Dale and Me
One of the best books I've ever read: Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People.
To anyone reading this, the reputation of the book is surely preceding my mention of it here. So I'll keep this very, very simple: required reading in all public schools in the country.
I read lots of books in English classes as a young whippersnapper, and not a single one of them make a dent in my thickish skull half as much as this one did. To this day what I read in it still drives what I do from day to day. I can't say that much for F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Sorry, Scottie.)
I read it when I was 20. This was lucky. I was young enough that the words in the book were assimilated into my everyday mode of thinking. But younger still would have been better. I say make all 9th graders, all freshman in high school, read it. The whole thing. You have to demonstrate that you read it and learned from it, either through a test, an essay, a series of Twitter posts, or maybe having to go down the the bus stations and convinced five complete strangers to purchase something from you. You don't get to go on to 10th grade until you've done it, no exceptions.
If you're a little bit older and you've never read it, you're behind. Go find a copy and read it, not once, but once every six months until it starts to stick.
There is an entire education in this book, and it's one that a lot of people I meet have never learned...even if they happened to have read the book.
A popular criticism of the book, in so many words: "It teaches you to be a phony." To these piping Holden Caulfields, I say, the solution to this problem is simple: after you read the book, don't go out into the world and be a phony.
You'll waste a lot of effort and get frustrated quickly if you spend your time smashing your head against human nature (or rather, the nature of people). Much better to learn to accommodate its idiosyncrasies. Dale will happily tell you how.
To anyone reading this, the reputation of the book is surely preceding my mention of it here. So I'll keep this very, very simple: required reading in all public schools in the country.
I read lots of books in English classes as a young whippersnapper, and not a single one of them make a dent in my thickish skull half as much as this one did. To this day what I read in it still drives what I do from day to day. I can't say that much for F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Sorry, Scottie.)
I read it when I was 20. This was lucky. I was young enough that the words in the book were assimilated into my everyday mode of thinking. But younger still would have been better. I say make all 9th graders, all freshman in high school, read it. The whole thing. You have to demonstrate that you read it and learned from it, either through a test, an essay, a series of Twitter posts, or maybe having to go down the the bus stations and convinced five complete strangers to purchase something from you. You don't get to go on to 10th grade until you've done it, no exceptions.
If you're a little bit older and you've never read it, you're behind. Go find a copy and read it, not once, but once every six months until it starts to stick.
There is an entire education in this book, and it's one that a lot of people I meet have never learned...even if they happened to have read the book.
A popular criticism of the book, in so many words: "It teaches you to be a phony." To these piping Holden Caulfields, I say, the solution to this problem is simple: after you read the book, don't go out into the world and be a phony.
You'll waste a lot of effort and get frustrated quickly if you spend your time smashing your head against human nature (or rather, the nature of people). Much better to learn to accommodate its idiosyncrasies. Dale will happily tell you how.