Category: Books
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Esteemed Eleanor
In her book, You Learn by Living, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about eleven keys for a more fulfilling life. I’m just getting to know who she was as a person. She was quite a prolific and thoughtful author with a voice of the times. She was the First Lady from 1933 to 1945 and was quite…
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If You Hate Running…
…Jen A. Miller’s Running: A love story: 10 years, 5 marathons and 1 life-changing sport is for you. Fair warning: it’s the story of Jen’s transformation from someone who detested running to someone who loved it. Jen’s first call to running adventure came from her father in humid New Jersey as “conditioning” for softball. She hated it.…
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Book Pairing
Book pairings like wine and cheese pairings have something unique to offer. Kim Baker went to Afghanistan in 2002 and her book,Whisky Tango Foxtrot, is based on years of reportage while living there. She combines an outsiders view of how American policy looked to Afghanistan as well as an outsiders view of how Afghan politics themselves…
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Run the World
I was browsing the running section at Powell’s bookstore in Portland. A tiny young woman with long brown hair dressed in a track suit and a tall young coltish many with curly brown hair were staring at a stack of paperback books on the bottom shelf. He reached won, picked up all 4 copies with…
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52 Books Checkpoint
Midway through the year I’m midway through my goal of reading 52 books. And I can say the practice is making a difference. Some examples of the impact include: The biggest change in the first 6 months is that urged on by my friends and readers I’m reading fiction again. Having abstained from fiction for…
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God is Always Hiring
I had read Regina Brett’s first book, God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detours, a couple of years ago. I found it in Watermark Books & Cafe, a well-curated thriving independent bookstore in Wichita, KS. Anne Frey helped me and we’ve been pen pals ever since. When I saw God is Always Hiring: 50…
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A Man Called Ove
I loved Frederik Backman’s Britt-Marie was Here and My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry. So I had to read his first book, A Man Called Ove. Warning! Oversimplified synopsis: Ove is a curmudgeon whose wife has passed away. His back story and the arrival of new neighbors give him purpose and the…
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Where’d You Go Bernadette
Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple takes place in Seattle and is about a woman who disappears figuratively then literally first through her marriage and motherhood and then by running away. We can all disappear into something and the book kept me occupied for the first 3 hours of my flight to Boston from SFO. The…
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The Story of a Happy Marriage
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a book of collected essays by Ann Patchett. I read State of Wonder a non-fiction work by Patchett and was deeply disappointed with the last 20% of the story. I swore off her books then. However, some top 10 books to read list recommended “anything by…
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The Heart Aroused
The Heart Arounsed ia a surreal book best read with a second glass of wine in one hand to keep your eyes gently unfocused on the leaps between haute literature and corporate life that the author, David Whyte makes, and a highlighter in the other for the parts that resonate like a tuba. Whyte is…
