Whether it be a towering stack on your night table like mine, its own pristine bookshelf in your library, or a haphazard list in the back of your planner, what you read next can be a hard choice. In this week’s episode, I let you in on my future choices, and then we get to see if I actually get to those books or if i get sidetracked by new shiny ones beckoning me from my local indie.

Let me know what’s on your TBR list, so I can add it to mine.

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Links referenced in this episode:

• Let Go and Begin

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Seattle Wave Books

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Nook
• Kindle
• Harlequin
• Outlander
• Bridget Jones's Diary
• Marion Keyes
• Daisy Jones and the Six
• Normal People
• Sally Rooney
• Gabrielle Zevin
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
• Jenny Colgan
• Joanne Harris
• Chocolat
• Emily Henry
• The Kissing Quotient
• Helen Huang
• Where the Crawdads Sing
• This Tender Land

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Valentine’s Day is coming and whether or not you celebrate or believe in the commercial nature of holidays, I am all for a reason to look at poetry about love. And if February makes me feel all the feels, then poetry in February is one way to escalate all of those feelings. Today, we look at three relatively modern ones. I mean within the last 20 years. We don’t need to go all the way back to Sappho or WH Auden to find the best romantic descriptions. Poetry lives and breathes as a reflection of our own times.

Here are the three I read:

Poem for My Love, June Jordan

Filling Spice Jars as Your Wife, Kai Coggins

The Hush of the Very Good, Todd Boss

What are your favorites?

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Well, here we are again. It’s cold out, the sun may or may not be shining, the holidays have finished, you may or may not have put away all of the decorations. So now what? People tell you it’s time for arbitrary resolutions and a push towards productivity. But the winter season says it’s time to slow down, make friends with the darkness, and look inward.

But you do you.

And if you want to do you with others, Tania (taniawalshyoga.com) and I are running our Winter Workshop on January 30, 2025 and registration is open at letgoandbegin.com.

We would love to see you there.

And for those who come for books, here are the three I have going at the moment:

1. Yoga and Ayurveda, David Frawley
2. I Have Some Questions For You, Rebecca Makkai
3. Ghost Girl, Banana, Wiz Wharton

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It’s the end of another year, folks. And it’s time to recap 2024 and all of the reading I managed to do.

Here are a few of the books I highlighted for you to check out:

• James by Percival Everett
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro
• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

And a big thank you for all of you who listen. This is my 50th episode. And here’s to 50 more!

If you want to help out the podcast, please feel free to share, rate, and review where ever you listen.

And as always, let me know what you loved this past year and what your fist book of 2025 is!

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Get your last minute shopping done at the bookstore.

Live by the mantra: one book for you, one for me.

It’s what you want for Christmas anyway.

And whenever possible, shop local.

Merry Merry.

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In our Let Go and Begin workshops, Tania Walsh and I always start with the symbol of the doorway. Are you closing a door, opening a new one to a room you’ve never entered, or revisiting a dusty room that needs a good airing out?

This idea came to me after reading Donald Justice’s poem “Men at 40”. I loved the metaphor of the “softly closed door”. I felt incredible empathy for these men who now looked at their life’s choices and could see that they would no longer be able to take these roads that led to frontiers of the self or make the choices that would take them away from their life as it stood in the moment of mid-life. They did not slam them, or shut them emphatically, but with a whisper of a close, maybe the door didn’t even make the click to let him know that it was fully shut. I related to their suffering to the lost lives or hopes or dreams and I always equated those dreams with artistic ones. The idea of being a road musician, or a fine arts painter, or a nomad who made his living off of acting, writing, drawing.

I encourage you all to do the guided journaling questions included in this week’s episode and to, of course, follow us on Instagram to be kept apprised of our 2025 workshop dates.

Read the poem here.

Follow Let Go and Begin here.

Drop in on one of Tania’s yoga classes here.

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When I am unsure of what’s to come, I turn to poetry. When I feel sad, I turn to poetry. When I feel lost, in love, overburdened, underwhelmed, dazzled or dreary, I turn to poetry.

After the election, these three poems filled the void.

1. Anne Waldman’s “Crack in the World”
2. Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones”
3. Nikki Grimes’ “You Still Dream”

What poems have you turned to this November?

Let me know in the comments!

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Do you have friends who are ten years older than you?

What about ten years younger?

Diversity is also about age. Understanding the generations that bookend yours is more than just reading the myriad memes on the subject. It requires an open hear and a generous ear.

If we want to honor the classics and expand the canon, we need to broaden the audience.

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You are an artist. Plan your day accordingly.

Micro Plan and Macro Plan.

Then be ready for it all to change in a moment.

Do your best and make sure to make room for your creative life.

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Here is the episode on planning your retreat!