The subtitle of The Power of Habit is Why We Do What We do in Life and Business. Charles Duhigg, a New York Times reporter, writes about the science of habit formation and recounts wonderful stories of personal lives, businesses and social movements that illustrate the importance of understanding how habits are formed and changed. He describes a habit this way: we encounter a...
The subtitle of Elaine Pagels' book Revelations is Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation. She is a professor of religion at Princeton, best known for her books about the Gnostic Gospels, a trove of materials hidden more than 1500 years ago in an earthenware jar in Nag Hammadi in Egypt, discovered in 1945. The book of Revelation, that bombastic last book in the New...
I had low expectations for this police procedural, but found myself listening with growing enthusiasm. It follows many of the usual dictates for novels of this type. The detective is competent, unlike many of his fellows, is trying to quit his bad habits, and has alienated his wife. In this case Joe Cashin is trying to quit smoking, is recovering from a terrible gunshot wound...
P.D. James playing Jane Austen….a better walking companion I cannot imagine. P.D. James imagines the life of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth (of Pride and Prejudice) after 6 years of marriage; they have two perfect sons, her beloved father comes to visit regularly, Jane and Bingley live nearby and come to visit often, and the housekeeper loves Elizabeth. Into this idyllic world comes a murder in...
Ned Kelly is a heroic figure for Australians. He was not a founding father, not a great leader of the country, not a great inventor or thinker. He was a bushranger, that is, an outlaw, in the 1870s. Peter Carey wanted to explore what it is about Australians that makes them find Kelly a heroic figure. Of course there was also a long letter that Kelly wrote to defend himself in 1879 reproduced...
Audiobook. Drylands is a shrinking village well inland from the coast in the Brisbane area that has been suffering a drought for some years. Perhaps it is the lack of water that makes the men so hateful toward women and the women so inclined to inertia until they have no choice but to act. The village is revealed to us through individual stories of inhabitants who appear in...
Audiobook. A very smart story centered on Katey who came to Manhattan from Brooklyn to make her way in the mid 1930s. She becomes friends with Eve who left her family's money behind in Indiana. They met the perfectly attired Tinker who treats them to the wonders of high-end Manhattan. The descriptions of what you can do with money in 1938 in Manhattan is like...
Audiobook. What a perfect book for listening. Thanks to this book and the subsequent movie, people are aware of this amazing horse. It is interesting that such a media phenomenon in his time (1936-1942) was forgotten until the 2001 book caught on. He received more coverage in the late 30s than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Perhaps this means that in a few years...
Audiobook. This is the first in a planned triology. Hearing about the second book, the recently published River of Smoke, moved me to listen to this one. I had enjoyed The Glass Palace years ago. From an interview I heard I knew that the trilogy is about the imposition of opium by the British East India Company on China. Sea of Poppies is set in India, where the...
Audiobook. I read this book after I heard the author speak at the community college here. She was brought through the efforts of Linda, the adviser of PVCC's student book club. The book has two narrators; the first is Lavinia who we meet when she arrives at a Virginia plantation sometime in the 1780s as a 6-year-old indentured servant. She tells us the story from...