Reading PH's comments about the Alex Cross series made me think of what I do a lot of in the winter -- when it's dark before 5 PM -- I catch up on my reading. I spend quite a bit of time looking at gardening and horticulture books and seed catalogs, planning what I'll try next in sometimes a square foot, especially in the front yard, which is so steep I have 6 steps up from the sidewalk to my front door. But ideal for a rock garden. I like to have something blooming or showing color just about all year. Right now my beautiful nandina has big clusters of red berries, and two other bushes that usually don't have a lot of berries also have more berries than usual this year. Then there's the lavender and rosemary. I think I may plant another nandina on the other side of the steps, and add two or three little "winter roses," (not really roses, I learned from the TV horticulturist). They bloom all summer long, until there's a hard frost.
And there are the birds. We haven't had any real winter weather yet, but it's about time to start feeding the birds. I have a beautiful bare-branched crape myrtle tree that is almost as wide as my back yard, and is a perfect spot to hang bird feeders. My kitten, now a cat, will love it when the birds and squirrels show up.
I have a lot of books. Some are very old, given to me by an old lady who knew I was too poor at the time to buy them. And I do buy them. It's hard for me to walk into a bookstore without walking out with something. That's how I discovered Deepak Chopra.
I was moving between stacks of books when one caught my eye: Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. The Quantum Alternative To Growing Old-- and this, on the jacket, piqued my curiosity enough to pay $22.00 for it:
"Deepak Chopra, M.D. was born and raised in New Delhi, India. He taught at Tufts University and Boston University schools of Medicine and became chief of staff at New England Memorial Hospital. He established the American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine and a health care facility in Lancaster, Massachusetts. In 1992, Dr. Chopra was appointed to the National Institutes of Health ad hoc panel on alternative medicine. He is also a member of the scientific advisory board of Longevity magazine. His books Creating Health, Return of the Rishi, Quantum Healing, Perfect Health, and Unconditional Life have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Dr. Chopra lives with his family near Lancaster."
I don't have all his books -- he's apparently written about 50 (at last count), and I have yet to sit down and read one through without stopping. His is the kind of writing that makes me read a sentence or two and :spooked: stop and think, and then put the book aside for a while. I keep going back to him when I am troubled and nothing seems to make any sense :confused: For some reason what he writes makes sense, calms me -- how many people can write with authority about his profession (medicine), the quantum field, religion, the soul and God, and Rumi, a 13th century poet who was born in what is now Afghanistan (whose work is still being taught in colleges today)?
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." -- Self Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882
I read book reviews, and think that most of them currently in the Washington Post are too long and spill too much of the plot. But, having said that , I am prejudiced about this one because of the subject of John Grisham'a latest novel -- what coal mining has done to Appalachia -- the people and environment, so am posting the entire review (I grew up there):
Book review: John Grisham's 'Gray Mountain' is a searing look at Big Coal
By Patrick Anderson
October 19 at 5:13 PM
At the start of "Gray Mountain," John Grisham's angry and important new novel, Samantha Kofer — age 29, Washington native, graduate of Georgetown and Columbia Law — is a third-year associate at a huge New York law firm. She works 100 hours a week, doing boring chores that she hates, but she's earning $180,000 a year and expects to be a $2 million-a-year partner by age 35.
Or she did expect that, until September 2008, when the economy tanked and panicked law firms began ridding themselves of associates and partners. We meet Samantha at the moment — "day ten after the fall of Lehman Brothers" — when the ax falls for her, with only one consolation offered. If laid-off associates will agree to intern with a nonprofit agency, they can keep their health benefits and will be considered for rehiring if prosperity returns. Thus it is that Samantha finds herself at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in tiny Brady, Va., in the heart of Appalachia.
That opening scene, wherein a world of privilege abruptly vanishes for astonished young people who have known only success, is startling, but no more than Grisham's portrait of the world of poverty and injustice that Samantha soon enters. The author does justice to the physical beauty of Appalachia and to the decency of most of its people, but his real subject is the suffering inflicted on those people by mining companies and politicians who pander to them.
Samantha's new boss, Mattie Wyatt, has kept the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic alive for 26 years. The first case she assigns to Samantha is that of a woman who needs protection from a husband who deals in crystal meth and beats her. Then Samantha moves on to her first black-lung case. If miners can prove they've been disabled by years of breathing coal dust, they're entitled to payments that can reach $1,000 a month. The problem is that Big Coal employs hordes of lawyers to delay cases until the miner dies or gives up, and the lawyers are often backed by doctors, prosecutors, judges and regulators who are in bed with the coal companies. Mattie warns that only 5 percent of miners with black lung receive benefits. That doesn't stop Samantha from championing one dying miner — and learning how heartbreaking that can be.
Mattie has a nephew, a good-looking young lawyer named Donovan Gray who's pursuing a one-man crusade against Big Coal. Grisham dramatizes two of his cases in detail. Both involve the form of strip mining often called mountaintop removal. It's cheaper for mining companies to remove the tops of mountains — hundreds of feet of earth and rock — and mine exposed seams of coal than to dig for it underground. This rape of the mountains does terrible harm — collateral damage, one might say — to streams, valleys and human beings so unlucky as to be below those mountains.
In one of Donovan's cases, a bulldozer working atop a mountain dislodged a six-ton boulder that tumbled down for more than a mile before it crushed a house trailer where two boys were sleeping. On behalf of the boys' parents, Donovan has brought the case to trial and is asking for an unprecedented judgment of $3 million. The worried coal company, as the trial nears, offers a $1.5 million settlement, but Donovan — against the advice of friends — insists on taking his chances with the jury. It's an agonizing wait for the jury's decision.
