Friday, December 30, 2016

Turning the Page on 2016

Gee, I'd like to say I've been so busy reading that I've fallen behind in my blogging. But, that's not the case. No excuses. In a feeble attempt to catch up, here are a few books I liked, didn't like, and maybe gave up on too soon in 2016. 

I read and liked:

A God in Ruins
The Tipping Point

A Jew in Hitler's Army
The Chocolate War


I read and was disappointed in:

When Breath Becomes Air
Fast Food Nation
A Grief Observed


I skipped the book & went straight to the video: 

Unbroken (Sorry, Kelly.)

What about you? What did you enjoy, what books didn't measure up for you in 2017? Did you love some of the titles that disappointed me? Would love to hear from you, dear readers!

Are you interested in learning more about home remedies?

I tried to eat healthier after reading AntiCancer: A New Way of Life
For more books that will help you get and stay well, naturally, Click here!

Would you read more if you had more time? Have you tried speed reading? I took a course years ago, and it really helped. (I'm probably due for a refresher course...) Anyway, for a proven way to read more, faster, try these.

_______________________________
Are you a speed reading demon and you'd like to show off your talents? Well, by all means, get in touch with me! Guest bloggers are always welcome here. The best way to reach me is via my website or my furry Facebook Page

Friday, November 18, 2016

When Google's Doodle Informs My Reading Choices

Anyone else add Fools Crow to their reading list this morning? 

Thank you, Google, for mentioning it. I have to admit the company often slips me a history lesson, courtesy of the morning doodle. Today's doodle featured author James Welch, a Native American who wrote novels about, among other things, the loss of a culture. 

In a long quest to find and use natural remedies that work better than pharmaceuticals, or at least sans scary side effects, I have often lamented that we likely lost volumes of vital health information when we wiped out the Native American people. 



In a nutshell, Fools Crow is the title character, a young warrior and medicine man living in Montana with a small band of Blackfeet Indians. And, now, thanks to the Google doodle, it's on my (damn long) 2R list. 

Cheers. 
Image crecdit: Google, 11-18-2016






PS: In case you still question the value of having a blog, consider: Google has one.


Monday, October 24, 2016

Ohio Authors, Reading Labels, and Ramblings

So imagine my excitement when I realized acclaimed MG/YA author Shelley Pearsall will be seated just a few tables away at the Buckeye Book Fair next month! I have to admit I didn't realize Pearsall was an Ohio author. It was a nice surprise, especially given my youngest has read a few of her titles. (Which, not surprisingly, means that I have too.)

MG book cover The Seventh Most Important Thing Most recently we've read The Seventh Most Important Thing, the much-acclaimed book about redemption and anger, two things most teens struggle with - though thankfully not to the extent of the main character.

Labels, Labels

Having done some research into "reluctant" readers in the past, I was a bit surprised to find The Seventh Most Important Thing was labeled for "them." It made me wonder, how do we determine who is a reluctant reader in 2016? Goodness, it's hard to concentrate when you're 13 and have a cell phone in your hand (or back pocket) and all your friends are watching (or making) YouTube videos.

Also, I've been perplexed about the "reluctant" label because both my kids, who read and comprehend above grade level and score high for vocabulary could be, I think, labeled as reluctant readers. And yet both go through spurts of serious reading. And, when they find a book they like, both are nearly over-zealous in recommending it.

If any reading teachers would like to explain, I WELCOME YOUR HELP!
(Want to guest blog here? Please get in touch!!)

Trouble Don't Last

Round tuitThe next Pearsall book on my 2R list is Trouble Don't Last. Confession: it's been on my 2R list for a lonnnnnnnnng time. I may have to move it up my list just because I'll have a chance to meet the author soon. But, in case I don't get a round tuit, maybe you'd like to review it?

If your answer is yes, please contact me in comments here, through my website, or slap a message on my Facebook Page about dogs and essays and writing and life and other stuff I don't understand.

