You get what you ask for, whether you want it or not.-Abraham The Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks and a mysterious disembodied host of Higher Beings called Abraham, is a fun book to read. I have been a self-help junkie for the better part of my life. When you first start reading Self help books, you have this wonderful optimism that the book will actually help you. I have now lowered my expectations to feeling good while I am reading a self help book. The Law of Attraction does make you feel good. The first half of…
Category: book review
I Feel Bad About My Neck-Nora Ephron
Aging Sucks-Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron is a great audio book. Nora Ephron has a great delivery and she is very familiar with the subject matter. Growing old and dying seems to be on Nora’s mind a lot as she was writing these essays. They are both funny and poignant. And I liked all that stuff about the New York Apartment that cost ten thousand dollars a month in rent. Being a man, and not yet that old a man, I am not worried about my neck.…
Confetti Cakes-It’s Fun to Look at the Pictures
My girlfriend was a huge fan of Star Trek, so I set out to make a designer cake that looked like the One Sheet for Star Trek III:The Search For Spock. This was a crude line drawing of Mr Spock with simple lines for all the facial features. I got a book by Wilton from the library and looked at the pictures and thought this will be a snap. Fondue has a mind of its own, in my experience, and I could not get the color or texture exactly right. The cake ended up sort of looking like how I…
Top Five Books People Talk About But Don’t Read
How To Talk About Books You Haven’t ReadWhat a great title. I mean, you have to love a book that tells it like it is. Wanna talk about that latest bestseller everyone is talking about? Go For It! The odds are good that no one else has read it either. I have not read How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, but the title was enough to get me thinking. What are some of the greatest books that most people talk about, but never actually read?Being a bookworm myself, I have read most of the books that I talk…
Chuck Norris A Legend in His Own Mind
A few million years ago there was a Martial Arts Living Legend named Bruce Lee. In Way of the Dragon Bruce Lee kills a bad guy played by Chuck Norris. That was the first time I ever heard of Chuck Norris. It’s been a few years since the rather silly Walker:Texas Ranger was on, and with its passing I kind of felt like Chuck Norris was moving into the Has Been Phase of his illustrious career.But hey, if Sylvester Stallone can still crank out Rocky and Rambo movies, then by God, Chuck Norris can whip out a couple more Delta…
A Home At The End Of The World
Micheal Cunningham’s A Home At The end Of The World, in addition to having a long and pointless title, is a thoroughly depressing book. The main theme is that old standard, Life Sucks and Then You Die. This book feels like someone told Michael that he needed to add a few metaphors, then forgot what ‘a few’ means. Nothing is what it is, everything is ‘like’ some other thing. After a while A Home At The End Of The World is like Russian poetry read by someone that only speaks Chinese.The Audio book version of A Home At The End…
The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
This is a book about a woman who has an adulterous affair with a Monk because she is bored with her life. This is a typical midlife crisis story, only it has a woman as the one that gets itchy feet and not the man. There are a number of other things going on in the story, our hero’s mother cuts off her finger. Her father died a tragic death in her childhood that she has always blamed herself for. There is this mysterious bond between the older women of her life and this strange monastery that makes a living…
A Slight Trick of The Mind by Mitch Cullin
The Sherlock Holmes we met in A Slight Trick of The Mind is a 93 year man that walks with two canes and seems to be losing what is left of his once great mind. It is a sad tale that is soaked with nostalgia for the days gone by when Holmes could solve a crime just by looking at the mud on a shoe’s heel or listening to the twang of an accent. Holnes still cares for bees and still roams around the world. He visits the site of the Hiroshima Nuclear Attack and marvels at the steel skeleton…
Douglas Hofstadter-Vegetarian
Twenty years or so ago I ran across a mind boggling book called Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This book was fun, thought provoking and, honestly, more than a bit baffling. But it helped my thinking a great deal. This is one of those books that reading can and does change your life. The next Hofstadter book I read was The Mind’s I. Another bit of fun, deep thinking and pondering wise. This a book that I never finished. Maybe it was the many brilliant authors all talking at once. Maybe I was going through a lazy phase…
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
I don’t eat at fine restaurants, but that didn’t stop me from throughly enjoying Ruth’s book on being a critic. Being a food write, as with most jobs involving writing, has been one of my passing fantasies. But it takes only a casual listen to this wonderful book for me to realized that I am out of my depth. My favorite foods are pizzas and BBQ, not truffles and foie gras. Also sad to say I had never heard of a sommeil before, which seems to be someone who knows a lot about wine. Of course, I don’t drink wine,…