Review: From Chicken Feet To Crystal Baths by Ian Mote
If Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island is a love letter to the United Kingdom, then Ian Mote’s From Chicken Feet To Crystal Baths is a love letter to China. Most Westerners know little about China, and what we think we know is often wrong or at least badly incomplete. Here, Mote is our friendly, ever cheerful, indefatigable tour guide to the Middle Kingdom.
Besides being just a delightful romp, this book gives readers something travel books rarely do: a sense of the place from the POV of both tourist and resident. Mote takes us to Tiananmen Square and […]
The delightful, whimsical cover of this book and tongue-in-cheek cover quote (“I am almost certainly going to end up in Hell”) alerts you right away to the fact that you are getting more—far more—than another of the currently popular anti-religion screeds. Boomsliter has tremendous respect, bordering on hero worship, for Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, and Sam Harris. But he wisely takes a slightly different tack in this book. Boomsliter, you see, has a sense of humor (in this he owes more to Christopher Hitchens than the triumvirate mentioned above, although Boomsliter’s wit is just a tad less acerbic than Hitchens’). […]
Living Fulfilled: The Infectious Joy of Serving Others is Lisa Thomas-McMillan’s inspirational memoir about helping the plight of America’s hungry that is equal parts harrowing and uplifting. With a decidedly spiritual message, she tells of her life growing up impoverished in Alabama, settling down in Los Angeles, then traveling back to her hometown to help the plight of the poor. She is also a fierce advocate against the death penalty.
Kyle Garlett is a four-time cancer survivor, and a survivor of the many illnesses caused by the cancer treatments he has taken off and on since his first cancer appeared when he was a junior in high school. Lessons From The Edge of Life, however, is not a cancer memoir. (I understand that he has written a story of his cancer experience, and though I have not read it, if it is anything like this book, it is a well-written and captivating read.) This book, though, is so much more than that. Here Garlett’s cancer is used only as […]
This memoir of a childhood and young-adult life spent advancing inexorably toward disaster was written from federal prison. Jamila Davis is currently serving a 151-month sentence for bank fraud. This memoir serves as both cautionary tale (for young people as well as their parents) and sociological profile. The cautionary tale is powerful, the sociological profile perplexing.
Lucid Dreams and the Holy Spirit by Maria Isabel Pita is a fascinating account of one woman’s experiences with lucid dreaming over many years. Describing over 50 dreams, Pita explores the imagery of each dream and the ramifications for her life both personally and spiritually.