We have developed, particularly online but increasingly everywhere, a very specific and very punishing culture around the concept of deserving. Not everyone has earned the right to good things. Not everyone has suffered sufficiently to justify their comfort.

The key to making things happen isn’t waiting for perfection. The version of starting over that exists in popular culture is a clean narrative.

I am not a casual reader. When a book makes this list, it is because it genuinely changed something: how I think, how I work, how I talk to people, how I make decisions.