The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate (audiobook) by Gary Chapman

Fill your mate's "love tank"

Published by Northfield Publishing in 1996.
4 hours, 46 minutes.
Read by the author, Gary Chapman.

Gary Chapman

The author, Gary Chapman, does an excellent job of narrating the audiobook version of  The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.

Chapman's thesis is, simply, that we all have a love tank, and it is best filled by two of 5 different love languages. If your spouse expresses his or her love to you in a love language that you don't speak than you will both be frustrated and your love tank will not be filled and eventually you will look for other ways to fill it.

The five love languages are:
-Quality Time
-Words of Affirmation
-Gifts
-Acts of Service
-Physical Touch

Chapman provides plenty of concrete examples so that most listeners will be able to identify themselves or their spouse.

He includes a section about expressing love to one's children as well using his love language theory.

Very interesting. Makes total sense to me. Chapman has a website where you can test yourself and see what love languages work best for you. Click here.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.

Reviewed on May 7, 2006.

The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo

A more "grown up" fairy tale

Published in 2003.

Inspired by a friend's son who wanted DiCamillo to write a story about "an unlikely hero...with exceptionally large ears," The Tale of Despereaux is both dark and joyful. It is a story of fear, hate,sadness, greed and the awful things of life as well as being the story of love, kindness, pity and courage.

There are many vocal detractors of this book. I am not one of them. I am not entirely happy with the book. For example, no one mourns the jailer and the rat is essentially pardoned for his death for it is not brought up at the end of the book - but I don't hate it - its many strengths greatly outweigh its weaknesses.

For those that don't like its themes of abuse, servitude and death I would refer you to this lengthy, but appropriate comment from C.S. Lewis:

"Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can't bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the...atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."

Kate DiCamillo

I'd rather my daughter know that danger exists and it is up to us - the little mice of the world to go out and rescue the princess. As the book notes, there is no knight coming to the rescue. It's also useful to know that there are people easily misled and used (Mig) and those who commit evil because they feel they are justified in doing so (the rat).

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread.

Reviewed on December 23, 2008.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (audiobook) by Maryanne Wolf

Brilliant. One of the best books I've encountered this year.

Published by Highbridge Audio
Read by Kirsten Potter
8 hours, 21 minutes
Unabridged.

Filled with everyday examples but also full of technical explanations about how the brain actually works when it reads, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain is a bit of history, a bit of science, a bit of philosophy, a bit of educational theory and a whole lot of learning bundled into an entertaining package.

Maryanne Wolf

I may be an ideal reader for Maryanne Wolf since I am a foreign language teacher, a history teacher, I love reading, and I am very much interested in how boys, in particular, suffer from reading difficulties (Wolf cites biological research that is buttressed by others who say we start too early to try to teach our students and we label students too early as having reading difficulties).

Wolfe explores the early history of writing and reading, the different types of writing and how the brain reacts to them, the dangers and positives of written text, how the brain actually physically reads, reading difficulties such as dyslexia and postulates on the future of reading in our new digital age. Wonderful stuff - all of it.

Audiobook notes: Well-read by actress Kirsten Potter, the audiobook lasts about 8 hours and 21 minutes. Oh, and yes I do appreciate the irony in listening to the audiobook version of a book about reading.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

Reviewed on December 23, 2008.

My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith by Benyamin Cohen

A charming spiritual journey in which an Orthodox Jew discovers that "Hanging out with Jesus has made me a better Jew."

Published in 2008.

First off - My Jesus Year is not one of those stories of conversion.

Rather, Benyamin Cohen does not feel fulfilled by his experiences with the synagogue or the hundreds of rules that an Orthodox Jew must follow. He decides to go to the other side of the street and see if the grass is greener (he literally grew up across the street from a Methodist church that seemed so much more vibrant and alive and happy than the synagogue that was attached to his house).

Cohen gets permission from a Rabbi to spend a year with the Christians - he goes to church every Sunday (after synagogue on Saturdays this makes for some long weekends I am sure) and treats the experience as a wandering anthropologist looking into the strange and wondrous world of Christianity.

Benyamin Cohen

What follows is a remarkable journal of one man's exploration of Judaism and Christianity - some of it mainstream, some odd (Christian professional wrestling, for example) but all of it treated respectfully by a man who is searching for what he's missing in his own faith. On the way he finds it and the reader is blessed with wonderful writing, witty insights, touching observations and, quite simply, the experience of a great read.