Yay! Ohio Authors!
Buckeye Book Fair 2016

In case you'd like to meet Shelley Pearsall, or me, or any of 98 other Ohio authors who published books in 2015 or early 2016, you just might have to go to the Buckeye Book Fair, held Saturday November 5 on the Wooster College campus.

Cleveland's favorite Man of Mystery, Les Roberts, will be there, as will super sports writers and commentators like Terry Pluto and Dan Coughlin, Tom Batiuk, Ohio's funkiest cartoonist, me, and a couple of guys who are really serious about mushrooms.

Hope to see you there! (Download the brochure here.)

Keep reading, my friends. 




Saturday, September 3, 2016

Why I Blog About Books

In case you're just joining us...it may seem strange to encounter a blog about books that isn't quite a review site, that rarely covers new or soon-to-be-published titles.

Well, strange isn't the worst thing I've been called ;) 


What RU Reading is About What I've Been Reading

...or wanting to read. Apparently, there's an endless supply of books, but sadly, and clearly, our reading time is quite limited. I started this blog primarily because my "to-read" (2R) list got too dang long to keep anywhere else (- though I do love Amazon's wish list feature - ) and also because it gives me a sense of satisfaction to publicly declare that I have finished a book I started (even when I started it a long, long time ago).

It's Not Really a Book Review Site, But...

Books by kennymatic from Flickr.com 
Another reason I started this blog was to share with readers my opinion about whether or not they should invest their precious reading time in a particular title. I know, ostensibly, any review is supposed to do that. BUT. I also know that most reviews are purposely positive - they are written to make you want to read the reviewed title. (Sorry; it's true. Consider this a book reviewer's confession.)

So Many Books/So Little Time

What I aim to do is to give you a good idea about whether a book is really right for you - or maybe, for someone you know. Because besides "just" reading, sharing our vast ocean of reading material is also a joy.

That may explain why in some quasi-reviews here, I mention that a book - perhaps one I did not absolutely love - may appeal to someone with different interests, a different perspective, or a different educational background. Then there are books I think EVERYONE should read.

Hey, different strokes make the world go 'round.

I'm not crazy about mysteries, but know many who are big fans. I like nonfiction more than fiction. What about YOU?

What ARE YOU reading, my friends? HOW do you like it? Is it worth your time? Would you recommend it to a friend who might like it more than you do? I would love, love, love to hear from you. Comments below come directly to me; you're also welcome to post a comment at my reading/writing/tail-wagging Facebook Page or tweet at me anytime.

Thanks for sharing your page-turning journey with me!

Here are a few of my "must read" books:

Monday, August 22, 2016

The Cabaret of Plants

According to The Guardian's review of The Cabaret of Plants, botanist Richard Mabey has "a poet's eye" for plants, and I agree. However, while I found the book fascinating and the research awe-inspiring, I have to admit I also found it a tad tedious to read.

I think it's safe to blame a short attention span. (Mine.) Or perhaps it's better to blame my disappointment on unrealistic expectations.

British Naturalist Mabey is a fine and competent writer. The book, subtitled Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination, presents not one unifying story of the history of plants, but rather breaks up the work into species, families, and a few particularly interesting periods in plant life.

A Reader Out on a Limb

A fair portion of the beginning of the book focuses on trees, which I rarely think of as plants. So, there you have it - it's quite possible I'm just not sophisticated enough to read Mabey's works. I tried anyway.

From trees and bushes to corn, cotton and medicinal plants, The Cabaret covers it all. (Well, a lot of ground, anyway.) It is a broad and deep work, and if not comprehensive, it's certainly an extensive overview. I think it would make an excellent and much-appreciated gift for botany majors, master gardeners, and serious historians and naturalists.

The chapter Harlequins and Mimics: The Orchid Troupe, for example, juxtaposes the so-called "Tulip Fever" with the even more heated period of "Orchid Fever," both of which occurred during the late 1800s and raised the price of the flowers astronomically. The chapter describes both periods and both plant families, digging deep into the history, psychology and botany the brought on both fevers. Among other things.

