I decided to listen to this delightful little memoir thanks to a glowing recommendation from my favorite book blog, Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves.  Andrew Sachs gives such a fantastic performance that it’s easy to imagine that Roald himself is telling his quaint and entertaining stories, which range from charming to funny to horrifying [...]

I got very lucky a couple of weeks ago - I was at a party for my boyfriend’s mom and my boyfriend’s cousin showed up with a pile of books written by his friend Michelle, which he was handing out.  Having just finished a book that morning, I was ready for a new book to [...]

If you’re interested in seeing some of the world’s smallest creatures ultra-magnified, this book is for you.  There are a few too many insects for my taste, but at least dust mites were thoughtfully excluded (and of course I skipped all spider pages.)  While my favorite subjects include the axolotl, the giant prickly phasmid, and [...]

This unusual little book on the philosophy of travel was a 2002 impulse buy from my days as a Harvard Coop trade book supervisor.  I almost never read hardcovers (excluding picture books, of course), but this one’s jacketless nature and understated faux gold embossment appealed to me.  I read somewhere recently that this type of [...]

Where do men win glory in our modern society? In sports, in battle, in service, in academics, in friends, in family? Author Jon Krakauer examines this and more through the prism of one man’s life and death in “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman”. Krakauer takes us beneath the surface images of [...]

In honor of World Vegetarian Day, I decided to write about one of my favorite cookbooks, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  Author Mark Bittman is a food writer for the New York Times who has written several well-known cookbooks and books on food  in general.  I just read about him in Runner’s World magazine recently and he even runs marathons - is [...]

I picked this one up while touring the fascinating FDR Presidential Library & Museum back in January and was inspired to read it cover to cover after spending a lovely afternoon at  the Washington’s Headquarters Museum in Morristown, New Jersey.   I had been thinking for quite some time that I should really work on learning [...]

Professional wrestling is a sport that is usually laughed at and considered fake and stupid by most people. The wrestlers, seen as steroid driven idiots, without a thought in their heads,  I used to think that way until I read this book.  A friend of mine, recommended this book and I was skeptical about reading [...]

THE DAY THE WORLD EXPLODED AUGUST 27, 1883

These heartwarming tales from the widely-beloved author of the All Creatures Great and Small series would be perfect for reading in a comfy armchair by a roaring fire with a cup of tea in hand and a blanket on your lap.  If getting lost for a time in the seemingly-innocent world of decades-ago Yorkshire, learning [...]