Tag: #rudyfrancisco

Book review posts, Uncategorized

March 2024 Reads

amybenoit

I read four books in March 2024. I have been reading less for my personal pleasure due to being busy with a post-graduate paralegal certificate program and spending most of my time reading textbooks. Here is a brief synopsis of the four books I read in March 2024, some of which I will post about in greater detail in the future.

“How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships” was written by Leil Lowndes, an internationally acclaimed communications expert who coaches top executives of Fortune 500 companies and frontline employees to become more effective communicators. Leil conducts communications seminars for the U.S. Peace Corps, foreign governments, and major corporations. While I did learn some great communication tricks and the book was very useful, I did not like the phone and smug tone of writing. Here are a handful of my take-aways:

  • When someone asks where you are from, never give just the city. Learn some engaging facts about your hometown that conversational partners can communicate on.
  • Never give a naked thank you. Never let the phrase “thank you” stand alone.
  • If you leave a voicemail, view it as your ten-second audition to prove you are worthy of a quick callback.
  • Use the big baby pivot when you meet someone new. Give the warm smile, the total-body turn, and the undivided attention you would give a baby who crawled up to your feet and smiled at you.
  • Imagine a giant swiveling spotlight between you and your conversation partner. The longer you keep it shining away from you, the more interesting he or she finds you.

“Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English” was written by Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada and author of the popular language blog called “Language in the Wild.” This book contained a linguistic exploration of the speech habits we love to hate – linguistic quirks that are fundamental to our social, professional, and romantic success. This book was fascinating, and here are just a few facts that resonated with me:

Language evolution doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Language evolves because social forces act as triggers in taking underlying linguistic tendencies and giving them social meaning. Ex: migration, school, class, cultural shifts, geography, age, etc.

‘Ums‘ and ‘uhs‘ don’t just fill pauses- these words unconsciously signify the introduction of a new topic or a complex idea and signal to a listener that there will be an upcoming speech delay and convey how long of a delay the listener should expect. ‘Um‘ precedes longer delays than ‘uh.’ They also result in a boost in memory to the listener (of what was stated after the pause) and filled pauses buy ourselves processing time and convey to the listener that “it’s still my turn.”


Our unease with the use of the word ‘like‘ is probably more about its association with casual, younger speech than its functionality. ‘Like‘ is an incredibly amorphous word:

  • verb – to discuss fondness for objects or people
  • noun – to describe likes and dislikes
  • adjective – to mean similar to “in the manner of”
  • preposition – simile construction
  • conjunction – to embed another clause
  • approximating marker – looseness of meaning before a numerical estimate/quantification
  • common quotative verb

“100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships, & Success” was written by Liz Moody, the host of the top-rated Liz Moody podcast, author of best-selling books, and popular online content creator. This book was my favorite book I read in March and contained so much valuable information! I will post about this book in more detail another time, but in the meantime, here are five ways you can change your life.

  • Take the risk. You are far more resilient than you think. Doing is a form of figuring out. Just start. The right time is always right now. A fundamental reason many people don’t find success is that they never begin.
  • Think about your death. What can it highlight about living a life that you’re proud of today? What can it teach you about shifts you need to make?
  • Establish and stick to better boundaries. You reclaim your energy, time, capacity, money, and physical space. We begin to resent people for not catering to our needs, even when we’ve never communicated what those needs actually are. Take a pause before replying to anyone’s invitation or request. Practice checking in with yourself first before you tend to someone else’s needs.
  • Identify your financial dreams. Why do you want to accumulate wealth in the first place? What is your Rich Life? What do you value? What are some things other people might value that truly don’t matter to you? Spend your money on what you value.
  • Create a mental health checklist. Social connection, good nutrition, routine, sleep, and movement are the five pillars of mental health. Use them as a first line of answers if you aren’t feeling your best.

“Excuse Me As I Kiss The Sky” was written by Rudy Francisco, one of the most recognizable names in spoken word poetry, and one of my favorite poets. This book covered different poetry styles, some of which I am not familiar with: ode, obit, golden shovel, contrapuntal, question-and-answer, free verse, page to stage, and love poems.

Rudy is one of the most recognizable names in spoken word poetry, but his talent also shows on the page. Rudy mentioned the difference between page poems and performance poems. Page poems are written for visual aesthetics and consist of rearranging text and line breaks. Performance poems are focused on how the poem will sound out loud, how it feels to say the words, the syllable count, rhythm, and taking just one chance to explain the story.

Here are some of my favorite lines in the book, which I have not formatted into the page poems:

Fragile – “I know the heart can be a fragile and dangerous thing. When it breaks, the ends are often jagged and will cut the hands of people who are just trying to help you clean up the mess. But I also know that pain is nomadic. It doesn’t like to stay in one play for too long. Healing is a slow crawl, but it will find you right where you are.”

“Fear is when we turn up the volume on everything that might go wrong and then allow it to speak louder than courage.”

“The past is one of the few things more stubborn than we are. It will not change and doesn’t care if you have a better idea of how the story should’ve ended.

Healing begins when we stop trying to run backwards on the escalator and embrace whatever will keep us moving forward.”

“I hope you stumble into the kind of love that bends all the question marks into exclamation points.”