It followed a similarly well-researched chapter, The Challenge of Carnivorous Plants: The Tipitiwitchet, which begins with an excerpt from a 1759 letter by Arthur Dobbs, then governor of North Carolina.  In it Dobbs describes a "kind of Catchfly sensitive which closes upon any thing that touches it." The letter was later quoted in Charles Nelson's biography of the Venus Flytrap, which Mabey explains "would for the next hundred years unsettle...ideas about the the distinctive character of plants and their place in the natural scheme of things."

Image: Wikipedia
Not only did cute-but-not-cuddly carnivorous plants upset the concept of the Great Chain of Being in the 18th century, according to Mabey, "The debate sparked off by the flytrap had epistemological repercussions too. It put the usefulness of biologic analogy - a favourite* eighteenth-century mode of 'explanation' - to severe test."

When discussing the Tipitiwitchet, Mabey doesn't stop with the botanical history of the plant or the era; he also adds a language lesson, explaining how the original name (the similarly spelled titipiwitshik, in the Lenape language of the East Coast Indians) was almost certainly purposefully "tweaked" to bring to mind the female genitalia in word as much as it might in its visual appearance.

(I'll leave you to your own devices here.)


Scat and Other Organic Stuff Makes Its Presence Known

I get really excited about plants as health food - medicine, if you must - and that's why I picked up Cabaret in the first place. Not surprisingly, then, my favorite chapters were those describing plant remedies in history (Ginseng, in particular) and Maize. Mabey validated my feelings about the tremendous wealth of knowledge we have destroyed in wiping out virtually all Native American medical knowledge, and barely protecting what we could have learned - and could still! - from people too often ignored in the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozarks.

Mabey makes sure not to ignore the animal kingdom, giving credit where credit is due to those who worked alongside plants lo these many years to spread their botanical wonder.

Which is to say, the varieties of apples we enjoy eating today has a lot to do with which ones the Chinese brown bears preferred way back when. They picked sweet ones, ate them, pooped out the seeds with a ready-to-plant plop of manure, and viola! our apple crop came about. Naturally.

Don't Drink While Reading Cabaret


Mabey's writing is more formal and flowery than I enjoy. That said, I mean it when I say he's a fine writer. Just, perhaps, not my favorite type.

I had really hoped The Cabaret of Plants would be more in the easy-breezy style of The World According to Soccer or have a more unifying story line like A Perfect Red. I truly enjoy learning new things, but simply wasn't primed to pick up Plants, which seemed more like a textbook than a book club pick like the oh-so-readable story of Henrietta Lacks.

Maybe I need to break my habit of reading as I relax with a glass of wine...

I don't want to judge a book by its cover, but isn't the UK title (pictured top right) much more exciting to look at than the US publication here, at left? 

Regardless, open the book and you'll find fantastic artwork that provide welcome, colorful displays on the otherwise info-packed pages of text. 

__________________________________________________
Happy reading, gardening, and eating, my friends. 
Care to offer a rebuttal? Are you a more sophisticated
reader than I? I welcome comments and guest reviews! 

*The author uses the Queen's English. There; you've been warned. 

Friday, July 15, 2016

Dru Who? Just Kidding - LeBron's High School Coach Has Much to Share

I purposefully held this post until the NBA championships hullabaloo faded away... but HOO BOY what a series, right? Now, let's talk Beyond Championships.

Written by Dru Joyce II, Beyond Championships: A Playbook for Winning at Life could be overlooked as a title by a wanna-be celeb. In fact, in today's publishing industry (*sigh*) it's possible the reason the manuscript was given serious attention by Harper-Collins is because Joyce coached a kid from Akron named LeBron James. 

Well, let that go. In fact, the book is worth reading and the teen edition is the printed version of a trusted (read: non-parent) advisor for kids who are at all sports-minded. 


