Kate's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:19:02 -0700 60 Kate's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup]]> 18652777 406 Bill Aulet Kate 0 to-read 4.26 2013 Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup
author: Bill Aulet
name: Kate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 400 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Kate 0 to-read 4.33 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Kate
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity]]> 215805908 How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.

Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for two hundred years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity.

In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs� efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum shows us that these problems have a common people can’t move as readily as they used to. They are, in a word, stuck.

Cutting through more than a century of mythmaking, Stuck tells a vivid, surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and lays out common-sense ways to get Americans moving again.]]> 320 Yoni Appelbaum 0593449290 Kate 0 currently-reading 4.35 2025 Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
author: Yoni Appelbaum
name: Kate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/13
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life]]> 27065373
For readers of Cheryl Strayed and Anne Lamott,a collection of brand new, impassioned, and inspiring letters by the author of the beloved advice column Ask Polly, featured weekly on New York Magazine's The Cut

Should you quit your day job to followyour dreams? How do you rein in an overbearing mother? Will you ever stop dating wishy-washy, noncommittal guys? Should you putoff having a baby for your career?

Heather Havrilesky, the author of the weeklyadvice column Ask Polly, featured in New Yorkmagazine’s The Cut, is here to guide you through the “what if’s� and “I don’t knows� of modern life with the signature wisdom and tough love her readers have come to expect.

How to Be a Person in the World is a collectionof never-before-published material along with a few fan favorites. Whether she’s responding to cheaters or loners, lovers or haters, the depressed or the down-and-out, Havrilesky writes with equal parts grace, humor, and compassion to remind you that even in your darkest moments you’re not alone.]]> 254 Heather Havrilesky 0385540396 Kate 0 to-read 3.82 2016 How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life
author: Heather Havrilesky
name: Kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> <![CDATA[The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing]]> 192723955
What is the work of art? In this guided tour inside the artist’s head, Adam Moss traces the evolution of transcendent novels, paintings, jokes, movies, songs, and more. Weaving conversations with some of the most accomplished artists of our time together with the journal entries, napkin doodles, and sketches that were their tools, Moss breaks down the work—the tortuous paths and artistic decisions—that led to great art. From first glimmers to second thoughts, roads not taken, crises, breakthroughs, on to one triumphant finish after another.

Featuring: Kara Walker, Tony Kushner, Roz Chast, Michael Cunningham, Moses Sumney, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Sondheim, Susan Meiselas, Louise Glück, Maria de Los Angeles, Nico Muhly, Thomas Bartlett, Twyla Tharp, John Derian, Barbara Kruger, David Mandel, Gregory Crewdson, Marie Howe, Gay Talese, Cheryl Pope, Samin Nosrat, Joanna Quinn & Les Mills, Wesley Morris, Amy Sillman, Andrew Jarecki, Rostam, Ira Glass, Simphiwe Ndzube, Dean Baquet & Tom Bodkin, Max Porter, Elizabeth Diller, Ian Adelman / Calvin Seibert, Tyler Hobbs, Marc Jacobs, Grady West (Dina Martina), Will Shortz, Sheila Heti, Gerald Lovell, Jody Williams & Rita Sodi, Taylor Mac & Machine Dazzle, David Simon, George Saunders, Suzan-Lori Parks]]> 432 Adam Moss 059329758X Kate 4 4.21 The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
author: Adam Moss
name: Kate
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Kate 4 read-as-audio-book 4.54 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Kate
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Sex Lives: Intimate Infrastructures in Early Modernity]]> 79995261
Gamble turns to a wide range of early modern texts and images from England, France, and Italy, ranging from personal accounts to closet dramas to visual art in order to excavate and analyze a variety of sexual practices in early modernity. Using an intersectional, phenomenological approach to bring historical light to the quotidian sexual experiences of early modern subjects, the book develops the critical concept of the “sex life”―a colloquialism that opens up methodological avenues for understanding daily lived experience in granular detail, both in the distant past and today. Through this lens, Gamble explores how sex organized and permeated everyday life and experiences of gender and race in early modernity. He shows how affects around sex structure the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, revealing the role of sexual feeling and sexual racism in early modern English drama.

Sex Lives reshapes how we understand Renaissance literature, the history of sexuality, and the meaning of sex in both early modern Europe and our own moment.]]> 224 Joseph Gamble 1512824607 Kate 0 to-read 5.00 Sex Lives: Intimate Infrastructures in Early Modernity
author: Joseph Gamble
name: Kate
average rating: 5.00
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope]]> 55879945
What the world needs now - featuring poems from inaugural poetAmanda Gorman, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith and more.

More and more people are turning to poetry as an antidote to divisiveness, negativity, anxiety, and the frenetic pace of life. How to Love the Poems of Gratitude and Hope offers readers uplifting, deeply felt, and relatable poems by well-known poets from all walks of life and all parts of the US, including inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, and others. The work of thesepoets capturesthe beauty, pleasure, and connection readers hunger for. How to Love the World , which contains new works by Ted Kooser, Mark Nepo, and Jane Hirshfield,invites readers to use poetry as part of their daily gratitude practice to uncover the simple gifts of abundance and joy to be found everywhere. With pauses for stillness and invitations for writing and reflection throughout, as well as reading group questions and topics for discussion in the back, this book can be used to facilitate discussion in a classroom or in any group setting.]]> 208 James Crews 1635863864 Kate 3 4.04 How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope
author: James Crews
name: Kate
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel]]> 214152325 From a pioneering Black feminist and MacArthur “Genius� Fellow, an urgent and exhilarating memoir-manifesto-handbook about how to rein in the excesses of cancel culture so we can truly communicate and solve problems together.

In 1979, Loretta Ross was a single mother who’d had to drop out of Howard University. She was working at Washington, DC’s Rape Crisis Center when she got a letter from a man in prison saying he wanted to learn how to not be a rapist anymore. At first, she was furious. As a survivor of sexual violence, she wanted to write back pouring out her rage. But instead, she made a different choice, a choice to reject the response her trauma was pushing her towards, a choice that set her on the path towards developing a philosophy that would come to guide her whole rather than calling people out, try to call even your unlikeliest allies in. Hold them accountable—but do so with love.

Calling In is at once a handbook, a manifesto, and a memoir—because the power of Loretta Ross’s message comes from who she is and what she’s lived through. She’s a Black woman who’s deprogrammed white supremacists, a survivor who’s taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism. With stories from her five remarkable decades in activism, she vividly illustrates why calling people in—inviting them into conversation instead of conflict by focusing on your shared values over a desire for punishment—is the more strategic choice if you want to make real change. And she shows you how to do so, whether in the workplace, on a college campus, or in your living room.

Courageous, awe-inspiring, and blisteringly authentic, Calling In is a practical new solution from one of our country’s most extraordinary change-makers—one anyone can learn to use to transform frustrating and divisive conflicts that stand in the way of real connection with the people in your life.]]> 288 Loretta Ross 1982190795 Kate 3 4.45 Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel
author: Loretta Ross
name: Kate
average rating: 4.45
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rating: 3
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]]> When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Kate 4 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Kate
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #1)]]> 86524
The Path to Power, Book One, reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and urge to power that set LBJ apart. Chronicling the startling early emergence of Johnson’s political genius, it follows him from his Texas boyhood through the years of the Depression in the Texas hill Country to the triumph of his congressional debut in New Deal Washington, to his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, of the national power for which he hungered.

We see in him, from earliest childhood, a fierce, unquenchable necessity to be first, to win, to dominate—coupled with a limitless capacity for hard, unceasing labor in the service of his own ambition. Caro shows us the big, gangling, awkward young Lyndon—raised in one of the country’s most desperately poor and isolated areas, his education mediocre at best, his pride stung by his father’s slide into failure and financial ruin—lunging for success, moving inexorably toward that ultimate “impossible� goal that he sets for himself years before any friend or enemy suspects what it may be.

We watch him, while still at college, instinctively (and ruthlessly) creating the beginnings of the political machine that was to serve him for three decades. We see him employing his extraordinary ability to mesmerize and manipulate powerful older men, to mesmerize (and sometimes almost enslave) useful subordinates. We see him carrying out, before his thirtieth year, his first great political inspiration: tapping-and becoming the political conduit for-the money and influence of the new oil men and contractors who were to grow with him to immense power. We follow, close up, the radical fluctuations of his relationships with the formidable “Mr. Sam� Rayburn (who loved him like a son and whom he betrayed) and with FDR himself. And we follow the dramas of his emotional life-the intensities and complications of his relationships with his family, his contemporaries, his girls; his wooing and winning of the shy Lady Bird; his secret love affair, over many years, with the mistress of one of his most ardent and generous supporters . . .

Johnson driving his people to the point of exhausted tears, equally merciless with himself . . . Johnson bullying, cajoling, lying, yet inspiring an amazing loyalty . . . Johnson maneuvering to dethrone the unassailable old Jack Garner (then Vice President of the United States) as the New Deal’s “connection� in Texas, and seize the power himself . . . Johnson raging . . . Johnson hugging . . . Johnson bringing light and, indeed, life to the worn Hill Country farmers and their old-at-thirty wives via the district’s first electric lines.

We see him at once unscrupulous, admirable, treacherous, devoted. And we see the country that bred him: the harshness and “nauseating loneliness� of the rural life; the tragic panorama of the Depression; the sudden glow of hope at the dawn of the Age of Roosevelt. And always, in the foreground, on the move, LBJ.

