BBT is the REAL Deal

I have dear friends who really KNOW Barbara Brown Taylor.   Pastor was president of Central Baptist Seminary when BBT came and spoke there and he and his First Lady (she hates it when I call her that!) got to know her and just say that she is an amazing, authentic person.  And I LOVE everything that I have read from BBT.  Learning to Walk in the Dark is no exception.  Fantastic and I love that she reads the audio.  A smart, well spoken, Christ-like writer, professor and priest. 

SO GLAD

That I read New Family Values by Andrew Solomon.  I had tried him before but couldn't get into the book, but man, this was just so good.  So good.  It was an audible original and he talks about it being a series.  Will it be a podcast?  Will it be one of those channels on audible?  I just really thought that this was an important, powerful and well done look into the American family and how family is defined.  There are SO many different kinds of families.  And when will we ALL understand that God is far more concerned THAT we love than WHOM we love and that families come in all shapes and sizes.  A great, great book. 

Remarkable

I had read some of Buechner when I was back in seminary school and recently I have subscribed to his daily emails and I highly recommend them!  When I saw The Remarkable Ordinary:  How to Stop, Look and Listen to Life I was super-excited to listen to it.  Not only for the subject matter, but just because of Buechner himself, as I have really come to glean a lot from his writings. 

LBJ Took the IRT down to 4th Street USA

Lady Bird Johnson, Legacy of a First Lady was a quick listen and fascinating.  It is a program heard on NPR produced and directed and narrated by Joe Bevilacqua, who did a masterful job in grabbing my interest.  I only wish it had been longer!  When I went to Austin for work in June I visited Lady Bird Lake and decided that August would be my month of the Johnsons!  Well, I am late in getting to them, and this was my first baby step but wow, what a step!  It includes footage of interviews with Lady Bird, Barbara Bush, Betty Ford, Katharine Graham,  and others. 

Last Summer

We went to Utah.  It was grand.  Just grand.  Amazing and beautiful and beyond words....one of the coolest places we stayed was Cedar City.  We stayed in an airbnb and the woman who owned the place was super, incredible nice.  She told us a lot about the fundamentalist Mormons who lived around the town.  Apparently after the Warren Jeffs horror, the followers who remained relocated to CC. 
We also went to Salt Lake and visited the Salt Lake Temple.  Which is part of the LDS, not the FLDS, but it sparked a lot of interest in both groups. 
Last year on a podcast I can't remember I heard an interview with Tara Westover, talking about her upbringing and how she didn't have a social security number and so therefore, didn't exist until her aunt could sign an affidavit that she really did exit.  I can't for the life of me find it now, but since then she has published Educated and is telling her story other places. 
This book is more about mental illness and abusive families than faith.  And Westover says that right in the beginning.  What a story.  What a book.  What a brave woman. 
Her parents and some of her siblings have disowned her, this is their business here.  Really good book and I wish Ms. Westover the best.  She is a brave, brave and resilient woman. 

Hungry Girl:  Recipes and Survival Strategies for Guilt-Free Eating in the Real World is written by THE Hungry Girl and I do love her site very much.  But this was published in 2008 when fat was still a bad thing, so some it was dated.  But who knows when Fat-Free will be the big thing again and it won't be dated anymore!  I would like to listen to a newer book from her.  And I did appreciate the eating-out tips!

Not the guy from Rush

J. Paul Getty is not, as far as I know, related to Geddy Lee from Rush.  Still, Painfully Rich:  the Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty was good!  I have to admit that I thought Geddy was spelled Getty, so that could be why I was confused.  The book is now called All the Money in the World, which is the name of the movie that just came out.  I saw it on Christmas Day with my mom.  I had listened to most of the book prior to seeing the movie so it was a different experience for me.  I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I did fall asleep.  I was tired!  I think reading the book before the movie is a good idea though, because you get a bigger picture.  Also, the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III is just a chapter in the book.  But it does have a lot of detail. It was sad to read about this family.  It was hard to envy them, even though they are super rich.  But it was hard to feel sorry for them, too.  But it was not like I was passing judgement, really.  It was just more or less, well, some people do have horrible lives here on earth.  They do.  But I think that money can make the horrible a little less horrible sometimes.  But it doesn't make it not horrible.  It can be horrible either way. 

