Mailbox Monday November 28, 2011




In November Mailbox Monday is being hosted by the person who originally began this meme - Marcia at Mailbox Monday.





Thanks to Hachette I received The Drop by Michael Connelly in the mail last week. From the author's website:

Harry Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever. In one morning, he gets two.

DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab’s DNA cases currently in court. Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving’s son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch’s longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation. Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.

Happy Thanksgiving and a guest post!




Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!


A Different Thanksgiving Conversation: Eight Questions to Ask Your Elders

By Karl A. Pillemer, Ph.D.,

The following is dapted from 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans"


A famous picture by Norman Rockwell shows beaming grandparents serving turkey to a crowd of smiling extended family members. This idealized image represents reality in this way: Thanksgiving is one event that traditionally brings the generations together. So what’s a good way to spend this precious intergenerational time?

Here’s one you may not have thought of: How about asking your older family members to give the younger ones advice for living? I’ve spent the past six years conducting a research project in which we asked older Americans: “What are the most important lessons you’ve learned that you would like to pass on to young people?” The results were fascinating, and yes, you can try this at home! So I’m proposing that we all use Thanksgiving to ask our family’s elders to share their wisdom.

Why try it? Because it’s an interesting and enjoyable thing to do. Younger people have a lot to gain by seeking the life wisdom of older people. We can take advantage of years of lived experience, perspectives that defy contemporary “common sense,” and experiential knowledge that comes from having been tested in almost every type of stressful situation. Have they been married for 50 years? Ask them what makes a marriage work. They raised a family, so ask them their advice for raising children. And don’t forget to ask their advice about aging well!

On this holiday, we can all be thankful that our elders are so full of wisdom, and willing to share. Below are some “conversation starters” to use around the dinner table this Thanksgiving. While you’re digging into your turkey and mashed potatoes, you can profit from the valuable lessons that those around you have have learned first-hand over their lifetimes.

1. What are some of the most important lessons you feel you have learned over the course of your life?

2. Some people say that they have had difficult or stressful experiences but they have learned important lessons from them. Is that true for you? Can you give examples of what you learned?

3. As you look back over your life, do you see any “turning points”; that is, a key event or experience that changed over the course of your life or set you on a different track?

4. What are some of the important choices or decisions you made that you have learned from?

5. What would you say you know now about living a happy and successful life that you didn’t know when you were twenty?

6. What would you say are the major values or principles that you live by?

7. Have you learned any lessons regarding staying in good health?

8. What advice would you give to people about growing older?

I hope you will give these a try. We do sometimes ask older people for their life stories, but it can actually reach deeper and be more rewarding to ask them their advice for living.

This is how knowledge for living was once transferred; the experience of interlocking lives, intertwined over generations, was passed along and remained alive in the telling. This wisdom exists in people you know, right here, right now. And it’s your for the asking this Thanksgiving.

And if you learn something valuable from an elder, or your own family elders would like to share their advice, you can add it to our website at Share Lessons To Win and be entered for a chance to win $100 Amazon gift card, now through December 4th!

Mailbox Monday November 21, 2011




In November Mailbox Monday is being hosted by the person who originally began this meme - Marcia at Mailbox Monday.

Last week I picked up:

Gideon's Sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child



The Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson

Mailbox Monday November 14, 2011




In November Mailbox Monday is being hosted by the person who originally began this meme - Marcia at Mailbox Monday.




Last week I received The Placebo Effect by David Rotenberg. From the back of the book:

Decker Roberts has the dangerous gift of detecting the truth. For years this talent proved to be a lucrative sideline to his acting teaching. Only his closest friends know, and he deeps his identity secret from the companies that pay him to tell them if the people they are planning to hire are truthful.

But Decker's carefully compartmentalized life starts to fall apart. His house burns down, his credit cards are cancelled, his bank loan is called and his studio is condemned. He realizes that he must have heard something in one of his 'truth telling' sessions that someone didn't want him to know.

Decker has to go on the run and figure out why he's been targeted. There's also a government agent hunting him who seems to know absolutely everything about Decker Roberts' identities, real and false-and other people of "his kind."

How will Decker find out which truth was endangering his life? Who betrayed him and revealed all his secrets? Decker needs to find answers quickly, before knowing the truth turns from a gift into a deadly curse.

Tuesday Teaser: River of Smoke


Tuesday Teasers is hosted by Should Be Reading. The rules are as follows:


Grab your current read and let the book fall open to a random page. Share two sentences from somewhere on that page and the title of the book that you’re getting the teaser from. Please avoid spoilers! Read the official Tuesday Teaser Rules.




My teaser this week is from River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh. From page 225:

'You must know, Barry,' he said in a low voice, 'that we are facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. It should come as no surprise that the Grand Manchu has decided to demonstrate his omnipotence by prohibiting the entry of opium into this country.'

Mailbox Monday November 7, 2011




In November Mailbox Monday is being hosted by the person who originally began this meme - Marcia at Mailbox Monday.





Last week I received Assassin of Secrets by Q. R. Markham. From the back of the book:

Jonathan Chase, the CIA's top field agent, is sworn to protect and serve the United States at all costs. But after a brutal period of captivity during the Korean War, Chase developed an agenda of his own: to use his mastery of war to create peace.

His new target: the Zero Directorate, a cabal of rogue assassins who have embarked on a campaign to systematically interrogate and kill seasoned secret agents across the globe.

But the Directorate has set an elaborate trap, and for Chase, the world's preeminent operative, the whole mission involves and inescapable paradox: the closer he gets to the cabal, the closer the cabal gets to its primary target.

We have a winner!!!



I used random.org to determine the winner of an autographed copy of Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (read my review here). The winner is:

Debra S.!

Thank you to all who entered!
 

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