If you can’t spend your summer days outside, relax on the couch with a glass of iced tea, an efficient ceiling fan and Weekend Reads.
Starting a business is the worst, most difficult, wonderful, magnificent thing you’ll ever do. But, starting a business isn’t for the faint of heart. In the new book Miss Jessie’s: Creating a Successful Business from Scratch – Naturally, author Miko Branch takes us through her family matriarchy and explains that self-sufficiency and hard work can lead to a successful career. Branch recalls her grandmother’s 1919 upbringing and how she taught herself how to cook in order to avoid picking cotton. Branch’s grandmother instilled in her and her sister that one day they would become businesswomen. This is a great read for fledgling entrepreneurs who understand the term #startuplife. Purchase it here.
Find a penny, pick it up. Do youths even know this phrase? What’s the deal with a lousy penny, anyhow? Harley J. Spiller makes it his hobby to know, and in Keep the Change, he’ll tell you. The first copper pennies, produced in 1792, couldn’t be deposited in a bank because they weren’t declared legal tender until 1862. Still, making cents made sense: pennies were traded for and used by slaves, and when Abraham Lincoln died, mourners turned “Indianhead” coins into souvenirs. Abe’s portrait on the penny proved to be even more popular: between 1909 and 2012, nearly 500 billion pennies were minted, although many people now jeer at the mere presence of a one-cent coin. Did you know that banks sometimes literally throw money away? Yep, and you’ll learn why (and more!) in Keep the Change. Purchase it here.
For much of your employed life, you dreamed about not having to work. Retirement would be great. It would stretch out for years, a horizon with no alarm clock and no deadlines. What will you do with it? Chances are, says author Chris Farrell, believe it or not, you’ll go to work. And in his new book Unretirement: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think about Work, Community, and the Good Life he says you’ll do it because you want to, not because you have to. He says that Boomers’ “last third of life is being reimagined and reinvented into ‘unretirement.’” They’re seeing work in a whole different way: the rate of senior entrepreneurship is up, and so is gradual retirement. They’re staying on the job longer, are finding second (or even third) careers, or are volunteering. A very interesting read and could be a great holiday gift. Purchase it here.
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Contributions by Terri Schlichenmeyer
