A good book haunts you like a childhood sweetheart. It grabs you, be it by the shirttails, the scruff of the neck, or by the small hairs, and strings you along to places you never knew existed, or whose visits you had forgotten.
Here, in no particular order, are some that continue to jab me in the eye, and that might help you navigate those ridiculously long days between the two holidays. In a fast-paced world of innumerable screens and terminal doom scrolling, finding the time to turn a page seems impossible, yet almost decadent when you succeed. Which is why a good first recommendation would be The Attention Economy by Thomas Davenport and John Beck.
The basic argument is that attention has become the most precious resource, and figuring out how to get and keep it is essential for businesses — and, I’d add, any exasperated parent trying to have a conversation with their teenagers. If, like me, you worry endlessly about whether the children will be alright, help might be at hand from Catherine McCarthy. Her book, Raising a Kid Who Can, is a mirror that shows how much understanding your children is about understanding yourself. Another go-to is Raising Emotionally Healthy Kids by Eileen Kennedy-Moore. The end of the year inspires well-meaning promises to improve and be a better person — New Year, New Me, anyone? — but bad habits are notoriously hard to kick, as Charles Duhigg notes in The Power of Habit.
Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, opened the creaky hinge to the rabbit hole of behavioural psychology and economics from which I have never been rescued. I invite you to get lost in it, but I warn you, you might never be heard of again! There’s plenty of help if you are looking to do better, be better, but two recommendations come to mind. In Nudge, which I consider a classic and personal favourite, Richard H. Thaler, a University of Chicago economist and 2017 Nobel laureate and his Harvard colleague Cass R. Sunstein, show that big changes come from small tweaks — or that small tweaks can help you make the big changes you hope for. The other would have to be Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud, which is so simple in its counter-intuitiveness, it is mind-blowing. To start new things, old things must end, and to grow, you must go.
It’s much harder in real life, of course, but you won’t fail from a lack of knowledge. There’s a tonne of books about money, but the most memorable, in my opinion, are tried and tested classics: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel is well worth its hype, but few money books are as accessible as The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. I have kept biographies and political books off the list, as well as local fare, because I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t done many this year. I have also chosen older books that are still relevant today and accessible in other formats, but please buy books if you can afford them; writers and publishers also have needs! It is for this reason, and just being old school, that I struggle to read PDF book versions (audio versions are a lifesaver in Kampala’s traffic).
I am looking forward to finally reading Mahmood Mamdani’s Slow Poison, a physical copy of which has been pressed into my flesh and will soon be devoured, and copies of which are now available at Mahiri Books. There’s a catch to my generous suggestions, of course. Together with a dear friend, we are collecting books for a small free public library we plan to open in the new year in Kira. We already have some books, but are keen to receive more and will gratefully accept any.
*** There is, I admit, a temptation to engage with malicious, malevolent and mendacious slurs that have been drawn to my attention on social media, but I am reminded of an adage that has served me well in the past; if a pig invites you to a mud-wrestling contest, wait for the mud to dry. Then decline. Happy holidays!