Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books — TBD
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Caitlin Moscatello, SEE JANE WIN

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Caitlin Moscatello, SEE JANE WIN

Caitlin: See Jane Win, I started working on this book in February of 2017. This was just a couple months after the 2016 election where many women across this country thought that we were going to see the first female president. We obviously know now that did not happen. The public temperature had definitely changed in those months. Right after the election, we know that groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood were being inundated with donations from men and women, but mostly from women. Then of course, there was the Women’s March where in sixty countries around the world people were taking to the streets. Right around that time, I want to say it was right around the Women’s March, there started to be these early reports that groups like Emerge America and Emily’s List, these groups that train and recruit democratic women to run for office, they were being completely flooded with applications. In a typical year, maybe there’d be nine hundred women who they might be able to get into their fold. At that point, there were fourteen thousand. It was very, very clear that something was happening. I decided to follow that.

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Rachel Levy Lesser, LIFE'S ACCESSORIES

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Rachel Levy Lesser, LIFE'S ACCESSORIES

Rachel: Life’s Accessories is a coming-of-age memoir told in fourteen essays which come together as fourteen chapters to tell a complete story. Each essay is represented by an item of either clothing or jewelry or an accessory or something in my closet in my life that serves as a lens into the experience that I've gone through, the lesson I've learned, the people I've met, and my life. Included also in the book at the beginning of each chapter/essay is a sketch of each accessory.

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Katherine Wintsch, SLAY LIKE A MOTHER

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Katherine Wintsch, SLAY LIKE A MOTHER

Katherine: We dip down into suffering when we assume we’re the only people that are struggling. We think everybody else is perfect. They're skating around on ice skates. We’re suffering because we think we’re alone. We’re knuckleheads. We suck. Everybody else is perfect. At the end of the day, we control the suffering. If we beat ourselves up less and give ourselves some grace for going through hard times, then the goal is just to struggle. If you're struggling, you're winning. That's the human existence. You can't buy your way out of it, move your way out of it, grow your way -- you're stuck with struggling, but we can suffer a lot less. Men suffer less than we do, in general.

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Alex Berenson, TELL YOUR CHILDREN

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Alex Berenson, TELL YOUR CHILDREN

Alex: Because the kind of psychosis that cannabis produces is so heavy on paranoia -- psychiatrists, they’ve done a lot of work about this issue because it’s so important. If you think about modern society, one of the most important things as a modern society, or as any society, is the prevention of violence. People spend a lot of time studying the causes of violence. They even spend time studying what specific delusions or paranoid ideation makes people violent who have severe mental illness. It’s clear that paranoia is a driver of severe violence. You put all of this together. Then you look at the individual cases, and it becomes harder and harder to argue that, “This is nonsense. I get stoned. I sit around. The only thing I murdered is a bag of Doritos.” 

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Susan Orlean, THE LIBRARY BOOK

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Susan Orlean, THE LIBRARY BOOK

Susan: The Library Book is a nonfiction book that has several narrative threads. On one level, it was a book in which I wanted to explore what the daily life of a library was all about. I was focusing on the Los Angeles Public Library, the main branch downtown. I had that in mind when I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that the LA Central Library was the site of the largest library fire in American history. This took place in 1986. It was an arson fire that destroyed 400,000 books. It damaged 700,000 books. It closed the library for seven years. What had begun as this more general curiosity about, what is the daily life of a library like? became a story about the near-death and rebirth of a library and an investigation into who did it and why. At the bottom of that as well, to add one more thread, was the thing that probably got me interested to begin with. I have an incredibly emotional response to libraries. I feel like it isn't entirely rational or logical. It’s some feeling that's much bigger and deeper and more touching than just saying it’s a building with books in it. There's something about libraries that feel really emotional. I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. The book also was an attempt to explore that. Why do we feel so attached and connected to libraries? Why does the idea of one burning down feel so deeply distressing?