Good Guidance, Influence on LeBron

Released in 2015, Beyond Championships surely got a boost from the forward by Akron's favorite son and Cleveland's adopted hero, LeBron James. But if it's possible to take off the star-struck glasses when you read, you can see the kid behind the big name (and endorsements) - the kid from Akron who, without a lot of support, could have turned out differently. 

Love him or hate him (I find it astonishing that there are haters, but ... there are) James is an undeniable force on and off the court - and especially in Northeast Ohio. 

Surely his athletic prowess would've taken him far, even if he had not had the benefit of good guidance and good people in his life, like Coach Joyce. But I suspect Joyce's influence on James reached a little deeper than some others. I think it's possible that some of Joyce's principles - and coaching, preaching if you want to call it that - might have planted the seeds that became the LeBron James Family Foundation. And for that, I am grateful. 


Image: https://www.facebook.com/lebronjamesfamilyfoundation



Stop the haters: 
The LeBron James 
Family Foundation was 
formed before James entered 
the NBA draft. 





Now back to the book. 


Yay, a Book for My Birthday

Have you given a kid a book for Christmas or a birthday lately? Has the child reacted with about as much excitement as they usually use to greet underwear? I'll be honest, my then-11yo was not exactly jumping up and down when we were browsing in a bookstore and I said, "do you want this?" 

Fortunately, nagging paid off in this case and he actually read it. He admitted he liked the book (teen edition) and even though he was a little disappointed (and Joyce says right up front) that the book had little to do with basketball, almost every page hinges on a basketball analogy.

Because buying my kid a book for his birthday and making him read it wasn't enough, I asked him to review it, too. 

Here's what he had to say.  

What would you tell someone about the book?
It's not all about LeBron, which is really good. (My kid isn't a hater, but he's got a chip on his shoulder when it comes to recognizing individuals over team.) It wasn't all about basketball either. It was like 'life lessons from a coach.' He used a lot of examples from LeBron and his friends and teammates at St. Vincent/St. Mary. 

What was the theme?
Work hard, have faith in your beliefs. 

Was it preachy
Coach Joyce is a Christian, but he's not preachy. 
Translation: the bible verses come in one-sentence quotations, not paragraphs. 


Advice for Players, Parents, People

To his brief review, I would add that while the book draws largely on Joyce's experience coaching, he is also a player, a parent, and a person - and his advice comes from all of those experiences. 

More often than not the advice and 'life lessons' are delivered using sports analogies. And let's face it, those work for a lot of us. (Hello, NBA ratings.) 

Recommended? 
Yes. OK, for a birthday present, maybe not so much. Back-to-school read? Sure. Before basketball team tryouts? Great idea.

Original Text or Teen edition?
The teen edition is simply a lighter, shorter version of the full-length book. While it's written on about a 3rd grade reading level, its message is the same as the one in the complete text. If you're a time-crunched adult, you won't feel silly reading it yourself. 

Friday, July 8, 2016

The Best of BTS Reading Lists?

I'm perpetually hungry for something to read. 

Unfortunately, my eyes are always bigger than the amount of time I have to sit down and chew through my 2R list. *Sigh* 

My kids seem to have the same affliction. Ergo, we have a lot of books. (Not complaining.) And, a significant number of the unread titles languishing on my shelves are books from the kids' summer reading lists that I just can't give away until I've read them. 


Does anyone else do that? I can't be the only 
grown-up who enjoys YA and Middle-Grade titles. 

Below, a short and haphazard list of some of what I consider to be the best titles I've seen (and read) on summer Back-to-School reading lists. I would love to hear from you regarding your favorite titles on summer reading lists! (Please share your thoughts on my Facebook page devoted to reading, and dogs, and a sort of eclectic list of other things I love.) 


My Favorite Back to School Reading Titles - Historical Fiction




BTS Titles that Make Kids Question Society & Themselves & Stuff




Unconventional BTS Titles With Exceptional Educational Value

These titles are likely to appeal to, and may only be appropriate for, older readers - meaning high school-aged kids. Although I have seen all three of these recommended for 7th graders. Hmm. 





