This post courtesy of my lovely wife, a book review of Eve: A Novel of the First Woman, by Elissa Elliot, which I received as part of the Ooze Select Blogger program.
 
For those of us who are women and/or looking for the female experience in the biblical narrative, many times we come up short.  The central figures of most biblical stories are males despite there being many female characters woven into the fabric of the entire biblical story.  As a woman you begin to wonder what life was like …

Last year I made it a goal to read 52 books in the year. No specifics on the books, authors, length or anything, just to read a book a week through the entire year. And I pretty much reached my goal (see the list at the end of the post). I realized in the last half week that I had miscounted and was a book shy, but what are you going to do. As a resort to my middle school english class days I wrote a brief book review each …

I picked up the large print edition of Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (A trick for getting new releases from the library quickly, get the large print edition).  Like all of Gladwell’s books, it was a thoroughly interesting read.
The basic premise is that we don’t become who we are simply by our own hardwork. It’s a case against our imaginary tale of the American Dream, where anyone with a work ethic can make it. Gladwell doesn’t say hardwork is bad or that those who are truly successful …

Somewhere along the way in doing this blogging thing something happened. Either my blog became popular, or more accurately, blogging became popular and recognized by businesses as a tool to sell you stuff. Regardless, the reality is that people want my to talk about certain stuff on my blog.  Mostly, I get sent books and occasionally a DVD or CD. And, in recent months, I’ve let those items pile up and begin to gether dust on the book shelf (sorry!). However, I’ve took a look at a few and thought …

The Long Tail is another book in the vein of Sway, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics and many others. The byline: Why The Future of Business is Selling Less of More. Chris Anderson, the author, is the editor of a very popular tech magazine called WIRED.
The idea being that in our popular culture, for years, the way business, particularly music and movies, but also everything else, have been dominated by the Hits. In fact, you pretty much only heard of or knew of the hits, since prior to the internet there …

Looking for a quick and interesting read, I picked up Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori and Rom Brafman. In the vein of Freakonomics, The Tipping Point and others (don’t know what that genre’s called). The book proved thoroughly interesting.
The basic premise is that we are swayed to act irrationally by various external forces. By learning and being aware of them we can learn to make more rational decisions, though the reality is we our often affected so sub-consciously by these forces that they are hard to …

I just read through Terrorism and War by Howard Zinn, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to hear a brilliant mind on the current issues of war and terror. The whole book is just over one hundred pages and it’s in an interview format, as it basically is a compilation of a series of interviews Zinn gave around 2002, just after 9/11 and the Afghanistan war and just before the Iraq war. Zinn is a truly brilliant mind and I feel makes a decent case that war is …

If you’ve had a baby or are going to have a baby then Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott is a must read. It’s a journal of the first year of her son’s life and a true to life parenting story to balance all the “Parenting in Three Easy Steps” types of books.
I won’t bore you with my consistent praise for Lamott, I’ve read a ton of her books this year and have loved every single one. She’s so true to life and makes you recognize the beauty in the little …