Here is Lyndon Johnson—his Texas, his Washington, his America—in a book that brings us as close as we have ever been to a true perception of political genius and the American political process.]]> 882 Robert A. Caro 0679729453 Kate 0 4.39 1982 The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #1)
author: Robert A. Caro
name: Kate
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read-in-2023, to-read-2025, currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation]]> 67862 128 Parker J. Palmer 0787947350 Kate 0 to-read 4.14 1999 Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
author: Parker J. Palmer
name: Kate
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961�2021]]> 60410959 From the New York Times bestselling author, the fascinating story of U.S. economic policy from Kennedy to Biden--filled with lessons for today



In this book, Alan Blinder, one of the world's most influential economists and one of the field's best writers, draws on his deep firsthand experience to provide an authoritative account of sixty years of monetary and fiscal policy in the United States. Spanning twelve presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Joe Biden, and eight Federal Reserve chairs, from William McChesney Martin to Jerome Powell, this is an insider's story of macroeconomic policy that hasn't been told before--one that is a pleasure to read, and as interesting as it is important.

Focusing on the most significant developments and long-term changes, Blinder traces the highs and lows of monetary and fiscal policy, which have by turns cooperated and clashed through many recessions and several long booms over the past six decades. From the fiscal policy of Kennedy's New Frontier to Biden's responses to the pandemic, the book takes readers through the stagflation of the 1970s, the conquest of inflation under Jimmy Carter and Paul Volcker, the rise of Reaganomics, and the bubbles of the 2000s before bringing the story up through recent events--including the financial crisis, the Great Recession, and monetary policy during COVID-19.

A lively and concise narrative that is sure to become a classic, A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961-2021 is filled with vital lessons for anyone who wants to better understand where the economy has been--and where it might be headed.]]> 432 Alan S. Blinder 0691238383 Kate 0 to-read 4.21 2022 A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021
author: Alan S. Blinder
name: Kate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America]]> 193544191
Joseph Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, with the equivalent of $100 sewn into the lining of his pants. Then came the Lehman brothers, who would open a general store in Montgomery, Alabama. Not far behind were Solomon Loeb and Marcus Goldman, among the “Forty-Eighters� fleeing a Germany that had relegated Jews to an underclass.

These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers� IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world—Goldman Sachs, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, J. & W. Seligman & Co. They would clash and collaborate with J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, and other famed tycoons of the era. And their firms would help to transform the United States from a debtor nation into a financial superpower, capitalizing American industry and underwriting some of the twentieth century’s quintessential companies, like General Motors, Macy’s, and Sears. Along the way, they would shape the destiny not just of American finance but of the millions of Eastern European Jews who spilled off steamships in New York Harbor in the early 1900s, including Daniel Schulman’s paternal grandparents.

In Money Kings, Schulman unspools a sweeping narrative that traces the interconnected origin stories of these financial dynasties. He chronicles their paths to Wall Street dominance, as they navigated the deeply antisemitic upper class of the Gilded Age, and the complexities of the Civil War, World War I, and the Zionist movement that tested both their burgeoning empires and their identities as Americans, Germans, and Jews.]]> 592 Daniel Schulman 0451493540 Kate 0 to-read 3.99 2023 The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America
author: Daniel Schulman
name: Kate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine]]> 205478768
Music is one of humanity’s oldest medicines. From the Far East to the Ottoman Empire, Europe to Africa and the pre-colonial Americas, many cultures have developed their own rich traditions for using sound and rhythm to ease suffering, promote healing, and calm the mind.

In his latest work, neuroscientist and New York Times best-selling author Daniel J. Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music) explores the curative powers of music, showing us how and why it is one of the most potent therapies today. He brings together, for the first time, the results of numerous studies on music and the brain, demonstrating how music can contribute to the treatment of a host of ailments, from neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, to cognitive injury, depression, and pain.

Levitin is not your typical scientist—he is also an award-winning musician and composer, and through lively interviews with some of today’s most celebrated musicians, from Sting to Kent Nagano and Mari Kodama, he shares their observations as to why music might be an effective therapy, in addition to plumbing scientific case studies, music theory, and music history. The result is a work of dazzling ideas, cutting-edge research, and jubilant celebration. I Heard There Was a Secret Chord highlights the critical role music has played in human biology, illuminating the neuroscience of music and its profound benefits for those both young and old.]]> 416 Daniel J. Levitin 1324036184 Kate 0 to-read 3.86 2024 I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
author: Daniel J. Levitin
name: Kate
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> Gilead (Gilead, #1) 68210 Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." GILEAD tells the story of America and will break your heart.]]> 247 Marilynne Robinson 031242440X Kate 0 friend-recs, to-read 3.84 2004 Gilead (Gilead, #1)
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Kate
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table]]> 13547854 The Boston Globe) work of reportage. Chronicling her own experience and that of the Mexican garlic crews, Midwestern produce managers, and Caribbean line cooks with whom she works, McMillan goes beyond the food on her plate to explore the national priorities that put it there.

Fearlessly reported and beautifully written, The American Way of Eating goes beyond statistics and culture wars to deliver a book that is fiercely honest, strikingly intelligent, and compulsively readable. In making the simple case that - city or country, rich or poor - everyone wants good food, McMillan guarantees that talking about dinner will never be the same again.]]> 352 Tracie McMillan 1439171963 Kate 0 to-read 3.57 2012 The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table
author: Tracie McMillan
name: Kate
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> Humankind: A Hopeful History 52879286 From the author of Utopia For Realists, a revolutionary argument that the innate goodness and cooperation of human beings has been the greatest factor in our success

If one basic principle has served as the bedrock of bestselling author Rutger Bregman's thinking, it is that every progressive idea -- whether it was the abolition of slavery, the advent of democracy, women's suffrage, or the ratification of marriage equality -- was once considered radical and dangerous by the mainstream opinion of its time. With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested.

By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese "bystander effect."

In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy.

The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving "citizens and professionals the means (left) to make their own choices (right)." Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers.]]> 462 Rutger Bregman 0316418536 Kate 3 effective-action 4.37 2019 Humankind: A Hopeful History
author: Rutger Bregman
name: Kate
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: effective-action
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]]> <![CDATA[Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis]]> 48587607
Missing Middle Housing, a term coined by Daniel Parolek, describes the walkable, desirable, yet attainable housing that many people across the country are struggling to find. Missing Middle Housing types—such as duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts—can provide options along a spectrum of affordability.

In Missing Middle Housing, Parolek, an architect and urban designer, illustrates the power of these housing types to meet today’s diverse housing needs. With the benefit of beautiful full-color graphics, Parolek goes into depth about the benefits and qualities of Missing Middle Housing. The book demonstrates why more developers should be building Missing Middle Housing and defines the barriers cities need to remove to enable it to be built. Case studies of built projects show what is possible, from the Prairie Queen Neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska to the Sonoma Wildfire Cottages, in California. A chapter from urban scholar Arthur C. Nelson uses data analysis to highlight the urgency to deliver Missing Middle Housing.

Parolek proves that density is too blunt of an instrument to effectively regulate for twenty-first-century housing needs. Complete industries and systems will have to be rethought to help deliver the broad range of Missing Middle Housing needed to meet the demand, as this book shows. Whether you are a planner, architect, builder, or city leader, Missing Middle Housing will help you think differently about how to address housing needs for today’s communities.]]> 328 Daniel G. Parolek 1642830542 Kate 0 currently-reading 4.14 2020 Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis
author: Daniel G. Parolek
name: Kate
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America]]> 205363945 A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia—and sought to transform their lives.

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives.

Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members.

Central to this effort was the shrine’s chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine’s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country’s largest Black-owned farm, where the effort to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today.

The Black Utopians is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making—one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.]]> 400 Aaron Robertson 0374604983 Kate 0 to-read 3.79 The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America
author: Aaron Robertson
name: Kate
average rating: 3.79
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date added: 2025/03/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation]]> 335357 Shortly before he died, Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, told his story up to a certain point. “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground,� he said, “and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.� It is precisely this point that of a people faced with the end of their way of life that prompts the philosophical and ethical inquiry pursued in Radical Hope. In Jonathan Lear’s view, Plenty Coups� story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one face the possibility that one’s culture might collapse?

This is a vulnerability that affects us all insofar as we are all inhabitants of a civilization, and civilizations are themselves vulnerable to historical forces. How should we live with this vulnerability? Can we make any sense of facing up to such a challenge courageously? Using the available anthropology and history of the Indian tribes during their confinement to reservations, and drawing on philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, Lear explores the story of the Crow Nation at an impasse as it bears upon these questions and these questions as they bear upon our own place in the world. His book is a deeply revealing, and deeply moving, philosophical inquiry into a peculiar vulnerability that goes to the heart of the human condition.

]]> 187 Jonathan Lear 0674023293 Kate 4 3.87 2006 Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
author: Jonathan Lear
name: Kate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> A Short Stay in Hell 13456414
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck 098374842X Kate 0 friend-recs 4.17 2011 A Short Stay in Hell
author: Steven L. Peck
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
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]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Kate 3 to-read-2025 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Kate
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Adult Learner: The Definitive Classic In Adult Education And Human Resource Development]]> 33907
Keeping to the practical format of the last edition, this book is divided into three parts. The first part contains the classic chapters that describe the roots and principles of andragogy, including a new chapter, which presents Knowles' program planning model. The second part focuses on the advancements in adult learning with each chapter fully revised updated, incorporating a major expansion of Androgogy in Practice. The last part of the book will contain an updated selection of topical readings that advance the theory and will include the HRD style inventory developed by Dr. Knowles.

This new edition is essential reading for adult learning practitioners and students and HRD professionals. It provides a theoretical framework for understanding the adult learning issues both in the teaching and workplace environments.

* Definitive classic, 5th edition sold over 20,000 copies.
* Essential reading for a wide audience of practitioners and students in the field of adult learning and human resource development.
* Incorporates Knowles'classic theories on adult learning alongside the latest advances in the field.]]> 378 Malcolm Shepherd Knowles 0750678372 Kate 0 currently-reading 3.86 2012 The Adult Learner: The Definitive Classic In Adult Education And Human Resource Development
author: Malcolm Shepherd Knowles
name: Kate
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/16
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review:

]]> Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1) 402093
Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, Shōgun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but also one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, Shōgun is, as the New York Times put it, "...not only something you read--you live it." Provocative, absorbing, and endlessly fascinating, there is only one: Shōgun.]]> 1152 James Clavell Kate 4
]]> 4.38 1975 Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1)
author: James Clavell
name: Kate
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1975
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/02/12
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review:
Hot take, Shogun isn't about samurai battles, it's about the long slow educational and cross-cultural development of one washed-up-on-the-shores-of-Japan sailor.


]]> <![CDATA[Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves]]> 18222705
This man was a freediver, and his amphibious abilities inspired Nestor to seek out the secrets of this little-known discipline. In Deep, Nestor embeds with a gang of extreme athletes and renegade researchers who are transforming not only our knowledge of the planet and its creatures, but also our understanding of the human body and mind. Along the way, he takes us from the surface to the Atlantic’s greatest depths, some 28,000 feet below sea level. He finds whales that communicate with other whales hundreds of miles away, sharks that swim in unerringly straight lines through pitch-black waters, and seals who dive to depths below 2,400 feet for up to eighty minutes—deeper and longer than scientists ever thought possible. As strange as these phenomena are, they are reflections of our own species� remarkable, and often hidden, potential—including echolocation, directional sense, and the profound physiological changes we undergo when underwater. Most illuminating of all, Nestor unlocks his own freediving skills as he communes with the pioneers who are expanding our definition of what is possible in the natural world, and in ourselves.]]> 272 James Nestor 0547985525 Kate 0 to-read 4.43 2014 Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves
author: James Nestor
name: Kate
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen]]> 112974860 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain

As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.�

And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?

Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.

The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.]]> 304 David Brooks 059323006X Kate 0 to-read 4.09 2023 How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
author: David Brooks
name: Kate
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Kate 2 4.39 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Kate
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
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More like an extended blog post that felt like the publisher wanted a quick best seller.
]]> <![CDATA[Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]> 528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Kate 4 friend-recs, to-read-2025 4.14 2024 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Kate
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism]]> 55338982
What makes “cults� so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .

Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.� But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.

Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,� revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish� everywhere.]]> 309 Amanda Montell 0062993151 Kate 0 to-read 3.82 2021 Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
author: Amanda Montell
name: Kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World's Food]]> 207003515 256 Joel K. Bourne Jr. 1419774263 Kate 0
� All meat eaters should be required to read the chapter on meat and dairy
� Kind of shocking how many massive industrial farms are owned, not by farmers, but investment firms optimizing for investor returns
� The scale of the global food system is staggering and honestly kind of beyond mental comprehension
� We ask many millions of people to do back-breaking, sometimes truly disgusting, low-paid work that we wouldn’t do ourselves in order to sustain our daily eating habits

While many other food books have made these points, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. Great and interesting photography; I wholeheartedly recommend getting this from your library and keeping it on the table to flip through for a few weeks.
]]> 4.20 Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World's Food
author: Joel K. Bourne Jr.
name: Kate
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
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Feels wrong to give a star rating to a book of photographs where the text is long detailed captions � so I won’t. Instead, here are some random thoughts I had:

� All meat eaters should be required to read the chapter on meat and dairy
� Kind of shocking how many massive industrial farms are owned, not by farmers, but investment firms optimizing for investor returns
� The scale of the global food system is staggering and honestly kind of beyond mental comprehension
� We ask many millions of people to do back-breaking, sometimes truly disgusting, low-paid work that we wouldn’t do ourselves in order to sustain our daily eating habits

While many other food books have made these points, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. Great and interesting photography; I wholeheartedly recommend getting this from your library and keeping it on the table to flip through for a few weeks.

]]> <![CDATA[The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind]]> 57220273 The first truly global history of work, an upbeat assessment from the age of the hunter-gatherer to the present day

We work because we have to, but also because we like it: from hunting-gathering over 700,000 years ago to the present era of zoom meetings, humans have always worked to make the world around them serve their needs.

Jan Lucassen provides an inclusive history of humanity’s busy labor throughout the ages. Spanning China, India, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, Lucassen looks at the ways in which humanity organizes work: in the household, the tribe, the city, and the state. He examines how labor is split between men, women, and children; the watershed moment of the invention of money; the collective action of workers; and at the impact of migration, slavery, and the idea of leisure.

From peasant farmers in the first agrarian societies to the precarious existence of today’s gig workers, this surprising account of both cooperation and subordination at work throws essential light on the opportunities we face today.]]> 544 Jan Lucassen 0300256795 Kate 0 to-read 3.43 2021 The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind
author: Jan Lucassen
name: Kate
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> Thinking In Systems: A Primer 3828902 Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.

Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.

While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.

In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.]]> 218 Donella H. Meadows 1603580557 Kate 0 4.17 2008 Thinking In Systems: A Primer
author: Donella H. Meadows
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read-2025, friend-recs, to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Madam Secretary Frances Perkins]]> 48574202
On March 25, 1911, Perkins was with friends in New York City when they heard fire engines. Running to see what was happening, they witnessed one of the worst workplace disasters in US history: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 people, mostly young women and girls. Perkins saw fire escapes collapse, firemen’s ladders unable to reach the women trapped by the flames and 47 workers leap to their deaths from the 8th and 9th floors. A year earlier these same women and girls had fought for and won the 54-hour work week and other benefits that Perkins had championed. Perkins at that moment resolved to make sure their deaths would not be in vain.

Perkins became the secretary of a committee formed to study reforms in safety in factories. Besides fire safety, the committee took on all other health issues they could think of. By that time a respected expert witness, Perkins helped draft the most comprehensive set of laws regarding workplace health and safety in the country. Other states started copying New York’s new laws to protect workers.

Perkins continued to work in New York for decades, until she was asked by President Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to serve as Secretary of Labor. She told him only if he agreed with her goals: 40-hour work week, minimum wage, unemployment and worker’s compensation, abolition of child labor, federal aid to the states for unemployment, Social Security, a revitalized federal employment service, and universal health insurance. He agreed and Perkins became America’s first woman Cabinet member, serving as Secretary of Labor from 1933 until 1945. One of her cabinet colleagues was Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes. Similar to what she achieved in New York State, her successes became the New Deal, and changed the country and its workers forever.

“George Martin [has] produce[d] an almost totally absorbing book, one that not only brings Miss Perkins to life, but also one that quivers with the excitement that the New Deal generated in most Americans... Mr. Martin’s book is well‐researched... Madam Secretary is full of rewards, not the least of them being that it gives stature to a woman Americans will be richer for knowing.� � Alden Whitman, The New York Times

“A sturdy biography of the first woman Cabinet member.� � The New York Times

“George Martin’s volume is more than a biography... he has produced a volume that should rank high in the current literature of political science.� � Isador Lubin, Monthly Labor Review

“[A] rich, scholarly account of the life of this remarkable woman... the biography has an immediate, conversational, almost autobiographical quality.� � Ronald L. Filippelli, Business History Review

“[A] remarkably personal look at a very private woman... [a] comprehensive picture of [Frances Perkins].� � Sarah A.]]> 477 George W. Martin Kate 0 to-read, to-read-2025 4.78 1976 Madam Secretary Frances Perkins
author: George W. Martin
name: Kate
average rating: 4.78
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> Adrift on a Painted Sea 206304496
This graphic novel by her son, Tim Bird, explores their family life and her creative explorations through a mix of her paintings and Tim's comics, depicting their relationship and her life from teenagehood to her struggle with cancer at the height of the covid pandemic. After her death, this graphic novel at last showcases her work.

At its heart a book about creativity and family relationships, Adrift on a Painted Sea tells a story about the things we overlook in the people closest to us.]]> 84 Tim Bird 191039582X Kate 0 to-read 4.18 Adrift on a Painted Sea
author: Tim Bird
name: Kate
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Micromastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Find the Hidden Path to Happiness]]> 32509887 272 Robert Twigger 0241280044 Kate 2 3.48 2017 Micromastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Find the Hidden Path to Happiness
author: Robert Twigger
name: Kate
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves:
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I think I might be cheating by marking this as 'finished' - does skimming the dozens of examples of how to 'learn' something in 4 steps (seriously, it tries to teach you how to grow a bonsai tree in 4 steps, with instructions like "buy good shears! prune!) count as having finished? This is a 500-word-blog post that someone tried as hard as they could to turn into a book.
]]> <![CDATA[When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon]]> 37868562
When Death Becomes Life is a thrilling look at how science advances on a grand scale to improve human lives. Mezrich examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the inspiring and heartbreaking stories of his transplant patients. Combining gentle sensitivity with scientific clarity, Mezrich reflects on his calling as a doctor and introduces the modern pioneers who made transplantation a reality—maverick surgeons whose feats of imagination, bold vision, and daring risk taking generated techniques and practices that save millions of lives around the world.

Mezrich takes us inside the operating room and unlocks the wondrous process of transplant surgery, a delicate, intense ballet requiring precise timing, breathtaking skill, and at times, creative improvisation. In illuminating this work, Mezrich touches the essence of existence and what it means to be alive. Most physicians fight death, but in transplantation, doctors take from death. Mezrich shares his gratitude and awe for the privilege of being part of this transformative exchange as the dead give their last breath of life to the living. After all, the donors are his patients, too.

When Death Becomes Life also engages in fascinating ethical and philosophical debates: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? What defines death, and what role did organ transplantation play in that definition? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich’s riveting book is a beautiful, poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.]]> 384 Joshua D. Mezrich Kate 3 read-as-audio-book 4.25 2019 When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon
author: Joshua D. Mezrich
name: Kate
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: read-as-audio-book
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]]> Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1) 518848
With Sabriel, the first installment in the Abhorsen series, Garth Nix exploded onto the fantasy scene as a rising star, in a novel that takes readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn't always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether.]]> 491 Garth Nix 0064471837 Kate 4 actually-good-fiction 4.17 1995 Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1)
author: Garth Nix
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: actually-good-fiction
review:

]]> Philosophical Investigations 12073 Philosophical Investigations is the definitive en face German-English version of the most important work of 20th-century philosophy The extensively revised English translation incorporates many hundreds of changes to Anscombe's original translation Footnoted remarks in the earlier editions have now been relocated in the text What was previously referred to as 'Part 2' is now republished as Philosophy of Psychology - A Fragment, and all the remarks in it are numbered for ease of reference New detailed editorial endnotes explain decisions of translators and identify references and allusions in Wittgenstein's original text Now features new essays on the history of the Philosophical Investigations, and the problems of translating Wittgenstein's text]]> 246 Ludwig Wittgenstein 0631231277 Kate 0 4.26 1953 Philosophical Investigations
author: Ludwig Wittgenstein
name: Kate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read-2025, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World]]> 43983938
Sasha Sagan was raised by secular parents, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the writer and producer Ann Druyan. They taught her that the natural world and vast cosmos are full of profound beauty, that science reveals truths more wondrous than any myth or fable.