Your Brain on Reading 

Fascinating findings - preliminary to be sure, but this article about research from Carnegie-Mellon is very interesting. Happy reading! 

Monday, June 20, 2016

Phew! Pew Says We Can Still Read, Even Long Stuff, Even on a Short Screen

Got two minutes? Long-form journalism is calling.

Literally (sort of). 


Pew Research Center published an interesting analysis of reader behavior last month. It was concerned exclusively with how we read on our cell phones, and while two minutes may not sound like an encouraging number, it really is. 

cell phone reading on a beach
Beach reading, 2016?

Pew notes: 

"...despite the small screen space and multitasking often associated with cellphones, consumers do spend more time on average with long-form news articles than with short-form. Indeed, the total engaged time with articles 1,000 words or longer averages about twice that of the engaged time with short-form stories: 123 seconds compared with 57."

and 

"Return visitors to long-form articles spent 277 seconds with the article compared with 123 seconds for users overall."


Social Media Readers Under the Microscope

The analysis also covered where those longer pieces capture readers - not surprisingly, many come from Twitter and Facebook. Also not surprising: those coming from each social media networks behave a little differently. 

"While Facebook drives more traffic, Twitter tends to bring in people who spend more time with content."


So, I guess I will share this on Twitter. 


If you're a reader and appreciate geeky insights about reading like this, you'll love Pew's article. Read it...on whatever device you want. If you try to make sense of online readers' behavior because you are charged with content marketing duties, you might want to visit my blog on copywriting and related conundrums. 

_____________________________
Update 7/8/16 -- You might like this: new research from Carnegie Mellon on how our brains handle words and reading. 

Saturday, June 18, 2016

What's On Your 2016 Summer Reading List?

Whatcha reading this summer? I'll start with a confession: I'm years behind on my 2R list.  But my summer reading is heading in the right direction, as I just checked off a title long on the list, so I'll put a positive spin on it and say I'm "catching up"

I recently finished The Secret Life of Bees and OH, MY, GOODNESS! it won't be the last Sue Monk Kidd title for me! More on that later...


To follow that kind of fabulous story with a popular non-fiction title is a bit of a disappointment, but page by page, Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell, several releases ago...) is drawing me in. 



Want to dish about your summer reading? 
I would LOVE to hear from you! 
Contact me and let me know you'd like to be a guest blogger. PLEASE. 


Can't Wait to Read This 2016 Release!


Oh boy, oh boy, oh Lab Girl! Sure sounds like my kind of fiction. 


Here's an excerpt: 

 
A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it. Neither the seed nor the old oak is growing; they are both just waiting. Their waiting differs, however, in that the seed is waiting to flourish while the tree is only waiting to die. When you go into a forest you probably tend to look up at the plants that have grown so much taller than you ever could. You probably don’t look down, where just beneath your single footprint sit hundreds of seeds, each one alive and waiting.


Have you read Lab Girl? 
I would welcome a guest review! 

Wait 'Til Next Year


There's a little good news for me and my way-too-long 2R list: I can put off reading about Edward Snowden until next year.  The book's pub date has been pushed back to Feb 2017.



To whet your appetite (or tick you off), you might want to read Columbia Journalism Review's recent article with excerpts from an interview with Snowden. Did you know he's  on the Freedom of the Press Foundation's Board of Directors? File under, #ThingsThatMakeMeSayHm.




Wednesday, June 15, 2016

The Art of Biography and A Journalist's Dismay

After reading about The Art of Biography in The Paris Review (don't be impressed, a much better educated friend suggested I Google it; so I did) I find I'm dismayed all over again with "creative" writing. 
excerpt from biographer interview
More: http://www.theparisreview.org/about/

I admit I lack a certain artistic flair - but truly, I feel a lot of biography (and possibly all autobiography - ha!) is far more fiction than we want to believe. To be fair, I should note that Edel points out "biographers...are not allowed to imagine facts." 

