Outside of entertainment and learning, one of the things I enjoy most about reading is discussing and sharing books with others. I especially like it when people share book recommendations with me. Nearly all my most interesting reads have come from recommendations. And while I might not get to all of my recommendations right away, eventually I manage to get to them. I know my daughter Courtney can relate.

Anyway, both Courtney and Amanda read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides last year. They both liked it, a lot. Since they both highly recommended it, I made it a point to put it at the top of my 2022 reading list even though it isn’t in my primary reading genre of science fiction. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting into, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

My final morning read for 2021 was Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull. In case you don’t know who Ed Catmull is, which I didn’t before reading the book, he was one of the co-founders and CEO of Pixar. Yes, that Pixar. The one that made movies such as the Toy Story franchise, A Bug’s Life, Up, Cars, Monsters, Inc., and more.

There’s an interesting story behind how I learned about the book, and it’s one I’m going to share. Why? Because it’s what I do. It’s who I am.

There are pros and cons to Amazon’s recommendation engine. On the one hand, it’s uncovered books that I would have otherwise never found on my own. On the other hand, it can lead you into some really deep rabbit holes. Once you read a couple of books around a similar topic or theme, it recommends more of the same.

After I finished reading The Fold, I thought I’d exhausted the books about time travel on my reading list. Apparently, I didn’t. Next up on my reading list was All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai.

Daniel Suarez has been near or at the top of my favorite authors ever since I read Daemon and Freedom. I enjoy how he combines action and suspense with believable near-term science fiction concepts.

In his latest novel, Delta-v, Suarez explores the topic of space exploration and the various options that are currently under evaluation such as colonizing Mars, asteroid mining, and space hotels. Around this backdrop, he creates a techno-thriller around the first team that is selected and sent to space to mine an asteroid in hopes of providing a method to sustain the human race.

I’ve been reading books related to Stoicism and ancient Stoic philosophers for a few years now. I can trace my interest to Brad Feld’s blog, which is one of few that I still follow regularly. He wrote a book review about The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman at the end of 2017. I was intrigued.

I had heard of Ryan Holiday. His book, Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, transformed the way I view mainstream media and popular news websites. Little would I know that reading The Daily Stoic during 2018 would change my outlook and approach to life.

Since then, I’ve continued my exploration of Stoicism. I’ve read additional books related to Stoic philosophy, including other Ryan Holiday books such as Ego Is the Enemy and Stillness Is the Key, which I recently finished.

The best book recommendations come from those who are closest to you. They are the ones who know you best. Since my two oldest daughters have started reading regularly, one of the side benefits has been getting book recommendations from them. For example, last summer Amanda recommended Recursion by Blake Crouch, which I really liked. Then, later in the year, Courtney recommended Lexicon by Max Barry, which I thoroughly enjoyed. As it turned out both books had been on my reading list, but their recommendations pushed them to the top.

So when both of them recommended American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, a book that wasn’t previously on my radar, I didn’t just add it to my reading list. I put it at the top. I figured it deserved priority treatment since they both suggested I read it.

Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

I’m intrigued and constantly amazed by the power of the human brain. I’m convinced had I not taken a liking to computers and electronics growing up that I would have ended up a neuroscientist. The more I read about the brain, the more fascinated and interested I become. What’s most amazing to me is how little we understand of its operation, even after all the brain research that’s been done over the last century . After all that time and energy, researchers have only scratched the surface. There is still so much more they have yet to discover.

A lot of my interest in the brain is understanding how to maximize its utilization. If one was to compare the human body to a computer, the brain is the microprocessor. It has the job of processing the inputs our senses provide, which is our interface to our environment. Those inputs, which make up our experiences, in turn affect the make up of our brain, which in turn determine our personality, which is in effect who we are. In my opinion, the better we are at using our brain, the closer we get to realizing our true potential.

Based on these interests, when the book Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Growth by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi showed up in my Amazon recommendations, if felt like the perfect fit. Of course I had to read it.