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts

February 2024 Reads

amybenoit

I read four books in February 2024. I have been reading less for my personal pleasure due to being busy with a post-graduate paralegal certificate program and spending most of my time reading textbooks. Here is a brief synopsis of the four books I read in February 2024, some of which I will post about in greater detail in the future.

“Her Honor: My Life on the Bench … What Works, What’s Broken, and How to Change It” was written by LaDoris H. Cordell, a legal commentator and police-reform advocate who is a frequent guest on news outlets and served as the first African American woman jurist in Northern California. This book was very comprehensive and educational, and I learned SO much!

This review sums up my interpretation perfectly:

A brave, profound, and affecting book that combines wisdom, candor, wit, and humanity in equal measure, Her Honor is a sterling embodiment of the meaning of judicial independence that should be required reading for law students and anyone interested in our system of justice.

Kathleen M. Sullivan, former dean of Stanford Law School

Here are five random facts I learned reading this book:

  • The Multi Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA) requires the states to diligently recruit foster and adoptive parents who reflect the race or ethnicity of those children needing foster care and adoptive homes.
  • The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) requires the Native Child’s Tribe to be notified as soon as any proceedings concerning the child’s welfare are filed in court, and the Tribe has the right to be present at proceedings.
  • Seven states do not require any legal grounds to recall a judge. All that is needed is to collect the required number of signatures of registered voters to place the recall on the ballot. Federal judges cannot be recalled, no matter how controversial their decisions are.
  • The general rule is that judges cannot publicly comment about pending cases. It is no small irony that an accused murderer can speak out in his defense, but the judge who presides over that case cannot.
  • Today, defendants accept plea bargains and plead guilty in nearly 98% of criminal cases in federal and state courts.

“Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital” was written by Elise Hu, a correspondent at host-at-large for NPR and the host of TED Talks Daily, the daily podcast from TED that’s downloaded a million times a day. Elise was the NPR bureau chief responsible for coverage of North Korea, South Korea, and Japan for nearly four years.

This review sums up my thoughts of this book:

Superbly researched and deeply insightful, Flawless is a timely, provocative, and fascinating must-read. Elise Hu masterfully blends an engrossing memoir about her experience as a foreigner, woman, and mother of girls in Seoul with a journalistic exploration of the disturbing forces behind K-beauty’s global rise.

Angie Kim

Here are three surprising take-aways from the book:

  • At high school graduation time in South Korea, students are commonly given cosmetic surgery gift certificates by their parents and grandparents, and dermatology and plastic surgery apps offer 50-70% discounts to recent high school grads for a three-pack of the most popular procedures for young Koreans: eyelid surgery, nose jobs, and Botox for facial contouring of the jawline.
  • Olive Young, like Sephora, is a one-stop shop for Korean skincare and cosmetics. In 2020, there were 1,259 Oliver Young stores in South Korea, roughly twice the number of Sephoras in the United States. Accounting for the population differences between the two countries, that means Koreans are roughly 6x more likely to encounter an Olive Young than an American is to encounter its equivalent!
  • South Korea leads the world in cosmetic procedures relative to its population.

“I’ll Fly Away” is a book of poems that paints an intimate portrait of Black life in America, written by Rudy Francisco, one of the most recognizable names in Spoken Word Poetry. Rudy is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and a National Poetry Slam Champion. He is my favorite slam poet.

Here are some of my favorite anecdotes from the poems:

“Sometimes I’m the mess. Sometimes I’m the broom – on my hardest days, I have to be both.”

“Have you ever noticed how much water hates to argue? How it molds itself into the shape of a pour, makes a home where it lands, but also never gives up its identity. As if to say, ‘Sure, I’ll stay but only if I can be myself.’ I think there is a lesson here.”

“The Peace Lily is a flower that can grow and survive even if it’s left in the shade. See? We don’t always choose our environment, but we can’t let that stop us from blooming.”

“There are people that you don’t know, who dislike you for things you never did. There are people who start wars but hide the declaration under their breath for years. They see you coming, stare from a safe distance, and launch a fleet of ships using only a glance.”

“How to Break Up With Your Phone” was an eye-opening book written by Catherine Price. Part of this book covered the negative impacts of phone usage and addiction, and the second part of this book covered a detailed 30-day plan to break the cycle of addiction to your phone. Although I have not yet done the 30-day plan, I learned a lot from this book and will implement some of the 30-day challenge tips.

The biggest tips from this book are to reframe the way you think about your phone. Every moment you spend on your phone is time you’re not spending doing other pleasurable things, whether that’s in-person relationships, practicing a hobby, reading a book, etc.

Ask yourself what you want to pay attention to. Our lives are what we pay attention to. Every time you reach for your phone, consider asking yourself: What for? What else? Why now?

Set yourself up for success. If you spend too much time on social media apps, uninstall them from your phone and make yourself use a computer to check social media. Disable notifications from apps and e-mail to prevent distractions. Establish rules about phone usage. Ex: no phones at the dinner table, no phone within an hour of waking up or going to bed, no phones while riding in an elevator, no phones on a daily walk, etc.

I really enjoyed all four of these books and will post about some of them in more detail on my blog sometime!

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!