Tag: NonFiction

Za’atar Days, Henna Nights

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Masood, Maliha. Za’atar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East. Seal Press, 2006.

Reason read: October is hero month and I would consider Masood a sort of superhero for traveling around by the seat of her pants.

Masood straddles that line between American and Pakistani, Pakistani and American. Born in Pakistan, her family moved to America when Masood was in middle school. Now, eighteen years later, Masood is traveling haphazardly through the Middle East. She bought a one-way ticket with no intention of having a specific itinerary. It was a journey just be to on a journey. One could call it a trek to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey as some sort of spiritual quest to find herself or get back to her ancestral roots. Did she? I’m not really certain. To be sure, Masood had some crazy adventures (some more dangerous than others), she had a few cultural misunderstandings, and she relied heavily on the natives she befriended (I felt bad for the men who fell in love with her). All in all, she survived her seventeen months of travel relatively unscathed.

As an aside, I had no idea pollution was a thing in Cairo.

Confessional: Tommy Rivs got me interested in the poetry of Mary Oliver. Masood includes one of Tommy’s favorites, “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and call it a life?”
Second confession: Because of Natalie Merchant’s album “Keep Your Courage” I have been paying attention to mentions of Walt Whitman. Masood also reads Walt.

Reason read: there is such a thing as za’atar days, the celebration of the spice.

Playlist: “Staying Alive”, U2, Phil Collins, Pavarotti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake”, Umm Kulthum, “Enta Omri” (as an aside, Masood spelled Umm’s name as Om Khoulsoum and the song as “Inta Omri”. I couldn’t find singer or song with those spellings) Amr Diab (as another aside, this guy is very good looking), Fairuz, Saleh, Wadi al Safi, Jose Fernandez, Elvis Presley, and Billy Joel.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Za’atar Days.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “A Mention of the Middle East” (p 148).

Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks

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Oswald, Michael Joseph. The Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks. Stone Road Press, 2023.

Reason read: I am very excited about this Early Review pick from LibraryThing. I love to hike. I want to travel around the country and see every national park. I’ll be sure to take this book with me.

First impressions after cracking open The Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks:

  • Beautiful color photographs in full page.
  • The copyright is amusing.
  • Easily organized by regions: East, North, South, Southwest (because it deserves its own chapter), West, Alaska, and Remote Islands.
  • Good to know the average distance of hikes is 5.8 miles (almost my favorite distance).
  • Maps are generated from USGS National Map data.
  • Terrain, elevation, trailheads, parking information – including parking spots (?!), and shuttle service information is included where applicable.
  • Elevation information is sourced from Google Earth.
  • Trail map legend is easy to understand.
  • Time zone information.
  • Inclusion of national monuments on historical sites.
  • No index so if you heard of a place but have no idea what state or even region it is in, you are out of luck and will have to scan the entire book only to find it might not be there.
  • Excited to try the online trail location map!

I have a question, though. Oswald makes a list of the best dayhiking parks? What makes them the best? What criteria did he use to come up with that specific list?

As an aside, my spellchecker did not like “dayhiker” as one word.

Author fact: Oswald is a hiking fanatic.

Book trivia: Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks includes 198 trail maps. You couldn’t find two more to make it an even 200? Just kidding! 198 is plenty!

When Broken Glass Floats

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Him, Chanrithy. When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge. W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.

Reason read: I needed to pair a nonfiction book on history with a historical fiction on the same subject for the Portland Public Library 2023 Reading Challenge. Both When Broken Glass Floats (nonfiction) and For the Sake of All Living Things (fiction) are about the days of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I am also reading When Broken Glass Floats in honor of the monarchy of Cambodia being restored in the month of September.

Many times, more times than I could count, I found myself trying to put myself in Him’s shoes. Having her brother waste away and die before her very eyes. The utter grief she experienced when her father left for “orientation” before she could say goodbye (not to mention his subsequent murder). Those are only some of the devastating events Him experienced during the rein of Pol Pot terror. Then came the never-ending slave labor and extreme starvation. One by one, her family withers and dies. How does one survive such constant suffering? Him is courageous and her will to survive is astounding.
Confessional: Despite the horrors Him relates in When Broken Glass Floats, there was a fascinating component of describing cultural superstitions. When Him’s brother is dying it was believed he urinated on someone’s grave and that is why, during the worst of his illness, he could not speak or relieve himself.

