The Idle Parent

by Donna | Jun 16, 2010 | Nonfiction, Other

Rating:  The Idle Parent: Why Laid-back Parents Raise Happier and Healthier Kids, by Tom Hodgkinson. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin (2010), 251 pages. The Idle Parent is getting a fair amount of press right now, which is a good thing because I don’t know how much...

Enduring Grace

by Cindy | Jun 11, 2010 | Nonfiction, Other

Rating:  Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics, by Carol Lee Flinders. HarperOne (1993), 272 pages. The contemplative, mystical branch of Catholicism has always held great appeal for me in that its followers are attempting to actually...

Committed

by Cindy | May 31, 2010 | Nonfiction, Other

Rating:  Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Viking (2010), 285 pages. The movie adaptation of Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love will be opening in theaters this August. It is still May as I write this, yet the cover from the book...

Finding Oz

by Donna | May 22, 2010 | Nonfiction, Other

Rating:  Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story, by Evan I. Schwartz. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2009), 322 pages. In many respects this is a biography of L. Frank Baum, with immensely enjoyable stories about his family history,...

The Professor and the Madman

by Donna | May 15, 2010 | Nonfiction, Other

Rating:  The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester. Harper Perennial (1998), 246 pages. The making of the Oxford English Dictionary is more interesting than you might think....

You Are Not a Gadget

by Cindy | Apr 18, 2010 | Nonfiction, Other

Rating:  You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, by Jaron Lanier. Alfred A. Knopf (2010), 209 pages. This is a very difficult book to describe because the author is the kind of genius who has ideas that are so visionary I at times have the feeling I’m only...