by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 25, 2020 | LEARN: Everything Else
In the midst of anxiety and uncertainty, I turned to Pema Chödrön and her 1997 book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Truthfully, I should probably listen to it on an unending loop right now. Chödrön is an American Buddhist nun, and has been...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 1, 2020 | LEARN: Everything Else
Dahr Jamail is an adventurer and journalist. His 2019 book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, is both objective and deeply personal. Jamail has spent plenty of time exploring various parts of our world’s outdoors,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 8, 2020 | LEARN: Everything Else
Julia Goldstein is a Ph.D. materials engineer. And her passion is exactly in line with the subtitle of her book: More Sustainable, Less Wasteful Manufacturing of Everything from Cell Phones to Cleaning Products. Goldstein takes readers through a journey that is part...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 13, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Kate Murphy is a journalist who makes her living with her listening skills. No skills, no article. For the rest of us it’s not so straightforward. In her new book, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, she makes a case that listening is...
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...
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