Author fact: Chanrithy is a human rights activist as well as an author.

Book trivia: one of the maps in When Broken Glass Floats is curious. Places are pinned as meals: supper, breakfast, dinner, dessert, snack, and lunch.

Playlist: Sinsee Samuth, Ros Sothea, and Leo Sayer’s “I Love You More Than I Can Say”.

Nancy said: Pearl called When Broken Glass Floats heartbreaking and unforgettable.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Cambodia” (p 47).

Seasons of Rome

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Hofmann, Paul. The Seasons of Rome. Illustrated by Joanne Morgante. Henry Holt and Company, 1997.

Reason read: Kisa and I are going to Rome in a few months.

Paul Hofmann decided to record daily life in Rome for one year. He wanted to remember how the city and its people lived through 1994 to 1995. Each chapter takes place in a different month, beginning in September. Why start in September? I have no idea. Hofmann writes about Rome with an air of authority that borders on possessiveness. It is obvious he loves his city.
Things I learned about Rome from thirty years ago. Holidays and Sunday closures made it nearly impossible to by medicine or milk, but the good news was that you would be able to find parking. And speaking of cars in 1994, 16,000 people were permitted to take their cars into the center, but only 12,000 were admitted. Sounds like a scam to me. Although, fifty years earlier (1945), Hofmann was allowed to park his Jeep at the Vatican, thanks to being a war correspondent with the New York Times (Rome was just liberated by the Allies six month prior).
I love it when assumptions are turned on their heads. Here is one of mine. When I think of religious figures, I think of monks living in monasteries or ministers in parsonages. I think humble. Very humble. So, it was strange to read about a pope needing a heliport or an Italian air force to warn him of inclement weather before flying. Then it dawned on me…Vatican City. Oh.
Thanks to Hofmann’s book, there are other elements of Rome I cannot wait to check out: is there some kind of memorial to Keats at No. 66 Piazza di Spagna? There was not at the time of Hofmann’s book. Where do I find a mechanical creche? Does the C line from the Colosseum to the Vatican exist yet?
This is a charming book, albeit, a little outdated.

As an aside, I can see Dermot writing a song and using the word sirocco. I have no idea why, but it is a very passionate word in my mind and it fits the way he writes. And speaking of Dermot, he revealed where in Rome she said “I wish we could stay”. You can bet the Kisa and I will be trying to visit that place.

Author fact: at the time of publication, Hofmann was chief of the New York Times bureau in Rome. He passed away in 2008.

Book trivia: The Seasons of Rome was illustrated by Joanne Morgante.

Playlist: Verdi’s “Aida”, “Requiem”, and “Rigoletto”, Maria Callas, Wagner, Herbert von Karajan, Danna Takova, Puccini, and Maria Jeritza.

Nancy said: Pearl called Seasons of Rome immensely interesting.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Roman Holiday” (p 188).

How the Irish Saved Civilization

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Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved Civilization: the Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. Nan A. Talese Doubleday, 1995.

Reason read: the Lisdoonvarna festival is in September. Supposedly, it is this big match-making festival. Sounds fun!

In the beginning of How the Irish Saved Civilization we examine the philosophies of Augustine, Plato, and Cicero. Augustine’s knowledge is considered the portal into the classical world. The most influential man in Irish history is Patrick, of course. He was the first to advocate for the end to slavery. He had a lifelong commitment to end violence and he was not afraid of his enemies. Irish Catholicism was sympathetic towards sinners, accepting of diversity and women in leadership roles, and considered sexual mores unimportant.
Cahill has a sense of humor. Early on he supposes Alaric was the King of the Fuzzy-Wuzzies. I don’t know what that means, but it made me smile. Cahill also includes a map of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to orientate his readers.
Spoiler alert: the answer to how the Irish saved civilization is that they brought their literacy and love of learning to the rest of the world. Probably one of the most fascinating parts of How the Irish Saved Civilization is how the Irish monks buried their beloved books and valuable metalworks to hide them from the Vikings. Cahill claims that even today farmers are known to unearth lost treasures.