Not What I Expected-- Even Better!

When I lived with my buddy Nancy Lou, her son and daughter-in-law and their little daughter lived Morning Side Heights on the Upper West Side. Their daughter went to St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's, then to Spence then to Emory. So to me, a lower-than-average-smart, very middle class suburbanite, I found stories from their lives fascinating.
When I saw Primates of Park Avenue, I thought for sure it would be a fun, guilty-pleasure tell-all kinda book.  And that was great!  But it was SO much more.  Now this book is set on the Upper East Side, and there are so many opinions about which better, and for what reasons.  Just google UES vs UWS to see.
The title wasn't meant to just be provocative, it really IS a primate study, told through a semi-academic lens.  I say "semi" because the author, Wednesday Martin, whom I liked immediately admits she is not a trained anthropologist. Of course there has been controversy over the book.  But all I can say is, I really, really enjoyed this book.

Good Title

Gary Dell'Abate talks about all of the possible titles for his book They Call me Baba Booey and they were funny, but I do think they got it right!  Especially after hearing how Dell'Abate wound up with the nickname, just such a simple thing turned into a catch phrase.  I like Dell'Abate, as much as one can come to like someone from hearing him read a very open and honest audiobook.  I like the extra parts to the audiobook and I like the Dell'Abate is a supporter of them!  And I completely agree with his "screw you" to people who say if you have only listened to a book, you really haven't read it!  Good stuff!

Dr. Phil

My mom had seen Dr. Phil talk about his book, The 20/20 Diet:  turn your weight loss vision into reality and asked me to buy it for her.  Right before Christmas, it was impossible to find and even out of stock on amazon.  So I bought it on the kindle and also the audible version so that we could have a listen.

Mom quickly got bored, but I stayed with it because even though Dr. Phil wasn't the narrator, I could hear him, with his southern twang admonishing us for every screw up.  It was kinda funny.

For me, it is too much shopping and too much cooking and too restrictive and I think I have found something that works for now, so I won't take on his plan, but it is worth reading if you want to try to lose weight, and if you like Dr. Phil.

Even from the beginning...

I am a David Sedaris fan, for sure.  He is quite, quite witty.  And I love listening to him!  Barrel Fever was his first book and even though it might not be as great as the books that came after, he really hit a home run his first time up at bat.

Still Missing Her

In fact, after reading Men are Stupid...and They Like Big Boobs, I miss Joan Rivers even more.  She was such a kind and smart woman.  I don't think everyone realizes that.  But if  you read this book, you will know it for sure. She really cared about people.  Really.  I know that might be hard for people to believe, especially as I am saying this about a book that is pretty much about plastic surgery, this is the perfect book for gaining insight into plastic surgery but also into the kind of woman that Joan Rivers was.  I listened to the audio which was read by Ms. Rivers herself.  She truly wanted everyone to live "their best life now" as Joel Osteen says.

Just turn your anger inside

anger turned inward is depression, of course!  And I have always turned my anger inward, thus, depression.  The Dance of Anger sounds like it is all about anger, but the subtitle is really what the book is about, which is, changing the patterns of intimate relationships.  I have seen this book many times and shelved it many times, but it wasn't until my very dear friend, Miss Christin encouraged me to read it that I did.  Once again, I felt much thankfulness for my dear friend!  This was an exceptional, yet really easy to understand for even someone like me.  I do want to read more by Harriet Lerner.  Good stuff here, for the day to day of realating to others and for those times when a relationship seems too overwhelming.

The Wordy Hipster

Sarah Vowell is older than I am.  Not by much, but since she is older than I am, and I am no spring chicken, I am confused as to why Ms. Vowell acts like she is still young enough to be a hipster. Very sad.
There were some interesting parts to this book, but it was sort of weird.  I just wasn't sure what it was trying to accomplish. I'm an average person.  Not too smart.  Not too intellectually challenged.  I went to decent schools, but no place to write home about, you know?  Most of the information in this book wasn't anything new to me, so I can't imagine this was a history book.
You know, I really don't know what else to say about this.   The Wordy Shipmates was way too wordy.

Joan Rivers is on the Tonight Show!