An excerpt is below. (Emphasis added by a certain snarky blogger.) If you dig this, good news: it is taken from a five-part series and each piece is quite long. Enjoy.

INTERVIEWER
I want to come back to something you said earlier. Is biography really an art or is it, in fact, a structural piecing together of fragments—a form of carpentry?
EDEL
There is carpentry involved, of course, but what I was doing was finding a form to suit my materials as I went along, having from the first given myself a large design. The moment you start shaping a biography, it becomes more than a mere assemblage of facts, mere use of lumber and nails—you are creating a work of art. I think I was performing like a dramatist when I planted my pistols ahead of time, and like a novelist when I did a flashback—incorporating retrospective chapters as I moved from theme to theme, character to character, showing the hero making mistakes and correcting them, facing adversity and learning from experience, growing older and having his particular kind of artistic and intellectual adventures, writing novels applauded in England and decried in America or being attacked in England amid the cheers of his countrymen back home. I had James’s Europe as my scene, and his bold way of annexing foreign territory to his American subjects. Above all, I was working toward what would be the climax of my serialization—those five intense years of dramatic writing, when he failed miserably, and then pulled himself together to write his last novels. All this required what I like to call the biographical imagination, the imagination of form. As biographers, we are not allowed to imagine our facts.
INTERVIEWER
How would you describe the nature of the biographical art beyond the technique of narrative?
EDEL
I believe the secret of biography resides in finding the link between talent and achievement. A biography seems irrelevant if it doesn’t discover the overlap between what the individual did and the life that made this possible. Without discovering that, you have shapeless happenings and gossip. The difference between one kind of biographer and another may be measured by the quantity of poetry infused into the narrative of life and doing—the poetry of existence, of trial and error, initiation and discovery, rites of passage and development, the inevitabilities of aging, or the truncated lives—Keats, Byron and others—who died young and yet somehow burned like bright flames. This kind of writing requires patience, assiduity, also enthusiasm, feeling, and certainly a sense of the biographer’s participation. The biographer is a presence in life-writing, in charge of handling the material, establishing order, explaining and analyzing the ambiguities and anomalies. Biography is dull if it’s just dates and facts: it has for too long ignored the entire province of psychology and the emotions. Ultimately, there must be a sense of the inwardness of human beings as well as outwardness: the ways in which we make dreams into realities, the way fantasies become plays and novels and poems—or the general who fights a great battle, Nelson and Trafalgar, Wellington and Waterloo, Washington and Valley Forge, the defeated Napoleon and his Waterloo—the strivings and the failings. It involves finding the links between the body and the spirit or soul in which human beings seem to rise above weakness and struggle.
# #

Do Edel's comments cause you to reconsider any biographies you've read and loved over the years? I haven't given it a great deal of thought yet, but so far, at least, it has given me new appreciation for great historical fiction, much of which could pass for fictionalized biographies. I'm sure I will give this some more thought in the future. In the meantime, if you'd like to share your thoughts, please doGuest bloggers are always welcome here! 


Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Too Soon To Think About Summer Reading?

In Ohio, it's often hard to tell which season it is outside. Wind, snow, sleet, hail, sunshine, tulips - any of those things can pop up just about any time. When Mother Nature confuses (and she does!) I rely on manmade clues. My calendar says it's April and my brain is begging for more time in the hammock, so we must be approaching summer.

And what's a hammock without a book?

Summer Reading 2016

Here's what's on my list:

  • The Secret. Yeah, I know it's not a recently released title but since when did that stop me? Having recently read The Alchemist, I would like to compare Paulo Coelho's insights with The Secret. Are they similar? Is one more powerful than the other? If you've read both and have an opinion, boy-oh-boy would I love to hear from you! Please get in touch and let me know you'd like to send in a guest review!
  • The Secret Life of Bees. Not new (see above) but been too long on my shelf. 
  • The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Because my son said it's a good book and I could really learn a lot from it. Please, he said. Because sometimes you really bug me, mom. (Perhaps I should move this one up the list a bit.)  
  • The Big Book of Culinary Medicine. I'm looking forward to finding out how this may complement what I learned from Anti-Cancer Diet

Light Reading or Heavy-Hitting Books for Summer? 