When Sagan herself became a mother, she began her own hunt for the natural phenomena behind our most treasured occasions--from births to deaths, holidays to weddings, anniversaries, and more--growing these roots into a new set of rituals for her young daughter that honor the joy and significance of each experience without relying on religious framework.

As Sagan shares these rituals, For Small Creatures Such as We becomes a tribute to a father, a newborn daughter, a marriage, and the natural world--a celebration of life itself, and the power of our families and beliefs to bring us together.]]> 275 Sasha Sagan 0735218773 Kate 0 to-read, friend-recs 4.10 2019 For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World
author: Sasha Sagan
name: Kate
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read, friend-recs
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]]> <![CDATA[Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine Forever]]> 53847362 Cystic fibrosis was once a mysterious disease that killed infants and children. Now it could be the key to healing millions with genetic diseases of every type—from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and sickle cell anemia.

In 1974, Joey O'Donnell was born with strange symptoms. His insatiable appetite, incessant vomiting, and a relentless cough—which shook his tiny, fragile body and made it difficult to draw breath—confounded doctors and caused his parents agonizing, sleepless nights. After six sickly months, his salty skin provided the critical clue: he was one of thousands of Americans with cystic fibrosis, an inherited lung disorder that would most likely kill him before his first birthday.

The gene and mutation responsible for CF were found in 1989—discoveries that promised to lead to a cure for kids like Joey. But treatments unexpectedly failed and CF was deemed incurable. It was only after the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a grassroots organization founded by parents, formed an unprecedented partnership with a fledgling biotech company that transformative leaps in drug development were harnessed to produce groundbreaking new treatments: pills that could fix the crippled protein at the root of this deadly disease.

From science writer Bijal P. Trivedi, Breath from Salt chronicles the riveting saga of cystic fibrosis, from its ancient origins to its identification in the dank autopsy room of a hospital basement, and from the CF gene's celebrated status as one of the first human disease genes ever discovered to the groundbreaking targeted genetic therapies that now promise to cure it.

Told from the perspectives of the patients, families, physicians, scientists, and philanthropists fighting on the front lines, Breath from Salt is a remarkable story of unlikely scientific and medical firsts, of setbacks and successes, and of people who refused to give up hope—and a fascinating peek into the future of genetics and medicine.]]> 615 Bijal P. Trivedi 1948836378 Kate 3 effective-action
What fascinated me was seeing how much science truly is a conversation: the original description of CF, for example, emerged when a physician noticed missed patterns in patients previously diagnosed with gluten intolerance. Physicians tried one thing, then another; individually each contributing the smallest piece yet aggregating the information that laid the groundwork for eventual effective treatments. You see how what was once thought impossible, gets broken down step by step as we learn more.

Then there’s the fundraising. CF absolutely wouldn’t have been cured had there not been 60+ years of fundraising by dedicated families. But raising money wasn’t enough. There came a point when the foundation had to reduce paying for direct patient care � over the protest of families � because they recognized only research would yield a cure. What felt helpful in the short term, was stopping them from succeeding in the long term. There was the recognition they had to push science to do things that seemed crazy, because venture capital alone � too desirous for guaranteed profits � wouldn’t go there on their own. In a way, this story is about effective altruism before EA was a thing. They wanted to do what worked.

The real power in this book is illustrating how to tackle a seemingly intractable problem, and how many people it took working on different pieces of it even when they knew their efforts might not pay off. The state legislator who spent over a decade passing laws that let science innovation flourish; the scientists who spent year after year making incremental tweaks to drug compounds; the physicians who treated CF back when there were literally no options but still did research that paved the way for eventual cures decades later. The fundraisers, who figured out how to raise $175M, finished, and immediately started again. The parents who raised money and advocated � sometimes even after their children had died, so other parents wouldn’t have to experience the same loss. It gives me hope � and a roadmap � for fixing other problems we once thought impossible; it gives me courage to ask people to keep going and working for the long haul.

One thing I continue to ponder is who bears the ultimate costs of CF. Despite receiving extensive funding from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (and the foundation being the ones to request they even work on it), the company (Vertex) that finally produced the first breakthrough drug turned around and charged $294,000 per month for the drug. Vertex argued patients didn’t truly pay that, because insurance covers the cost � but who pays for insurance? You have a situation where patients fundraise for years, the money gets donated to a for-profit company, the for-profit company charges outrageous of money, and society turns around and gives them that money to increase their profits. Now, Vertex was critical in the success of this drug, and perhaps this is how capitalism works � but I think it’s important to be aware of as we think about innovation.
]]> 4.41 2020 Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine Forever
author: Bijal P. Trivedi
name: Kate
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: effective-action
review:
I picked up this book thinking about it was cystic fibrosis (CF), and it was � but it was also about effective philanthropy and how to jumpstart innovation on a seemingly incurable disease.

What fascinated me was seeing how much science truly is a conversation: the original description of CF, for example, emerged when a physician noticed missed patterns in patients previously diagnosed with gluten intolerance. Physicians tried one thing, then another; individually each contributing the smallest piece yet aggregating the information that laid the groundwork for eventual effective treatments. You see how what was once thought impossible, gets broken down step by step as we learn more.

Then there’s the fundraising. CF absolutely wouldn’t have been cured had there not been 60+ years of fundraising by dedicated families. But raising money wasn’t enough. There came a point when the foundation had to reduce paying for direct patient care � over the protest of families � because they recognized only research would yield a cure. What felt helpful in the short term, was stopping them from succeeding in the long term. There was the recognition they had to push science to do things that seemed crazy, because venture capital alone � too desirous for guaranteed profits � wouldn’t go there on their own. In a way, this story is about effective altruism before EA was a thing. They wanted to do what worked.

The real power in this book is illustrating how to tackle a seemingly intractable problem, and how many people it took working on different pieces of it even when they knew their efforts might not pay off. The state legislator who spent over a decade passing laws that let science innovation flourish; the scientists who spent year after year making incremental tweaks to drug compounds; the physicians who treated CF back when there were literally no options but still did research that paved the way for eventual cures decades later. The fundraisers, who figured out how to raise $175M, finished, and immediately started again. The parents who raised money and advocated � sometimes even after their children had died, so other parents wouldn’t have to experience the same loss. It gives me hope � and a roadmap � for fixing other problems we once thought impossible; it gives me courage to ask people to keep going and working for the long haul.

One thing I continue to ponder is who bears the ultimate costs of CF. Despite receiving extensive funding from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (and the foundation being the ones to request they even work on it), the company (Vertex) that finally produced the first breakthrough drug turned around and charged $294,000 per month for the drug. Vertex argued patients didn’t truly pay that, because insurance covers the cost � but who pays for insurance? You have a situation where patients fundraise for years, the money gets donated to a for-profit company, the for-profit company charges outrageous of money, and society turns around and gives them that money to increase their profits. Now, Vertex was critical in the success of this drug, and perhaps this is how capitalism works � but I think it’s important to be aware of as we think about innovation.

]]> <![CDATA[Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down]]> 157981706
If you’re muddling through the day in a fog, often forgetting why you walked into a room...
If you feel emotionally flattened, lacking the energy to socialize or feel joy in the small things...
If you feel an inner void—like something is missing, but you aren’t sure what...

Then this book is for you.

Languishing—the state of mental weariness that erodes our self-esteem, motivation, and sense of meaning—can be easy to brush off as the new normal, especially since indifference is one of its symptoms. It’s not a synonym for depression and its attendant state of prolonged sadness. Languishers are more likely to feel out of control of their lives, uncertain about what they want from the future, and paralyzed when faced with decisions. Left unchecked, languishing not only impedes our daily functioning but is a gateway to serious mental illness and early mortality.

Emory University sociologist Corey Keyes has spent his career studying the causes and costs of languishing—the neglected middle child of mental health. Now Keyes has written the first definitive book on the subject, examining the subtle complexities of languishing before deftly diagnosing the larger forces behind its the false promises of the self-help industrial complex, a global moment of intense fear and loss, and a failing healthcare system focused on treating rather than preventing illness.

Ultimately, Keyes presents a groundbreaking approach to breaking the cycles keeping us stuck and finding a path to true flourishing. Unlike self-improvement systems offering quick-fix mood boosts, his framework focuses on functioning taking simple but powerful steps to hold our emotions loosely, becoming more accepting of ourselves and others, and carving out daily moments for the activities that create cycles of meaning, connection, and personal growth.

Languishing is a must-read for anyone tempted to downplay feelings of demotivation and emptiness as they struggle to haul themselves through the day, and for those eager to build a higher tolerance for adversity and the pressures of modern life. We can expand our vocabulary—and, with it, our potential to flourish.]]> 304 Corey Keyes 0593444620 Kate 3 3.59 2024 Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down
author: Corey Keyes
name: Kate
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
Kind of a mess of anecdotes + advice that's given like throwing mud against the wall and seeing what sticks. However, nuanced from the perspective in that it articulates that "mental illness" and "mental health" are each a distinct spectrum; it is possible to have low mental health and yet NOT have clinical depression, anxiety, etc. I still consider this a helpful addition to the discussion of how to thrive and recognizing that the answer to doing so likely requires more focus on things like building community and challenging oneself with new experiences/growth.
]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Kate 0 3.53 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Kate
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read, friend-recs, to-read-2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What's for Dessert: Simple Recipes for Dessert People]]> 60863607 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A love letter to dessert by the New York Times bestselling author of Dessert Person

ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE Simply Recipes
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE Bon Appétit, Vice, Mother Jones

“Whether you’re into flambés, soufflés, or simple loaf cakes this book offers over 100 different answers to that all-important What’s for dessert?”—Claire Saffitz

Claire Saffitz returns with 100 recipes for all dessert people—whether you’re into impressive-yet-easy molten lava cakes, comforting rice pudding, or decadent chestnut brownies. In this all-new collection, Claire shares recipes for icebox cakes, pies, cobblers, custards, cookies and more, all crafted to be as streamlined as possible. (No stand mixer? No problem! You won’t need one.) To keep the recipes straightforward and simple, Claire makes sure each recipe is extra efficient, whether you’re making a Whipped Tres Leches Cake with Hazelnuts or Caramel Peanut Popcorn Bars. Fans will find all the warmth, encouragement, and deliciously foolproof recipes with loads of troubleshooting advice that they’ve come to count on from Claire.]]> 480 Claire Saffitz 1984826999 Kate 0 cookbook-club 4.30 2022 What's for Dessert: Simple Recipes for Dessert People
author: Claire Saffitz
name: Kate
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: cookbook-club
review:

]]> The Book Swap 203800257 “A love letter to books and reading. This debut is catnip for any book geek. I just loved it.� —Cesca Major, author of Maybe Next Time, a Reese’s Book Club Pick

A story of second chances and new beginnings, this is a love letter to books—and a love letter to life

Still reeling from a recent tragedy, Erin Connolly knows she needs to start living, but has no idea how. When she accidentally donates her favorite book—a heavily annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird containing a memento she can’t be without—to a local little community library, she’s devastated. But then the book turns up a week later, back in the library with fresh notes in the margins, along with an invitation in a copy of Great Expectations to meet her newfound pen pal.

A life-changing conversation, written only in the margins of beloved classic books, begins between Erin and her Mystery Man. Following each other through the pages of their favorite novels as the book exchange continues, they both begin to open up, falling into a friendship…and maybe something more.

But Erin and her pen pal have a shared history that neither of them has guessed. Faced with painful reminders of the past—and the one person she swore never to forgive—Erin finds herself at a crossroads. One that could change her life forever.

A book-lovers dream! References to the following classics can be found in The Book Swap:
� TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
� GREAT EXPECTATIONS
� WUTHERING HEIGHTS
� MANSFIELD PARK
� THE GREAT GATSBY
� MIDDLEMARCH
� BELOVED
� ON THE ROAD
� THE BELL JAR]]> 336 Tessa Bickers 1525836706 Kate 2 3.56 2024 The Book Swap
author: Tessa Bickers
name: Kate
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:
No one who likes books that much would be so dismissive of Middlemarch.
]]> <![CDATA[What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures]]> 144421737 What if we act as if we love the future?

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures.

Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financers, architects and advocates help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from all of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.

If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world—or see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it� this book is for you. If you haven’t yet found your role in shaping this new world, or you’re not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you.

With grace, humor, and humanity, Ayana invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question, What if we get it right?

On imagination, possibility, and transformation with

Paola Antonelli
Xiye Bastida & Ayisha Siddiqa
Jade Begay
Régine Clément
Abigail Dillen
Brian Donahue
Kelly Sims Gallagher
Rhiana Gunn-Wright
Corley Kenna
Bryan C. Lee Jr. & Kate Orff
Franklin Leonard & Adam McKay
Bill McKibben
Kate Marvel
Samantha Montano
Leah Penniman
Colette Pichon Battle
Kendra Pierre-Louis
Judith D. Schwartz
Jigar Shah
Bren Smith
Oana Stanescu
Mustafa Suleyman]]> 496 Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Kate 0 4.48 2024 What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures
author: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
name: Kate
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Mother of All Questions 29633797 Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit offers commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more.]]> 176 Rebecca Solnit 1608467406 Kate 0 4.21 2017 The Mother of All Questions
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Kate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read, friend-recs, to-read-2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers]]> 41138379 288 Mihir Desai 1633696707 Kate 0 to-read, to-read-2025 4.51 How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers
author: Mihir Desai
name: Kate
average rating: 4.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read, to-read-2025
review:

]]> Solutions and Other Problems 24493732
Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.

This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features all-new material with more than 1,600 pieces of art.]]> 528 Allie Brosh 0224101285 Kate 0 4.24 2020 Solutions and Other Problems
author: Allie Brosh
name: Kate
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Midnight’s Children 14836 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,� all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight� s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.]]> 647 Salman Rushdie 0099578514 Kate 0 3.98 1981 Midnight’s Children
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Kate
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read, friend-recs, to-read-2025
review:

]]> Experience and Education 739202 Experience and Education is the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received.

Analyzing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeper and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, one that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.]]> 91 John Dewey 0684838281 Kate 0 to-read, to-read-2025 3.88 1938 Experience and Education
author: John Dewey
name: Kate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read, to-read-2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)]]> 77566 500 Dan Simmons 0553283685 Kate 0 to-read-2025, to-read 4.26 1989 Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)
author: Dan Simmons
name: Kate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read-2025, to-read
review:

]]> The Night Circus 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Kate 0 4.00 2011 The Night Circus
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Kate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read, friend-recs, to-read-2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit]]> 60132743
Even small charities can improve hundreds of thousands of lives each year if they are focused on cost-effectiveness and based on rigorous research. The authors unpack the profile of these rare, much-needed organizations and invite you to consider your own potential for success in what might be the highest-impact career path in the world.

This book is the distillation of years of both running and teaching effective charity practices. It forms the backbone of the annual Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program and is designed to help you understand the mindset of the most effective founders and how they shape their start-ups to maximize impact per dollar donated.

It’s a no-nonsense, accessible handbook. The authors tackle tough questions, shining a light on the limits and shortcomings of their knowledge and the challenges you’ll face. It’s also a practical resource guide where you’ll find direct examples, valuable templates, thoughtful discussions, and next steps.]]> 440 Joey Savoie Kate 0 4.69 How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit
author: Joey Savoie
name: Kate
average rating: 4.69
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: currently-reading, to-read-2025
review:

]]> The Emperor of Gladness 219848315 Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing � formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness � are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.]]> 416 Ocean Vuong 059383187X Kate 0 to-read 4.34 2025 The Emperor of Gladness
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Kate
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference]]> 218372426 From the author of the New York Times bestsellers Humankind and Utopia for Realists—“a more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell� (The New York Times)—comes a bold manifesto daring us to harness our talents and transform our idealism into action, all with the goal of making the world a wildly better place.

A career consists of 2,000 workweeks, and how you spend that time is one of the most important decisions of your life. Still, millions of people are stuck in in mind-numbing, pointless, or just plain harmful jobs.

There’s an antidote to this waste of talent, and it’s called moral ambition. Moral ambition is the will to be among the best, but with different measures of success. Not a fancy title, fat salary, or corner office, but a career dedicated to the best solutions to the world’s biggest problems� whether that means tackling climate change, making pandemics history or fighting Big Tobacco.

In Moral Ambition, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman reveals how our conventional definitions of success are harming us and the planet, and shows how we can shift the focus from personal gain to societal benefit. In the process, he explains, we will join a growing movement of pioneers who are already living out this ethos. They’re the builders, the problem-solvers, the doers who have chosen a path less traveled. A guidebook to finding that path for ourselves, Moral Ambition reminds us that the real measure of success lies not in what we accumulate, but in what we contribute, and shows how we, too, can build a legacy that truly matters.]]> 304 Rutger Bregman 031658035X Kate 0 3.85 2024 Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference
author: Rutger Bregman
name: Kate
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Kate 4 read-as-audio-book Needed more 3 star reviews. 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Kate
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/11
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: read-as-audio-book
review:
Needed more 3 star reviews.
]]> Stoner 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Kate 0 friend-recs 4.35 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Kate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: friend-recs
review:

]]> The Mountain in the Sea 59808603 Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future.

Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them.

The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.

The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses� advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.

But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.

A near-future thriller about the nature of consciousness, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea is a dazzling literary debut and a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.]]> 456 Ray Nayler 0374605955 Kate 3 3.87 2022 The Mountain in the Sea
author: Ray Nayler
name: Kate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman]]> 5608045
Compiled from years of research, many interviews, and feedback from O'Reilly's online forum, these patterns address difficult situations that programmers, administrators, and DBAs face every day. And it's not just about financial success. Apprenticeship Patterns also approaches software development as a means to personal fulfillment. Discover how this book can help you make the best of both your life and your career.

Solutions to some common obstacles that this book explores in-depth ]]> 165 Dave Hoover 0596518382 Kate 3 4.11 2009 Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman
author: Dave Hoover
name: Kate
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter]]> 39345591
In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”―including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens―recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are now hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts. Eager is a powerful story about one of the world’s most influential species, how North America was colonized, how our landscapes have changed over the centuries, and how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and the ravages of climate change. Ultimately, it’s about how we can learn to coexist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travelers on this planet.]]> 304 Ben Goldfarb 160358739X Kate 4 4.27 2018 Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
author: Ben Goldfarb
name: Kate
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
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]]> Termination Shock 57094295 A visionary technothriller about climate change.

Neal Stephenson's sweeping, prescient new novel transports readers to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics.

One man has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as "elemental." But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?

Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming. Ultimately, it asks the question: Might the cure be worse than the disease?]]> 708 Neal Stephenson 0063028050 Kate 0 to-read 3.68 2021 Termination Shock
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Kate
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise]]> 200869482
But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.

The result is a humming, glowing tapestry, a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.]]> 336 Olivia Laing 0393882004 Kate 0 to-read 3.87 2024 The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
author: Olivia Laing
name: Kate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement]]> 209650054 A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR—and still provides a model of opposition in Putin’s Russia

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile—and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.

Benjamin Nathans’s vivid narrative tells the dramatic story of the men and women who became dissidents—from Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to many others who are virtually unknown today. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, personal letters, interviews, and KGB interrogation records, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause reveals how dissidents decided to use Soviet law to contain the power of the Soviet state. This strategy, as one of them put it, was “simple to the point of in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.�

An extraordinary account of the Soviet dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause shows how dissidents spearheaded the struggle to break free of the USSR’s totalitarian past, a struggle that continues in Putin’s Russia—and that illuminates other struggles between hopelessness and perseverance today.]]> 794 Benjamin Nathans 0691255571 Kate 0 to-read 4.29 To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
author: Benjamin Nathans
name: Kate
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion]]> 57933312 In this lively journey through human psychology, bestselling author and creator of the You Are Not So Smart podcast David McRaney investigates how minds change--and how to change minds.

What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change take place only when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, How Minds Change is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation.

When self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney began a book about how to change someone's mind in one conversation, he never expected to change his own. But then a diehard 9/11 Truther's conversion blew up his theories--inspiring him to ask not just how to persuade, but why we believe, from the eye of the beholder. Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, How Minds Change explores the limits of reasoning, the power of group-think, and the effects of deep canvassing. Told with McRaney's trademark sense of humor, compassion, and scientific curiosity, it's an eye-opening journey among cult members, conspiracy theorists, and political activists, from Westboro Baptist Church picketers to LGBTQ campaigners in California--that ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy?]]> 352 David McRaney 0593190297 Kate 0 to-read 4.13 2022 How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion
author: David McRaney
name: Kate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out]]> 55711592
That’s what “high conflict� does. It’s the invisible hand of our time. And it’s different from the useful friction of healthy conflict. That’s good conflict, and it’s a necessary force that pushes us to be better people.

High conflict, by contrast, is what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them . In this state, the normal rules of engagement no longer apply. The brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority and, at the same time, more and more mystified by the other side.

New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict—and how they break free.

Our journey begins in California, where a world-renowned conflict expert struggles to extract himself from a political feud. Then we meet a Chicago gang leader who dedicates his life to a vendetta—only to find himself working beside the man who killed his childhood idol. Next, we travel to Colombia, to find out whether thousands of people can be nudged out of high conflict at scale. Finally, we return to America to see what happens when a group of liberal Manhattan Jews and conservative Michigan corrections officers choose to stay in each other’s homes in order to understand one another better.

All these people, in dramatically different situations, were drawn into high conflict by similar forces, including conflict entrepreneurs, humiliation, and false binaries. But ultimately, all of them found ways to transform high conflict into something good, something that made them better people. They rehumanized and recatego­rized their opponents, and they revived curiosity and wonder, even as they continued to fight for what they knew was right.

People do escape high conflict. Individuals—even entire communities—can short-circuit the feedback loops of outrage and blame, if they want to. This is a mind-opening new way to think about conflict that will transform how we move through the world.]]> 368 Amanda Ripley 1982128569 Kate 0 to-read 4.26 2021 High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out
author: Amanda Ripley
name: Kate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World]]> 75593889
In a riveting investigation of the science and ecology of wildfires, journalist M.R. O'Connor ventures into some of the oldest, most beautiful, and remote forests in North America to explore the powerful and ancient relationship between trees, fires, and humans. Along the way, she describes revelatory research in the fields of paleobotany and climate science to show how the world's forests have been shaped by fire for hundreds of millions of years. She also reports on the compelling archeological evidence emerging from the field of ethnoecology that proves how, until very recently, humans were instigators of forest fires, actively molding and influencing the ecosystems around them by inserting themselves into the loop of a natural biological process to start “good fires.�

As she weaves together first-hand reportage with research and cultural insights, O'Connor also embeds on firelines alongside firefighters and “pyrotechnicians.� These highly trained individuals are resurrecting the practice of prescribed burning in an effort to sustain fire-dependent forest ecologies and prevent the catastrophic wildfires that are increasing in frequency and intensity as a result of global warming. Hailing from diverse backgrounds including state and federal agencies, scientific laboratories, and private lands and tribal nations, these fire starters are undertaking a radical and often controversial effort to promote, protect, and expand the responsible use of fire to restore ecological health to landscapes. At the heart of Ignition is a discussion about risk and how our relationship to it as a society will determine our potential to survive the onslaught of climate change.]]> 384 M.R. O'Connor 164503738X Kate 4 4.42 Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World
author: M.R. O'Connor
name: Kate
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World]]> 61966364 A stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changingrelationship between fire and humankind

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Fire has been a partner in our evolution for millennia,shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on ariveting journeythrough the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to theunprecedented devastation that modern forest fires wreak, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.His urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.]]> 432 John Vaillant 1524732850 Kate 0 to-read 4.32 2023 Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
author: John Vaillant
name: Kate
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together]]> 18079773 256 Pamela Slim 1591846196 Kate 2 3.85 2013 Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together
author: Pamela Slim
name: Kate
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/11/12
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An unstructured smorgasbord of empty platitudes.
]]> What Are People For? 7507664 224 Wendell Berry 1582434875 Kate 3 4.12 1990 What Are People For?
author: Wendell Berry
name: Kate
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at: 2020/07/06
date added: 2024/11/10
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]]> Among Others 8706185 Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.

Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she and her twin sister played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins, but her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. When her mother tries to bend the spirits to dark ends with deadly results, Mori is sent away and must try to come to terms with what has happened without falling prey to the darkness.]]> 304 Jo Walton 076532153X Kate 3 3.69 2011 Among Others
author: Jo Walton
name: Kate
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time]]> 63934607
Humans are unique in our ability to understand time, able to comprehend the past and future like no other species. Yet modern-day technology and capitalism have supercharged our short-termist tendencies and trapped us in the present, at the mercy of reactive politics, quarterly business targets and 24-hour news cycles.

It wasn't always so. In medieval times, craftsmen worked on cathedrals that would be unfinished in their lifetime. Indigenous leaders fostered intergenerational reciprocity. And in the early twentieth century, writers dreamed of worlds thousands of years hence. Now, as we face long-term challenges on an unprecedented scale, how do we recapture that far-sighted vision?

Richard Fisher takes us from the boardrooms of Japan - home to some of the world's oldest businesses - to an Australian laboratory where an experiment started a century ago is still going strong. He examines the psychological biases that discourage the long view, and talks to the growing number of people from the worlds of philosophy, technology, science and the arts who are exploring smart ways to overcome them. How can we learn to widen our perception of time and honour our obligations to the lives of those not yet born?


Praise for The Long View:

'A wise, humane book laced with curiosity and hope. It will open your mind and horizons - and leave you giddy at the prospect of all that we may yet become.' Tom Chatfield, author of How to Think

'Hope-filled and revelatory ... Beautifully readable and scholarly, rich and personal, this book shows how, to leave a robust legacy for the future, we need to overcome our bias for the present.' Rowan Hooper, author of How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

'A soaring hymn to all that might lie in the future; alongside the diverse and beautiful ways to think about it. Overflowing with wisdom and insight.' Thomas Moynihan, author of X-Risk

'Few books can claim to shake your perspective on life, but The Long View does exactly that ... a landmark book that could help to build a much brighter future for many generations to come.' David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect

'The Long View is a manifesto calling for a radical reconception of our relationship with time. Richard Fisher documents the social, psychological, and economic reasons we have become stranded on the Island of Now - and charts routes for us to get back to the mainland.' Marcia Bjornerud, the author of Timefulness...]]> 352 Richard Fisher 1472285212 Kate 0 to-read 3.90 The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time
author: Richard Fisher
name: Kate
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World]]> 41795733
Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.

Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.]]> 339 David Epstein 0735214484 Kate 0 read-as-audio-book 4.12 2019 Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
author: David Epstein
name: Kate
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: read-as-audio-book
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]]> <![CDATA[Seabiscuit: An American Legend]]> 110737 There's an alternate cover edition here

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:

Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.

