Today I want to suggest ways of getting the most out of books, at least nonfiction books, which is about all I read.

Reading shouldn’t be a passive experience. If you allow yourself to be absorbed in the interaction of the author’s thoughts and your reactions, it’s like a great conversation. Lots of people think it’s a sin to mark up a book. I think it’s a waste to leave it untouched.

I reread complex, clever, and profound passages several times. I underline them, make notes in the margins, fold back pages, do whatever I can to highlight the parts I find useful or inspirational so I can find them again.

When a passage stimulates thoughts, I write them in the margins or on the blank pages in the front or back of the book. A really good book has me thinking as much as reading, and I never read a book in one sitting. When I restart a book, I revisit my notes like they were old friends.

Both during and after a book, I try to communicate what I’ve learned or the new ideas it generated in conversations, letters, and even these commentaries. New insights are a great gift, and we should share them. I liked Kushner’s book so much that I bought 30 copies and gave them as gifts.

While writing this piece, I realized the way I approach books is also a decent way to approach life: Live it fully and completely at the time, and live it by remembering it and sharing it.

The Power of Kindness

Bob wrote to tell me that having just lost his bride of 42 years, how deeply important it’s been to him to be the beneficiary of grand and spontaneous acts of kindness of strangers.

In one case, he was overcome with emotion while seeking to make copies of all the notes of love and support he received. A young woman seeing his pain hugged him until he regained control.

Weeks later he was at a restaurant and began to cry when he thought about his wife. A waitress sat beside him and held his hand. As long as there are people like that in the world, Bob concluded, there’s still hope.

The great musician Pablo Casals said, "Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he acts on it and listens to it, he is giving a great deal of what the world needs most. It is not complicated, but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act upon it."

The poet William Wordsworth put it another way, declaring that the best portion of a good person’s life are "little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love." And novelist Henry James said, "Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."

Think how much better the world would be and how much more gratifying your life would be if every day each of us set out to do lighten the life or brighten the day of another with simple kindness.

The Value of Money

Despite the advice of preachers and philosophers warning us of the shortcomings of money, it’s hard to argue with the much-quoted observation: "I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better."

Although money is better at reducing suffering caused by poverty and relieving anxiety caused by debt than it is at making us happy, it can buy lots of things that make us feel good and important.

But wealth is not a certain road to happiness. A poor person with good relationships is much more likely to be happy than a rich person with lousy ones. And people who earn moderate wages but love their work are much more likely to be happy than those who earn a lot but hate what they do.

It’s easy to expect too much from money. Rich people have different problems than the non-rich, but they do have problems. Many are related to wealth, including shallow relationships, spoiled children, and continual pressure from relatives and friends who expect a handout. Rich people, as a whole, are not more content or emotionally satisfied than others and neither are their kids.

The problem is, people preoccupied with money are never satisfied. Often, their desires and debts grow faster than their means. The more they have, the more they think they need.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with material wealth or its pursuit, but there is a danger of paying too much to get it. As Rousseau said, "The money you have gives you freedom, but the money you pursue enslaves you."

We shouldn’t disdain money, but we should put its value in perspective.

The moral: Focus first on forming deep and enduring relationships and finding work that makes you fulfilled. At best, money is the icing, not the cake.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.