Good, right, and important, but somehow I did not manage to grow much between the start of Together and its finish.
Reviews and Comments
Nonfiction audio is my main thing. Autobiographies, parenting, science, social issues, and some business or anything educational.
I consider nonfiction to be a healthier and more useful view of the world than the news.
I have a few Mastodon accounts, like @travisfw@fosstodon.org
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Travis F W finished reading Together by Vivek H. Murthy
Travis F W reviewed The Autism Relationships Handbook by Joe Biel
Travis F W started reading The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
I started listening to Green read his book to me a year or two ago, and dropped it. But feeling drawn to more poetic subject matter now, feeling my usual focus glaze over, this delivers in ironic commentary, as if a star rating could ever provide insight into the quality of an experience beyond just the quality, a quality of the experience of a book that I have been missing. I just very much enjoyed the chapter on our capacity for wonder.
Wonder, itself, given a star rating. Does it matter how many? Should it ever matter to you, how many stars for anything? Only because the metric is forced down our throats by e-commerce platforms, must it matter. But no wonder why the quality of daily life has been seeming to drop in dimensionality. Not that Green has yet made this point.
Travis F W reviewed The LOVE Prescription by John Gottman
pervasively relevant insight that how we respond to bids for attention is key
5 stars
The Gottmans under-state the significance of this book by implication, with the type of title they gave it. But the take-away is that they found the single variable most correlated with long, happy relationships: how partners respond to bids for attention. Though the authors only discuss the context of amatonormative marriages, this finding, through the lens of the experienced Gottmans, is valuable insight for friendships and any kind of emotional intimacy partners wish to maintain.
Travis F W started reading The Autism Relationships Handbook by Joe Biel
Travis F W wants to read How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra
Having grown up in Alaska, I feel I have a different set of assumptions about infrastructure than most who grew up with higher population density. For a long time after I left the north, I still carried a knife, lighter, and flashlight. Convenient tools, if for no other reason than that others usually don't have them when they need them, but reflecting a lack of assumption on my part that wherever I find myself, I will necessarily have light and warmth, or need nothing more than my bare hands. Infrastructure is the difference, and its ubiquity in most lives is both freeing and limiting.
Travis F W wants to read Social Chemistry by Marissa King
Travis F W wants to read The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff, Kristin Neff
From leading psychologist Dr. Kristin Neff comes a step-by-step guide explaining how to be more self-compassionate and achieve your dreams …
Travis F W rated Debt: The First 5000 Years: 5 stars

Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber
The author shows that before there was money, there was debt. For 5,000 years humans have lived in societies divided …
Travis F W commented on The Balanced Brain by Camilla Nord
Nord's chapter 4, Motivation Drive and Wanting, strikes directly at the crux of my personal life challenges. The difference between wanting and pleasure. I want, and I have sometimes extreme drive, but I do not feel good about it, and am almost always disappointed. The countless times I have finished doing something and found myself pretending to be happy about it for the sake of others…
Travis F W started reading The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay
I enjoying these, specifically the account of drama beetween neighborhood cats which I just finished. A nice book I don't have to pay much attention to, but am glad to, when I do. A reminder to take delight where I can, not just think hard about everything and stay busy.
Travis F W commented on Together by Vivek H. Murthy
Content warning Judgment of insightfulness
In this section on male and female culture I really feel like the Surgeon General is two decades behind. Maybe he is watering it down to be broadly accessible? Or maybe he doesn't know as many psychologists as I do? But he really missed how feminist culture is bringing loneliness to the previously socially adept sex by adopting masculine individualistic values, and he really missed the huge trove of insight into the psychology of relationships that can be gleaned from queer, lgbt, ace and aro communities, and he only scratched the surface of intergenerational social trauma in men, and the possibilities for healing that young boys have access to now that their fathers and grandfathers should be paying attention to. I hope I am speaking too soon.