The best line to like, “A world in chaos is not a world in which books are copied and libraries maintained” (p 35). Amen.

Author fact: Thomas Cahill’s author photograph looks like he should be reporting the six o’clock news. How the Irish Saved Civilization is the only book I am reading of his.

Book trivia: How the Irish Saved Civilization includes a very small section of black and white photographs. As an aside, one of my pet peeves is when an author describes a striking or favorite photograph and then does not, for whatever reason, include it in the book. Cahill actually shares the photographs that he describes.

Nancy said: Pearl called How the Irish Saved Civilization readable.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Ireland: Beyond Joyce, Behan, Beckett, and Synge” (p 110).

People Person

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Williams, Sandy R. People Person: How to Talk to Anyone, Improve Social Awkwardness, and Communicate With Ease and Confidence. 2023.
Reason read: an Early Review pick from LibraryThing.

I decided I would not try to digest every piece of advice or tackle every suggestion Williams made in People Person. It was good enough to start small: smiling at everyone you meet, saying hello with enthusiasm and practice positive self-talk. I don’t know what constitutes a power playlist or how to surround myself with confident people (they are who they are). One of the best reasons to read a self help book is to discover other self help books that might fit you better. In reading People Person I discovered Ty Tashiro.
Warning – the consequences of not being a people person sounds like the warning label on a prescription bottle: if you are anxious, side effects include misunderstandings and missed opportunities; loneliness and depression.
Confessional: I am wary of any book that uses the word transformation. Another disappointment was a plug for reviews at the end of chapter four. Williams could have at least waited until the end of the book for such a self-serving plug.
All in all, I enjoyed People Person. This is the first self help book I have read in a long that I consider more helpful than not.

Ancient Shore

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Hazzard, Shirley and Francis Steegmuller. The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Reason read: We are planning a trip to Italy in at the end of the year. At the time I put this on my list I didn’t know if we would make it to Naples or not. It turns out, we will not be going to Naples this time. Something for the next trip!

Hazzard begins Ancient Shore with an abbreviated autobiography of her childhood and how she discovered Italy. From there, different essays connect Naples to its culture, politics, history, and endless charm. Hazzard remembers Naples of the 1950s so there is a nostalgic air to her writing. Because Ancient Shore is a little dated, I wondered if some of the details are still accurate. I guess I will have to travel there to find out!
Hazzard’s husband, Francis Steegmuller, steps in for a story about a violent mugging he experienced. His tale is terrible. Terrible because he was warned many times over not to carry his bag a certain way. Terrible because the violence caused great ever-lasting injury. Terrible, above all, because he knew better. This was not his first time in Naples.

Lines worth remembering, “There can be the journey to reconciliation, the need to visit the past of to exorcise it” (p 17), “Like luck itself, Italy cannot be explained” (p 125), and my personal favorite, “We are encouraged to stop defining life, and to live it” (p 126).

Author(s) fact(s): I am reading four of Hazzard’s books. Ancient Shore is the second on the list. Steegmuller was a man of many hats. He died in 1994.

Book trivia: Ancient Shore is a very short book, but please take your time reading it. The photographs are wonderful, too.

Playlist: Diana Ross.

Nancy said: Pearl called Ancient Shore a lovely little book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Naples” (p 146).

Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded August 27th, 1883

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Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded August 27th, 1883. HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Reason read: one hundred and forty years ago this month a volcano blew its top, killing 40,000 people.

