The Gift of Music

In good times and bad, music heals.  Another healing salve is the ability to approach life more playfully.  Enter a book that teaches both—music and general lightheartedness.  How to Play the Harmonica and other Life Lessons by Sam Barry is a series of 17 lessons about playing the harmonica, and, well, just playing.
Peppered throughout you’ll [...]

Read Full Post »

From the Good Books Hidden Camera

Our Blackberry cam ninja-at-large, Laina, is on ongoing assignment all over the Bay Area and beyond to discover what people are reading. Disguised as a commuter, she sneaks into public places such as BART and while seemingly checking work email, the shutter sound effect drowned by BART’s shrieks of metal against metal, snaps photos of book covers held by [...]

Read Full Post »

Joe Jonas on THE ALCHEMIST

According to Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers (in Time Out New York), “The Alchemist” is a good book anytime…
The Alchemist is a story about the endless search of finding out who you truly are. On the road for most of our lives, sometimes it’s difficult to find something to grasp on to, to define [...]

Read Full Post »

Gwyneth Paltrow gets CLEAN

Remember our post on the book CLEAN (Clean. It Does a Body Good)?  Well it ends up we’re not the only ones shouting about the benefits of CLEAN.  In the latest issue of GOOP Gwyneth Paltrow states:
I feel pure and happy and much lighter (I dropped the extra pounds that I had gained during a [...]

Read Full Post »

Sandra Boynton makes it better…

I remember when GE sold the NBC radio station in San Francisco where I was morning news anchor, and we all lost our jobs.  I had been completely tied to my business card, believing that’s who I was…and that’s ALL I was.
Then I found a book at the store.
It was in [...]

Read Full Post »

Reconnect with your Basic Instincts

Evolutionary psychologists have discovered stunning new lessons about the power of instincts and their capacity to transform lives from merely surviving to actually thriving in every area of life. Unfortunately, in these modern times, most of us are disconnected from our basic instincts and all too often cautiously rely on [...]

Read Full Post »

A Bad Blog in Bad Times

Good Books in Bad Times apologizes.  We’ve been a bad blog in bad times for the past month.  We guess all this talk about bad times simply got us down.  We retreated, as so many of us are prone to do when the going gets tough.  We left you hanging. We pledge to *try* not [...]

Read Full Post »

Human Nature At Its Best

When my black sheep cousin called me out of the blue to help save his life, after an estrangement of nearly two decades, my first (unspoken) impulse was to tell him to stuff it.  Why would I want to get back involved with a character who had proven himself unreliable, to say the least?  He [...]

Read Full Post »