Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Spring Reading

DOE Workforce Guidelines, ACI White Paper on the future of home performance, Home Performance Diagnostics constitutes a large part of my reading for my professional work in the home performance and construction world. This makes up the nuts and bolts of my work as a BPI Proctor and manager of home performance programs along with various teaching and speaking duties. This is good stuff because of what it means for the built environment in my community and the development of the professional community around me.

Still, if man does not live on bread alone, I will contend that we should not limit our reading to the narrow focus of our chosen profession(s). I have learned  much from a wide range of reading that, coincidentally, positively informs my work on a day to basis and it comes in all forms and all manner of surprising ways. I encourage a well rounded reading life - find your own surprises and share them with friends and colleagues.

I am just finishing Rampersad's 2 volume biography of Langston Hughes and it is something to near the end of the work and the end of Hughes' life. He was a decent and dignified man who gave us some great poetry, filled with the humanity he saw around him and made manifest in his own life.
I am in the middle of E.O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of the Earth and I just started The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. More on these as I finish. 

Finally - one more plug for Kahneman's Thinking, Fast & Slow - this will help you in your professional and personal life - incredible insight into the workings of the human mind.