Books that I Believe Every High Schooler Should Read

All opinions expressed in the blog are solely my own. 

I read Anna Karenina by Tolstoy because it was on a list of a hundred books everyone should read. 1205 pages later, I don't recommend it as a  great time investment. The first sentence tells you all you need to know, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The rest of the book expounds on this misery.

Here are a few that are worth your valuable time: 

On Writing by Stephen King. King shares his career development in the first half of the book and ideas about writing in the second half. For example, who regrets limiting adverbs by using stronger verbs? 

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. "History doesn't repeat, man does." Frankl chronicles life in a Nazi death camp (he was a prisioner for over three years) and extends Freud's observations about life being about relationships and work. Frankl adds suffering as the third element none of us escapes during life. 

The Positive Dog by Jon Gordon. On his website, Gordon shares, "Being positive doesn't just make you better. It makes everyone around you better." Positivity applies to both our attitude and to our 'culture', everything in our ecosystem. Nobody crafts a positive life from a negative attitude. 

MVB has always taught more than volleyball. Commitment, discipline, effort, sacrifice, and teamwork create the MVB experience. 

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Housel shares commonsense information about our attitudes and behaviors around money. For example, the poorest Americans spend about $412 dollars a year on lottery tickets. Forty percent of Americans don't have $400 to meet an emergency. The groups overlap as people chase dreams. That's meant as an effort to understand behavior. The earlier you learn about money (currency being a relatively new creation since 600 B.C.) the more effective you are likely to become at managing it. 

A separate issue is what books are the best ever written by women. The best three I've read were:

1) Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book is a shortened version of her biographies of Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. She delves into the events and character that formed their Presidential leadership. 

2) In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais. The UMASS journalism professor explains how a basketball team that always fell short comes together through a remarkable healing of a fractured relationship between their two star players. Beautifully written, it captures the complexity of team and the culture surrounding the Amherst Hurricanes. 

3) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This is a controversial book in contemporary America as our country seeks to navigate societal polarization. Although not banned statewide, the novel has been banned in multiple school districts over concerns about language and racial content among other issues. 

Here is a separate list of The Greatest Books of All Time Written by Women. 

Lagniappe. Short video on passing, especially serve receive. 

Lagniappe 2. Report. Serve receive means finding solutions for all serves.