This may come as a shock to Harry Potter fans everywhere (including me!), but I haven’t read the entire Harry Potter series. (The horror!) The first book came out when my children were wee. My oldest was 5 or 6 at the time, a prime age for me to settle in and read to the kiddos. Because the books were released over a series of years, I kept up with reading them through Book 4.…
One of the used books I bought at the Twin Cities Book Festival was Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” It is a 1952 softcover copy that has a slight whiff of incense to it. I have not read a lot of Hemingway during my lifetime, maybe one other book in college. I’ve never been drawn to his books, though I couldn’t say why. Until I read this. Seriously, this is the saddest…
While I was at the Twin Cities Book Festival, I picked up a few books at the used book sale. “The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff” by Rich Gold was one of those books. It’s a slim volume, so it only took a couple of days to read. It expressed in written form a number of ideas I’ve had about being a creator in a world of too much stuff. Rich Gold was an…
I read. A lot. In looking back through the books I’ve read in the past 5 years (yes, I keep a list), I see that I’ve read a number of very good ones. So, when I say a book is the most enlightening one I’ve read in 5 years, that’s saying something. “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard has completely changed how I see the…
I finished reading “The Urban Monk” a week or so ago. I appreciated the book’s take on how to deal with centering one’s self when living in the chaotic “real” world, as opposed to living in a secluded cave somewhere and meditating all day. (Much easier to reach enlightenment if all you have are your own thoughts. Or maybe that’s the way to self-delusion, which might feel like enlightenment.) The book is an easy read,…