“August,” I wrote in this month’s eLetter. “Somnolent summer afternoons, the sour-sweet smell of fresh cut grass, backyard barbecues … and this year, a wedding. By the time you read my September eLetter, I’ll be a married Mann — and will be grateful to the month of August for the rest of my days.”

Yes, nuptial preparations have got us hopping here. And we are not alone. Someone else is hopping. Right outside my study window, in fact, in that sour-sweet fresh-cut grass.

I wonder if they are getting ready for a wedding too?

Last month, it so happened that I was scheduled for an interview on The Go-Giver on June 10, which happens to be my birthday.

It was a great birthday treat: the interviewer was Tom Heck, inspirational founder of the TeachMeTeamwork newsletter, which now reaches some 36,000 readers in more than 100 countries. Tom is a terrific guy, and his newsletter’s well worth following.

Tom has now posted the 44-minute interview here in his July issue.

Meanwhile, I just read another one of those reviews that makes me want to say, “Um, thank you?” But then, compliments of the left-handed variety are my favorite kind: when they come with this much sting, it’s hard to doubt their sincerity! This one hails from the keyboard of Bob Corrigan on the ack/nak blog.

“This slim little book is chock full of hackneyed dialog, stock characters straight out of central casting, and features an ending that will remind you of a Disney movie. But I loved it for the simplicity of its message—the key to success (sorry, “stratospheric” success) is . . . I won’t spoil it for you, but you can probably already figure it out from the title. I carry this book around with me and dip into it on a frequent basis. No kidding. It’s 144 pages of goodness.”

(Scroll down; you’ll find it below the piece on The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.)

This week an amazing treat landed in my mail box: the hot-off-the-press Japanese hardcover edition of The Go-Giver. (I wrote about this over on the Go-Giver blog, but figured perhaps I should post it here too.)

The people at Bungei Shunju Ltd. did a phenomenal job: gorgeous production values. Even though I can’t read a lick of Japanese, leafing through this book is an experience.

For one thing, it’s illustrated—and in the most hilarious, creative, practically hallucinogenic Japanese fashion. Sort of Saul Steinberg meets Manga.

(“Joe” in the Japanese edition of The Go-Giver—click on image for full effect.)

And this is no casual production: whoever did these illustrations took incredible care, and has an uncannily intimate knowledge of the text. And a helluva sense of humor.

For example:

• In Chapter 2, when Pindar says, “Have you ever heard people say, You can’t always get what you want?” and Joe grins and says, “You mean, the Rolling Stones?” — in the Japanese edition, so help me, there is a full-page drawing of Mick Jagger on stage belting out The Song.
• Accompanying the description of Rachel’s history in Chapter 7, “Rachel,” is a drawing of Rachel serving coffee. Behind her is a Mellita the size of a well-fed black Labrador Retriever, and a vivid rainbow arcs out of the cup in her hand. (The artist, I think, has seen the film “Yellow Submarine” more than once.)
• How would you illustrate the story’s dramatic conclusion, at the end of chapter 13, “Full Circle”? The artist devotes the facing page to a single image, tucked into the lower-left corner: a simple black and white drawing of a cup of coffee. What a brilliant touch.
• Finally: bonus points for the first reader who can write in and tell me what book is sitting on Gus’s table when we first meet him in Chapter 1. I’ll give you a hint: it’s by Stephen King, and it’s one of my favorite books. (How did the artist know that?!)

I can’t wait to find someone who can read Japanese to walk me through parts of the book. For example, the chapter titles. They all look about the same length as the English ones, except for Chapter 7. In English, it’s “Rachel.” In Japanese, it’s, like, a whole sentence, with a dramatic dash in the middle. I wonder what the heck it says?

I know, I know: no posts for weeks, and then two in one day. But there’s a reason I have to post this one today, and that in this case, tomorrow will not do.

Our amazing publicist, Kathryn Hall, who has helped put The Go-Giver on the map, is also an amazing gardener. For the past four days, Kathryn’s blog, Plant Whatever Brings You Joy, has placed #1 on Blotanical.com, out of over 800 other gardening blogs around the world! Here

Kathryn’s web site itself is amazing: stay in touch, and you’ll see everything from this:

to this:

All of which brings me to my favorite gardener in the world: my sweetheart, fiancée and best friend.

As I type this, I am at my desk, perhaps 25 feet from Ana’s garden, which is currently being busily criss-crossed by yellow finches, red-tail thises and thats, and a lot of other birds whose names I don’t know but whose songs I love. And some persistent rabbits. Leaving my desk, I step outside and take a walk into the thick of it:

… and step onto the path …

… and take a closer look …

… and I can see that this is the perfect day for this Eden [NOTE: click on the photos above to get the full sense of it!] to be in such glorious full bloom: it is the gardener’s birthday.

Happy birthday, Sweetheart!

Yikes, has it really been more than two weeks? (“Bad blogger! No donut!”) I was down for the count with a flu sort of thing the last week, and before that, running around preparing for the Big Day.

While I wasn’t looking, The Answer made the New York Times bestseller list. (Scroll down: it’s #9.)

Last summer I created a list of affirmations I’ve since adopted as a type of verbal “dream board.” One statement says, “I write bestselling books that change people’s lives.” Another says, “I have twelve books on the market, all of them New York Times bestsellers.”

