Hi everyone! Welcome to SUMMER! (It might have come earlier to those of you in the south and west, but here in New York, school just ended and it’s the first official weekend of summer.) I’m a year-round reader and I don’t think I devote more time to it during any particular season, but most […]
Books
The Lesson of the Boggart
This morning I was listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and I had one of those (all too frequent) moments when I thought, “J.K. Rowling is a genius.” The scene I was listening to was the first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson taught by Professor Lupin, where he introduces Harry and […]
Current Influences 3
Current Influences, third edition! What I’m reading/recently read…. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I think the guy is a little nuts, but obviously smart, and I like his style. The concept is to outsource and compress your work until your company (or the equivalent, if you’re not the boss) virtually runs itself, and then you […]
Making Weekend Plans
Despite the fact that I’ve moved away from strictly books in this blog, it wouldn’t be Words from the Sowul without a little homage to Laura Vanderkam now and then. I’ve had her latest mini e-book, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend, in my Kindle queue for a few weeks. It’s the […]
The Valued Opinion
I recently had the pleasure of introducing my father to a series of books he now loves. It made me feel really good to do this, and I started to think about why. The obvious reasons are that: 1. In a small way, I made my dad happy 2. I can share my enjoyment of […]
Rowling Update & Recent Reads
I thought the NY Times reviewed The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling very well here: NY Times Review- The Casual Vacancy The reviewer saw more of the “societal ills” aspect to the book than I did, and after seeing Rowling do a few interviews on the subject, it was clear that for her, addressing those themes […]