Tag: book review

The Compound Effect

Author: Darren Hardy

Genre: Personal development.

Length: 200 pages.

Overview: The compound effect refers to the ability of small positive actions to multiply over time into great payoffs, and conversely, for small negative actions to multiply over time into dysfunction. Choices create behaviors which create habits, with good habits moving us toward our goals and bad habits away from our goals. Consistency ultimately builds momentum, which further accelerates change. Tools include tracking, goal setting, finding your “why-power,” and managing the positive and negative influences in your inputs, associations, and environment.

My thoughts: Although the book doesn’t necessarily cover any new ground for the genre, it is remarkably succinct (about 3 hours to read), well organized, and the case studies and allegories are illustrative and motivating.

If you like this, you’ll like: Atomic Habits by James Clear.

America’s First Daughter

Authors: Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie.

Genre: Historical fiction.

Length: 587 pages.

Description: A historical fiction account of the life of Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson.

My Thoughts: This novel will leave you with a new appreciation for some of the complexities of the life of Thomas Jefferson, and that period of our nation’s history. As with any good historical fiction, you gain an understanding for how life was lived on a day-to-day basis in a different era. In the early chapters of the book, you develop a great sympathy for Patsy, and later come to rue the utter devastation made of her life and that of her family because of what turns out to be a tragic choice of husband.

Book Club: This would make an excellent book club book, discussion points could include:

  • On what issues is our modern society like that of the antebellum Virginians, who know slavery is morally wrong, but continue to go along with it anyway?
  • Patsy’s life was shaped by regional and era-specific societal expectations and constraints on women. To what extent do these still exist today?
  • What might the second half of the book been like, had Patsy married William Short instead?

If you liked this, you’ll like: My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie