Worth Reading
359 articles filed under Worth Reading.
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Worth Reading
How to Do Nothing
How to Do Nothing By Jenny Odell 256 pages Published April 9, 2019 by Melville House I’m not sure how I came to read this. It was on my audiobook file. I turned it on accidentally, and then was intrigued by…
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Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet By William Shakespeare Probably written between 1591 and 1596 Both film versions of West Side Story (1961 and 1921) are very good in so many ways. But watching them, I was constantly reminded…
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Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything
Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything By Kelly and Zack Weinersmith 368 pages Published Oct. 17, 2017 by Penguin Press Soonish is a fun and fascinating look at…
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Barking Up the Wrong Tree
TS recommended it to me a few weeks ago. I bought it and put it on top of my “recently recommended” pile. I might have gotten to it a year from now, but the title intrigued me. So, I picked it up and started…
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10 Very Good Books on Writing
On Monday, I answered a question asked by the son of a friend. He wanted to know what books he should read to improve his skills as a writer. Three titles came to mind immediately: The Elements of Style by…
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A Cry From the Far Middle
A Cry From the Far Middle By P.J. O’Rourke 320 pages Published Sept. 15, 2020 by Atlantic Monthly Press Several years ago, I met P.J. O’Rourke at a small event at a private, lodge somewhere. We were speaking…
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Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm
Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm By Thich Nhat Hanh 176 pages First published Jan. 1, 2012 by HarperOne This was a Christmas book – a stocking stuffer that fit easily into my reindeer…
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The Maid
The Maid By Nita Prose 304 pages Published Jan. 4, 2022 by Ballantine Books The Maid was the March selection of my book club, The Mules. I didn’t finish it. I couldn’t . This book is absolutely the worst piece…
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Nightmare Alley — January 28, 2022
Nightmare Alley By William Lindsay Gresham 304 pages Originally published in 1946 by Rinehart & Co. Every so often we Mules (my book club) select not just a book of the month, but a movie to go with it. Our…
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Enlightenment Now
Enlightenment Now By Steven Pinker 576 pages Published in 2018 by Penguin Books After I published a review of Rationality by Steven Pinker, AG, a colleague, sent me a note saying that he was happy I had…
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories By Flannery O’Connor 252 pages First published in 1955 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a collection of short stories written by Flannery…
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Book Recommendations for 2022
From Literary Hub’s “Best 48” The Dawn of Everything By David Graeber and David Wengrow “Whether or not you’re a longtime fan of the late anarchist anthropologist David Graeber’s engagingly erudite…
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10 Christmas Books
(from Esquire) I am not afraid to say it: I like Christmas movies. I always have. Getting older hasn’t weakened that feeling. Next week, I’m going to give you a list of great holiday films (many of which are…
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Out of This World
Out of This World By Graham Swift 212 pages Published in 1988 by Viking Penguin I found it among the bookshelves in the family room of our house in Nicaragua. I selected it because it was the size I was…
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A Handbook for New Stoics
A Handbook for New Stoics By Massimo Pigliucci and Gregory Lopez 336 pages Published May 14, 2019, by The Experiment I’ve read essays by Seneca, discourses by Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations…
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Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters By Steven Pinker 432 pages Published Sept. 28, 2021 by Viking His name kept coming up in conversations. Good conversations. “I’ve never read him,” I…
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Howl and Other Poems
Howl and Other Poems By Allen Ginsberg 57 pages Originally published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights Books) in 1956 After church service, but before we were allowed to go out on Sundays, my mother…
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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World By Haruki Murakami 416 pages Paperback published in 1993 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group This was my book club’s book for October. I’d heard of the author…
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The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind
The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind 236 pages Published May 18, 2021 by Lioncrest Publishing In The Art of Playing Defense, Whitney Tilson talks about what it takes to have a…
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My Car in Managua
My Car in Managua By Forrest D. Colburn 135 pages Published in 1991 by University of Texas Press My Car in Nicaragua was recommended by a friend and board member of FunLimon, our community development center…
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Blood Meridian – or The Evening Redness in the West
Blood Meridian – or The Evening Redness in the West By Cormac McCarthy 337 pages Published in April 1985 by Random House I’m writing this review two hours before we meet to discuss the book. At this point…
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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry By Neil deGrasse Tyson 244 pages Published in 2017 by W.W. Norton & Co. “I’m in a hurry,” I thought. “Astrophysics? I’ve been trying to teach myself physics – Newtonian…
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Talent Is Overrated — August 27, 2021
Talent Is Overrated By Geoff Colvin 228 pages Originally published in 2008 If I were to list the 100 best non-fiction books I’ve ever read, Talent Is Overrated would not be included. Not because it’s a bad…
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A Sport and a Pastime
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter 204 pages Originally published in 1967 Paperback published in 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux A Sport and a Pastime – another Mules Book Club selection – is a short…
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Do One Thing Different
Do One Thing Different By Bill O’Hanlon 224 pages Originally published in 1999 by William Morrow and Company A cop comes upon a drunk on his hands and knees at night under a streetlight. “What are you doing?”…
