At Amazon:
All Things Wise and Wonderful (All Creatures Great and Small Book 3), by James Herriot, $2.99
(add Audible narration for $12.99)
3,283 ratings
5-star: 87%
4-star: 10%
3-star: 1%
Only a couple of years after settling into his new home in northern England, James Herriot is called to war. In this series of poignant and humorous episodes, the great veterinarian shares his experiences training with the Royal Air Force, pining for a pregnant wife, and checking in on the people back home who made his practice so fascinating. As the young men of Yorkshire are sent into battle and farmers consider the broader world they’re a part of, Herriot reflects on the lives — human and animal alike — that make his home worth fighting for.
https://www.amazon.com/Things-Wonderful-Creatures-Great-Small-ebook/dp/B0060QM0G0
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee, $1.99
(add Audible narration for $7.49)
502 ratings
5-star: 69%
4-star: 22%
3-star: 5%
What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper that’s ever come into his home? What compulsions drive a person to sacrifice her marriage or career for an accumulation of seemingly useless things? Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago. They didn’t expect that they would end up treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls from the families of hoarders. Their vivid case studies (reminiscent of Oliver Sacks) in Stuff show how you can identify a hoarder—piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails, vast piles of paper that the hoarders “churn” but never discard, even collections of animals and garbage—and illuminate the pull that possessions exert over all of us. Whether we’re savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, very few of us are in fact free of the impulses that drive hoarders to extremes.
https://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Compulsive-Hoarding-Meaning-Things-ebook/dp/B003JAO0QI
The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari, by Paul Theroux, $1.99
500 ratings
5-star: 48%
4-star: 31%
3-star: 16%
Paul Theroux’s best-selling Dark Star Safari chronicled his epic overland voyage from Cairo to Cape Town, providing an insider’s look at modern Africa. Now, with The Last Train to Zona Verde, he returns to discover how both he and Africa have changed in the ensuing years. Traveling alone, Theroux sets out from Cape Town, going north through South Africa, Namibia, then into Angola, encountering a world increasingly removed from tourists’ itineraries and the hopes of postcolonial independence movements.
After covering nearly 2,500 arduous miles, Theroux cuts short his journey, a decision he chronicles with unsparing honesty in a chapter titled “What Am I Doing Here?”
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Train-Zona-Verde-Ultimate-ebook/dp/B008P94QDA
Badass Affirmations: The Wit and Wisdom of Wild Women, by Becca Anderson, $1.99
5,027 ratings
5-star: 78%
4-star: 12%
3-star: 6%
We all need reminders. You don’t leap out of bed knowing you are amazing and about to have an incredible day. All of us have a lot of demands, pressures, to-dos and responsibilities. We find ourselves rushing around, working hard to please others. Often we find ourselves at the back of our own bus, having made everyone else happy but our own damn self. Then you go and beat yourself up about it. Let’s stop that, shall we?
In Badass Affirmations, positive living and affirmation queen Becca Anderson reminds you that you are pretty darn great. She will help you heal scars from bad childhoods and relationships and stop the self-defeating scripts that loop through your unconscious brain. Even nice moms and dads perpetrate parenting errors that leave marks on our souls. But, we can overcome with the right mix of badass affirmations. Every day and in every way, you can learn the art of self-affirmation.
Read Badass Affirmations and:
Learn the habit of affirming yourself daily
Experience a life filled with love, joy, fulfillment and satisfaction
Take control of your destiny
Strengthen your self-esteem
https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Affirmations-Wisdom-Wild-Women-ebook/dp/B079FTPPGQ
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914 – 1918, by Louis Barthas, $1.99
342 ratings
5-star: 80%
4-star: 11%
3-star: 5%
Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceaseless combat, wherever the French army fought its fiercest battles: Artois, Flanders, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, the Argonne.
