Category Archives: Books

The Fault in Our Stars

Posted on June 30, 2014 by hessd

When you are dying of cancer, the question of what, really, is the point of living, becomes pressing.  John Green has written a really good book about that dilemma.  It is called The Fault in Our Stars.[1]  Hazel Grace Lancaster, … Continue reading →

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Are the people of Feathertown, Tennessee, Idiotēs?

Posted on June 1, 2014 by hessd

I think so.  I am going to offer some information about Feathertown from Barbara Kingsolver, who invented it and described it in her marvelous novel, Flight Behavior.  She has set a major dilemma in Feathertown: what to do about the … Continue reading →

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In a Larger Sense, We Cannot …Hallow This Ground

Posted on July 2, 2013 by hessd

The battle of Gettysburg began on July 1, 1863: 150 years ago today.  Three days of unparalleled carnage followed.  Recent studies conclude that the Union army and the Confederate army each lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 23,000 soldiers in those … Continue reading →

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Walter Possum’s Apprenticeship

Posted on August 20, 2012 by hessd

If our fathers are around, we learn from them.  That’s pretty much how it goes.  We learn good things and bad things.  We learn character and settled habits and gestures and verbal tics the father himself doesn’t even know about. … Continue reading →

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Quiet: Some Reflections by an Introvert

Posted on May 24, 2012 by hessd

This post will eventually be about introversion.  Specifically, it will be about a marvelous book about introversion:  Quiet, by Susan Cain.  It has a subtitle too—The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking—but the subtitle doesn’t represent … Continue reading →

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moneyball

Posted on October 3, 2011 by hessd

It is hard to give up the old ways.  I am not going to do it casually.  You will have to give me a really good reason to change my ways and then I probably still won’t do it.  I … Continue reading →

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Reading Year (RY) 2012

Posted on September 9, 2011 by hessd

You can have conflicting short-term and long-term goals, right?  I want to lose weight over the longer term, but I want that milkshake RIGHT NOW!  With that in mind, the sentiment I want to begin with today might not be so … Continue reading →

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The Touch of a Really Good Author

Posted on August 18, 2011 by hessd

Some part of the genius of Ursula Le Guin is that she hides the crucial evidence in plain sight. In her Tales From EarthSea, Le Guin gives us a little girl named Dragonfly. She first appears in a subordinate clause … Continue reading →

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