I tend to look for lighter reading in the summer, but I have some serious stuff on my shelf, too. Those titles include:

  • A Higher Call
  • Unbroken (Yes; it's still on my 2R list. No, I haven't seen the movie yet.)
  • Notorious RGB
  • Presidential Courage

I'll admit to having trepidation aplenty just thinking about that last title. I don't know if I should read it before the election (and risk becoming even more jaded about our current candidates) or after (whereupon I may simply run for the border, screaming). We'll see....

So what are you reading? And what do you plan to read this summer? Want to guest blog about it? That would be great! Let me know.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Guest Reviewers Wanted!


Look, I'm still working my way through The Kitchen God's Wife. And the back issues of National Geographic are piling up... if you're tearing through your 2R list, stop. Jot down a few notes about the things you've read that were worth your time, and why. Who would love them. Who might not. That's what I try to do here - and I could really use some help! 

#guestreviewerswanted!

Please drop me a line and share your suggestions here, for the sake other time-crunched readers. Thanks!! 

Monday, March 28, 2016

Happy I Found The Alchemist

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. Just a page or two into the narrative, "lyrical" was the word that came to mind to describe it.

Not exactly surprising, considering Coelho worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist before  he claimed "author" as his full-time job. 

While the book is about pursuing your dream - and the story was lovely - I found the language itself as inspirational as the book's message. This is not a snarky way of saying I thought the book was weak (although quite a few Goodreads reviewers said just that). I'm very glad I read it. 

The Alchemist was on my radar several years ago, but so were dozens (hundreds?) of other titles, so I might never have gotten around to reading it if I hadn't gone grocery shopping downtown.

Happy Pharrell Mentioned It

That's a long unimportant story; the point of it is this: a magazine I picked up along the way had a great article about Pharrell Williams, in which he lauded the book. Currently, Williams is touting his own book, Happy (what else?), and his literacy campaign with FirstBook.

According to the article, Williams told Rhonda Price that before he read The Alchemist, he felt the universe might be conspiring against him. He credits the book for helping him turn around a general and pervasive frustration at the way his life and career was going.

Happiness is an attitude that is accessible to all people. It's a state of mind and it's real. You don't have to doubt it.  

Pharrell Williams said that, but it sounds almost like a page from Coelho's book.


You can read the whole interview with Williams in vol 26 of Extraordinary Health magazine, and see more quotes from The Alchemist on Goodreads.com. And if you're looking for a short, somewhat inspirational book that will make English sound almost as enchanting as a romance language, check out The Alchemist

Monday, January 11, 2016

January Reading & Help Wanted



What are you reading? I'm happy to announce that I made it through all of my National Geographic issues. From 2014. Here's the positive spin: I'll never run out of reading material. Yay!

Food for Thought

I've just begun reading Anticancer: A New Way of Life and I'm hooked! A smart friend who is a very selective reader recommended it highly (hi, Bekah!) and once again, she proves the master of understatement. "It's good," she said.

"It's awesome!" is more accurate, I say.

Author David Servan-Shreiber, MD, PhD, was a recognized and rising research physician when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. That's when he discovered how little he (and fellow medical professionals) knew about nutrition and its role in preventing and treating disease.

The book's website provides a nice example of how to provide credible information without giving too much away for free. In this case, the book is worth the price!

What the website doesn't say, at least not overtly, is that the book is positive - never preachy - and well-written. In short, it's a pleasure to read. If you've read it, and would like to offer a more thoughtful review of it, please let me know.

2016 Help Wanted

What are YOU reading? Anything you'd like to share? Guest bloggers are welcome! If you'd like to write a review to be published here, please (please!) contact me via my Dumb Facebook page or on Twitter.