I remember being a kid and being so excited when Johnny Carson, who I really didn't like, was off and Joan was filling in for him on The Tonight Show.  That was the only time I never watched the Tonight Show, as  I am a David Letterman girl.  When I was 13 I bought The Life and (hard) Times of Heidi Ambromowitz at Waldenbooks in Northway Mall and I loved it!  So I have good memories of Joan Rivers.  I know she is offensive and rude and awful, but she is a part of my childhood.  I read a comment somewhere online that Joan's day has come and gone because her comedy is outdated.  He wasn't being critical, really.  Just stating a fact, in fact, this commenter wrote that he enjoyed her, but yes, her time is over.  That is probably true.  Joan Rivers' comedy is more of the age of Dean Martin's Celebrity Roasts and Don Rickles.   Not a lot of people remember Sunny von Bülow.  Well, I can't help it.  I love Joan.  And I did find myself laughing out loud several times, but yes, cringing many times, too.

Haunted

There are a lot of books about haunted places, but this book boasts that the places written about it in America's Secret Hauntings are not too well known.  Hence the whole "secret" thing!  The only places I had heard of were Danvers and the Ax Murder House, so I would say that the book was right, in my case!  I was driving back from the NAEYC Institute in Minneapolis and I drove through part of Iowa for a new route.  I had thought about heading over to Villsaca even before I started listening to this book!  The thing is, it got a recent bad review on tripadvisor, so I didn't.  Then after listening to this book, I was sorry I hadn't gone.  I was already to the Illinois line by that time.  Anyway, there is some good, gruesome stuff in here!

Underwhelming

Just Babies:  the origins of good and evil was a big disappointment. It was a particular downer because I bought the book for a friend for Christmas and also because I bought the audio version for myself.  I had heard about this 60 minutes bit but I hadn't watched it and I just heard it was neat so I thought, well, I will get the book! I've mentioned by whole Calvinist upbringing and so this is very different.
The book didn't really talk a lot about the Baby Lab.  It went off on a lot of different tangents. Seems like this might have just been a nice journal article, instead of a whole book.

Freaky Thoughts

This was a truly enjoyable book.  Think Like a Freak:  the authors of Freakonomics offer to retrain your brain is filled with a lot of great little stories, as usual.  Of course, there was my whole hesitancy over the Lemonjello thing, but I look on the Freakonomics Blog and while I didn't find the place where my question was addressed directly, if it was, I did see the Dubner and Levitt are still looking for Lemonjello and his brother.  So that made me very happy.  This morning I sent an email off to the address listed for the authors on their blog, so maybe I will get an answer.  I hope so.
Regardless, this is a must-read.  It really is.

I Don't Know...

It's not so much that I don't believe Jon Krakauer's criticisms of the Three Cups of Tea guy, Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute.  Mortenson's antics have been well documented elsewhere and Mortenson himself has publicly confessed.  It's just that Three Cups of Deceit, I don't know...there was just something off about it.  I don't mean that it didn't tell the truth or that Krakauer lied or anything, no, not at all.  It was more like a personal attack or criticism or something.  Which I know it was, but the reviewer on goodreads who said, "the moral of the story is, don't f*&k with Jon Krakauer's money."  seems to have said it best.  Krakauer himself gave money to CAI and when he found out that there were lies in Three Cups of Tea he went on an investigation and did a piece for 60 Minutes and this ebook came out of it.  The good part of the book was that it was super short, unlike those that you need to listen to quickly to get through them.  I still sped this one up though.  I never read Three Cups of Tea, it is really not my thing at all.

Not What I Thought It Was

When I saw the cover of The Mad Sculptor:  the maniac, the model and the murder that shook a nation I thought it would be like The Devil in the White City or The Monster of Florence but it wasn't.  That was totally my fault.  The author, Harold Schechter has been writing true-crime books for a very long time and he is true to his craft and does a great job at it.  I was just hoping for something more.
I had never heard of this crime, even though it is listed on Raymond Chandler's 1948 list of most memorable crimes of the century.  This is the story of Robert George Irwin, a guy with some serious psychological problems.  If you want a good true-crime book, this is a good one, but it's not like DIWC or TMOF.