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Tonya Dalton, THE JOY OF MISSING OUT

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Tonya Dalton, THE JOY OF MISSING OUT

Tonya: Honestly, it is more than a book to me. It’s a movement to help women stop feeling that heavy burden of busy. I feel like we think that we are supposed to be busy and when we’re not busy, we are somehow failing. The book really is about, how do you create a life for yourself that isn't busy, is really focused on what matters most, but still allowing you to get the things done that you need to get done? You've still got to do laundry. You've still got to pay the bills. You still have all those other things to do. How do we make it so that we have a priority-centered life while still focusing on what matters most and using the majority of our time to do that? It is a system to create that in your own life, which is what I'm excited about.

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Erica Cerulo & Claire Mazur, WORK WIFE

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Erica Cerulo & Claire Mazur, WORK WIFE

Erica: The book is about the power of female friendship to build successful businesses, to drive successful businesses. We wrote it because this is what we've experienced in working together. We've been working together almost nine years now. Over the years, our proudest career accomplishment has been the partnership we've built and the way that it’s survived all of the highs and lows. There have been so many highs and so many lows of building a business together. When we started looking around, we were like, there's so many other people who have also taken this path, both in starting their own companies or organizations or working within larger organizations. We wanted to shed light on that. You don't really hear the story of women partnering that much. The classic tale is women are catty. They don't work well together. That's not what we had experienced or what we were seeing in the world around us.

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Alain de Botton, THE SCHOOL OF LIFE: AN EMOTIONAL EDUCATION

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Alain de Botton, THE SCHOOL OF LIFE: AN EMOTIONAL EDUCATION

Alain: Here's an optimistic thing to bear in mind. No child needs a perfect parent. In fact, if you have a perfect parent, you'll end up psychotic. A parent who never disappoints you leads you towards a life of madness. The role of a parent is kindly disappointment. You want to try and gently initiate a child to the tragedies of existence until such point your job will long be done when it can accept the fact it’s going to die. It starts with, “I want to stay in the park all day. I want to eat as much chocolate cake as I like.” The job of a parent is, in a kindly way, to let them down. Some parents can never do any of the letting down because they have their own issues around disappointment. The notion is that the child must be happy all the time, which is very dangerous. There are some parents like that around.

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Tiffany Shlain, 24/6: THE POWER OF UNPLUGGING ONE DAY A WEEK

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Tiffany Shlain, 24/6: THE POWER OF UNPLUGGING ONE DAY A WEEK

Tiffany: Our daughters love it. It’s our favorite day of the week. I feel more creative, more productive. I'm happier on those days. I laugh more. It’s this secret sauce. It’s this ancient tradition that has so much wisdom in it. I'm so excited to get these ideas out. It’s not something I tried for a couple years or a couple months or digital detox. It’s not that. It’s a whole different way to live, to have a real structure around your week and have a true day of rest and a true day where we have a big Shabbat meal -- we have a big meal every Friday night with family and friends. No one brings their screen. It’s very different to be with people without their phones. Then the next day is the most delicious day of my week that I look forward to all week.

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Adrienne Brodeur, WILD GAME: MY MOTHER, HER LOVER, AND ME

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Adrienne Brodeur, WILD GAME: MY MOTHER, HER LOVER, AND ME

Adrienne: The truth of it is some part of me has been writing this story my whole life, mostly in my journal. At different points in my life, I tried to tackle it in different ways. There was some period in my life where I told this story entirely humorous as cocktail party patter or funny essays. I tried to write it as a romantic comedy at one point. Why now or why when I did start to write it, it was having children and starting a family of my own that made me realize I really needed to reckon with my past. I love my parents. I love my mother, but I did not want to parent or mother as I had been parented or mothered. That was probably the biggest impetus for writing it the way I've written it. Aside from the point that I think it’s worth noting that my daughter will be fourteen at the time of publication -- that was exactly the age I was when all this started in my own life. There's probably some unconscious timing and considerations that went on as well.