Reading anything by Simon Winchester is like going into a restaurant that has a twenty-plus page menu. So much information and everything looks good. I personally find Winchester fun to read because he is not didactic, dry or stale. His personal anecdotes add flavor and spice to just about any topic he cares to write. In this case, “the day the world exploded,” the day the volcano, Krakatoa, erupted. Winchester delves into the science behind the disaster; what caused the eruption and the deadly tsunami that followed. For example, on the “explosivity index” Krakatoa was a seven; measured by the amount of material that is ejected and the height to which it is spewed through the atmosphere. Rest assured, he will tell you everything beyond the science as well. Death counts, survivor recollections, political implications, even information you didn’t know you needed like the origin story of time zones and anecdotal information about historical characters. He’ll joke about the different ways to spell Krakatoa and emphasize the fact that the original island was blown to smithereens.
My only letdown was that I was disappointed with the inclusion of a black and white photograph of Frederic Edwin Church’s painting of a sunset over ice on Chaumont Bay of Lake Ontario. The whole point of mentioning the painting was the colors most likely caused be Krakatoa. Not helpful as a black and white picture.

Quote I liked, “Krakatoa, after the final majestic concatenation of seismic and tectonic climaxes that occured just after ten that Monday morning, had simply and finally exploded itself out of existence” (p 257). Can you just imagine it? I picture a toddler having a ginormous, ear-piercing, destructive meltdown and then falling asleep without fanfare.

Author fact: I am reading seven books by Winchester. I couldn’t tell you which one has been my favorite thus far. Everyone knows The Professor and the Madman but I think I am looking forward to The River at the Center of the World.
Another small fact: at the time of publication Winchester was living in the Berkshires.

Book trivia: Krakatoa includes a bunch of black and white photographs and maps. I mentioned that already.

Playlist: Ebiet G. Ade’s “Jakarta 1”.

Nancy said: Pearl only mentioned two books in the chapter on Krakatoa.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Krakatau” (p 133).

Jane Austen Had a Life

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Rutherford, V.S. Jane Austen Had a Life!: a guide to Jane Austen’s Juvenilia. Arcana Press, 2020.

Reason read: this is a selection from the Early Review Program with LibraryThing.

Disclaimer: the book came with a sticky note asking me to email the author my review. That was a first.

On my first reading of Jane Austen Had a Life I came away thinking it was very dense with interesting information from a variety of sources including biographers such as Virginia Woolf, John Halperin, and E. M. Forster. In addition to Jane’s life Rutherford includes small biographies of people to whom Austen dedicated her stories: Miss Lloyd, Francis William Austin, and the beautifull Cassandra, to name just a few. On my second reading I was distracted by repetitive information, the format being strange with choppy paragraphs, and frequent little one-line quotes everywhere. Maybe this is Australian, but style is also very different with italics and unusual spellings.
The biggest draw of Jane Austen Had a Life was not to discover secret love affairs or an exciting social life of Ms. Austen, but rather the summaries of Austen’s juvenilia. Having never read any of it, Rutherford’s compilation was thorough and well researched. This is not for the casual reader.

Author fact: Rutherford calls her own work “interesting and scholarly.”

Book trivia: Jane Austen Had a Life! was previously published in August 2020 by Arcana Press so not exactly an “early” review on my part. The cover photograph of a castle was taken by the author.

Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety

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Baier, Molly J. The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety: On the Road in the Former Soviet Union. Lost Coast Press, 2001.

Reason read: I read somewhere that the Baltic Singing Revolution took place in August. Well, to be fair it took place between June and September 1987 – 1991.

The problem with reading some travel stories is that they become outdated and if you aren’t up on your geography or travel laws, the content becomes muddled. Example: are hotels in Eastern Europe still charging in 24-hour increments from the time you check in? Do trains still give provodnitsa-issued toilet paper to passengers? If you travel by bus in the Arctic, do you still pay by the kilometer and not the final destination? Is Finland still one of the most expensive countries? What about maple syrup? Do they know the breakfast condiment? Despite all these questions, Bier’s three-month solo trip in 1999 was a fun read. Her sense of humor peppers a no-nonsense travelogue. Some of my favorite moments were every time she challenged a ticket seller with Article 62 of the Russian Constitution, stating it was unlawful to sell a tourist an inflated priced ticket, whether it be for a museum or train ride. This happened a great deal. (Theroux mentions the same maddening system in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.) A final comment. I was impressed with Baier’s travel philosophy. Her itinerary was not planned out to the minute. She seemed to go from place to place by the seat of her pants, never knowing how she was going to go from place or where she would stay when she got there.

