When I get a recommendation from an actual human being I know and trust, I typically enjoy it, but when it’s a book that influencers say “changed their life” or

When I get a recommendation from an actual human being I know and trust, I typically enjoy it, but when it’s a book that influencers say “changed their life” or gets good reviews from NYT, or Goodreads, etc, I enjoy it much less so. There’s nothing wrong with not being into the same books everyone else pretended to read. A good book should feel like entertainment or an interesting diversion, not a chore to slog through. There are some classics (like Dickens) that I just can’t get into, and I’m OK with that. Stephen King describes his books as the literary equivalent of a “Big Mac and Fries” and you know what? Sometimes a Big Mac is what sounds good for lunch. One genre I particularly like is non-fiction about interesting events, like “Endurance” about Shackleton’s failed voyage to the South Pole. It’s a great book and I learned more about leadership from it than all the other self-help books combined.