That’s one.

Last night we drove down our street to park in full view of a glorious fireworks display, on the campus of the University of Massachusetts. From 8:30-ish to nearly 10, we sat surrounded by hundreds of neighbors, oohing and ahhing.

It made me think of Adams and Jefferson.

John Adams, the scrappy lawyer from Massachusetts, and Thomas Jefferson, the gentleman-farmer from Virginia, were two of the three principal architects (with Benjamin Franklin) of the Declaration of Independence. They were also temperamental opposites, as near-perfect a human example of yin and yang as you could wish for.

Through the years of the “war for independency,” Adams and Jefferson become exceptionally close friends. However, in one of those peculiarly human twists of plot, they later became bitterly estranged political enemies, running fierce campaigns against one another for the presidency and spearheading the opposing camps of the nation’s emerging two-party paradigm.

Jefferson even hired a hit-man-journalist to publish vituperative attacks against Adams in a vicious character-assassination campaign — all while Jefferson was serving as his former friend’s vice president.

And yet — evidence of a peculiarly human capacity for redemption — the friendship miraculously healed itself decades later. After both were long out of public life, Adams wrote Jefferson a letter, and they not only reconciled but proceeded to engage in one of the greatest long-running correspondences in American history.

At the end, the one in Quincy and the other in Monticello, the two were so psychically connected to one another that they held onto life in tandem, each saving his last breath for the appointed day. On July 4, 1826, one half-century to the precise day after that fateful signing that had first brought the friendship (and the nation) together, Adams died at the age of ninety. His last words were reported as “Jefferson lives!” — although in fact, his friend from Virginia had given up the ghost just a few hours earlier.

Here’s to independency — and good friendship.

The other day I peeked out onto my front deck in Virginia, and lo and behold, there were two silent visitors. They were nice enough to hold still long enough for me to grab my camera and shoot through the screen door.

Later on, I attended my son Chris’s graduation, where I was able to take this snapshot of another form of wildlife (Chris and his older brother Nick).

The new Networking Times is on the stands and up online. This issue sports a feature article about my fiancée Ana McClellan-for-now here. This is, alas, one of those articles you have to be a paid subscriber to read online.

You can also read my latest editorial here (this one you can read gratis, just by registering on the site)—I also posted it here on the Zen site, along with a photo of Ana’s very own Secret Service bodyguard. (Can you guess his secret identity?)

This week The Answer hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list for the second time. On iTunes, I notice that it stands right now as the #1 title under “New & Notable” under “Audiobooks: Business,” and is #14 in their “Top Audiobooks” list.

Why is The Answer doing so well? I think one reason is that it fills in a gap so many people feel was left by The Secret, which goes something like this:

“Okay, the Law of Attraction, I get it . . . but don’t we have to do something?”

Indeed. Lao Tzu may have championed wei wu wei, the famous Taoist “doing without doing,” but note that the first word there is not being, experiencing or even manifesting, but doing.

In The Answer, we explain the Law of Attraction by illustrating the miraculous phenomenon of resonance, which is what lies within the heart of music, love and the Doctrine of Signatures, among other many wonderful things. (Writing this section was my favorite part of the whole experience.)

But the Law of Attraction doesn’t operate in a vacuum: it’s only one-third of the story. We lay it all out in Chapter 3, sandwiched between the wild galactic quantum physics romp in Chapter 2 and the Chapter 4 tour of how your brain is more amazing than you thought it was:

There are three laws, each one equally important: the Law of Attraction, the Law of Gestation, and the Law of Action. In practical terms, they go like this:

1. Craft a vivid, compelling picture of your heart’s desire.

2. Have the patience and good grace to let it unfold on God’s timing.

3. Meanwhile, why are you just standing there?

That’s what was missing in The Secret.

I promise I will not let this blog devolve into an endless list of lists. But this one is pretty fascinating: a list of the “100 best reads” from the last quarter-century. Albeit compiled by the editors of Entertainment Weekly (not who you’d necessarily consider the nation’s prime arbiter of literary taste), it’s a meaty list, and not a bad source for building your own “books I really need to read” list.

I was pleased to note my favorite novel of all time on the list: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving (1989). Here are a few other of my favorite novels that appear on the EW list:

• The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
• American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
• Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
• Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)

As well as several nonfiction books that I loved:

• On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
• The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000
• The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)

My wonderful agent Margret McBride and her amazing husband Nevins just enthusiastically recommended that I read Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry (1985). Yep, there it is, #24. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (the only thing of his I haven’t yet read). The Kite Runner, The Interpreter of Maladies, The Remains of the Day, Love in the Time of Cholera, Rabbit at Rest, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—all of these titles are on my shelves, but I just haven’t gotten to them yet.

Note to self: get to them.

Eventually I’ll compile my own “top 100 books of all time” list and post it here — and invite you to let me know your list, too. Meanwhile, there are about 75 books on the EW list I haven’t read yet . . .

A few weeks ago, leadership expert David Zinger posted a list of 300 thought-provoking blogs. It’s quite a resource, well worth poking through and seeing what you find.

P.S. When you get to the G’s, you might notice included there a certain blog about a “Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea”…

Thanks, David!