This short audiobook grew out of a multi-part podcast by Freakonomics Radio Podcast host, Stephen Dubner. He became enamored of The Messiah by George Frideric Handel at the time of the pandemic. He put the podcasts together with additional material for this audiobook. My own connection to The Messiah occurred when I was very young. Music was important for all my family members, in particular...
I began listening to this book of Zadie Smith’s essays in January, but gave it up when I was worried there was too much about Trump in it. I picked it up again in late April just when my anxiety over Mr. Booklog’s move to an assisted living facility was at its height. It turns out that her voice, whatever was on her mind, was preferable to what was rattling around in my head. Now Mr...
This author appeared at the Charlottesville Festival of the Book and I was drawn to hear about someone who made their way in the world playing Bluegrass and Old Time Music. Over the years I have known people whose lives are centered on Old Time music, especially people that we knew in Bloomington, Indiana where we lived in the 1970s. So of course I was interested in seeing a woman born in 1934...
I have been a big fan of Timothy Egan since I read his book The Worst Hard Time, so when Cathy mentioned this one in a comment recently, I read it right away. I listened to the audiobook read by an Irishman and that contributed to my thought that the part set in the US before and during the Civil War was very much the Irish immigrant’s view of a major event in American history. The story of...
Having recently dipped into the British TV series Victoria from 2016, I looked for a reputable biography of her that was available as an audiobook. I was surprised to find that a book written in 1987 by an American academic whose special interest was George Bernard Shaw had been recorded. The reader spoke in accents and as she imagined Victoria, Albert, or others would have spoken. That made the...
It was a review in the NYT that brought this book to my attention and the story that the author’s great-grandfather was an important figure in the immigration of ten thousand Jewish people fleeing to Galveston, Texas from Russia that hooked me. The author has written a family history that used newspaper quotes and multiple historical figures to tell her family’s stories. It is...
When The Washington Post put this book on their list of the ten best for the year, I was interested, and it has turned out to be a great read for me. Stein was born in 1874 and was raised in Oakland, California in a wealthy family. Her parents died when she was young, but her older brother successfully invested the family money and sent money to the siblings. Gertrude attended Radcliffe and...
Initially I found this book to be a bit preachy with its earnest messages, but I was won over by the author’s unique life and her willingness to face the great complexities of life that affect us all. And of course she could write about those complex issues with clarity. She was born in Korea and lived there her first five years. Her father, a multi-generational Tacoma-based Jewish man...
This is my third Mark Kurlansky book and I marvel at his enthusiasm for his subjects and for his love of factual information. And a firehose of information it was; this time he writes about “The Adventures of a Curious Man,” Bob Birdseye, the man associated with frozen food, for whom the Birds Eye brand of frozen vegetables is named. When I wrote about Kurlansky’s book Cod, I...
The subtitle of this non-fiction book is Ireland to India with a Bicycle and just reading it was exhausting. It’s hard to imagine someone could do this, but doing it in 1963 is truly amazing. I must resist the urge to recount all Dervla’s stories, but hope that a few of them will give the feel for how she coped with the challenges and what beauty and joy she found. To begin this epic...