by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 9, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Writing Creative Nonfiction is an audiobook course taught by Tilar J.J. Mazzeo. As such, I understand this review won’t interest everyone. But for me, a part-time, casual writer and author with a bachelor’s degree in business, it was a terrific foundation in...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 31, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Neil Pasricha followed a unique path to fame and fortune. He tells plenty of his own story in his latest book, which focuses on resilience. You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life was a mixed bag for me. Ultimately...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 16, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Stephen King offers a memoir and discussion of the creative life in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. I tried to judiciously underline, but found so many valuable nuggets that my book is marked up like a high school English textbook.The book is divided into two major...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 8, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else, RESIST: Social Justice
Johann Hari did so much more than enlighten me in his book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. I met all the players in this war, from the government officials to the cartels and dealers, to those on the global leading edge of...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 2, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Massoud Hayoun combines two shorter books into one with his debut nonfiction, When We Were Arabs. It’s a family memoir, a political history, and a commentary. He uses his own family’s experience, primarily that of his maternal grandparents, to illustrate a wide...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 7, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Richard C. Lyons takes on an ambitious project in his history book, The DNA of Democracy. It begins with Egyptian Pharaohs and ends in the early 20th century. And at just over 375 pages, it’s impossible for the author to provide extensive detail on any one time period...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 28, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Alan Weisman considers a conundrum in his book The World Without Us. Can we look at the past in order to see the future? And what if that future didn’t include humans? What would the earth and its revised balance of organisms look and act like?To do this, Weisman...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 20, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
John Pollack prefaces his exploration of puns with his experience at the world pun championship. This was the most intense part of his book, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics. The...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 10, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Freelance journalists Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau moved with their daughters to Paris for a year to write this book. As native Quebecers they were already fluent in French, and in fact had already lived in Paris some years earlier. And yet, they found that the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 7, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Apparently, I get easily depressed these days. I thought Therese Oneill’s book, Unmentionable, was funny. Until it was just overwhelmingly sad and depressing. Sometimes history can be like that, though. And this book focuses on various parts of women’s lives in the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 28, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else, RESIST: Feminism
Naomi Ragen is an acclaimed novelist, who wrote and produced this play set in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family and community. Women’s Minyan is about Chana, a married mother of twelve, who leaves her home and family. Two years after she leaves, the play opens as Chana...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 11, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Val McDermid covers exactly what’s in the subtitle for this book, and much more. The full title is Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime. Expect plenty about each sub-topic.In Forensics, she explains many (if not all) of the common ways...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 23, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory is an examination of death and the so-called death industry from Caitlin Doughty. By death industry she means how funeral homes, mortuaries, crematories, medical facilities and government agencies like...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 19, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Sapiens covers a lot of ground in its 400+ pages, and author Yuval Noah Harari makes it readable. The title’s subheading, “A Brief History of Humankind,” is telling but incomplete. There’s much more than just history here. At the same time, Harari makes clear in the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 9, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Author Jeff Guinn divides The Road to Jonestown into three parts. The final third of the book deals with the Jonestown endgame, which felt most familiar to me. It’s the remaining two-thirds that was new and most interesting. If you’ve ever wondered how a demagogue...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 25, 2018 | LEARN: Everything Else
Xanet Pailet is a woman with a cause. She wants everyone to begin Living an Orgasmic Life, and her book offers plenty of ideas and information. Her subtitle, Heal Yourself and Awaken Your Pleasure also gives you some clues about where she’s going with this....
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