#books | The Garbage Sifter by Barry Jones

This is the first book by Barry Jones that I have read. The book combines politics, drugs, sex, murder, and an innocent Argentinian widow who is supporting her family by dumpster diving. The woman comes across a partially shredded CIA document while sifting through trash and decides to use to her advantage to better her family's well being.

The story combines government agencies from Argentina and the United States, and drug cartels out of Mexico. This can be really confusing normally, but the author is nice enough to break the book up into three parts and provide lists of the key characters for each. This makes the book read like a book of short stories almost, told from the different perspectives of the key players, but all of the stories tie back into the bigger picture and make that bigger picture easy to follow. The book is fast paced and an easy read. I personally liked that none of the sex or violence in the story was overly graphic either. I really liked this book and will definitely be picking up more from this author.

You can pick up The Garbage Sifter for yourself here

note: I was sent this book for free in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Book Review | Snacktastic!

Cooking Light Snacktastic!: 150-Calorie Snacks That Keep You Satisfied by Editors of Cooking Light

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I like the variety in this book! There are recipes for dips, spreads, smoothies, snack mixes, spiced nuts, cookies, granola, you name it. A few of the recipes are repeats from other Cooking Light cookbooks that I own, I really don't mind though because it's just convenient to have all of these snack recipes together in one book instead of flipping back and forth between the other cookbooks. You will need a food processor for some recipes, but other than that no special equipment is needed for these snacks.

Most of the recipes are pretty simple and use ingredients that you probably already have on hand.

Nutritional information for macro-nutrients is listed with each recipe, nice for anyone counting calories or doing Weight Watchers, etc.



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Book Review | The Empathy Exams

The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


"I want to show off my knowledge of something.Anything."

That one sentence pretty much sums up the whole book. Every essay felt like an attempt to show off how smart she is. She's much better at writing about feelings than actually feeling them. Which would have been fine if her thoughts weren't so vague and scattered. She uses a lot of words in such a circular way that by the time you've finished the 218 pages you've read only a tiny bit of actual information on a lot of different subjects.

Most essays have a pretty easy to figure out formula:

1. Pick a hot button issue/little known fact to grab the readers attention.

2. Use a lot of flowery language(to sound super smart) or an excess of profanity(to make sure everyone knows she's also edgy and cool)in a circular way so that by the end of the essay the reader forgets what the topic of the essay even was.

3. Uses the circular language as a segue into a story about herself that only vaguely relates to the original topic of the essay.

She goes out of her way to tell the reader personal information about herself(i.e. getting an abortion, having an eating disorder, addiction, cutting, promiscuity...) but stops at that. No additional information, no history, just here's my problem. It's like she's fishing for empathy for herself from the reader. Which, I wouldn't have minded at all if she had given some insight into why she had those behaviors. It's hard to feel empathy about a situation when you have NO idea why it's taking place. Was she abused, bullied, neglected? Or is she experiencing some sort of unprovoked psychotic break that requires medication to control her self-harming behaviors? I don't know.

When you get to the end of the book it all just feels like a major let down. No insight into empathy, humanity, her...anything.

There were so many missed opportunities within the subjects of each essay to have really meaningful conversations about empathy that the book became just plain aggravating to read.



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Book Review | The Invention of Wings

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book was just okay to me. I think given the political climate during the time period this story was written in, both for slavery and women's rights issues, and the fact that it's based on a REAL person's life...who was a woman...and owned a slave...that was a woman...it just fell short.

Every essay just kind of skimmed the surface of emotions that the characters would have been feeling in the situations they were dealing with. It actually took me months to finish this book because there wasn't anything really gripping my attention or making me feel the need to keep reading.

It was alright but could have been so much better.



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