Well UL that goes with your year of sports fandom.
I am reading Spark Joy by declutterer Marie Kondo and browsing some recipe books.
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Well UL that goes with your year of sports fandom.
I am reading Spark Joy by declutterer Marie Kondo and browsing some recipe books.
I know quite a few folks here who liked the Kondo book. She is an interesting, influential woman. I have a great deal of respect for her, despite disagreeing with a point or two.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
What are you thinking of it so far?
I also read The Call of Cthulhu by H.P Lovecraft. It was a good read!
A "frolleague" (friend/colleague) suggested it, as he is a huge fan. I will probably read some more of Lovecraft's stories down the road a piece.
There is a lot of repetition with her previous book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up so this is more reinforcement for me. I like her storage ideas, but I don't pull out a whole category of things and go through it in one fell swoop. I do not anticipate I will ever have a completely tidy life, but I am getting better at not bringing new things into my home that don't spark joy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultralight
Okay, I dig it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
There is a term being tossed around in the minimalist community now: "Comfortable minimalism." A married minimalist Canadian couple seemed to have coined the term.
I just started The End of Alzheimer's, by Dale E Bredesen. I'm listening to The Postmortal, about an immortality vaccine, which--though well-written, well-read, and imaginative, I'm kind of disinclined to finish. I'm really not much of a fiction fan, no matter how hard I try to be.
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America - since I moved to a marijuana state
The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath - personal memoir about becoming an alcoholic at a very young age - the whys
Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan. Her memoir of having a mental break in her 20s and the doctors trying to figure out the medical mystery of what was happening. It has a happy ending but is very instructive on how you/your friends and family have to be strong advocates for you to be able to navigate the medical world.
She's a journalist by profession so it's well-written and the cutting edge medical info is very readable.
I like Barbara Ehrenreich. Did you see she's got a new book out, Natural Causes, about aging and death. I've always liked her research abilities and her frank style so I'm interested to read Natural Causes next.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
I'm trying to cut back on my Kindle purchases, but when I saw this in your post, pinkytoe, I couldn't resist. I'm pretty deep in it already. Really interesting read. I love how she really delves into the attitudes, historical and current--how the drunk male poets have a certain nobility where women drunks are just "sloppy fish". (I heard this horrendously disparaging term for women from someone lately, but it fits here).Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkytoe
And wanton willfulness vs disease. And white culpability for their behavior vs minority.
It's really a great read for anyone with alcoholism in their midst, or not. Thanks for the recommendation.
I recently re-read my father's diary from 1948. He would have been in his 30s and already quite proudly an alcoholic so The Recovering was of personal interest. I have always wondered about the power of any addiction.
Checked out from the library a recommendation from a friend, "The Year of Wonders:"
When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.
Today I found a couple of books recommended here: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning and Brain on Fire. I also picked up All About Love by bell hooks and two novels, A Rising Man and Tornado Weather.
Wow. Reading his diaries must be compelling and scary at the same time. Was he an artist/writer--i.e., the type of "noble drunk" Jamison writes about? My dad was an artist and philosopher and fit that mold, although I don't know how proudly he wore the badge of alcoholic. An ignominious badge for him, when he wound up dying with cirrhosis on the side of a building in the Bowery, but maybe that's all part of the romanticism of it. I had a friend in college who told me that I romanticized my father's alcoholism. I don't know what led her to believe that, and I hate to believe that's true, but maybe it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkytoe
I read Brain on Fire. It was ok, not great. I have the Sedish Death cleaning book at home right now, will be skimming it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
This sounds like the type of book I like: historical fiction. An easy way to learn about history and using characters who are trying to live through it is a compelling device.Quote:
Originally Posted by KayLR
A glutton for punishment, I'm reading Michael Crichton's Timeline, which isn't bad so far. I do enjoy some fiction, but discovering which fiction is kind of a slog.
If you want your heart pulled out of your chest, twisted, wrung dry and then handed back to you, I strongly recommend "Every Note Played," a novel by Lisa Genova about ALS. It was a hard one to put down.
Rosa, you make good siggestions, andQuote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
I like medical biographies. And sad endings.
This seems right ip my alley.
I still have a short list of titles you have reccomended.
The Power of Habit.
You guys make great suggestions and I have been reading some of the recommendations. I just bought the last book recommended by Kay. I enrolled in the local library but they have very few books in kindle format. Lots of audiobooks but I hate being read too. Interesting that the kindle books cost as much as a used book even with the shipping. Someone told me there is a monthly fee and I can read all the books I want so will look into that.
