Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  WoBoGro    Holiday books?
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Holiday books? Login/Join
 
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted
Do you have any recommendations for holiday book gifts?
 
Posts: 24263 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
I guess not! I have a couple of recommendations that I read about in either the NY Times or the WSJ:

1) " Jewish Jocks " by Foer & Tracy -
quote:
“Jewish Jocks” represents the high end of this quirky pursuit. Edited by Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy, both of The New Republic, the book gathers 50 brief portraits from some of the biggest names in journalism and academia. Their essays follow no particular pattern, the common denominator being the exceptionally high quality of the writing. Jews are profiled in everything from broadcasting and management to fencing and bullfighting. It’s an odd mix, but it works for two reasons. First, much of the Jewish influence in sports has occurred beyond the locker room. Second, let’s be honest: the Jewish bench is far too thin to support 50 tales of athletic immortality.


2) "A Kosher Christmas," by Joshua Eli Plaut - another book with a Jewish flavor:
quote:
Plaut reports on the tradition of Jewish volunteering, the Christmas mitzvah — something to do when the rest of the world has the day off. Jews feed the hungry, fill in for Christians at work, donate toys, play Santa. These are activities, he says, that allow “Jews the opportunity to participate in Christmas, but in a way that does not detract from their Jewish identity; in fact, their volunteerism reinforces their Jewishness.” Boldly stated: “America’s Jews have reacted to their exclusion from Christmas in a manner similar to how they have reacted to their exclusion from a country club — by building a better one of their own.”
I remember, as a nurse, I used to work on Christmas so others could have it off.

3) " Bitter Brew : The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's King of Beers" -
quote:
The first King of Beers was a German immigrant who came to America just before the Civil War. Adolphus Busch set down roots in heavily Germanic St. Louis, used an inheritance to buy a brewery-supply business and married into the Anheuser family, which owned a struggling brewery of its own. Installed as president of the family business (re-christened Anheuser-Busch), Adolphus purchased a beer recipe—you have to love this—used by monks in a Bohemian village named Budweis. The crisp, pale lager was known as Budweiser.
(Richard, you may like this one!)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,
 
Posts: 24263 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Richard English
posted Hide Post
Fascinating. And now they have their just come-uppance for having tried, for so many years, to stop the Czechs calling the beer, that they had invented, Budweiser.


Richard English
 
Posts: 8037 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UKReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of BobHale
posted Hide Post
I think you pasted the wrong quote into number 2.
 
Posts: 8544 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
Ah, yes, Bob. Thanks for letting me know!
 
Posts: 24263 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of BobHale
posted Hide Post
For your holiday reading you could try

this.

Or even these.

Just suggestions of course.
Smile

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,
 
Posts: 8544 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
<Proofreader>
posted
I'll wait until the movie comes out.
 
Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of BobHale
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Proofreader:
I'll wait until the movie comes out.


Really?
If I release a DVD you'll buy it?
 
Posts: 8544 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
<Proofreader>
posted
You'll go straight to DVD without public showings? Sounds like mommy porn to me.
 
Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
My daughter gave me Jon Meacham's "Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power" for Hanukkah. I am looking forward to reading it.
 
Posts: 24263 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of bethree5
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Kalleh:
My daughter gave me Jon Meacham's "Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power" for Hanukkah. I am looking forward to reading it.

Wow I'm impressed by both of you. I find it tough to read any non-fiction that is not practically hands-on job-related (though I do read lots of reference material online). How do you like the book so far?

Here are my recent reads, all of which I can STRONGLY recommend:

Burmese Days by George Orwell- his first novel, based on experiences in Burma while in his twenties. funny! poignant! sarcastic! enlightening! I could go on.

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry - WWI from the point of view of a dear and special voice, a young Dublin soldier. Sad, lovely, important

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Olbreht - Balkans: a young female doctor in time of '90's wars,[informed by WWII memories of grandfather, also a dr, as told to her in childhood)investigates the circumstances of her grandfather's death. This looks to be the beginning of a remarkable literary career, I will be watching this author.
 
Posts: 2369 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!Reply With QuoteReport This Post
<Proofreader>
posted
i'm reading The Dictionary of Slang. Not much plot but lots of four-letter words that inflame my imagination.
 
Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of bethree5
posted Hide Post
Oh go on mention a couple.
 
Posts: 2369 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of arnie
posted Hide Post
I'm rereading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Rather apposite, really, since it's about the end of the world.


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 
Posts: 10940 | Location: LondonReply With QuoteReport This Post
<Proofreader>
posted
quote:
Oh go on mention a couple.

Trying to learn new ones or just recalling old friends?
 
Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
The Tiger's Wife sounds great, Bethree!

I just read about another book that I think I'd like: "The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date," by Samuel Arbeman. Here is a quote from it that I think is so accurate: "We persist in only adding facts to our personal store of knowledge that jibe with what we already know, rather than to assimilate new facts irrespective of how they fit into our worldview." Isn't that the truth. As one analyst said, "All too true; confirmation bias is everywhere." We see it in nursing, medicine, other sciences...and, yes, here on WC.
 
Posts: 24263 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 

Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  WoBoGro    Holiday books?

Copyright © 2002-12
https://wordcraft.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8061068303/m/5380070856
wordcraft.infopop.cc
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-40
114089
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:2HCCO7P4SPWDBJVE4ZKYA7MHGVIDQTY6
<urn:uuid:36d94101-2a22-4755-b69c-4a667cce3775>
2020-09-28T14:01:56Z
199.255.145.105
text/html
sha1:MDUQDJ2DSANHSJUIJFCIV4HQTG6HNVZM
<urn:uuid:652190e7-d7c0-4ec8-b409-4bb30aa2bb23>
https://wordcraft.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8061068303/m/5380070856
response
<urn:uuid:7efbb06a-1a23-4a7e-9dbe-133636b87af6>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-40
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-59.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.17 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/