While the notion that “happiness can found within oneself” has recently become popular, Buddhism has taught for thousands of years that every person is a Buddha, or enlightened being, and has the potential for true and lasting happiness. Through real-life examples, the authors explain how adopting this outlook has positive effects on one’s health, relationships, and career, and gives new insights into world environmental concerns, peace issues, and other major social problems.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Thursday, December 10, 2020
SAY NOTHING BY PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE
In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.
Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.
Friday, November 20, 2020
I'M KEITH HERNANDEZ BY KEITH HERNANDEZ
Keith Hernandez revolutionized the role of first baseman. During his illustrious career with the World Series-winning St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets, he was a perennial fan favorite, earning eleven consecutive Gold Gloves, a National League co-MVP Award, and a batting title. But it was his unique blend of intelligence, humor, and talent -- not to mention his unflappable leadership, playful antics, and competitive temperament -- that transcended the sport and propelled him to a level of renown that few other athletes have achieved, including his memorable appearances on the television show Seinfeld.
Now, with a striking mix of candor and self-reflection, Hernandez takes us along on his journey to baseball immortality. There are the hellacious bus rides and south-of-the-border escapades of his minor league years. His major league benchings, unending plate adjustments, and role in one of the most exciting batting races in history against Pete Rose.
Indeed, from the Little League fields of Northern California to the dusty proving grounds of triple-A ball to the grand stages of Busch Stadium and beyond, I'm Keith Hernandez reveals as much about America's favorite pastime as it does about the man himself. What emerges is an honest and compelling assessment of the game's past, present, and future: a memoir that showcases one of baseball's most unique and experienced minds at his very best.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY BY MATT RUFF
The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.
Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.
At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.
A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of one black family, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us.
Monday, August 3, 2020
BRAIN ON FIRE BY SUSANNAH CAHALAN
When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?
In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.
Sunday, July 12, 2020
UNTAMED BY GLENNON DOYLE
There is a voice of longing inside every woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good mothers, daughters, partners, employees, citizens, and friends. We believe all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives, relationships, and world, and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful. We hide our simmering discontent—even from ourselves. Until we reach our boiling point.
Four years ago, Glennon Doyle—bestselling Oprah-endorsed author, renowned activist and humanitarian, wife and mother of three—was speaking at a conference when a woman entered the room. Glennon looked at her and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. Soon she realized that they came to her from within.
Glennon was finally hearing her own voice—the voice that had been silenced by decades of cultural conditioning, numbing addictions, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl Glennon had been before the world told her who to be. She vowed to never again abandon herself. She decided to build a life of her own—one based on her individual desire, intuition, and imagination. She would reclaim her true, untamed self.
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both a memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It offers a piercing, electrifying examination of the restrictive expectations women are issued from birth; shows how hustling to meet those expectations leaves women feeling dissatisfied and lost; and reveals that when we quit abandoning ourselves and instead abandon the world’s expectations of us, we become women who can finally look at ourselves and recognize: There She Is.
Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get. (less)
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I’m often asked why I don’t publish books more often. My answer is this: I never write a new book until I’ve become a new woman. Over the past few years, I became a new woman. UNTAMED tells that story.
At an event for LOVE WARRIOR, a woman walked into the room and the moment I saw her, three words filled my entire being: There She Is. I knew, from my roots, that she was ...more

Did anyone else find this book to basically be the author patting herself on the back about how she is just nailing life at the moment?
The author should have just made a prologue that read: Listen up masses I have figured it all out because I'm more sensitive than you and thus for just can understand the world better. Also I know what you're thinking will I as a white woman address racism within this memoir? And yes, of course, I have a whole chapter dedicated to it and I think I get ...more

Untamed is the follow-up to that book, and a lot has happened since then. Notably, Glennon has divorced her husband and married a ...more

My thoughts and feelings changed ‘several’ times - from positive to negative - back to positive- back to negative!!!
By the end.... I was just glad to be DONE!
If this book was ‘clearly’ a memoir... I wouldn’t have felt annoyed.
I often didn’t buy her strategies in achieving emotional balance—-because ‘she’ lacked balance in important areas of life: true empathy for others.
Glennon will ALWAYS put her needs and desires ‘before’ others. She demonstrated several tim ...more





I got about 2 hours into the audiobook (18%) and had to stop.
She had me at first, with the cheetah story and being locked in cages created by those around us. How important it is to find our wild again, and let it be what dictates our choices.
But then she got into going into herself to find God, or the thing she no longer refers to as God, and letting that be what guides her decisions and she started to lose me.
I also lost count of how many times she said she was a bestselling author.
It a ...more

I’m often asked why I don’t publish books more often. My answer is this: I never write a new book until I’ve become a new woman. Over the past few years, I became a new woman. UNTAMED tells that story.
At an event for LOVE WARRIOR, a woman walked into the room and the moment I saw her, three words filled my entire being: There She Is. I knew, from my roots, that she was ...more

Much like Love Warr ...more








First off: I have a real problem with the author describing herself as “caged.” I think middle-class, college educated white women really overestimate and catastrophise the kind of disadvantages they face from being women. We are all certainly confined by cultural and social values that are arbitrary. I would not call being in an unhappy marriage “caged.” There are actual people in cages in Ame ...more

The tone is so self righteous, like I have figured everything out and you’re weak and you don’t listen to yourself nonsense.
Also, who the hell has conversations like the ones written in this book? And that too for very general everyday things. And when someone asked her to repeat what she had said, she was like oh I can’t say it again but here it is in ...more


I wonder if I would have a different reaction to the book if I'd read it in the world we lived in before this awful pandemic, and I have no way of knowing the answer.
So, all I can do is write my review fr ...more
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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The Well-Read Wom...: Untamed | 11 | 30 | Jun 23, 2020 11:10AM | |
Greatist Reads: deliveries – epilogue: human | 1 | 2 | Jun 16, 2020 12:08PM | |
Greatist Reads: touch trees – lies | 1 | 7 | Jun 09, 2020 10:33AM | |
Favorite quotes | 6 | 34 | Jun 09, 2020 09:43AM | |
Supper Club: Welcome to Supper Club | 3 | 6 | Jun 06, 2020 08:33AM |