Tag: book review
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BR347) “Poverty, By America” Book Review
Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond. 2/5 rating. 189 pages. Book #9 of 2024. Finished February 19, 2024. This book talks very openly about poverty: its causes and why it is perpetuated. The topic is very interesting, but I struggled soooo much to get through this book. It just wasn’t written in a very engaging…
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BR343) “Quit” Book Review
Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke. 3/5 rating. 247 pages. Book #5 of 2024. Finished January 28, 2024. This book focuses on Annie’s idea: “Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.” We give a…
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BR332) “Meditations” Book Review
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. 3/5 rating. 304 pages. Book #48 of 2023. Read November 24, 2023. This is a book of writings by the philosopher -ruler of Rome in the second century A.D. Aurelius was a very deep thinker who believed in the ideas of the stoics. He talks a lot in this book about…
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BR331) “Stolen Focus” Book Review
Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari. 5/5 rating. 283 pages. Book #47 of 2023. Read November 19, 2023. This has officially become one of my favorite books! Johann looks at the epidemic of failing attention throughout the world. If you talk to nearly anyone,…
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BR329) “The Stranger in the Woods” Book Review
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. 3/5 rating. 225 pages. Book #45 of 2023. Read November 5, 2023. This is an interesting look into the life of a man described as a hermit who had no direct interaction with people for 27 years. In 2013,…
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BR306) “Rambunctious Garden” Book Review
Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris. 4/5 rating. 171 pages. Book #22 of 2023. Read June 28, 2023. This book is all about how to best take care of the world’s ecosystems in a way that saves what we find most dear to us. I really loved the idea that…
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BR304) “Dopesick” Book Review
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy. 4/5 rating. 308 pages. Book #20 of 2023. Read June 17, 2023. This book follows the pipeline from OxyContin to heroin caused by Purdue Pharma. It highlights the evils – and I mean EVIL – of the Sacklers who own Purdue Pharma,…
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BR299) “Master Gardener Manual” Book Review
Master Gardener Manual by PennState Extension. 4/5 rating. 743 pages. Book #15 of 2023. Read May 8, 2023. This was the accompanying textbook for my Master Gardener’s class in Vermont. The amount of information in this book is absolutely overwhelming. It is a true guidebook with information about a wide-array of topics about gardening: from…
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BR289) “The Warmth of Other Suns” Book Review
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. 4/5 rating. 560 pages. Book #5 of 2023. Read February 26, 2023. This book tells the story of The Great Migration of African Americans to escape the American South during Jim Crow. The amount of research and information in here…
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BR288) “Gilead” Book Review
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. 4/5 rating. 247 pages. Book #4 of 2023. Read February 4, 2023. This novel follows a pastor who is at the end of his life and sorry to leave his wife and his child in a hard world. In order to impart some more wisdom on his young son, he decides…