As I mentioned a few weeks back, each Friday post will feature fantastic articles, books, and blog posts that I’ve read since the Friday post before. More people should read more great writing, I say.

Happy reading!

• Years ago, Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn gave me a thought-provoking read, and so did this recent article the couple penned about the limitations to our current methods for ending the cycle of poverty—and how we could make a far bigger difference. In short: We have to start earlier.

• Jon C. Lundell’s meditation from an artist’s perspective on whether art has something to do with beauty and the subjectiveness of the beautiful made me think. Personally, I believe that anything can have beauty from the right perspective.

• Blame my intellectual-historian background and my work in the marketing field: I love studies like this one, written up by John Beshears and Francesca Gino in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, of human behavior and how to influence better decision making.

• This post by Joelle about private lives in a public, social-media world sounded a bell for me: As much as this blog, Twitter, and Facebook puts out about me into the world—and as much as I may choose to share off-line—I hold back a great deal more. In fact, I sequester what matters most to me far more often than not. Maybe one day, that will change. But not anytime soon.

• The fragility and transience and poignancy and preciousness of life have lingered in my thoughts quite a bit lately. And so when I read this post by David Pennington, I read it thrice. Though it made me ache, it helped to know someone else feels the sadness. And I still wonder who wrote the beautiful eulogy from the physics perspective. I want to thank him or her.

• My humanities-loving heart sang when I read James McPherson’s post marking parallels in “The Wire” to Greek epic—and poignantly drawing conclusions about the need for justice to achieve peace in the world. And I haven’t ever even seen “The Wire.”

I still forget to make note of the fantastic writing I encounter—I haven’t yet mastered the habit. Stay tuned in future weeks for ever better lists!

What have you read recently that I should read?