If you are a health practitioner, read this book! If you are a theatre professional, read this book! If you are anyone who works in a compassionate career, read it! I’ll explain why in a moment. I knew from the start I would enjoy this book to at least some degree because, like Dr. […]
The post-modern explosion of self-help books kicked off with the success of How to Make Friends and Influence People in 1936. A steady stream of such books followed, offering practical-but-obvious-when-you-think-about-it advice to a population without internet access, perhaps culminating with the business-oriented The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Then came a barrage of feel-good […]
The Spirit of the Trail by Carrie Morgridge with Ross Sellers is an account of the 46 day bicycle journey undertaken by Morgridge and her husband John in the summer of 2016. The couple rode their bicycles the length of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) from Banff, Alberta to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, […]
Kimberly Adams’ Beginning Color Mixing: Tips and Techniques for Mixing Vibrant Colors and Cohesive Palettes is a fantastic book for new artists wanting to learn more about color in a way that inspires the newbie to dive into vibrant colors with confidence. Adams begins with a discussion of basic materials, then moves on to techniques in a […]
George Thomson’ s Practical Calligraphy is a small book full of big ideas. It introduces the history and uses of calligraphy in straightforward and inspiring ways, from ancient Mesopotamia, through medieval monks to modern wedding invitations. The examples and step-by-step instructions for projects look very accessible, and they are clear. The big problem for me […]
Broadway. The term, encompassing both an urban location and the style of theater produced therein, is so familiar, so loaded with rich cultural history, that we almost can’t conceive of American theater without it. But while the term may conjure up images from decades of iconic performances, or discussions of an impressive financial, touristic, and […]
When I heard about the shootings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, I immediately thought of the religion scholar Stephen Prothero. More specifically, I thought about his book God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World, which I finished reading just about a month ago. Prothero’s main argument is […]
I’ve become a dog person. There, I said it, and I joined the millions of Americans (as well as others around the world) who worship their dogs. My boyfriend has an agreeable and adorable Cava-Poo (a King Charles Cavalier and Poodle mix) that is impossible not to love. But like looking at a newborn-adopted baby […]
After every great non-fiction book I find myself saying, “that was the best non-fiction book I’ve read in a long time”. However, after finishing The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun, I can confirm that this book is in fact the best non-fiction book I’ve read in a long time, and possibly the best […]
“The U.S. financial markets had always been either corrupt or about to be corrupted,” writes Michael Lewis in his new book Flash Boys. The shadow-casting book about high frequency traders hit the publishing arena as the feds were simultaneously hitting the streets to uncover the secretive, billion-dollar world. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the […]
From the authors of the book and equally popular podcast, Freakonomics, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt have released their third book, Think Like a Freak. While the first two books looked more from an economist’s standpoint, this book tends to come from the perspective of a social scientist’s, with a bit of economics to back […]
One really has to hand it to Rupert Everett. Once touted as the next great British leading man, he came out of the closet and summarily watched a once very promising film career go down, if not in a torrent of flames, then at the very least, in a rank smouldering mess that resembled nothing […]
Chuck Klosterman is a genius in ways that do not really matter—like how your high school buddies know where every linebacker went to college, which has little to do with their current employment at Tastee Freez. Unlike your old friends, however, Klosterman has earned a soapbox to shout from. As a writer for the likes […]
Women who found themselves caught in the web of the mob have always avoided publicly expressing their feelings. Yet a few have come forth with riveting stories exposing a feminine side of the “life”. We can go way back to the earliest published testimonies from women like Rosalie Bonanno (“Mafia Marriage”), Sandy Sadowsky (“Wedded to […]
Falling somewhere on the scale between oddity and prodigy, Tim Ferriss is at it again with his third book of “personal experiments on lifestyle design.” First, he explored the realms of time and business in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. Next, he took physique to extreme levels of reader discomfort and follower transformation in The 4-Hour […]
You guys, I did something crazy. I read a non-fiction book. This is … new and different for me. I don’t usually read nonfiction if it’s not about infectious diseases. …By which I mean Ebola. Really, pretty much just Ebola. In middle school and high school my dad got so frustrated with my 100% fiction […]
Maybe it’s in the water here. I mean, mostly I’ve read that Los Angeles water is filled with parasites and toxins, but maybe it’s actually filled with a desire to spend one’s life eating strangely colored smoothies based on a vegan, plant-based, raw diet. I don’t know. Anyway, about two months after my move to […]
A.J. Jacobs likes to use his life, body, and family as a template for thoughtful experiments on a myriad of issues. His past two, bestselling books were The Know It All, in which he attempted to read the entire encyclopedia from A to Z, and The Year of Living Biblically, in which he decided to […]
I’m not the biggest history buff in the world (not gonna lie, I rocked the heck out of AP Euro, but that was years ago, and didn’t, you know, cover the history of places that… weren’t Europe), but I deem this book pretty solidly executed. And what’s more, I enjoyed reading it/learning stuff about history/re-learning […]
The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers, is Laura Oliver’s practical guide to writing. It deals with the act of writing, the business of being a writer, and the social/psychological agitation of being a writer (or being one of those people who is afraid to call themselves a writer, but writes all the […]