Author Laura Hillenbrand brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story, one that proves life is a horse race.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 457 Laura Hillenbrand 0345465083 Kate 0 4.22 1999 Seabiscuit: An American Legend
author: Laura Hillenbrand
name: Kate
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology)]]> 751572 918 K. Anders Ericsson 0521600812 Kate 0 to-read 4.30 2006 The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology)
author: K. Anders Ericsson
name: Kate
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Dictionary of Lost Words 49354511 Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium�, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid� flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.]]> 384 Pip Williams 1925972593 Kate 3 friend-recs 3.97 2020 The Dictionary of Lost Words
author: Pip Williams
name: Kate
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: friend-recs
review:
I loved the concept of this book and learning about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Also really appreciated some of the structure the author used to convey difficult events - it was creative and revealed a lot without dwelling on traumatic experiences. Yet at the same time, the plot had endless dangling tangents that never went anywhere and so many side characters that played no purpose. I was never clear the actual point of the narrative, and the main character was frustratingly passive and helpless.
]]> <![CDATA[Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation]]> 7044124 � P AMELA M. I RONSIDE , director, Center for Research in Nursing Education, Indiana University The profession of nursing in the United States is at a significant moment. Since the last national nursing education study almost forty years ago, profound changes in science, technology, and the nature and settings of nursing practice have reshaped the field. Yet schools have lagged behind in adapting to these changes. Added to this, the profession faces a shortage of nurses and nursing faculty. To meet these challenges, the authors assert that schools, service providers, and the profession must change. They recommend four controversial yet essential changes that are needed to transform nursing education. A volume in The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s ­Preparation for the Professions series, the book discusses key topics for the future of the field and offers revolutionary recommendations for change.]]> 288 Patricia Benner 0470457961 Kate 4 adult-learning Educating Nurses ! Check it out if you want more in-depth information on its learning principles and recommendations for nursing education reform.]]> 4.17 Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation
author: Patricia Benner
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/15
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: adult-learning
review:
I wrote a reader's guide to Educating Nurses ! Check it out if you want more in-depth information on its learning principles and recommendations for nursing education reform.
]]> The Bright Sword 201750794
They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.]]> 673 Lev Grossman 0735224048 Kate 0 3.94 2024 The Bright Sword
author: Lev Grossman
name: Kate
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
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I'm not going to lie, when I say "I finished this!" I mean I got halfway through and then skipped to the end so I could be up to date for book club. It was a slooooooog.
]]> The Pine Barrens 821355
The term refers to the predominant trees in the vast forests that cover the area and to the quality of the soils below, which are too sandy and acid to be good for farming. On all sides, however, developments of one kind or another have gradually moved in, so that now the central and integral forest is reduced to about a thousand square miles. Although New Jersey has the heaviest population density of any state, huge segments of the Pine Barrens remain uninhabited. The few people who dwell in the region, the "Pineys," are little known and often misunderstood. Here McPhee uses his uncanny skills as a journalist to explore the history of the region and describe the people "and their distinctive folklore" who call it home.]]> 157 John McPhee 0374514429 Kate 0 to-read 4.20 1967 The Pine Barrens
author: John McPhee
name: Kate
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process]]> 18194765 208 John McPhee Kate 0 to-read 4.05 2013 Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
author: John McPhee
name: Kate
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Kurt Hahn: Inspirational, Visionary, Outdoor and Experiential Educator]]> 11725161 121 Nick Veevers 9460914675 Kate 0 to-read 2.60 2011 Kurt Hahn: Inspirational, Visionary, Outdoor and Experiential Educator
author: Nick Veevers
name: Kate
average rating: 2.60
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Islands of Healing: A Guide to Adventure Based Counseling]]> 2158570 301 Jim Schoel 0934387001 Kate 0 to-read 4.21 1988 Islands of Healing: A Guide to Adventure Based Counseling
author: Jim Schoel
name: Kate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Spear Cuts Through Water 55868456 Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.

The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.

But that god cannot be contained forever.

With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.

Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
]]> 525 Simon Jimenez 0593156595 Kate 0 4.17 2022 The Spear Cuts Through Water
author: Simon Jimenez
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
review:
Not sure how I feel about this one. Quite original? Yes. Potentially powerful themes? Yes. Way too long and unnecessarily gory and perhaps said powerful themes are actually surface level but pretending to be deep with endless paragraphs and unexplained mystical happenings? Also yes. But points for ambiguity about who is 'good' and who is 'evil.'
]]> The Psychology of Money 41881472 242 Morgan Housel 0857197681 Kate 3 4.28 2020 The Psychology of Money
author: Morgan Housel
name: Kate
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life]]> 62039167
In her mid-thirties, Marian Evans transformed herself into George Eliot―an author celebrated for her genius as soon as she published her debut novel. During those years she also found her life partner, George Lewes―writer, philosopher, and married father of three. After “eloping� to Berlin in 1854, they lived together for twenty-four years: Eliot asked people to call her "Mrs Lewes" and dedicated each novel to her "Husband." Though they could not legally marry, she felt herself initiated into the "great experience" of marriage�"this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength." The relationship scandalized her contemporaries yet she grew immeasurably within it. Living at once inside and outside marriage, Eliot could experience this form of life―so familiar yet also so perplexing―from both sides.

In The Marriage Question , Clare Carlisle reveals Eliot to be not only a great artist but also a brilliant philosopher who probes the tensions and complexities of a shared life. Through the immense ambition and dark marriage plots of her novels, we see Eliot wrestling―in art and in life―with themes of desire and sacrifice, motherhood and creativity, trust and disillusion, destiny and chance. Carlisle's searching new biography explores how marriage questions grow and change, and joins Eliot in her struggle to marry thought and feeling.

Includes black-and-white images]]> 400 Clare Carlisle 0374600457 Kate 4 4.10 The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life
author: Clare Carlisle
name: Kate
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Laws of Connection: 13 Social Strategies That Will Transform Your Life]]> 203363023
When we form meaningful bonds with others, our wounds heal faster, we shake off infections more quickly and our blood pressure drops. We are less likely to have Alzheimer’s, heart attacks or strokes. When people feel that they have strong social support, they perform better on tests of mental focus, memory and problem solving. Greater connection can fuel creativity, increase our financial stability and enhance our work productivity. But making friends can also be daunting.

InThe Laws of Connection, David Robson does two important he takes us through the fascinating science behind the effects of social connection and he unpacks the research that shows that we are all better at being social than we might think. We meet ideas such as ‘the liking gap� and ‘the gratitude gap�, learn to recognise ‘frenemies� and discover a powerful conversational strategy known as the ‘fast-friends procedure� that promotes instant rapport. Being social doesn’t have to mean having dozens of friends, it can also mean having one true, deep connection with another person. As Robson shows, we can all benefit from the laws of connection.
]]> 321 David Robson 1837261431 Kate 0 to-read 4.28 The Laws of Connection: 13 Social Strategies That Will Transform Your Life
author: David Robson
name: Kate
average rating: 4.28
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Money: A Story of Humanity 99940735 MONEY.
The object of our desires.
The engine of our genius.
Humanity’s greatest invention.

Whether we like it or not, our world revolves around money, but we rarely stop to think about it. What is money, where does it come from, and can it run out? What is this substance thatdrives trade, revolutions and discoveries; inspires art, philosophy and science?

In this illuminating, sometimes irreverent, and often surprising journey, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money � from a tally stick in ancient Africa to coins in Republican Greece, from mathematics in the medieval Arab world to the French Revolution, and from the emergence of the US dollar right up to today’s cryptocurrency and beyond. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money, disrupting society and changing the way we live, in an ongoing monetary evolution that has, for the last 5000 years, animated human progress.

McWilliams unlocksthe mysteries and power of money, explaining why it mattersand how it shapes our world.

‘McWilliams has a great knack for bringing a complex economics story to life. He is also funny. In economics, that's a rare and persuasive combination’�Irish Times]]> 413 David McWilliams 1471195457 Kate 0 to-read 4.23 Money: A Story of Humanity
author: David McWilliams
name: Kate
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy]]> 145624957
Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century � widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiseration of millions of workers around the world � many economists and business leaders still preach dogmas that lack evidence and create political catastrophe: Private markets are always more efficient than public ones; investment capital flows efficiently to necessary projects; massive inequality is the unavoidable side effect of economic growth; people are selfish and will only behave well with the right incentives.

But a growing number of people � academic economists, business owners, policy entrepreneurs, and ordinary people � are rejecting these myths and reshaping economies around the world to reflect ethical and social values. Though they differ in approach, all share a vision of the economy as a place of moral action and accountability. Journalist Nick Romeo has spent years covering the world’s most innovative economic and policy ideas for The New Yorker. Romeo takes us on an extraordinary journey through the unforgettable stories and successes of people working to build economies that are more equal, just, and livable. Combining original, in-depth reporting with expert analysis, Romeo explores:

The successful business owners organizing their companies as purpose trusts (as Patagonia recently did) to fulfill a higher mission, such as sharing profits with workers or protecting the environment.

The growing deployment of new models by venture capital funds to promote wealth creation for the poorest Americans and address climate change.

How Oslo’s climate budgeting program is achieving the emission reduction targets the rest of the world continues to miss, creating a model that will soon be emulated by governments around the world.

How Portugal strengths democratic culture by letting citizens make crucial budget decisions.

The way worker ownership and cooperatives foster innovation, share wealth, and improve the quality of jobs, offering an increasingly popular model superior to the traditional corporation.

The public-sector marketplace that offers decent work and real protections to gig workers in California.

The job guarantee program in southern Austria that offers high-quality meaningful jobs to every citizen.

Many books have exposed what’s not working in our current system. Romeo reveals something even more essential: the structure of a system that could actually work for everyone. Margaret Thatcher was wrong: there is an alternative. This is what it looks like.]]> 384 Nick Romeo 1541701593 Kate 0 to-read 4.15 2024 The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy
author: Nick Romeo
name: Kate
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mississippi Vegan: Recipes and Stories from a Southern Boy's Heart: A Cookbook]]> 39306049
Inspired by the landscape and flavors of his childhood on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Timothy Pakron found his heart, soul, and calling in cooking the Cajun, Creole, and southern classics of his youth. In his debut cookbook, he shares 125 plant-based recipes, all of which substitute ingredients without sacrificing depth of flavor and reveal the secret tradition of veganism in southern cooking.

Finding ways to re-create his experiences growing up in the South--making mud pies and admiring the deep pink azaleas--on the plate, Pakron looks to history and nature as his guides to creating the richest food possible. Filled with as many evocative photographs and stories as easy-to-follow recipes, Mississippi Vegan is an ode to the transporting and ethereal beauty of the food and places you love.]]> 288 Timothy Pakron 0735218145 Kate 0 to-read, friend-recs 4.41 Mississippi Vegan: Recipes and Stories from a Southern Boy's Heart: A Cookbook
author: Timothy Pakron
name: Kate
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read, friend-recs
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ten Thousand Doors of January]]> 43521657
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.]]> 374 Alix E. Harrow 0316421995 Kate 0 to-read, friend-recs 3.99 2019 The Ten Thousand Doors of January
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Kate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read, friend-recs
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Colour of Magic (Disc world, #1)]]> 22743742 198 Terry Pratchett Kate 0 to-read, friend-recs 3.92 1983 Colour of Magic (Disc world, #1)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Kate
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read, friend-recs
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner]]> 179311302 512 Natalie Dykstra 1328515753 Kate 3 3.96 Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
author: Natalie Dykstra
name: Kate
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance, #1)]]> 6437061 427 N.K. Jemisin 0316043915 Kate 0 to-read 3.88 2010 The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Kate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Satanic Verses 12781
From the back cover.]]> 561 Salman Rushdie 0312270828 Kate 0 to-read 3.73 1988 The Satanic Verses
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Kate
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West]]> 10380354 988 William Cronon 0393072452 Kate 5 4.29 1991 Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
author: William Cronon
name: Kate
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2016/05/18
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Terraformers 60784471
Centuries later, Destry's protege, Misha, is building a planetwide transit system when his worldview is turned upside-down by Sulfur, a brilliant engineer from the volcano city. Together, they uncover a dark secret about the real estate company that's buying up huge swaths of the planet―a secret that could destroy the lives of everyone who isn't Homo sapiens. Working with a team of robots, naked mole rats, and a very angry cyborg cow, they quietly sow seeds of subversion. But when they're threatened with violent diaspora, Misha and Sulfur's very unusual child faces a stark choice: deploy a planet-altering weapon, or watch their people lose everything they've built on Sask-E.]]> 338 Annalee Newitz 1250228018 Kate 2 3.26 2023 The Terraformers
author: Annalee Newitz
name: Kate
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
Technically didn’t finish; I got halfway through and then just read the end chapter of each section. Started out with an intriguing concept and got real tedious and preachy (sans subtly) real fast. Cardboard characters who are more mouthpieces for ideas.
]]> <![CDATA[Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley]]> 58537511
Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture, and spiritual gurus. Work Pray Code explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience in modern life.

Over the past forty years, highly skilled workers have been devoting more time and energy to their jobs than ever before. They are also leaving churches, synagogues, and temples in droves―but they have not abandoned religion. Carolyn Chen spent more than five years in Silicon Valley, conducting a wealth of in-depth interviews and gaining unprecedented access to the best and brightest of the tech world. The result is a penetrating account of how work now satisfies workers� needs for belonging, identity, purpose, and transcendence that religion once met. Chen argues that tech firms are offering spiritual care such as Buddhist-inspired mindfulness practices to make their employees more productive, but that our religious traditions, communities, and public sphere are paying the price.

We all want our jobs to be meaningful and fulfilling. Work Pray Code reveals what can happen when work becomes religion, and when the workplace becomes the institution that shapes our souls.]]> 272 Carolyn Chen 0691219087 Kate 3 3.81 2022 Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley
author: Carolyn Chen
name: Kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love: Recipes to Unlock the Secrets of Your Pantry, Fridge, and Freezer: A Cookbook]]> 56845759 From the New York Times bestselling author and his superteam of chefs, this is Ottolenghi unplugged: 85+ irresistible recipes for flexible, everyday home cooking that unlock the secrets of your pantry, fridge, and freezer

Led by Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad, the revered team of chefs at the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen gives everyday home cooks the accessible yet innovative Middle Eastern-inspired recipes they need to put dinner on the table with less stress and less fuss in a convenient, flexibound package. With fit-for-real-life chapters like "The Freezer Is Your Friend," "That One Shelf in the Back of Your Pantry," and "Who Does the Dishes?" (a.k.a. One-Pot Meals), Shelf Love teaches readers how to flex with fewer ingredients, get creative with their pantry staples, and add playful twists to familiar classics.

All the signature Ottolenghi touches fans love are here--big flavors, veggie-forward appeal, diverse influences--but are distilled to maximize ease and creative versatility. These dishes pack all the punch and edge you expect from Ottolenghi, using what you've got to hand--that last can of chickpeas or bag of frozen peas--without extra trips to the grocery store. Humble ingredients and crowd-pleasing recipes abound, including All-the-Herbs Dumplings with Caramelized Onions, Mac and Cheese with Za'atar Pesto, Cacio e Pepe Chickpeas, and Crispy Spaghetti and Chicken.

With accessible recipe features like MIYO (Make It Your Own) that encourage ingredient swaps and a whimsical, lighthearted spirit, the fresh voices of the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen will deliver kitchen confidence and joyful inspiration to new and old fans alike.]]> 256 Yotam Ottolenghi 0593234367 Kate 0 to-read, cookbook-club 4.17 Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love: Recipes to Unlock the Secrets of Your Pantry, Fridge, and Freezer: A Cookbook
author: Yotam Ottolenghi
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: to-read, cookbook-club
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family]]> 40796136
Indian food is everyday food! This colorful, lively book is food writer Priya Krishna’s loving tribute to her mom’s “Indian-ish� cooking—a trove of one-of-a-kind Indian-American hybrids that are easy to make, clever, practical, and packed with flavor. Think Roti Pizza, Tomato Rice with Crispy Cheddar, Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Green Pea Chutney, and Malaysian Ramen.

Priya’s mom, Ritu, taught herself to cook after moving to the U.S. while also working as a software programmer—her unique creations merging the Indian flavors of her childhood with her global travels and inspiration from cooking shows as well as her kids� requests for American favorites like spaghetti and PB&Js. The results are approachable and unfailingly delightful, like spiced, yogurt-filled sandwiches crusted with curry leaves, or “Indian Gatorade� (a thirst-quenching salty-sweet limeade)—including plenty of simple dinners you can whip up in minutes at the end of a long work day.

Throughout, Priya’s funny and relatable stories—punctuated with candid portraits and original illustrations by acclaimed Desi pop artist Maria Qamar (also known as Hatecopy)—will bring you up close and personal with the Krishna family and its many quirks.]]> 256 Priya Krishna 1328482472 Kate 0 cookbook-club
� Writing style: This book is a shouting celebration of Priya Krishna’s parents and I love it so much. No other cookbook I’ve read has given me such a warm feeling of family and so clearly recognized the culture and home life that led to the author’s food career. Seriously, where else will you find essays by the author’s parents prominently featured?
� Teaching fundamentals: Priya provides an excellent grounding of how to get the flavors of Indian cooking in any circumstances. She makes it easy to go off-script and do your own thing because you understand the foundation principles.
� Recipe selections: This book shines in the areas of sauces, beverages, and flavored accompaniments; less so in main dishes, which are scanty in number and range. While not entirely vegetarian, meat eaters won’t find much here. The biggest plus of these recipes is they use only a few spices, making it easier to get started if your kitchen isn’t already stocked (many online recipes will include 10+ spices).
� Taste: This should always be a rule, but even more for these recipes: salt to taste, NOT to Priya’s direction. Everything I’ve made so far has been oversalted. I also found following her directions tended to result in a raw spice flavor. Sixty percent of all food I make is based on Indian cooking techniques, so I’m going to risk being a know-it-all and say this isn’t because I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s because I did what she told me rather than what I normally do. But hey, you never know.

Overall: a fun, delightful read that inspired me to try some new sauces, but I’m glad I got it from the library rather than purchasing.

Running Log of What I’ve Made:
� Spinach and feta cooked like saag paneer: Loved the idea of using feta instead of paneer. Be cautious, however, as the feta melts rapidly when paneer would not.
� Butternut squash raita: A great idea if you need to use up squash, but squash is so mildly flavored that � even after doubling the squash � this was still essentially basic raita.
� Peanut chutney: Yum. Had to add significantly more liquid than the recipe called for.]]> 4.19 2019 Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family
author: Priya Krishna
name: Kate
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2020/12/10
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: cookbook-club
review:
It’s hard to rate cookbooks, and (in my opinion) not truly fair unless you’ve cooked the majority of its contents. Thus, rather than a star rated review, for now I shall provide a list of running thoughts (and, below that, a log of recipes cooked to date):

� Writing style: This book is a shouting celebration of Priya Krishna’s parents and I love it so much. No other cookbook I’ve read has given me such a warm feeling of family and so clearly recognized the culture and home life that led to the author’s food career. Seriously, where else will you find essays by the author’s parents prominently featured?
� Teaching fundamentals: Priya provides an excellent grounding of how to get the flavors of Indian cooking in any circumstances. She makes it easy to go off-script and do your own thing because you understand the foundation principles.
� Recipe selections: This book shines in the areas of sauces, beverages, and flavored accompaniments; less so in main dishes, which are scanty in number and range. While not entirely vegetarian, meat eaters won’t find much here. The biggest plus of these recipes is they use only a few spices, making it easier to get started if your kitchen isn’t already stocked (many online recipes will include 10+ spices).
� Taste: This should always be a rule, but even more for these recipes: salt to taste, NOT to Priya’s direction. Everything I’ve made so far has been oversalted. I also found following her directions tended to result in a raw spice flavor. Sixty percent of all food I make is based on Indian cooking techniques, so I’m going to risk being a know-it-all and say this isn’t because I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s because I did what she told me rather than what I normally do. But hey, you never know.

Overall: a fun, delightful read that inspired me to try some new sauces, but I’m glad I got it from the library rather than purchasing.

Running Log of What I’ve Made:
� Spinach and feta cooked like saag paneer: Loved the idea of using feta instead of paneer. Be cautious, however, as the feta melts rapidly when paneer would not.
� Butternut squash raita: A great idea if you need to use up squash, but squash is so mildly flavored that � even after doubling the squash � this was still essentially basic raita.
� Peanut chutney: Yum. Had to add significantly more liquid than the recipe called for.
]]> <![CDATA[What Happens When We Play: A Critical Approach to Games User Experience Design & Education]]> 128566476
The seemingly simple question posed by our title, What Happens When We Play, opens up a range of complex possibilities for inquiry, all of which we argue fall under the purview of contemporary GUX that centers our focus on the player. For example, who do we mean by “we� in our title? Who is playing, and who is left out? Who wishes to join in but cannot, and who may join but chooses not to? Why? In addition, our title opens up questions about the scope of play - when can we be said to be “in� the game? Where does the play experience begin, and end? What happens just before that, and what happens after? This perspective on games and the user experience is intended to stretch the boundaries of the field, encouraging GUX students, researchers, and workers to question both more deeply and broadly as they aim to both understand and create player experience.]]> 438 Rebecca Rouse 1387434837 Kate 0 to-read 0.0 What Happens When We Play: A Critical Approach to Games User Experience Design & Education
author: Rebecca Rouse
name: Kate
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>