Keren Threlfall

10 Books My Kids Love to Read Over and Over Again

December 22, 2016

My 4 children are currently ages 8, 7, 4, and 2, at the time of this post. My older girls do enjoy longer read-alouds and chapter books, but for the most part I’ll focus on easier reads. Here are 10 books they love right now: 1. Tintin and the Picaros (Hergé) My two older girls have actually read the entire set of Tintin books (minus Tintin in the Congo, which is currently not really accessible where racism and some other issues are a little too much to try to discuss at this point). My husband had these books as a child, and their entry into the world of Tintin began with his childhood copy of this book, which subsequently spurred on our now 7-year-old to become a voracious reader. 2. Frog and Toad Together (Arnold Lobel) We love all the Frog and Toad series, but this collection (“A List,” “In the Garden,” “Cookies,” “Dragons and Giants,” and “The Dream”) takes the cake. (Or in this case, the cookie!). This is definitely one of my favorite easy books to read aloud.

10 Personal Development Books That Rocked My World

December 21, 2016

1. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business (Charles Duhigg) In a sense, this book was my gateway drug into the world of personal development and pop psychology reading. (See: my review in 2012.) It also helped me understand my own personal psychological makeup in a way that would best allow me to establish some important habits (reading, exercise, healthy eating) and remove others (nail-biting, stress-eating). An important concept that was embedded into my life through read The Power of Habit was that of keystone habits, a concept that has stuck with me in the years since and has cross-pollinated as I have read other books where an intersection with the topic of habit(s) occurred. 2. The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun I first read this book around the same time I read The Power of Habit. And while you might not suspect it from the title, Rubin’s The Happiness Project (and later writings) discusses habits a great deal. This book was an important one in self-awareness and being able to understand the best approaches to make personal change in my life. 3. The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) In recent years, Daniel and I have changed on just about every level. We have our reading to thank for much of that, but we also frequently find ourselves coming up against a wall. For the most part, it’s a wall that’s in our heads. In other words, our big struggle in forward momentum and overcoming fear continues to be a psychological one. The Big Leap pretty much blew our minds in pulling back some of the layers of the psychological barriers that were preventing us from moving forward. 4. Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Amy Cuddy) Fear is a big challenge for many of us, particularly as it plays out in self-confidence. Presence addresses this in a big way, and you might just find yourself doing some power posing by the end. 5. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Elizabeth Gilbert) Some people hate this book; others are borderline obsessed. I don’t think I fall into either category, but definitely not the middle, either. Nonetheless, I did find this book to hold some very powerful concepts. As a person whose…

10 Books on Race That Every American Should Read

December 20, 2016

Racism is a loaded term, a buzzword that often creates an immediate barrier if one perceives it is in any way being negatively connected with them. As such, reading a list called “10 books on racism” might make you want to run, because the mere suggestion of such a list might make you feel that someone is accusing you of being racist. Or, it might make you want to run toward it, because perhaps like many of us, you’ve realized your initial understanding of race and racism in our world was missing important pieces, at best. The reality is that each of our prejudices, fears, and acceptance of people different than us – on both a personal and societal level– has been shaped by a number of things, and none of us can avoid this entirely. We would all do well to examine this issue from viewpoints outside of our own. Without further commentary, these are 10 of the books that shaped my understanding of race and racism in America: 1. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Bryan Stevenson) 2. Black Like Me (John Howard Griffin) 3. Twelve Years a Slave: The Autobiography of Solomon Northup (Solomon Northup, Sue Eakin) 4. Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen (Loewen, James W.) (My review on this, from 2012) 5. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II 6. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 7. Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America 8. Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) 9. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., (Clayborne Carson) 10. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (Isabel Wilkerson) Bonus Resources: 16 Books About Race That Every White Person Should Read 70+ Race Resources for White People 50 Books That Every African American Should Read

85 Books I Read in 2016

December 19, 2016

Although I’ve attempted to categorize my reading, many books could fall into multiple categories. In no particular order, these are the books I read in 2016: Business & Personal Development Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing and Selling (Michael Port) Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy…Create a Mass of Raving Fans…and Take Any Business to the Next Level (Ryan Levesque) How to Become a Corporate or Business Coach (Lyn Kelley) #GIRLBOSS (Sophia Amoruso) The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea (Bob Burg, John David Mann) Rich Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan for Getting Your Financial Life Together…Finally (Nicole Lapin) Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (Jocko Willink, Leif Babin) Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace (Al Ries, Jack Trout) Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Simon Sinek) Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (Nir Eyal) The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers (Ben Horowitz)

Countdown in Booklists

December 18, 2016

2016 Christmas Countdown…In Book Lists! It has come to pass that this blog pretty much gets use for just a few things: a new baby and birth story, my book list for the year, maybe some travel, and maybe a post or two when I actually take time to jot down some thoughts online. Every year, I try to end my yearly reading at the end of November, and have December to think and reflect on the year. And post my reading for the year. A trip to the Pacific Northwest shuffled up our November/December schedule. (How 2016-ish…what didn’t get shuffled up this year!? ;)) Nevertheless, I ended my reading the first week of December, ending with 85 books for the year. A few books over my original goal, and a few books short of my reset goal. So over the next few days, as we count down to Christmas day, I’ll share my 2016 Reading List, my favorites from my 2016 reading, and some special picks on several other topics — all from books I’ve read in recent years.