I am writing from the perspective of an active, involved Christian and I find myself chuckling at some of his offbeat observations about the quirky things we do. I also learned a lot about Judaism along the way. I am sure some would find offense, but...whatever. It was not written in the spirit of offense and if they are offended they should grow up some.

One of the best books of the year for me.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: My Jesus Year.

Reviewed on December 26, 2008.

Twice Buried (Bill Gastner #3) (Posadas county #3) by Steven Havill

Not up to the standards of later Gastner mysteries

Originally published in 1994.

Having read several of the later Undersheriff Bill Gastner mysteries I found myself a little torn with Twice Buried.

I love the character of Bill Gastner. The characters in this series are particularly well-developed and realistic. The procedures in this book are thorough and seemingly well-depicted (I'm not a police officer, but it seemed pretty kosher to me) except for one very large hole in the way the investigation developed - a whole line of investigation was ignored that seemed obvious to me. This hurt the integrity of the book in my eyes, but I still give it 4 stars.

If you are a fan of Tony Hillerman's Navajo Tribal Police books you should check out this series.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Twice Buried.

Reviewed on December 29, 2008.

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 by Brian M. Fagan

Published in 2000 by Basic Books

Brian Fagan's The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 is, by definition, an introduction to the climate phenomenon of the same name. Actually, it is quite similar to a History Channel documentary of the same name. On page xix Fagan notes that historians are either "parachutists" (big picture) or "truffle hunters" (love all of the details of one particular era or topic). Fagan warns that this is a parachutist book - an overview.

So, what of this overview? Fagan starts with the Vikings and covers an area that is better covered by Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. However, his stories of how the fishing industry was affected by the shift to a colder climate was surprisingly interesting.

A lengthy discussion of how the colder climate change brought more disease, famine and general mayhem is punctuated by the single best one page description of the changes in farming methods that came about in the 1600-1700s that I have ever read (page 107).

An interesting (and too short) section on glaciers proved quite fascinating and should be required reading for those that point to the melting of those "ancient" glaciers in our day as a cause for worry. If 200 years old is ancient, well...

Frequent maps are a big positive but some of them are unnecessary. However, too many maps is much better than the normal too few that are in most books.

The end of the book gets bogged down in the Irish Potato Famine. We go from being a parachutist to a truffle hunter in this section.

The last chapter is a commentary on something out of the scope of the book's stated thesis. We leave the Little Ice Age and receive a lecture on Global Warming that is at variance with some of the things we've just read. Early on in the book he tells us the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than we are now (p. 17) and spent the better part of 200 pages telling us that cooling brings famine, death and disease. Why is global warming so bad then? On page 206 he mentions cattle herding as a source of methane over the last 150 years. In the United States at least, cattle herding was only possible by clearing out the deer and buffalo east of the Mississippi and by killing off millions of buffalo out west (imagine herds from one horizon to the other in the Great Plains) to make room for millions of head of cattle. To me, that seems to be a methane trade-off.

Regardless, this is really a nice little book. You'll undoubtedly learn something new. Skip the last chapter.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850.

Reviewed on December 31, 2008.

Note: there is a revised edition of this book that was published in 2019.

Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve

A re-telling of the Arthurian legend

Published in 2008.

Philip Reeve's re-telling of the Arthurian legend has a ring of truth to it, although he openly admits in his notes that this re-telling is based on nothing more than his own imagination and is not a product of new research.

Intellectually, I appreciate his take on Arthur in Here Lies Arthur. I never have been a big fan of the Arthurian legend. To me it is too puffed up, too self-important. You would think that this re-telling - a re-telling that includes a not-so-noble Arthur being promoted by a story-weaving Merlin so that Arthur's legend can grow to the point where he can actually unite the Britons against the Saxons would appeal to me. All of the magic from the story is explained away. All of the legends are laid bare, exposed as frauds.

And, the story loses all of its punch.

It becomes nothing.

Wonderful characterization fails to make up for the fact that Here Lies Arthur takes the magic from the story which, in the end, turns out to be the whole point of the legend.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Here Lies Arthur.

Reviewed on January 13, 2009.