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The Bomber Mafia
The Bomber Mafia By Malcolm Gladwell Published in 2021 by Allen Lane This was The Mules’ book selection for July. Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite non-fiction authors. His books are about ideas…
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Virginia Woolf: Her Last Letter
When people say that suicide is a selfish act, I think, “No, thinking that suicide is a selfish act is what is selfish.” There is only one reason that people kill themselves: The pain of living has become…
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The Beginning of the Best Thing That Ever Happened
By Alexander Green Journalists labor around the clock to deliver a distorted picture of the United States. Their relentless drumbeat of negativity has convinced millions that we are a shameful and fatally…
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The Winter of Our Discontent
The Winter of Our Discontent By John Steinbeck 292 pages Published in 1961 by The Viking Press Reissued in 2008 by Penguin Classics The Plot: Ethan Allen Hawley, a former member of Long Island’s Great Gatsby…
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State of Play (2009) on Netflix
State of Play (2009) on Netflix Directed by Kevin MacDonald Starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Jeff Daniels, and Robin Wright Penn Netflix served it up to me. And with a cast…
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My Writing Time Is Sacred, but Please Don’t Ask Me What I Did All Day
Brevity is a “non-fiction blog” that profits from giving wannabe writers a platform to write about how they wannabe writers. It irks me (as an entrepreneur) because it’s such a clever idea. “For a modest…
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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine By Gail Honeyman 352 pages Published in 2017 by Penguin Books The plot of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is almost a cliché of romance novels and high school movies –…
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You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation By Deborah Tannen, PhD Originally published in 1995 by Virago The book’s thesis is that, from childhood, boys and girls learn different approaches to…
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Interviewing Matisse, or The Woman Who Died Standing Up
Interviewing Matisse, or The Woman Who Died Standing Up By Lily Tuck 148 pages Published in 2006 by Harper Perennial I decided to read Interviewing Matisse because it was a thin book, just 148 pages, and…
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Dalrymple On Cellular Humility And Human Limits
“Humility on a Cellular Level” – another fun essay from Dalrymple. Click here to read it.
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Solstice
Solstice By Joyce Carol Oates 249 pages Originally published in 1985; reissued in 2019 by Ecco Joyce Carol Oates is nothing if not a prolific writer. She published her first book in 1963 at age 25, and has…
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From Letters of Note…
I’ve never read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, perhaps the most important environmental book published in the second half of the 20th century. After reading this heartbreaking letter that she wrote to a friend…
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The Blue Streak
The Blue Streak By Ellen Lesser 242 pages Published in 1992 by Grove Press The Blue Streak was a book I selected randomly from the bookshelves of our home in Nicaragua. I decided to read it because (1) it was…
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Red Notice
Red Notice By Bill Browder 416 pages Published in 2015 by Simon & Schuster Red Notice was the March selection for the Mules. I was in Nicaragua (for the ceremony inaugurating the new facilities at FunLimon)…
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Hamnet: A N
Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague By Maggie O’Farrell 384 pages Published in 2020 by Tinder Press Hamnet is, as the title suggests, a book about Shakespeare’s son and the plague that killed him. It is also a vivid…
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Microaggressions” and Other Dangerous Words
According to an article in Business Insider, there are 14 things you should never say at work (or anywhere else) because they are “indirect expressions of racism, sexism, ageism, or ableism.” Here are some…
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The Blue River
The Blue River By Ethan Canin 222 pages Published in 1991 by Warner Books Blue River is the story of two brothers, Lawrence and Edward, who, after having taken very different paths in life, are reconnected…
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The Turncoat
The Turncoat By Siegfried Lenz Translated by John Cullen 384 pages Written in 1951; posthumously published in 2020 The Turncoat is the story of a German soldier’s experience of World War II, fighting for a…
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A Letter from Charles Darwin, age 12, to a friend (Jan 4,
You must know that after my Georgraphy, she said I should go down to ask for Richards poney, just as I was going, she said she must ask me not a very decent question, that was whether I wash all over every…
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French Museum Directors Revolt Against COVID Closures
Good news for art lovers… but only if you live in France. French museum directors have banded together and are revolting against the country’s COVID guidelines. Read the story here.
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Self-Reliance
Self-Reliance By Ralph Waldo Emerson 52 pages First published in 1841 Something about the word bothered me. If a writer was described as a “transcendentalist,” I didn’t want to read him. (Talk about prejudice…
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Nick Cave Prevails
On December 7, I commented about this: a fight between an art museum that allowed some “artist” (Nick Cave) to paint the words TRUTH BE TOLD on one of their walls, and the local community that objected to it…
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The Price of Privilege: Raising Healthier Affluent Children
The Price of Privilege By Madeline Levine 224 pages Published in 2006 by Harper Collins The Price of Privilege is two books in one. It’s a critique of how some affluent parents in America today handicap their…
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A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast By Ernest Hemingway 1st ed. published in 1964 by Charles Scribner’s Sons 2nd “Restored” ed. published in 2009 by Seán Hemingway 223 pages (1964); 256 pages (2009) This was the second time I…
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The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold By John le Carré 256 pages Published January 1, 1963 by Coward-McCann This was the Mules’ January book selection. As I’m writing this, we haven’t yet met, so I can’t report on…
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