Happiness is a Choice: Lessons from a year among the oldest old. Has some very good advice about the big picture of a long life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
oh wait, this is a novel. But thats ok, sometimes fiction elucidates real life situations better than biography. It all depends on the writer.
I remember a novel I read decades ago about a married man in his 30’s, heterosexual for all intents and purposes, who had a compulsion to molest young boys of a specific age and look. The writer did a good job in describing this fictional guy, to help,p the reader understand something that seems i possible to understand.
It is a novel but I do think you would like it. Unfortunately, we do not currently live in a world where there are happy endings to ALS stories. I hope some day that will be possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
I will be starting Missing 411 Sobering Coincidence (more on unexplained urban deaths), and She Has Her Mother's Laugh : the powers, perversions, and potential of heredity. I finished Timeline, and thought it wasn't bad.
The Story of Arthur Truluv, latest fiction work by Elizabeth Berg. Jacket synopsis: "...three people who've lost the ones they loved most, only to find second chances where they least expect them."
I liked it for the same reasons I've liked her other books I've read: she has a wonderful turn of phrase and really knows how to tell a story. She gets below the surface of her characters by including all of their foibles. My only nit is that her characters are so much more articulate in their conversations than most everyone is in their real life speech, although I'm sure it's because she needs to move the story line along.
Definitely recommended.
I've always liked her writing, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lainey
I enjoyed Arthur Truluv, but will issue a warning to Iris Lilies - you would hate this one! It's definitely on the sweet & sentimental end of the spectrum.
Will ignore that title!Quote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
Eruption, by Steve Olson, which chronicles the events surrounding the Mount Saint Helens blast. It happened in my back yard, so to speak, and some co-workers were involved. I saw an excellent documentary recently (wish I could remember its name) and look forward to reading this.
I'm currently reading The Baroque Cycle, a trilogy of books by author Neal Stephenson. Set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries it deals with political and Royal intrigue primarily in France, England and America during an approximately 50 year period. It is filled with fictional and historical characters, Papists, Protestants, Puritans and heathen vagabonds as well as the early days of advanced cryptology, finance, alchemy and natural philosophy (science). The author refers to it as science fiction, although I suspect he's broadened the term to fit his personal description. Halfway into the trilogy, it's an engaging read.
Sounds like something my DH would really love. Is it anything like Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
Yes, although the focus is much broader. I very much enjoyed Pillars of the Earth and World Without End (haven't gotten around to A Column of Fire yet), so far, I'd rank The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World) at a similarly high level of enjoyment.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
I am reading Sheryl Sandberg's Option B about how she learned to cope with the adversity of loss and grief when her husband died unexpectedly. I suppose many of us ponder what will happen when our significant other leaves the planet and we are left to fend alone and I think it would be extremely helpful info in that situation (losing a spouse, child, job, house etc).
Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
That sounds fascinating. I remember seeing a wide streak of the smoke from the eruption across the sky in Kansas a few days afterwards.
Jane, did you live here then? I was in Yakima at that time, but grew up seeing the melty icecream cone look of MSH in the background my whole childhood. My family has photos of themselves---mostly kids--with the plume behind them, the selfies of the times.Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
I lived in Beaverton. I remember walking around in a particle mask, kicking up ash in the street, scooping it out of my gutters, watching it fall from the sky like snow.Quote:
Originally Posted by KayLR
“A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution” Carol Berkin , 2002.
An examination of the men who hammered out the document that has served our nation well. Perhaps the modern pastime of making hero’s and godlike figures out of the various delegates to the Constitutional Convention has me wondering what they really were like. Not to my surprise, though many were rich and well educated.....they each had their foibles and they disagreed often about what the structure of government might be. And they were more in crisis than ever in control. I haven’t read the book yet, it is on it’s way, but I did see an interview of the author on an episode of PABooks on PCN which wetted my appetite.
One facet is the opinion that the “founders” would be appalled at the power the “executive” or President currently wields and certainly would see no need to preserve the electoral college. That the amendment provision was instituted precisely because they realized they could not see into the future and a method had to be available to make the document living and able to adjust to changing times. And interestingly enough, that the 3/5 count of slaves was not a comment on the valuelessness of a single slave but a recognition that the southern states had a great population of slaves and because of this it was a distinct advantage for over representation in the form of government adopted. Therefore, the total population of salves in any state would be counted and 3/5 would be assigned to make it fair.
You shoulda been in Yakima....Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0