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Matt Hall, ODDS ON: THE MAKING OF AN EVIDENCE-BASED INVESTOR

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Matt Hall, ODDS ON: THE MAKING OF AN EVIDENCE-BASED INVESTOR

Matt: Writing what, for me, is a very personal story, writing a memoir is not easy. I heard one of your other podcast guests at one point say that it doesn't feel lonely if you're creating a work of fiction because you're getting to know this village of people that you're creating. For me, going back through my own experience, you have these moments where you go, is this going to be relevant? Is this going to connect with people? I loved the process. Writing the book has been transformational. I really wanted to do a personal narrative that was aimed at sharing the important truths I have found about modern investing. I had experience watching my mentor write many books that didn't really connect. If you go to any big bookstore and you look in the business section, it’s littered with books that are all doing the same thing. I really wanted to do something different.

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Rachel Brathen, TO LOVE AND LET GO

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Rachel Brathen, TO LOVE AND LET GO

Rachel: To Love and Let Go essentially is about a year in my life where I had the most amazing things happen and the most terrible things happen at the same time. My best friend passed away really tragically in a car accident. She was supposed to be the bridesmaid in my wedding. Three months after that, I got married to my husband, which was a highlight, of course. Then my grandmother passed away. Then we lost our dog. Then my mom tried to commit suicide. This all happened in the scope of one single year. It was a really big journey for me. Already then, I knew I wanted to write these stories down because I had so many intricate moments of things that felt like divine intervention, little miracles that happened in those really dark times. I wanted to write about it. It’s taken me five years to actually complete the book.

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Carla Naumburg, HOW TO STOP LOSING YOUR SH*T WITH YOUR KIDS

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Carla Naumburg, HOW TO STOP LOSING YOUR SH*T WITH YOUR KIDS

Carla: I met a mom once who was like, “You know, I just decided to stop yelling at my kids, and I stopped.” What? Are we speaking the same language? Are you a human? If I turn you around and open the little door on your back, will I push buttons and there's little wires? I don't understand how that works. If I could've done that, I would've done that. That's what I call a coulda/woulda strategy. Willpower is like a muscle. When we use it too much or even at all, over time, it gets tired. By the end of the day, it basically doesn't work, which is why we stand in front of the fridge trying to decide what to eat and we end up eating chips for dinner. It even takes willpower to make a decision like, should I eat this or that? Should I get out of bed or should I hit the snooze alarm? All these little things we do during the day. Am I going to fight with my kid about the shoes or let them wear flip flops to school?

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Will Schwalbe, THE END OF YOUR LIFE BOOK CLUB

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Will Schwalbe, THE END OF YOUR LIFE BOOK CLUB

Will: It’s a memoir. It is a memoir about living each day more purposefully and with more meaning as a tribute to those we've loved who aren't here to live anymore. I also wanted to inspire other people to do their own books for living, and put it forward as a way of understanding your life, and to remember your life through the books you read that gave you insight at the moments you needed the most, and to say to people, it can be any kind of a book. It can be a mystery novel. I write about The Girl on the Train. It can be a children’s book. I write about Stuart Little. It can be a cookbook. I write about A Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis, whatever books they are, not just as a kind of log, but really about a way of conjuring your whole life. The way books, getting back to what we talked about earlier, connect to you to people, they connect you to people, also, who are no longer here. When you read a book that you know someone loved who's dead, it brings them back. When you read a book that you think a friend who's no longer here might have liked or a parent or sibling or whoever you've lost, it allows you to be in a kind of dialogue with them.

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Deborah Copaken & Daniel Jones, MODERN LOVE

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Deborah Copaken & Daniel Jones, MODERN LOVE

Deborah: I said to you at the time, “You just emailed her? If you really love her, you've got to go after her.” I told him the story of this guy that I was dating back in 1989 who I met in Jamaica. Then we spent a beautiful week in London together. He was supposed to show up in Paris and never showed up. I thought he'd stood me up. I found out twenty years later, because that was back in the day before email and Facebook and being able to keep track of people, that he had showed up in Paris but had lost the piece of paper with my phone number on it and ended up staying at a youth hostel all weekend. It’s so sad. When this young man and I met up twenty years later, both married with three kids, love doesn't go away. It just is there. I told him the story. If you love her, don't end up like me twenty years later regretting not going after this person. I thought I was stood up. Put your body where your beliefs are.