In another case, Donovan has obtained — stolen, actually — documents proving that a mining company knew that chemicals it used in mountaintop removal have for a decade been polluting the wells of a small town nearby, giving it one of the highest cancer rates in America. The documents prove the company made a cold economic decision that fighting lawsuits would cost less than trying to clean up its lethal mess. Donovan hopes to introduce the purloined papers in his suit against the company; the company, for its part, has enlisted a friendly U.S. attorney and the FBI to recover the papers and perhaps prosecute the crusading lawyer. Samantha, to her horror, finds herself embroiled in this battle.
As Grisham's story unfolds, an important figure dies, perhaps murdered. Samantha is followed by thugs who seek to intimidate her. Undaunted, she finds time for a taste of romance. We encounter unexpected bits of humor here, of sociology there. Finally, the question is whether Samantha will return to the glories of New York or stand and fight amid the hardships of Appalachia.
Grisham makes his characters all too real, but the heart of his story is his relentless case against Big Coal. We all know something about the plight of miners, but we are unlikely to have encountered the realities of their lives in the depth provided here. This is muckraking of a high order. If it's possible for a major novelist to shame our increasingly shameless society, "Gray Mountain" might do it. This novel, following "Sycamore Row" (2013), a searing look at racism in his native Mississippi, shows Grisham's work — always superior entertainment — evolving into something more serious, more powerful, more worthy of his exceptional talent.
One hopes Grisham's recent, muddled comments on child pornography won't detract from the achievement of this book. Writers do well to send their well-wrought fictions forth into the world and leave the temptations of off-the-cuff sermonizing to political candidates and other desperate characters. The novel will outlive the controversy.
Anderson regularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for Book World.
GRAY MOUNTAIN
By John Grisham
Doubleday. 368 pp. $28.95
I read a lot! I really like true stories- Ann Rule murder mysteries, Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy and I want to read Killing Patton. I also enjoy military history books!!
Quote from: Purplelady1040 on October 20, 2014, 06:34:39 PM
I read a lot! I really like true stories- Ann Rule murder mysteries, Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy and I want to read Killing Patton. I also enjoy military history books!!
You sound like my daughter -- she likes the same kind of books. When she was about 15 she discovered military history, and especially liked a book about Pearl Harbor. My son was more like me -- science oriented -- and from there in just about every direction that curiosity took us.
Quote from: libby on October 20, 2014, 10:22:24 PM
You sound like my daughter -- she likes the same kind of books. When she was about 15 she discovered military history, and especially liked a book about Pearl Harbor. My son was more like me -- science oriented -- and from there in just about every direction that curiosity took us.
My family growing up were huge readers, thanks to my late mother who instilled a love of books in all of us. My brother nearest my age is the only one who doesn't like to read.
Here is a book I cannot put down:
Natural Health, Natural Medicine by Andrew Weil, M. D.
My daughter, who knows I am a fan of the author, asked if I'd seen the updated version of one of his books. I hadn't but drove over to Barnes & Noble and bought the one copy they had left:
I seldom start on page 1 of any book and read straight through, so while thumbing through this one, I came upon home remedies, and the one that caught my eye right away was for sinus problems: Dissolve 1/4 tsp of table salt in warm water and sniff it up your nose, one nostril at a time. "It will be messy," he said. I had to laugh, because that is exactly what a doctor in the coal fields of WVa where I grew up told my mother.
Now. Before you dismiss this as :rolleyes:, let me show you the short biography of the doctor who wrote that:
"Andrew Weil, M. D. is the best-selling author of ten books .... "He has degrees in biology and medicine from Harvard University. He has experienced and studied healers and healing systems around the world and has earned an international reputation as an expert on alternative medicine, mind-body interactions, and medical botany. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine and Director of the Program in Integrative Medicine (www.integrativemedicine.arizona.edu) at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Weil also writes a monthly newsletter, Self-Healing (www.drweilselfhealing.com) and has a popular website www.drweil.com.
If you want to google him, be sure to read the part about how he outed a colleague, Timothy Leary. :biggrin: And the picture of him, "a giant of a man" in a sauna is somethin' else!
Libby I just finished reading DIVINITY OF DOUBT by VINCENT BUGLIOSI. It's about the Christian religion and Atheism. It is one of the best books I have ever read on this subject. Bugliosi has done one of the best researches of this subject I have ever seen. :yes:
I will tell you it is a good read. :yes:
Quote from: The Troll on December 07, 2015, 11:02:59 PM
Libby I just finished reading DIVINITY OF DOUBT by VINCENT BUGLIOSI. It's about the Christian religion and Atheism. It is one of the best books I have ever read on this subject. Bugliosi has done one of the best researches of this subject I have ever seen. :yes:
I will tell you it is a good read. :yes:
Hmmm. I googled it and it sounds interesting. Will have to check it out.
Have been going through some books this morning, and came across an old science fiction paperback by Isaac Asimov, American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was best known for his sci-fi and Popular Science books. The first story was one of his most famous short stories. The prelude made a big impression on me, a young stargazer:
Nightfall
"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes I read poetry, mostly by poets long dead. Here's one of my favorites:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other,
does not make any sense.
-- medieval mystic and poet Rumi, of Persia (present-day Afghanistan)