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Peter Schiff accurately predicted the 2008 meltdown of the mortgage market and financial sector. Before it all hit the fan, though, he was called a doomsayer and was frequently laughed at on the mainstream financial talk shows. But he turned out to be right. The real problem, Schiff argues in this book, is that what happened in 2008 was not actually “The Crash,” but was simply the prelude to it. The dot-com bubble popped at the turn of the century; the housing bubble popped in 2008; Schiff shows persuasively that we are now in what he calls the government bubble. The “recoveries” from each of the first two bubbles were not actually true, healthy corrections in the market; instead, the Federal Reserve used easy money policies to paper over the real issues and delay (and ultimately prolong) the inevitable pain.

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Summary: A 16 year old English girl that grew up in the free society of Barbados moves to a closely controlled community of Puritans in Connecticut in 1687.

Yet once again, I thought I had read a book, and when I go to read it again, realize I had not.  This season of not buying new books has been pushing me to my library for audiobooks.   I have tons of kindle books in my library that I need to get around to reading.  But I do not have a lot of audiobooks that I have not read, especially fiction audiobooks.  So I am working through my library wishlist.

The Witch of Blackbird pond was published in 1958 and was the first of two Newberry Awards that Elizabeth George Speare won (The other was for The Bronze Bow).  Only 5 authors have received 2 Newberry Awards and no author has received more than two.  When I was growing up I read a lot of historical fiction in my middle grade years.  And since then I have read a lot more history.  I am fairly familiar with the time period.  Jonathan Edwards (although from Massachusetts) was born a few years after this book was set.

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Summary: A great reminder of what is gained and lost by stability, and what happens when we are willing to find out.

There is a great quote by CS Lewis from God in the Dock about the importance of reading old books.  He says that it is not because they are inherently better because they are old, but because they have different biases and blind spots and we get things out of them that we cannot out of modern books because those books can speak to us in ways that modern books cannot.  This book reminds me that this is generationally true as well.

I have read a lot of 20 something memoirs.  Donald Miller, Shauna Niequist, Anne Marie Miller and the many others.  There is something particularly bold (and foolish) about writing a memoir when you are only about 20 or 30 percent through your life.  There is so much more to learn and understand and experience that it is just not possible to have learned, understood or experienced when you are still in your 20s.

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Summary: A Very Short Introduction to the Academic field of African History, not actual history itself.

Oxford Press’ Very Short Introduction series continues to interest and somewhat discourage me.

It is interesting because the idea of getting a short introduction to a particular subject in about 150 or so pages by someone that is well known in the field is a great idea.

The problem is that about half of the books I have read from the series just do not live up to the promise.  A Very Short Introduction to African History has the same basic problems as A Very Short Introduction to the Bible.  It is a lot about the academic practice of African History, the problems of doing history with predominantly non-literate cultures, in a geography that tends to short term structures, that has been very altered by climate change over the past 10,000 years and with a subject as diverse as an entire continent that is separated by language, culture, racial characteristics and that contains a huge diaspora.

All of those academic concerns really are interesting, but they do not tell me much about actual African History.  And I think most people that pick up the book, probably are interested more in the actual African History than the problems of the academic study of African History.

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Summary: A young adult retelling of Beauty and the Beast.  Although it feels more like a retelling of the Disney movie than the original story.

YA sync is a program that matches an old book to a thematically similar new book and gives both audiobooks away during the summer.  It is a great program to introduce teens to both new and old books that they might not find another way.  (The 2014 summer schedule has been released and it includes Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.)

I picked up Beastly two or three years ago through YA Sync but until now had not listened it.  Beastly is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story.  I read the original short story a while ago.  So I am familiar with both the Disney and original story and this feels more like the Disney than the original (although Disney is pretty true to the original.)

Kyle is a spoiled, rich 16 year old.  His father is a network news anchor that has no time for Kyle.  His mother ran off years ago.  After being mean to a girl at school (asking her to the dance and then publicly standing her up at the entrance to the dance) he is cursed and turned into a beast.  He has two years to get someone to love him and kiss him or else the curse will become permanent.

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Reposting this 2012 review because the Kindle and Audible Audiobooks are free for the month of March as part of a promotion of whispersync. See the bottom of the review for details.

Summary: Sherlock Holmes solves a murder.

After reading the Picture of Dorian Gray, I decided to move onto The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Like so many classics, I am familiar with Sherlock Holmes, but I have not actually read more than one or two short stories.  This is a full book, about the same length as Dorian Gray and as I found out when looking into Dorian Gray, they were both commissioned at the same dinner meeting with an editor of a monthly literary journal.

Both Wilde and Doyle submitted stories and both were eventually published as full length book in 1890.

The Sign of Four opens with Holmes doing drugs (cocaine in this case, but it is clear from the story that Homes also was doing heroin).  Holmes claimed to a very concerned Watson, it was his only option when there were no cases.

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