Confessional: Bad timing on the title of this book. On the day I started to read it one of the buildings on my campus was hit by lightning and caught on fire. Despite only being a two-alarm fire, I heard the building is a total loss. On the day I finished The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety Maui was on fire. This fire took the lives of many people.

Author fact: Baier is not a prolific writer. I only have one book written by her for the Challenge.

Book trivia: The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety is illustrated by Lisa Jacyszyn.

Nancy said: Pearl; did not say anything specific about The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “The Baltic States” (p 34).

Ghost Train To the Eastern Star

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Theroux, Paul. Ghost Train To the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Greatest Railway Bazaar. Houghton Mifflen, 2008.

Reason read: July is Train Month.


Theroux first made this journey in 1973, thirty-three years earlier. He was eager to make comparisons as he followed the old travel itinerary of The Great Railway Bazaar (with a few exceptions like skirting Iran and Pakistan and being able to enter Cambodia as it was no longer controlled by the Khmer Rouge, for examples). [Confessional: I wanted to read these books backwards so that I could understand Theroux’s references. I guess you could say I wanted that 20/20 vision and I appreciated his admittance of half truths in The Great Railway Bazaar.]
Retracing his own steps affords Theroux the ability to look up hotels he previously visited and people he met thirty-three years ago. He is pleasantly surprised when they remember him and dismayed to learn others thought him a pompous jerk on his first visit.
In addition to writing about a journey, readers get a glimpse of Theroux’s personality. I found it curious that he doesn’t like people eating and walking at the same time (no street fairs for him). By 2006 he hasn’t wanted to learn the lesson of his first marriage – it is self-indulgent to travel for four months, leaving a wife and/or family behind. The family sees this extravagance as abandonment. (Although the second wife was wiser thanks to technology. She demanded Theroux take a smart phone.) My favorite part of Ghost Train was Theroux’s conversation with Haruki Murakami about his first marriage. It felt like an honest, soul-exposing confession. The real Theroux came out, author to author.
Theroux also gauges a country’s cultural acceptance by their use of pornography. Not sure why, because if you think about it, pornography is only tantalizing because it is often hidden from view. If sex was as commonplace as talking or breathing no one would be scandalized by it. Uncommon to the eye is scintillating. As the book goes on, Theroux’s running commentary on the varying sex trades increases. As an aside, I will have nightmares about the kun kraks.
In terms of idioms, I felt Theroux was overly negative in his descriptions of towns: acid, broken, beleaguered, cruel, crummy, crumbling, dirty, dim, dark, derelict, dreary, dilapidated, disorder, desperate, decaying, fatigued, foul, filthy, gloomy, lifeless, muddy, miserable, melancholy, mournful, nightmare, neglected, poisonous, primitive, pockmarked, rust-stained, ramshackle, ragged, smoky, sticky, shadowy, stale, stink, stinky, sooty, tough, threadbare, unfriendly, ugly, wrecked, wasteland to name a few. But, as another aside, I love authors who use the word hinterland. Don’t ask me why. I think it’s a very romantic word.

Confessional: sometimes when I am traveling by car or train (ground level), I will spot someone and imagine their life as mine. What would be like to be mowing the lawn when a speeding train rushes by? Fishing on the banks of a river when a car rattles over the bridge? Would I glance up and wonder about the passengers? Where are they going?

Second confessional: because I am somewhat obsessed with the music of Josh Ritter, I thought of his lyrics all about trains while reading Theroux’s book.

Lines I liked, “And sometimes you just need to clear out” (p 13). Amen. “Luxury is the enemy of observation” (p 63). Interesting. And one last one, “But just when I thought that this icebound city represented nothing more than a glacial point of departure, I was sitting in the hotel bar and the gods of travel delivered to me a horse’s ass” (p 461).

Author fact: Theroux’s list of fiction and nonfiction is impressive. I am reading ten of his works (but only completed Mosquito Coast and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star).

Book trivia: while there is an illustration of a map of Theroux’s journey, there are no photographs to speak of. Bummer.

