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alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)
I had been wanting to read a book by Heather Lende for some time—the description of a small-town obituary writer has caught my attention on multiple occasions and one of my favorite reviewers, Brina, loves her books.
These essays are homey slice-of-life dispatches from a tiny fishing community. Lende is earthy, practical, and positive, exactly the kind of person you would expect a middle-aged woman who has thrived in a lifetime of Alaskan winters to be. Think Anne Lamott but podunk and less whiney.
The stories brought me unexpected moments of joy as I listened to them. In general they center around the good things in life: new friends and old, faithful pets, the joy of keeping routines and making space for new ideas, supporting your neighbor and being supported. *sniff* I love the importance and glory that Lende grants to everyday living. It reminded me to find the good in my boring days, too.
These essays are homey slice-of-life dispatches from a tiny fishing community. Lende is earthy, practical, and positive, exactly the kind of person you would expect a middle-aged woman who has thrived in a lifetime of Alaskan winters to be. Think Anne Lamott but podunk and less whiney.
The stories brought me unexpected moments of joy as I listened to them. In general they center around the good things in life: new friends and old, faithful pets, the joy of keeping routines and making space for new ideas, supporting your neighbor and being supported. *sniff* I love the importance and glory that Lende grants to everyday living. It reminded me to find the good in my boring days, too.
I hadn't read this book since I was a kid. I love the characters and the story is sappy sweet, but I could have done without all the victorian sermonizing. That's why I recommend the movie over the book!
I wouldn’t use this as a cookbook, but rather a resource for getting the most out of your veggies. A lot of the recipes are a jumping off point for making sure you eat every last bit. For example, there is a whole chapter on different types of food preservation, instructions on how to properly freeze things, a list of veggie scraps you can freeze to make broth out of and which ones you can’t. I’d recommend reading this book because you might pick up some new tips.
“Confession: I have read Pride and Prejudice two hundred times. I get lost in the language, words like: Thither. Mischance. Felicity. I am always in agony over whether Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are really going to get together. Read it! I know you’ll love it.” — You've Got Mail
Incredible storytelling that kept me wondering and guessing. Evelyn is glamorous and cunning and always plays her cards perfectly—I think I learned a lesson in boldness from her. The drama levels are high, but one would expect nothing less from a diva at the center of Hollywood's golden age.
I wasn't sold on this book in the beginning because the drama seemed manufactured and overblown, but I'm glad I stuck it out. The characters all had unique voices and flaws they needed to overcome, and I thought the portrayal of messy relationship dynamics was important and authentic. Coming out is layered and multifaceted, it's not a one-and-done thing, and this story showed how complicated navigating that can be. It also has a good discussion about what many beloved artists have been facing with music industry contracts being too controlling and overstepping boundaries of what should be a fair professional relationship. I didn't expect the author to touch on these complex issues and it pleasantly surprised me. So, I'd recommend this book!
2022: back for a reread and I like it a lot better this time! Funny how time can improve a story or make it worse. I liked the characters more and I hope Iko and Thorn end up as a couple. Things are not looking good for planet earth at this point in the story, but I bet the heroine can turn things around!
2016: This series started out strong and went seriously (series-ously?) downhill from there. Character work deteriorated from being interesting and vaguely multidimensional to flat and stereotypical. Anyways, I won't be finishing the series.
2016: This series started out strong and went seriously (series-ously?) downhill from there. Character work deteriorated from being interesting and vaguely multidimensional to flat and stereotypical. Anyways, I won't be finishing the series.
I enjoyed listening to these lectures. I liked How Jesus Became God more because Dr Ehrman went in depth about the development of Christian beliefs on Jesus and the trinity, but he does give a brief overview here. In this course, he went book by book in the New Testament to talk about their authorship, controversies, philosophy and historical placement. Learning about the deutero-Pauline letters and why their authorship is questioned was fascinating.
I've been trying to learn about Zen Buddhism, but even beginners classics like [b:The Way of Zen|514210|The Way of Zen|Alan W. Watts|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348297121l/514210._SY75_.jpg|1223062] are hard for me to grasp.
This book, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, helped me immensely. It is not straightforward, this is part of what makes Buddhism so difficult for us Westerners. But I was delighted to find that by the end of the book I understood many important things.
For Suzuki Roshi, sitting zazen, and living zazen, the practice of being wholeheartedly committed to the present activity is Buddhism. "Philosophical discussion will not be the best way to understand Buddhism. If you want to be a sincere Buddhist, the best way is to sit... Just to sit, that is enough." And, "For us there is no need to understand what Zen is. We are practicing zazen. So for us there is no need to know what Zen is intellectually. That is, I think, very unusual for American society."
So, I decided to start sitting zazen. It's hard still, but I find value in it because of the concepts I learned in this book.
Some concepts are easy because they are very similar to Christian ideas. For example, contrast this statement with God's description of themself (make no graven images, "I am"): "I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color—something which exists before all forms and colors appear."
Or this idea compared to the Trinity: "So it is absolutely necessary for everyone to believe in nothing. But I do not mean voidness. There is something, but that something is something which is always prepared for taking some particular form, and it has some rules, or theory, or truth in its activity. This is called Buddha nature, or Buddha himself. When this existence is personified we call it Buddha; when we understand it as the ultimate truth we call it Dharma; and when we accept the truth and act as a part of the Buddha, or according to the theory, we call ourselves Sangha. But even though there are three Buddha forms, it is one existence which has no form or color, and it is always ready to take form and color."
Other concepts, like non-duality ("Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different; in essence they are the same."), or the re-appropriation of certain terms like emptiness or nothing are still hard to understand.
But I'm sure I will understand it eventually, with practice. That sense that we don't have to get everything on the first pass, that we don't have to consume everything and move on to the next idea, is pleasant.
This book, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, helped me immensely. It is not straightforward, this is part of what makes Buddhism so difficult for us Westerners. But I was delighted to find that by the end of the book I understood many important things.
For Suzuki Roshi, sitting zazen, and living zazen, the practice of being wholeheartedly committed to the present activity is Buddhism. "Philosophical discussion will not be the best way to understand Buddhism. If you want to be a sincere Buddhist, the best way is to sit... Just to sit, that is enough." And, "For us there is no need to understand what Zen is. We are practicing zazen. So for us there is no need to know what Zen is intellectually. That is, I think, very unusual for American society."
So, I decided to start sitting zazen. It's hard still, but I find value in it because of the concepts I learned in this book.
Some concepts are easy because they are very similar to Christian ideas. For example, contrast this statement with God's description of themself (make no graven images, "I am"): "I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color—something which exists before all forms and colors appear."
Or this idea compared to the Trinity: "So it is absolutely necessary for everyone to believe in nothing. But I do not mean voidness. There is something, but that something is something which is always prepared for taking some particular form, and it has some rules, or theory, or truth in its activity. This is called Buddha nature, or Buddha himself. When this existence is personified we call it Buddha; when we understand it as the ultimate truth we call it Dharma; and when we accept the truth and act as a part of the Buddha, or according to the theory, we call ourselves Sangha. But even though there are three Buddha forms, it is one existence which has no form or color, and it is always ready to take form and color."
Other concepts, like non-duality ("Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different; in essence they are the same."), or the re-appropriation of certain terms like emptiness or nothing are still hard to understand.
But I'm sure I will understand it eventually, with practice. That sense that we don't have to get everything on the first pass, that we don't have to consume everything and move on to the next idea, is pleasant.