Haven of the Readers

Quick note: If you are part of a business or you negotiate/ argue on a daily basis, this post (and book) will help your life in a substantial way, you need to read it. I'm not joking, if you negotiate/ argue/ communicate with other people regularly, you've got to read this, it's required.

Books changed my life. They can change yours too. Let me explain: From the beginning For a lot of my childhood, I was reading fiction books constantly. Now, I don't mean to say you should never read fiction, but nonfiction reading is where a lot of magic happens.  Why? From nonfiction reading, you learn, and I'm not counting the fiction "lessons learned". I mean true learning about the real world. Still, not all nonfiction books are created equal, and so to have the vocabulary for the rest of the post I'm defining a nonfiction book (for this post) as  a book that immediately affects your real-world actions and experiences. I know this is kind of like the definition for self-help books, but it's different for reasons you'll see later. Back to the personal story: For a lot of my childhood I was constantly reading fiction books, and it was only a year or so ago that I started reading nonfiction books. Here's a graph of what my life looks like: Before I st...

Not too long ago I wrote a short story- 2, actually- and they were fantasy short stories, each with its own set of characters and its own setting. Guess what? I don't know why, but they absolutely sucked. I created characters' insecurities and strengths and tried to affect them in the stories. I put stuff into effect and showed the insecurities and strengths without saying "John Smith is insecure of how common his name is" but instead showing with:  As John looked at the golden telephone book the hairs on his arms stood up and his vision got distorted, the telephone book seemed to be going forward and back and the room- oh, the room- was going this way and that. "Hey, this isn't a good idea, let's just go back home," cried John to his brother. But John couldn't hear his brother anymore, all he heard was his heartbeat in his head, all he could see were the thousands of John Smiths in the telephone book." I feel this showed the insecurity bett...