Books, Professional Development

Book 969: The Art of Communicating – Thích Nhất Hạnh

Book cover of "The Art of Communicating" with Amazon Affiliate linkI had to read this for a course I’m talking about the art of brave communication. We only had to read the first couple of chapters, but I found it to be an approachable and relatively easy read so kept going.

Where Hanh excelled was in his simple writing. For the most part, there were no overwrought metaphors or awkward analogies. There was one at the end that I’ll get to, but I think it’s a religious thing and it just fell flat for me.

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Books

Book 946: Just by Looking at Him – Ryan O’Connell

Book cover of "Just by Looking at Him" with Amazon Affiliate linkIf I’m 100% honest I first was drawn to this book because of the cover art, a cropped version of Henry Scott Tuke’s The Critics (Wikiart). Tuke does water like no one else and they pumped up the blues and greens on the cover.

Then when you add the title of the painting to what the main character does for a living: mind blown. So THEN I realized this was the same Ryan O’Connell who created, wrote, and starred in Special on Netflix, and of course, I requested a copy.*

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Books

Book 926: Khabaar – Madhushree Ghosh

Book cover of "Khabaar" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen the publicist reached out to me about this one, I wasn’t sure I had the capacity, but it was five months before it was published so I figured I’d make time!*

That sort of happened. Khabaar was on my TBR pile nonstop from February onward but between all the knitting I was doing and getting distracted by EVERY MM romance novel possible, I kept putting it off to my detriment.

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Books

Book 900: Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Book cover of "Wuthering Heights" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhat a difference eight-ish years makes between reads. I last read this in November 2013 and had some interesting comparisons to Pride and Prejudice and observations about my own love life.

I’m not planning to reflect on that this time, for a couple of reasons, mainly that this read I really felt that perhaps the better Austen comparison is Fanny Price in Austen’s Mansfield Park rather than Darcy. I mean the whole nature versus nurture argument and how responsible are they for what happens and how much of an impact does their upbringing have? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS (and thoughts).

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Books

Book 861: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson

Book cover of "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" with Amazon Affiliate linkI picked this book up way back in November 2014 because I’d been hearing great things about it and remembered enjoying Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in undergrad (and still languishing on my TBR shelf).

I only read this at this moment in time because a few months ago I created a spreadsheet of all the books on my TBR shelf that were under 250 pages that randomly spits out a book title so when I had a bit of a gap or wanted to actually make progress on my shelves I had an easy tool to select a book.

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