Every year for the last seven years, Cool Tools has published an annual holiday gift guide (you can check them out here). This year, we decided to make lists of things that made us happy in the year 2020. You can read my list here. Kevin and Claudia’s lists will run in the following weeks — MF

Good news. We’ve rounded up the best recomendos from the past four years of this newsletter and have organized 1,000 of them by subject, and illustrated most of them, in a 217-page book. This book, Recomendo: The Expanded Edition, is a better way to search for past recommendations, browse for cool stuff you missed, or catch up if you are a new subscriber. This hefty paperback is available in two flavors: a $13 B&W version, and $30 for a color version. It makes a great gift, too, with neat, uncommon, and useful things for almost anyone. — KK

Enter a location in The Booktrail and it will find books set there. You can refine the search by selecting a setting from a pull-down menu (e.g., a bookshop, factory/office, prison). I searched Chicago in a factory office setting and got Girl in Disguise, about a female Pinkerton agent in the 1850s. — MF

I crave insider knowledge. This Reddit thread feeds my desire to hear what’s really going on in everyday businesses. It simply asks people “What’s an industry secret in the field you work in?” There’s a  couple hundred responses, like: Goodwill throws away most of what is given to them; in vodka, the bottle costs more to make than the vodka; it’s easy to get library fines waived; bouncers make up the rules; there is way more butter than you think in almost every dish at fancy restaurants; etc. — KK

The premise of this book, Time Off, is that you can’t maintain a great work ethic without having a great “rest ethic”. You have to take time off, vacation, go on sabbatical, pause, rest, sleep, slack, play, and goof off in order to be and do your best. I’ve long been a champion of slack time and mandatory time off, and I am delighted all the arguments and evidence for this take are presented in this hefty book. Includes examples of very productive people, and the latest scientific evidence. Time off is not only essential to a good life, it is something you can get better at. — KK

If you are a “person of influence,” particularly when it comes to books, and you’d like to read books before they are published (so you can rave about them when they are), you can sign up at NetGalley and get digital “advance reader copies (ARC)” of upcoming books. This is an early ebook edition used to promote the book. Most titles are available to all members, but some books need to be requested. For avid readers who like to talk about what they are reading, NetGalley is a handy service. — KK

If you are an Amazon Prime member, you are entitled to two free Kindle ebooks per month from a selection of 9 popular bestselling books chosen by Amazon that month. This same program, called First Reads, also gives you access to free short stories and Audible readings for listening, commissioned as Amazon originals. I can usually find at least one book I am interested in each month, and since it is free, why not? —KK

A year or two ago I recommended Standard Ebooks as a resource for free reading. They have since updated their catalog with a lot of new titles, so I thought it was time to re-recommend them. They take public domain texts (by authors such as Robert E. Howard, Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Bertrand Russell), scour them for typographical errors, add excellent cover art, and format them for Kindle and other e-readers. The online catalog is a pleasure to browse, and includes a synopsis for each book. The latest entries include The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Time Traders by Andre Norton, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll, The Marvelous Land of Oz by L Frank Baum, and Villette by Charlotte Brontë. Join the mailing list or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on new books added to the catalog. — MF

Black Imagination is a collection of voices curated by conceptual artist Natasha Marin, who sought out Black individuals, including youth, LGBTQ+, incarcerated, and unsheltered people and asked them three questions: What is your origin story? How do you heal yourself? and Describe a world where you are loved, safe and valued. The result of which are these deeply moving testimonies/prose/dreams/poetry. This book has cracked my heart wide open and I’m honored to experience this literary space that expands beyond its bound pages. Here are three excerpts or three possible worlds from Black Imagination. — CD

I recently got a subscription to 12min, a library of condensed non-fiction books (audio and text). New titles are added all the time. I’ve found it especially useful to refresh my memory on books I read years ago, like Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness, and Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans. A lifetime subscription to 12min is $39. — MF

Voracious adventure novel reader Josh Glenn put together a list of 250 of his favorite adventure novels of the 20th century, with a capsule review of each book. I’ve already added a bunch to my reading list. Many are available on project Gutenberg and other public domain book and audiobook websites. — MF

I  am a very happy user of You Need a Budget (YNAB), a personal finances subscription service (get a free month when you sign up with this link). They also have a good YouTube channel and I particularly enjoyed this episode where the host recommended five books that changed her life. Those books are: The 5 Second Rule, You Need a Budget, Daring Greatly, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, and Getting Things Done.  — MF

I’ve had this book (Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chödrön) for years but find myself pulling it off the shelf more in the last month than ever before. You don’t need to be a meditation expert or Buddhist to appreciate the message. Each chapter is a short lesson in self-compassion and awareness, designed to make you comfortable with uncertainty. It is one of those books you can open to any page and find wisdom. There is a Kindle version, but I think it belongs in everyone’s library. — CD

Many folks dream of being self-sufficient on a half-acre homestead somewhere. The person I know who’s come closest to that goal is Lloyd Kahn, who has evolved a do-it-yourself lifestyle near a city that really works and is not a fantasy. He’s put his 46 years of building his own homes, foraging for wild foods, raising plants, traveling in a van, working from home, self-publishing, and all-around DIY into one photographic book. The Half-Acre Homestead is not how-to; it’s a visual demonstration of what an integrated handmade life looks like, for real. At 85 years young, Lloyd Kahn is still doing it! He is one of my heros. — KK

We have a weekly podcast where we ask remarkable people to rave about four of their favorite tools. We took the best shows and compiled them into a really cool book. Hundreds of unusual and fantastic tools are recommended. Paper copies are still available, but we can now offer a digital version  – especially useful to those outside of the US. It’s a PDF, in full color, with active links for all tools mentioned. And the 300-page book is only $1.99. Download Four Favorite Tools here. — KK

I recently read I Am Strange Loop, by Douglas Hoftstadter, which makes the argument that one’s sense of self is a mirage that arises out a cognitive feedback loop. I struggled with many parts of the book, but want to reread it because I believe Hoftstadter is onto something. In the meantime, I enjoyed Will Schroeder’s 20-minute video, called You Are A Strange Loop, which summarizes the book in an approachable way. — MF

Remember libraries, where content is free? Library Extension is a browser extension that will tell you whether a book you are looking at on an Amazon page is available in your local library. If it is you can click on the button to put a hold on the book, or find which branch has it. Very nicely done. Like libraries it’s free. Works on Chrome and Firefox. — KK

Kevin and Mark host a weekly podcast called Cool Tools. For more than 5 years now they have invited notable and creative people to talk about their favorite tools. This year, I took the transcripts from the best 150 episodes and pulled text, added images, and laid it all out in a 300-page book titled Four Favorite Tools. It is now available on Amazon in both color ($39.99) and B&W ($12.99) versions. Inside the book are hundreds and hundreds of recommendations for apps, gadgets, tools — but my recommendation is the book itself as a handbook for inspiration. — CD

I only recently learned that Amazon Prime subscribers (here’s a link for a free 30-day trial) are entitled to one free Kindle book a month. The program is called Amazon First Reads, and you can see the current selections here. — MF

I was happy to find in last week’s Anne Friedman Weekly a crowdsourced syllabus of media depicting mother/child relationships. Which is a favorite subject of mine to explore, because the more I understand my personal relationship with my mother, the better I understand myself. Some of the books were already on my wishlist so I just went ahead and bought them, but now I have a whole new list of things to watch and read. You can check out all the other recommendations that didn’t make the syllabus here in a public google sheet. — CD