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Eve Rodsky, FAIR PLAY

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Eve Rodsky, FAIR PLAY

Eve: I embarked on a quest. When I talk about quest, I mean a quest like you said before, through 508 interviews of men and women, through 10 disciplines of experts, a quest to find a solution for domestic rebalance that I knew so many of us needed. I’ll just tell you one finding on my quest because we’ll talk more about it. The most interesting thing I found was that the biggest problems in marriage and in partnerships were the smallest details. I had a COO of a publicly traded company, a woman, telling me that her greatest challenge was getting her husband to take out the kitty litter, not running her publicly traded company. I had a man in Upstate New York telling me that he was locked out from his house driving around aimlessly because he forgot to bring home a glue stick for his child’s art project. I'm sobbing over off-season blueberries. Enter Fair Play. Fair Play is a life management system. At its core, at its crux is a card game you play with your spouse. It’s easier to play than Monopoly. You divide up domestic tasks based on things that you value, having conversations that actually matter to you. Ultimately the goal is for fairness, but also for women to be able to get some time back to pursue what makes them uniquely them.

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Amanda Salzhauer, THE KINDNESS ADVANTAGE

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Amanda Salzhauer, THE KINDNESS ADVANTAGE

Amanda: [Kindness] is a way for us to connect with other people. Being kind gives us the space to be aware of what's going on for another person, what they might need, and through our actions, to connect with them. In addition, there are physiological reasons that kindness is important. I don't know if anybody's heard of this phenomenon called the helper’s high. If we do something kind for another person, it releases endorphins, the feel-good chemicals. It makes us feel good. It makes us want to do more acts of kindness for other people. Interestingly, if you even observe an act of kindness, you get that benefit as well. The idea that through acts of kindness we can all change our brain chemistry is pretty phenomenal.

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Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington, GROWN AND FLOWN

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Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington, GROWN AND FLOWN

Lisa: We wrote Grown and Flown: How to Support Your Teen, Stay Close as a Family, and Raise Independent Adults -- that's a mouthful -- for the same reason that we started the whole package. These are some of the most challenging, some of the most exciting, some of the most heartbreaking, and certainly some of the most consequential years of parenting. These are when kids are setting the direction for their lives. We still play a pretty big role in some of that decision-making, if nothing else, just being a sounding board for our kids.

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Deborah Burns, SATURDAY'S CHILD

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Deborah Burns, SATURDAY'S CHILD

Deborah: This book is about my very unconventional, larger-than-life mother. I was an only child who danced around an otherworldly beautiful goddess of a mother. Life with her was really all I knew. She may have been a tad narcissistic, not a word I knew back then. She was always central to my life. When she was fifty-six, she got breast cancer and after some lingering, was not a survivor. More than twenty years after her death, always carrying her with me, my life was changing. I realized it was time to reflect on that critically important relationship to me. The book was born from that reflection, which was full of revelation. Then I got inspired to actually write a book when I was on a trip to London with my own daughter. The mother-daughter story continues.

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Leslie Anne Bruce, YOU ARE A F*CKING AWESOME MOM

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Leslie Anne Bruce, YOU ARE A F*CKING AWESOME MOM

Leslie Anne Bruce: It’s a mama book. It’s not a baby book. It is a book for women who are transitioning into motherhood. It is a book that focuses on that journey. So much of preparing for becoming a mom is baby-centric. We plan for the nursery. We plan for the hospital and our diaper bag and what kind of crib mattress to get. We’re not planning for what happens when we become mothers, that moment when your child is born and you realize you're the least important person in that room. When I had my daughter in 2014, I really struggled with that transition. On top of the hormone shifts and the body shifts and all of that, I was going through a real identity crisis. I had spent so much of my life being one person. Overnight, I was becoming someone new. I didn't have the foresight to really honor that change. This book talks about that journey and largely about my journey. Its goal is to help women, support women who are going through it as well and also offer them a little bit of guidance. I don't like to say so much advice because I think that only you know what is best for your child in your home. I like to have little tips and tricks along the way.

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