https://www.androidauthority.com/delete-facebook-847934/amp/ I am putting to the test this pundit’s claim; so far, I’m 2-years out: I deleted Facebook on March 26, 2018, and have had a grand total of two regrets. I miss contact with old acquaintances (who, experience says, I probably would never have actually contacted anyway). And occasionally I hear about events scheduled/planned through Facebook to which I was oblivious. In return my quality of life and focus is far better, not to mention the vastly improved data security.

Read more

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis My rating: 5 of 5 stars After watching Selma together my favorite librarian suddenly remembered this book to recommend. She described Christopher Paul Curtis as a Gary Schmidt-like author (another of our absolute favorites), and he certainly displayed that same ability to transport the reader into the inner life of a child, this one being Kenny, a middle-child of a Michigan-living African American family in 1963 America.

Read more

In an interesting example of fair-use, WalkingTacosDubs creates renditions of disney musical scenes without accompaniment. The results are sometimes more authentic and disarmingly intimate, but sometimes it is flat. Let’s look at Moana’s “How Far I’ll Go” (here it is normal, with accompaniment) compared with Frozen’s “Let it go” (normal form here). How Far I’ll Go The official rendition has a very simple instrumental portion, keeping beat a with drums and ornamenting with some acoustic guitar.

Read more

Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw My rating: 4 of 5 stars This review is of the 1988 edition. A thought-provoking read in which John Bradshaw introduces some valuable concepts and terminology. It is centrally concerned with one’s relationship with themself, wherein lies the defining characteristics that can be healthy or toxic shame. In my religious parlance it is concerned with humility, what Bradshaw calls healthy shame:

Read more

What Stories Are by Thomas M. Leitch My rating: 4 of 5 stars Fine treatment of the ambitious task of defining “story,” considering literary, Cinema, and theatric media. Leitch clearly lays out many of the challenges, including with the fiction/non-fiction vagueries, as well as teleographic (having a designed message or point) vs discursive (having a tendency toward continuing indefinitely), and described stories as being definitively concerned with the struggle between these two opposites.

Read more

Because I keep forgetting the arcane art of locating my watch history in Amazon Prime, here are the steps as of November 2019: -> Amazon.com -> Account & Settings -> Watch history -> "View Watch History" Yes, it’s three clicks after log-in to see your history, and doesn’t appear to be at all possible on a mobile device.

Read more

After a friend mentioned a Brazilian commercial to me on the same topic, I found this and thought I would share it. Enjoy! An unborn set of twins are having a conversation in their mother’s womb. “Tell me, do you believe in life after birth?” asks one of the twins. “Yes, definitely! In here we are growing and gaining strength for what will face us on the outside,” answers the other.

Read more

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt My rating: 4 of 5 stars Published two years before Gary D. Schmidt acclaimed The Wednesday Wars, Lizzie Bright is a historical novel I found at first reminiscent of Johnny Tremain. However, while both are New England Americana, the similarity stops there; this book is not patriotic or set around any well-known historical events. Instead it is steeped in Maine bay-culture where fishing, lobster-catching and oyster-hunting are the daily bread of life, along with strict religionism that Turner’s family, led by his preacher father, was hired from Boston to implement.

Read more

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30025336-all-the-crooked-saints" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="All the Crooked Saints" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500451773m/30025336.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30025336-all-the-crooked-saints">All the Crooked Saints</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1330292.Maggie_Stiefvater">Maggie Stiefvater</a><br/> My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2560683183">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br /> Maggie Stiefvater’s All the Crooked Saints is, pun intended, a miraculous book. It qualifies as young adult literature because it describes an emotional world centering on love, confusion, regret, and responsibilities. It also carries with it wide pallets of characters and several interlinking family dynamics.

Read more

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein My rating: 4 of 5 stars A fun, wholesome, and smart book essentially giving a benign, library-loving twist on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with a high-tech library instead of the candy factory and a zany, imaginative, library-loving game-maker instead of the slightly psychotic, deranged candy maker. Much of the book felt like unabashed fan-service to libraries, from scavenger-hunts through the stacks to revels in the Dewey Decimal System.

Read more