Reviews and Comments

For me the advice in this book amounted to things I had already been doing, without the names the author has been attaching to old concepts. The one actionable takeaway I found was to list the daily activities you already do out of habit and the ones you either want to do in the future or want to avoid. Doing this periodically is a good part of a discipline to accomplish what you want to do. He goes through a process of breaking a habit into its components and telling the reader how to facilitate this (for habits one wants) or to try to hinder this (for bad habits). He draws from other books the thinking about about the rewards system of the mind so these can be used to improve the habit. Accompanying the text is a set of very simple worksheets online. He talks about how to track habits to reinforce them when attention flags.

Unfortunately he does not mention whether there is a way to make activities on another automatic habits. For instance, if I need to pay off a list of bills once a month, what kind of one can I devise to kick that off? It would require another list of chores with deadlines which I had to habitually check daily in a way to serve as a cue for the chain that would happen at that time. To me a simple description of how to set this up would have been more valuable than some of the rest of the topics he covers.

I listened to this light memoir of the author's experiences growing up on Corfu in the 1930s with his eccentric British family and menageries of animals he collected. I would say that it fits in the category of creative nonfiction with humorous anecdotes recounted with somewhat heightened details for comedic effect. He is sometimes mean to his family of mother, two brothers, and sister in the unflattering way he describes them, but the native Greek and Turkish characters he encounters on Corfu are all pretty much depicted with affection and appreciation for their qualities. He does not spare himself, either, with his impractical animal acquisitions that would have been trying for any family. It's a cozy way of life living on a sun-drenched Mediterranean island with only absurd (usually self-inflicted) cares without fears of European war or harsh treatment by the neighbors. It is just the right kind of story for someone who is crazy about nature and wildlife, whatever their age. The book was turned into a 1987 miniseries and a 2005 television movie.

The narrator had great fun coming up with the vocal mannerisms for the various characters as they spoke.

This book came out seven years ago but still has an immediacy these days because of the war between Israel and Hamas. A group of writers each contribute chapters to the volume based on their experiences in the Palestine communities in Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. The origin of this project was organized by the group Breaking the Silence which is made up of ex-Israeli Defense Forces troops who witnessed the lives of the Palestinians they were responsible for policing. The chapters differ in styles, in settings and in details, but there are so many accounts of abusive detentions, capricious arrests, and fatal shootings without consequences it becomes hard to doubt the veracity of the reports. The many types of daily humiliations, the outbreaks of unexpected hostility or outright violence, the bureaucratic obstacles to movement and other impediments to living an ordinary life also recur in a nearly overwhelming way. It is hard not to come away with the conviction that something has to change, not only for the Palestinians but for the health of Israel. The current armed conflict makes this feel as far off as ever.

This is a collection of magical realism tales, many of them dark or outright horror (the title story has body horror elements), all of them somewhat unsettling with the protagonist in some degree of danger. It feels as though the author has incorporated more recent experiences of her life as a mother into her imagined universes. Of the eight stories I most liked The Bad Graft, Bog Girl: A romance, The Gondoliers, and Orange World the best for the way I could immerse myself in the story, but I did often feel as though I had to work at the reading to get something out. The style isn't totally bleak with humorous elements tossed in to lighten the mood Like the other collection of hers I read, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, the settings are widely varied, though I can sense a kind of character trait in common among the protagonists in the form of a dogged persistence in the face of a difficult challenge. The premise of each story is presented without any sense that the characters consider things to be absurd. For the best stories I felt like the endings were the best part when things came together in the mind of the main character.

This debut novel is a steampunk fantasy story set in Egypt in the early part of an alternate 20th century. It is a mystery story filled with magical beings and objects following the author's previous two short works which plays with some of the conventions of the genres with plenty of humor throughout. I started this audiobook last spring but had to take two passes at getting through the entire convoluted tale. It is written with verve and a real love of invention. The alternate mystical Cairo here is packed with detail and the characters have been imagined with sympathy for their memorable idiosyncrasies. The center of the tale is a murder investigation which spins out into wider conspiracies among many side characters both human and non-human. The entire world is threatened at the end, naturally.

I liked how an anti imperialist jab would show up now and then to make fun of the colonial pattern more conventional steampunk stories would tend towards, along with feminist and queer aspects woven in. The action scenes work fairly well even if you could see them coming in advance, cinematic style. I felt this book was deserving of the attention it gained when it came out a few years ago and am interested to see what other kinds of worlds this author will be building.

This scholarly yet accessible book explores how the concept of chosenness crops up in the three Abrahamic religions, each considered unitarily. Judaism emerged from Caananite polytheism and shows influences from this early phase, while the other two, Christianity and Islam, have been monotheism from their starts, sometimes militaristically so. In each there is a story of how God has chosen the followers in a specific fashion, and the author digs into how this is tied in to the belief in a single deity. The author is a Jewish scholar and Rabbi but one who makes the effort to understand the basis for the concept in all three faiths on their own terms. He is scrupulous about not arguing for one in favor of the others.

It was as though the idea of chosenness came to the early believers of each faith, not thinking of how it could lead to conflict with the wider world but instead for the strength it brought to the fledgling group. When it did cause debate with opposing teachers they would each draw from their own scriptures to make the case for a special relationship with the divine. The languages used were of course different and the specific terms underpinning their doctrine meant different things, sometimes making for misunderstandings. Also, when new groups within the faith communities formed, these would take their own sense of chosenness using a different emphasis to help distinguish their belief.

I did like how the author would identify the nuances without prejudice and without glossing over the differences. This book was good to spark thought within an individual about what it means to be chosen, in a fair-minded way.