read as many books as possible, starting with all the books I own but haven't read

“Spiritual teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”
I have always been an Emerson fan, but this opened my eyes to him alot more. Part biography, and part an attempt to explain what he was trying to say in his writings.
He also wrote far more than I knew, which means I have to find more of his writings, of course.

Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt. I wanted another quick and light read. It was a little too juvenile, but then again the target age is 10 – and I did want something light.

y Peter Ackroyd
Boy did I go through this one fast. It’s a biography of Edgar Allen Poe from birth to death. He had such a sad life, then to die at 40. He was orphaned, adopted by ambivalent parents,ignored as an author until late in life, and failed in every editing job he ever had.
He also had a loveless marriage (sexless) to a 13 year old cousin who died of consumption.
Of course his binge drinking did not help. he would go on 3 or 4 day benders and take several days to recover.
his whole life seemed to be one long tragedy. Sad.

by Dr. Peter Whybrow
Basically, it deals with mental health, primarily depression, bipolar and schizophrenia, I’m bipolar, so I read as much as I can on mental health and such. It gives case studies, talks about the origins of the illnesses, and meds and therapies.
It is entertaining, even though it is full of medical jargon.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Vonnegut. Quite good, but not my favorite so far. Breakfast of Champions and The Sirens of Titan still share that spot.

with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. I was reading five different books at once – one Vonnegut, two Dalai Lama, one Cheri Huber and another self-help – but I really just felt like something light and quick. Now that I’m refreshed I’m continuing on with the five.

by Neil deGrasse Tyson. This talks about how Pluto was discovered 4 times, and ignored, then found again. it was then made a planet. It then talks about why it was recently declared not to be a planet after all. ( No one had ever defined what a planet was)

I heard about this book a while back on Marketplace, and immediately got in the very long queue to check it out from the public library. Eventually I went online to check my status on the waiting list and found that they had reserved it for me a month before, and I never got it. I really need to get my dog to stop answering the telephone, I think. (We’ve been getting collections calls for someone who has racked up huge amounts of library fines, so sometimes the library robo-dialer gets hung up on.)

This book is very good; I would rank it up there on my bookshelf of essential world-view changing books. The principle behind the book is that the author went to some of the richest neighborhoods in the US, and then knocked on people’s front doors and asked them how they got there. Amazingly, people actually talked to him!

The book is divided into six chapters, each with an over-arching theme distilled from his interviews. Within each chapter are “nuggets” of advice and a story to go along with them. This book is inspiring; at the same time it makes me feel horribly inadequate. I think to myself, “There’s no way I can possibly do all the things those people are doing!” but then I think, “why not? Who says I can’t do all that?”

I heartily recommend this book. I’m even going to keep my eye out for a used copy so I can have my own.

D’Agostino, Ryan. 2009. Rich Like Them: My Door-To-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America’s Richest Neighborhoods. Little, Brown, and Company, New York.

Just finished re reading the Screwtape letters by CS Lewis. Basically it’s a course in how to go to Hell. Each chapter deals with little things that all add up to a lot of trouble in the end. It’s also rather tongue in cheek.