Dog-Eared Pages
Books are one of my favorite ways to stay curious, be challenged, and keep growing. This is where I share what I’m reading, what’s sticking with me, and the titles I keep recommending to everyone I meet.
On My Nightstand
What I’m reading right now…. with honest notes on what’s landing and why.
Not as a rule (I’m not typically a rule-making kind of gal) but more as a rhythm, my nightstand usually holds one non-fiction and one fiction book. Both continue to be important for me as I navigate through this adventure called life. And they both feed my growth in personal, spiritual, and professional ways.
✦ Currently Reading
The Knot
by Seth Godin
I’ve been learning from Seth Godin for years, and getting my hands on The Knot felt like a gift I didn’t know I needed. His style is unmistakable… short, sharp, and packed with perspective… and this book is exactly that.
What I’m already enjoying most is his unique way of naming the thing that keeps us stuck, and then gently, persistently showing us another way to see it. I’m reading it slowly, one idea at a time.
What I’m Taking Into My Work
Getting unstuck isn’t about working harder. It’s about seeing differently. Seth’s perspective is a reminder that the knot often loosens when we stop pulling and start looking.
✦ Currently Reading
Partita
by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver grew up in Kentucky, not far from me, actually, and she sets this story in East Tennessee, where I was born. That combination alone would have drawn me in. But then there is the music woven through it, and I was completely here for it.
Her writing is intelligent and beautiful in a way that is both surprising and relatable. And her character development creates layered individuals that tug at your emotions on a full spectrum… human in the complicated, messy way we humans actually are. Her characters’ stories unfold in a way that makes them stay with you long after you’ve read the last word. And Livia in Partita is no exception. This one’s so good.
Why It Has My Heart
There is something about reading a story rooted in the land you come from… the mountains, the music, the people… that makes you feel all the emotions. This one has my whole musical, Kentucky heart.
The Belief Bookshelf
The titles I come back to, recommend obsessively, and believe in deeply. These aren’t trendy reads… they’re the books that changed how I think.
✦ #1 Recommendation
The Art of Possibility
by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander
This book has both affirmed how I’ve always felt… that my paradigm is just a bit different than the norm…. and pushed me into embracing and growing this way of approaching life and leadership. It is a beautiful book that is both inspiring and actionable.
It will challenge your approaches, open up your soul, and help you create possibility for yourself and those in your sphere of influence. Many of the frameworks have made their way into my life in both small and big but always beautiful ways.
A Personal Core Value
Rule #6, one of the frameworks from this book, has become one of my personal core values. It shows up in how I lead, how I write, and how I move through the world.
✦ From the Bookshelf
Man's Search for Meaning
by Viktor Frankl
I read this book during Covid, at a time when I was trying to navigate so much uncertainty, as a leader, as a mom, as a wife, as a human being.
Viktor Frankl’s account of surviving Nazi concentration camps, and his insistence on using his suffering to make the world better is awe-inspiring and a lesson I’ll carry with me forever. This is not a book about resilience as a buzzword. It is a book about what it means to choose meaning, even in the most unimaginable circumstances.
It has shaped the way I think about purpose, about navigating life’s hardest chapters, and about the kind of leader and person I want to be. I recommend it often… to leaders navigating change, to anyone in a season of loss, to anyone asking the question: why does any of this matter?
What I’m Taking Into My Work
We don’t get to choose everything that happens to us — but we get to choose what we do with it. Frankl’s concept of finding meaning in suffering shows up in how I hold space for leaders who are in the thick of hard seasons. The question I ask most often: What does this moment ask of you?
✦ Always on My List
Atomic Habits
by James Clear
I’ve read a lot of books about habits and growth, and most of them are inspiring for about a week. Atomic Habits is different. I’m still drawing from it years later… not because it’s motivating, but because it’s practical.
What James Clear gets right is the combination of systems-over-goals thinking and the power of tiny changes. Together, they remove the friction that usually derails habit change, especially on your worst days. It’s not about willpower. It’s about design.
