A life of books . . .
I’m not sure how I stumbled across this one, it was probably a random email from Prolific Works that I just happened to actually open and they happened to profile a MM Romance novel in it.
It’s the story of Chase, a news anchor, and Ashton, a nonprofit CEO, college acquaintances who reconnect later in life at a gala event hosted by Ashton. There’s drama and office gossip and Ashton’s adorable kid, Trent, calling things like they are even when the adults won’t.
Another ARC, another gamble. After reading the blurb on this one with two characters with emotional baggage and growing together out of their traumatic pasts, I requested a copy.*
What I didn’t realize was that the entire book was going to take place in roughly a week, which is one of my biggest pet peeves. Forewarning, my response is going to sound a lot more negative than it is, but it’s because Neill has a lot of potential I think she just missed the mark by just a smidge on SO. MANY. THINGS. in this book. One reviewer on Goodreads went so far as to say, “DNF. The only interesting thigs in this book were the conversations Micha had with the dogs he groomed.” While I agree with this, I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it was a definite miss for me.
Continue reading “Book 877: Twice in a Lifetime (Sheltered Connections #1) – R.M. Neill”
Happy Valentine’s Day! What better way to celebrate a day of love than sharing that Bibliophilanthropy.org is fully live and open to the public! I hope you will join me in creating a philanthropic community of book bloggers and lovers. If you have any questions after checking out the site definitely get in touch!
I’ve been developing Bibliophilanthropy.org off and on since November 2015 and you can read about it here on the site. It’s something I believe in and is a great way for the book blogging/loving community to come together and put our money where our mouths are.
When I read Doing Good Better, I was looking for this. That isn’t a knock on Doing Good Better, it’s a kudos to Simple Giving and Jennifer Iacovelli. And I guess that’s an even bigger kudos to Tarcher/Penguin for sending me a copy because I would never have found sought it out, even though philanthropy is what I do for a living.* Simple Giving comes out next week October 27, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Where Iacovelli succeeds in the breadth of which she covers in this rather short book. She talks about individual and crowd sourced philanthropy, she talks about volunteering and socially conscious purchases and businesses and she spends time talking about how you can engage even the youngest of philanthropists in volunteering their time.
Continue reading “Book 392: Simple Giving – Jennifer Iacovelli”
I’m torn on this one and not for any obvious reasons. I think MacAskill does an excellent job laying out the foundations of “effective altruism” and I think this is something fundraisers and nonprofits need to be aware of for the future. However, I feel like there wasn’t enough to convince me 100% that this is the best way to move forward, probably because I had questions about MacAskill’s own nonprofits and experience.
Let’s start with the good. MacAskill has created a solid evidence-based way of helping alleviate some of the world’s biggest problems. Learning what a Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY, pronounced kwalee) challenged my perception of how to rate a nonprofit, but more importantly raised questions about whether things should be comparable when you’re talking about life-saving research. The answer is yes, with a bunch of caveats.