Free-For-All Newsletter #23

Sup, nerds!

Have you ever looked back on your life and wondered where the hell has all the time gone?

This week's Thoughtfully Stupid™ blog post is about my new theory as to why this happens.

You can read it here.

In case you missed the meeting last night, here's a list of some of the books that we discussed.

Enjoy! :)

Fiction:
Outlander

The Outlander books are a series of historical fantasy novels that focuses on 20th-century British nurse Claire Randall, who time travels to 18th-century Scotland and finds adventure and romance with the dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser.

Just One Damned Thing After Another

Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do 'time-travel' — they 'investigate major historical events in contemporary time'. Maintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power — especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet.

The Last Honest Seamstress

SHE NEEDS A HUSBAND... After too many business setbacks and unwanted marriage proposals, beautiful and ambitious Fayth Sheridan, a seamstress, desperately needs to find a husband of convenience. Now if she can only convince handsome sea captain Con O'Neill, the one man in Seattle who's shown no interest in her, that he's the one...

What She Left Behind

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone’s mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother’s apparent insanity, Izzy, now seventeen, refuses to visit her in prison. But her new foster parents, employees at a local museum, have enlisted Izzy’s help in cataloging items at a long-shuttered state asylum. There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.

The Book of V.

This kaleidoscopic novel intertwines the lives of a Brooklyn mother in 2016, a senator’s wife in 1970s Washington, D.C., and the Bible’s Queen Esther, whose stories of sex, power, and desire overlap and ultimately converge — showing how women’s roles have and have not changed over thousands of years.

Sense and Sensibility

When Marianne Dashwood falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behavior leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile, Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

Radical Payment

Angelina Gear wants serious revenge for past crimes against her family’s country. Using her talents, she creates a devastating weapon, embeds it into your daily life, and begins to randomly kill Americans. Quietly and quickly, the plots unfold before your eyes, baffling some of the nation’s best detectives and crime fighters.

Ask Again, Yes

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses — the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne — sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

Threat Vector

For Jack Ryan, Jr., and his comrades at the covert organization known as The Campus, the fight against America’s enemies is never over. But the danger has just hit home in a way they never expected… The Campus has been discovered. And whoever knows they exist knows they can be destroyed. Meanwhile, President Jack Ryan has been swept back into the Oval Office — and his wisdom and courage are needed more desperately than ever.

Non-Fiction:
Queens of the Crusades

This recreation of the action-packed century that saw the murder of Thomas Becket and the signing of the Magna Carta covers the lives and reigns of the first five Plantagenet queens, who ruled England and France throughout the bloody 1200s, a particularly dramatic and violent period of European history. Wars, crusades, treachery, murder, passion, and the interplay between rival monarchs of Britain and France provide a surprising picture of these five ambitious women and their struggle for power.

The Violet Shyness of Their Eyes

The Violet Shyness of Their Eyes is a moving account of a Western woman’s transformative sojourn in Nepal. Barbara Scot demonstrates insight into cultural differences while confronting the complex issues of development work and the status of women in Nepal. In vivid descriptions of mountain climbs, moving stories of the Nepalis, and the retelling of her personal memories, Scot challenges readers with women’s global struggles while nurturing a deep empathy and respect for the Nepali people.

Escape from Babel

While "psychotherapy" has been busily dividing into hundreds of different models, research shows that it doesn't really matter which approach you use, which guru you follow, or which fancy techniques you adopt. Yet there are some factors, across models, that do matter. The authors want readers to shake their allegiance to masters and models and focus on these basics, from which emerges a unifying language for psychotherapy practice.

Turning Pro

The follow up to the War of Art. In the War of Art, Pressfield identifies the enemy to living an authentic life – resistance. In Turning Pro, Pressfield teaches you how to defeat it.

That's all, folks!

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Thanks! :)

Trace Brady

921 N Woodbridge Drive
Bloomington, IN, 47408
United States


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