I’m a little late on my December reading post, but I didn’t want to just skip it, because my December reading list includes one of my favorite books of the year. Truth be told, I finished less books in December than just about any other month this year, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I actually started A LOT more books last month, but couldn’t get through them.
And for that, I blame The Women I Think About at Night.
The Women I Think About at Night was the last book I finished in December, and I think my inability to finish anything else was partly because I subconsciously wanted it to be the last book I read for the year and partly because everything else I tried to read paled in comparison. Yes, I loved this book that much.
But let’s backtrack for a minute.
I started the month with The Soul of an Entrepreneur by David Sax. I was looking for something to get my brain back into a business frame of mind, and since I really enjoyed Sax’s last book, The Revenge of Analog, I decided to give this one a go. And overall, I really enjoyed it. It made it into my best business books of the year for artists and makers list and I bought my brother a copy for Christmas! It’s not really a how to book, but I loved it because it really reflected the realities of being an entrepreneur.
After that, I read Accountable: The Rise of Citizen Capitalism. This one was ok. I really loved the history of how we got to our current financial situation (where stockholder value creation is privileged over everything else) and I think there were some solid ideas for changing that, but the book definitely reflected a sense of privilege that made the solutions not viable for everyone, and honestly, it just got kind of boring at times.
After that, I wanted to read something more art focused, so I pulled Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits off my shelf. I had bought this book (and read most of it) a while back, not long after launching my class Market Your Selfie. As a book, it’s ok – it gives a good overview of women artists and a bit about the theory behind self portraiture, though honestly, I would have liked it to go deeper on either.
But what this book did do was make me obsessed with Sofonisba Anguissola, the 16th century Italian portraitist and general bad ass of marketing and self-promotion. (Which is why she was in that book – lady made a lot of self-portraits as a way to show off her skills, which I am totally here for!) In my sudden desire to learn everything about Sofonisba, I came across The Women I Think About at Night, and well, game over.
Part travelogue and part biographies of amazing women (including Sofonisba), The Women I Think About at Night pretty much ticks all my boxes – art, travel, and badass women. It’s also beautifully written and just super enjoyable. A few of the women in my online community have started it as well now that they’ve heard me talk about it, and they all seem to agree.
All in all, it ended up being the perfect book to end my year (and one of my favorite reads of the year) so I’m not disappointed at all that my December list ended up being shorter. Plus, I’ve already finished two, albeit shorter, books in January, so I’m pretty much back to my old ways. But I also see myself rereading The Women I Think About At Night again at some point in 2021. I feel like it’s one of those books that I’ll end up returning to again and again.
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