Nancy said: Pearl mentioned Theroux is a connoisseur of long train rides.

Setlist: Stevie Wonder, Thelonious Monk’s “Espistrophy” and “Crespucule with Nellie”, Elvis, Mahler, and Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo theme.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Making Tracks By Train” (p 139).

Back to Yoga

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Kelley, Steve. Back to Yoga: A Whole Body Routine You can Do Anywhere in 30 Minutes or Less to Increase Energy, Focus, Relief Stress, Lower Anxiety and Improve Flexibility, Balance and Strength. Amazon Books, 2023.

Reason read: I am a member of LibraryThing and occasionally I review books. This is one of them.

One of the first things you learn when starting to read Back to Yoga is that you will get a free gift if you jump through the tiny hoop of emailing the author. You also learn Back to Yoga is not written by a professional practitioner. All of Steve Kelley’s information comes from someone else. His biggest source of information is an article found in Medical News Today (a health website that pulls primary research from other sources). Did I mention you get a free gift when you email the author? Kelley makes it clear he offers no warranties or professional advice. The standard disclaimer: you must see a medical professional before starting his routine. Instead, the purpose of Back to Yoga is to show busy people that no matter their schedule or lifestyle, they can practice yoga. Despite that goal, Kelley never explains how to carve out that time.
As Kelley admits, there is a little redundancy to the information he does include (I call this stretching the content). Despite the redundancy I felt there was room for more information. I was disappointed by the number of poses included in Back to Yoga. Kelley only includes one routine of 24 poses. Maybe the idea is to practice these 24 poses until you master them? The best part of Back to Yoga is the section of illustrated poses. They drawings are cute and they were accurate and informative. Not sure what the QR code was all about as I did not scan it, but there was one on every illustration. By the way, if you email the author you will get a free gift. He mentions this no less than five times in Back to Yoga.
Author fact: Steve Kelley also wrote the Grow Your Business with ChatGPT book I reviewed last month. As always, I appreciate his humor.
Book trivia: I think I found a typo. Sync does not rhyme with inch so I think he meant to say cinch.

9 Highland Road

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Winerip, Michael. 9 Highland Road: sane living for the mentally ill. Pantheon Books, 1994.

Reason read: 9 highland Road is in New York. New York became a state in July so…

Winerip combines triumph of the spirit with the harsh realities of prejudice. The mentally ill have more than just their sickness to battle. People are afraid of what they do not understand. They make assumptions that all mentally ill are violent, crude, childlike, or sexually deviant. Unlike an obvious injury like a broken leg a schizophrenic or multiple personality disorder cannot wave their affliction in your face and tell you when it will be healed. No one wants the likes of them in their neighborhood. In the pages of 9 Highland Road Winerip pulls back the curtain on the political controversies and uncovers the fear-induced prejudices about group homes for the mentally ill. He does not sugarcoat the harsh realities of childhood traumas that are at the core of some patients’ initial break with reality: psychological, verbal and physical abuses in the form of violence, rape, incest and torture. What was particularly stunning were the varying degrees of responsibility families accept regarding the wellbeing of their son or daughter. Winerip also touches lightly on the problem of homelessness and delves more deeply into the miracles of modern medicine.

As an aside, when NIMBY first came about a whole bunch of NIMBY signs popped up around Monhegan Most of them pertain to dog crap and wandering tourists.

As another aside, I just finished watching an episode of “The Fully Monty” and there was a character who was a talented artist but he was also a schizophrenic. At one point he tries to commit suicide because Jesus was telling him he could fly away from the devil.

Author fact: Winerip was nominated for a Pulitzer for his reporting.

Book trivia: a word of warning. When Winerip wrote 9 Highland Road the word retarded wasn’t considered offensive. If he were to rewrite the book today I am hoping he would refrain from using it.

Playlist: “We Got To Get Out Of This Place” by the Animals, “Nights in the Garden of Spain”, “Whiter Shade of Pale”, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, Beatles, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”, “Amazing Grace”, Georgia On My Mind”, Beethoven, Billy Joel, Mozart, Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Bob Dylan, “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie”, “If I Had a Hammer”, “Feliz Navidad”, Maria”, “Let It Be”, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, “Without you” by Harry Nilsson, “Yesterday”, “Can’t Live Without You”, and Tom Petty.

