Linda the Librarian

Freedom's Light by Colleen Coble A Daring Venture by Elizabeth Camden Two easy breezy reads for you to consider.  A Daring Venture is a sequel to the book A Dangerous Legacy, so you'll want to read that first.  With these two books it brings the final total to 97 books for the year.  I'm kind of excited by that! Until next time...

2018 is coming to a close and now we must turn our attention to a New Year full of new opportunities to grow.  It's exciting and daunting at the same time, isn't it?  I thought now would be a good time to reflect on my reading goals for 2018 and set goals for 2019 (that looks strange, doesn't it?). This year I followed the Christian Reading Challenge that Tim Challies has put together for the last few years.  My goal was to read two books a week for a grand total of 104.  I'm a librarian, for Pete's sake, how hard could it be?  If President George W. Bush could read more than 100 books in a year while leading the nation, I should be able to read 104 books while working as a librarian, right?   Mr. President, may I just say, "Uncle!!"  I didn't make my goal.  I will make it to the high 90's, which is about 20 books more than I read in 2017.  I'm glad I followed the plan even though I fell short.  I loved the structure of followin...

Lost Connections by Johann Hari My guess is that most of us know someone who struggles with depression or anxiety.  Maybe we are that someone.  If you or someone you care about has paid a visit to the doctor about depression or anxiety, chances are high that you were prescribed an antidepressant for your trouble.  In Lost Connections, Mr. Hari seeks to give real life reasons for our depression and anxiety and to propose solutions that are not solely based on medication.  Some of the causes for depression and anxiety that he includes are lost connections to people, nature, meaningful work, meaningful values, etc. I liked the fact that he did give real solutions for each of the lost connections (gardening, group projects/volunteering, changing jobs, etc.).  I like that the power for our own healing is put back into our hands and that this is a long term solution, a more permanent solution than a little pill can give.   I didn't agree w...

With all the comings and goings of my children for the holidays, I've been a little preoccupied.  My reading pace has slowed down a bit of late as well.  I know I'm not going to make it to my 100 book goal, but I'll be ending in the mid to high 90's this year.  Last year I read seventy-something books.  Stop Mass Hysteria by Michael Savage and Hit Makers by Derek Thompson To sum up what I learned from these two titles, we aren't as smart as we think we are.  Hit Makers describes the different media campaigns or perfect storm of circumstances that make people, music, art, etc popular.  So many times we like things because the right person at the right time comes along and tells us we do.  As far as Stop Mass Hysteria is concerned, we look around today and we see people frothing at the mouth over politics - from both sides of the aisle - again, this is nothing new.  We've had bouts of mass hysteria throughout our history (Salem witch tria...