Powered by Tofu

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia just didn’t do it for me. The title is probably the best thing about the book, but I guess that’s why you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s title (or featured destinations). I really tried to be interested in this book, but [...]

The Glass Castle is an emotional, but exceptional book. Yes, many families have their own Rex Walls, and the accuracy of the author’s childhood memories could be questioned, but that really wasn’t the point of the book for me. This memoir is about family and acceptance. While I can’t claim to have had such [...]

Knocking out a classic this week. Shocking as it sounds, I had never read Orwell’s Animal Farm. I liked it. It was short and full of intended symbolism and political “humor.” Yes, it belongs on the classic list.
Animal Farm (Signet Classics)

You either love or hate GTD (Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity). Although the Allen-ite way of productivity seems to have lost it’s best-seller momentum, it’s still a decent way to get things accomplished. So I decided a re-read was in order. I hadn’t read this book in a few years, so it [...]

I have mixed reviews about The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. First, it’s an excellent reminder of how short life is and that we should pursue what makes us “happy”, not stay in dead-end jobs etc. However, I really dislike the idea of “outsourcing” your life and producing or [...]

I had the most deja-vu feeling while reading this book. Anyway, Speaking with the Angelis kind of a sampler of 12 authors all around the same genre (Fielding, Bank, Hornby) and edited by Nick Hornby. Each story is set in first person, so it runs along the same theme, but I really wasn’t as impressed [...]

If only Peter Mayle would move to more countries and regions and then document his journey. I love reading these books! If you’ve been to the area he’s talking about, it makes you giggle; and if you haven’t then it just makes you want to go there. Organized in no particular order, the chapters are [...]

I like how this book is divided into alphabetized 1 page blurbs (otherwise known as riffs, rants and ideas). While all 183 are not remarkable it, it’s a great read/listen. I first checked this book out from the library and after skipping around, reading a few pages, I checked out the audio book. I think [...]

This week, I read Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate–The Essential Guide for Progressives by George Lakoff. It was written a few years ago (pre-’04 election), so it has that kind of “frame” around it. :) As a voter, I’m neither a democrat or republican, (although I lean a [...]

This week I reread Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (notice the proper usage of italics for the book title). I read it several years ago, and thought it was hilarious. Last month I found it on a sale table at Borders for a couple of [...]