This is actually the book behind this very page. I was with former colleagues, and one of them told me she remembered when we studied it together one summer… and that she felt like I was always looking for the next great read. I took that as one of the best compliments I’ve ever received. My college-aged son is reading it now. That says everything.
What I’m Taking Into My Work
The 1% better concept lives in everything I do. But what I come back to most is something Clear shared in a podcast… the three habits with the highest return: reading (go to bed smarter than you woke up), exercise (walking, strength training), and reflection (a daily habit of celebrating wins and adjusting for growth). These three aren’t a productivity stack. They’re a way of being that makes everything else work better.
✦ Returns to Me Again and Again
The Answer to How Is Yes
by Peter Block
I have been called overly optimistic and idealistic more than once in my life. For a long time, I took that as a caution. Peter Block helped me take it as a direction.
This book was both a challenge and an affirmation. A challenge because it asked me to stop negotiating between my values and the approval of the people and systems around me — and an affirmation because it named something I had always felt but never quite had language for: that doing the work that matters will consistently put you at the edge of the norm. That’s not a warning. That’s the terrain.
What I kept returning to was the question at the center of the book: not how do we do this, but why are we still waiting? When you know in your core that creating something special together is important work — that recognizing the genius every person brings to a community is worth fighting for — then the how stops being the obstacle. You set out to do it.
Creating a culture of belief is rewarding. It is also not easy, because it requires the undoing of so much of what we have accepted as the norm. This book gave me permission to stop waiting for the conditions to be right and start building anyway.
Why This Book Lives in My Work
“The quality of feeling alive comes when we act on our values, and find a way to bring our own model for better organizations and communities into the world.” — Peter Block
✦ Changed How I Think About Productivity
Four Thousand Weeks
by Oliver Burkeman
If you’ve ever felt exhausted by the productivity gurus telling you to squeeze more out of every hour, Four Thousand Weeks is the breath of fresh air you didn’t know you needed. Oliver Burkeman gives words to the quiet frustration that all the “hacks” and “systems” were only making things worse.
The title itself is sobering: four thousand weeks is roughly what a human life spans. Burkeman doesn’t dress that up. He sits with it… and somehow, that honesty is freeing. None of us can do it all. The question isn’t how to cram more in; it’s how to choose what actually matters.
What he offers is a meaningful life alongside meaningful work… just not all of it at once. That’s the paradigm shift. In an age of more, more, more, Burkeman offers a different kind of permission: to be finite, to be human, and to be okay with that.
In his follow-up, Meditations for Mortals, he offers an image that stays with me… the image of steering a kayak versus captaining a super yacht. You don’t need a 10-year plan for where to point your life. You just need to see clearly enough to navigate the next few weeks with intention.
Why This Book Lives in My Work
“The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control.” — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
✦ Where Belief Became Practice
Turn the Ship Around!
by L. David Marquet
I already believed in a culture where everyone is a leader. It was written right into our shared Taylor Mill vision of creating a community of leaders, a belief that took root in my Stephen Covey 7 Habits training. But believing it and building it are two different things.
I read this book in my first year as a principal, and it helped me put that belief into practice. Marquet’s story of what happened to his submarine crew when he empowered everyone as a leader was formational for me. It changed his culture, his team, and his own leadership journey. “Turn the Ship Around” even became one of our four core values at Taylor Mill: a shared agreement to show up as leaders and hold each other to it. That’s where our vision started to take hold.
What I’m Taking Into My Work
“A little rudder far from the rocks is a lot better than a lot of rudder close to the rocks.” Constant communication and transparency keep the whole team out of crisis. It’s a mantra I lived by at Taylor Mill, and one I still carry into every team I work with.
Want more of what I’m learning?
Every Tuesday, 
The 5-Minute Mentor brings you a short leadership reflection drawn from the books, podcasts, and articles I’m learning from, and the ideas I’m weaving into my work. Five minutes or less, straight to your inbox. 
Activate your genius now…