First published in France in 1978, this excellent new translation brings Barthas’ wartime writings to English-language readers for the first time. His notebooks and letters represent the quintessential memoir of a “poilu,” or “hairy one,” as the untidy, unshaven French infantryman of the fighting trenches was familiarly known. Upon Barthas’ return home in 1919, he painstakingly transcribed his day-to-day writings into nineteen notebooks, preserving not only his own story but also the larger story of the unnumbered soldiers who never returned. Recounting bloody battles and endless exhaustion, the deaths of comrades, the infuriating incompetence and tyranny of his own officers, Barthas also describes spontaneous acts of camaraderie between French poilus and their German foes in trenches just a few paces apart. An eloquent witness and keen observer, Barthas takes his readers directly into the heart of the Great War.
https://www.amazon.com/Poilu-Notebooks-Corporal-Barrelmaker-1914-1918-ebook/dp/B00IPJGW82/
Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, by Melanie Rehak, $2.99
(add Audible narration for $7.49)
155 ratings
5-star: 51%
4-star: 29%
3-star: 9%
The plucky “titian-haired” sleuth solved her first mystery in 1930—and eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women’s libbers) to enter the pantheon of American culture. As beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers, Nancy Drew has both inspired and reflected the changes in her readers’ lives.
The brainchild of children’s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy was brought to life by two women: Mildred Wirt Benson, a pioneering journalist from Iowa, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a well-bred wife and mother who took over her father’s business empire as CEO. In this century-spanning story, the author traces their roles — and Nancy’s — in forging the modern American woman.
https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Sleuth-Nancy-Women-Created-ebook/dp/B007PRF0LU
Free books recently released by Project Gutenberg ( gutenberg.org ):
Hawaiian Historical Legends, by W. D. Westervelt
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66357
A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth; Mourt's Relation, by Dwight B. Heath
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66359
Forest Trees and Forest Scenery, by G. Frederick Schwarz
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66356
Rasputin and the Russian Revolution by Princess Catherine Radziwill
Dr. Drew interviewed Scott Adams recently, and Scott Adams mentioned the absurdity that Republicans went to overthrow the government on Jan 6, but they neglected to bring their guns. On the first or second anniversary of the event, that alleged oversight made the narrative appear absurd to me, so I made a "video" that was supposed to be audio from January 6, captured on a video camera from which the lens cap had not been removed. I'm posting it again just because.
While I was waiting on hold to talk with a human at the IRS, I decided to put some food out for the dogs. I set the full bag of dog food on a chair, and walked away to get the bowls. When I turned around I saw the bag slowly tipping over, spilling much of its contents onto the floor. Fortunately I had help cleaning it up.
The main task for today is to begin revising McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader. It may take a couple of weeks, possibly more. I still have to work at Publix, and next week I start a new job in the memory care unit of a rehab/nursing home facility, and I'll also be working at Publix at least one night.
After that I'll take a look at the double-slit experiment, and see if there is an interpretation that is consistent with my theory of wave physics.
Also, I came across the attached meme, which I had created two or three years (or so) ago. I thought I'd include it because I still like it.
I recently proposed a theory of matter and energy called Wave Physics. In this theory, the only things in the universe are energy and the universal membrane, which is the medium through which all energy is transfered and stored.
Tonight I realized that according to this theory, everyone and everything in the universe are connected to each other at all times. Things that would be impossible according to the standard model of particle physics, are very possible in the universe of wave physics. Psychic transmissions and the power of prayer are physically possible and make sense if the universe works in any way like the theory I proposed.
If you've ever heard the phone ring and felt sure who it was before answering it, and were proven correct, this makes sense in wave physics, but not with particle physics. If you've ever looked intently at someone, and had that person quickly turn and look directly at you (I have), that phenomenon makes sense if all of us are parts of the same vast, ...
I was only scheduled to work three days this week, so I decided to work on a theory I'd been playing around with for fun over the last few years. I'd never been a big fan of the standard model of particle physics, so a few years ago, just for fun, I thought about exploring some alternate ideas, with zero training and zero experiments.
This week I wrapped up a few loose ends, and posted it to a community I created called Wave Physics. Originally I had called it Alternative Physics, but I changed my mind, so the link still has alternativephysics in it, but the community name is Wave Physics. I'd love for people to pay $5.00 a month to tell me how wrong I am.
https://alternativephysics.locals.com/
I also posted it on my personal website:
