Nonfiction or is it non-fiction? These are the issues that keep me awake at night. Kidding – really, nothing keeps me awake at night as I’m usually too tired once my head hits the pillow.
Anyhoo, I don’t read a ton of nonfiction since I prefer the Land of Make-Believe, but I do like a good biography, history, or science book along with books on the art and craft of writing, which I review for you. You’re welcome!
I came across this quote in A Moveable Feast and smiled at the curmudgeonness of it. I can’t say that I don’t feel the same way at times though. 🙂 When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be the happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. […]
The human body is a miracle of form and function. I’m always amazed at how intricate we are.
I’ve been on a personal/professional development reading kick recently and I just finished reading The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership. Co-written by Bill Walsh and Steven Jamison, it’s an interesting combination of football field-meets-boardroom. To be sure, there are many parallels between coaching a winning football team and a winning business team. However,
We buy these difficult books because we feel that, while not very exciting, they are in some way good for us. It’s sort of literature-as-bran-flakes philosophy. If something is dry and unpalatable, it must be doing something good for our constitutions. ~Chris Baty, No Plot, No Problem
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss My rating: 5 of 5 stars This exhaustively and impressively researched exposé on the food industry reads like good investigative journalism with an element of suspense thrown in. While I think most people know that processed and pre-packaged food isn’t good for you (for the most part), it’s quite another thing to learn how deliberately bad it is.
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It started off strong and rather compelling with a case study about innovative personal fitness (not PE) classes at a few high schools that were almost an experiment to see if exercise had any effect on students’ academic performance. […]
Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life by Elizabeth George My rating: 5 of 5 stars This turned out to be one of my favorite writing books written by a bestselling author (Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird being tied for my favorite). She caught my attention early on when she described herself as mostly left-brained (like me) and her subsequent need […]
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was a fantastic read that tells the story of Louie Zampirini, a World War II airman who epitomized the Greatest Generation. Zampirini, the son of Italian immigrants, spends his childhood engaged in shenanigans and petty theft. He later converts his talent for running away from the scene of the […]
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely My rating: 4 of 5 stars I first saw Dan Ariely present his notion of predictable irrationality in a video on tedtalks.com. He presented his ideas in a very entertaining manner, so I thought I would check out his book. The book is almost a series of vignettes discussing various experiments that Dr. Ariely and his colleagues have […]
