Hanging Up by Delia Ephron

By -
This was my other vacation novel while we were in Europe, and it was entertaining. I liked it. I kept imagining Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, and Lisa Kudrow as the characters in the book, since they starred in the movie. They seemed to fit pretty well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Defenestrations of Prague

By -
Did you know there's such a thing as the Defenestrations of Prague ? I didn't until recently. I'd like to know how familiar the word "defenestration" is to everyone. I know what it means because of the German and French words for window -- "Fenster" and "fenêtre" -- but I can't tell if I'd know if I didn't know that. From Wikipedia's entry on Defenestration: The term originates from two incidents in history, both occurring in Prague. In 1419, seven town officials were thrown from the Town Hall, precipitating the Hussite War. In 1618, two Imperial governors and their secretary were tossed from Prague Castle, sparking the Thirty Years War. These incidents, particularly in 1618, were referred to as the Defenestrations of Prague and gave rise to the term and the concept. How about that? An interesting way to demonstrate political outrage. There are other incidents of defenestration, in Prague and elsewhere, listed in the ...
Read more

Jason Zweig on Wall Street ethics

By -
A funny but sadly true note: Wall Street may have higher ethical standards than some businesses (smuggling, prostitution, Congressional lobbying, and journalism come to mind) but the investment world nevertheless has enough liars, cheaters, and thieves to keep Satan's check-in clerks frantically busy for decades to come. --Jason Zweig That's in a footnote on page 262 of the 2003 revised edition of Benjamin Graham's classic book The Intelligent Investor . Graham first published the book in 1934 and revised it several times, publishing his final edition in 1973. Graham died in 1976. A new edition was published in 2003, with the original text of Graham's last edition left intact, but surrounded with Talmudic-style treatment by Jason Zweig. Jason's new commentary appears after each chapter and in footnotes. This brings the book up to date and adds some perspective and humor, and notes cases where Graham has been vindicated or (rarely) disproven by history. ...
Read more

Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling

By -
I believe this book is the first book on homeschooling I've read cover to cover. Apparently John Holt's earlier book Teach Your Own: A Hopeful Path for Education is a homeschooling classic (specifically about what is perhaps unfortunately named unschooling ). His protégé Patrick Ferenga has taken that book and updated it. Overall, I enjoyed it, but as I read it, I was glad I hadn't read any until we'd already been homeschooling for years. I came to basically the same conclusions, but in my own way. I'll start with a few small and probably petty annoyances. One of the authors commented that nobody would need to "learn computers" at school because it's easy to teach yourself or take a community class. But what he actually meant was learning to use spreadsheets and word processors, hardly what I think of when someone says "learn computers". Programming, troubleshooting software or hardware, etc. are far beyond mere user semi-competence. Mi...
Read more