Friday Links #5: Great Stuff Worth a Read

Assorted awesome reads splayed on my coffee table. October 2014.

Ready to get the Friday great-reads party started?

Without further ado (because I don't believe you read the introductory text, anyway), the below bullets list the outstanding writing I’ve read these past couple weeks:

• The mind picture created by researchers completely recreating an era long past and immersing in it people who would have considered that time their prime of life—and the results of their experiment—completely captivated me. (And gave me hope as well.) Is age just a mindset, after all?

• Once sentimental about physical things, I shed them now without compunction. Well, when I remember to clean out my closets and cabinets and drawers, I do. Marie Kondo’s system of extreme “thing” dispatching and intensive home organization inspired me. Now just to find the time—and the dumpster—to purge all my accumulated stuff.

• Positive thinking can only get you so far, because envisioning drains you of the drive and energy you need to achieve your vision. Better, Gabriele Oettingen found, to daydream an objective, consider the obstacles to realizing it, and develop plans through which to surmount them.

• Ah, asking for salary increases. Interesting that in 1931 Walter Benjamin provided sound advice on the topic that people still haven’t learned nearly a century later. How many times have employees come into my office just as Benjamin’s Herr Zauderer did? Take heed, folks. Take heed.

• Should I call Richard Rodriguez’s piece in T Magazine,“Naked in a Digital Age,” an essay or a collection of musings? Either way, it captivated me—and will you—through evoking a complementary string of meandering thoughts about age and culture and fashion and beauty and community.

What have you read recently that I should read?