Nancy said: Pearl called 9 Highland Road sensitive.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the simple chapter called “Social Studies” (p 204). Just a comment: we have such a widespread problem with the mentally ill that Pearl could have included a whole informative chapter on the subject.

Attic of Dreams

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Neagley, Marilyn Webb. Attic of Dreams: a memoir. Rootstock Publishing, 2022.

Reason read: this is a pick from the Early Review program with LibraryThing.

Do you remember those View Master toys we used to have as kids? The wheel of photographs would display scenes like Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon, or the craters of the moon. You could swap out the disc of landscapes for one of exotic animals: look at these lions, eagles, and snakes instead! Reading Attic of Dreams was like viewing Neagley’s life through a View Master toy. Small but powerful images. Click. Memories condensed into a few images at a time. Click. Her childhood was punctured by the fangs of an abandonment only alcoholic addiction can bring. Click. The sting is painful. When Neagley isn’t remembering her parents drinking, Neagley had an idyllic childhood full of glamorous aunts, penny candy, and cloud-watching with girlfriends. As an adult, Neagley grows more involved in conservation and fights to establish the now famous educational nonprofit for sustainable living. She marries, have children and travels the world, but never losing the memory of childhood traumas.
As an aside, I am jealous Neagley got to meet Maxfield Parish.

Line I hope Neagley keeps: “Our emotional distance is smoldering” (p 79).

Playlist: “Auld Lang Syne”, Bob Dylan, Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine”, “Down By the Station”, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”, Jean Redpath, Joan Baez, Jo Stafford, Lawrence Welk, “Look For the Silver Lining”, “Let’s Twist”, Loudon Wainright III’s “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road” and “I Am the Way”, Mozart, Nana Mouskouri, Nat King Cole, “On Top of Old Smoky”, Paul Winter, Phil Ochs, “Scarlett Ribbons”, “Seven Shades of Blue”, “Stardust”, “Stormy Weather” “Twelve Days of Christmas”, “Yellow Bird”, “Rock of Ages”, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto #1 and “Where is Love?”.

Author fact: Marilyn Neagley is the director of the Talk About Wellness initiative.

Book trivia: there are no photographs to grace Attic of Dreams.

Grow Your Business with ChatGPT

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Kelley, Steve. Grow Your Business with ChatGPT: The 5-Step Al Blueprint to Generate More Revenue by Automating and Optimizing Your Business Processes Using Artificial Intelligence. Kindle Edition, 2023.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I am occasionally asked to review interesting books. My institution is getting into ChatGPT and so I thought I would expand my horizons a little with this review.

Confessional: I didn’t read the fine print about how this book would be delivered. Yes, I knew it was an e-book. Yes, I knew the author would send me a link. No, I didn’t know it would be an Amazon-only product (brought to you by Kindle). I don’t own a Kindle. What if I didn’t even have an Amazon account? I have to log into Amazon as if I am shopping in order to read Grow Your Business with ChatGPT. Amazon’s bots must think I’m doing a lot of browsing, but I never seem to buy anything.

Second Confessional: I don’t have a business from which to generate more revenue. I don’t have a business to automate. I don’t have a business process to optimize. I chose Grow Your Business with ChatGPT: The 5-Step Al Blueprint to Generate More Revenue by Automating and Optimizing Your Business Processes Using Artificial Intelligence because I wanted to come at it from the perspective of someone who is interested in starting a business. A business to automate and optimize and certainly from which to generate more revenue (who doesn’t want that).

I found Grow Your Business with ChatGPT to be very straightforward and dare I say, fun? Kelley writes with a conversational tone when his subject matter could be very dry and technical. Confessional Number Three: I did skip some parts, but only when he told me I could. There is a lot of sound advice and solid information in the parts I did read. In truth, I think Grow Your Business with ChatGPT is best suited for the audience Kelley intended – the folks already in business; the people wanting to stay well ahead of the curve.