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Joan Bauk

Atomic Habits: An Easy Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

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Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones  by James Clear
Format:  Book, ebook, Digital Audiobook, Book on CD
Who it’s for:  Adults

In Atomic Habits, James Clear teaches his readers how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master a system of reaching your goals by changing the way you think about your progress.  If you focus each day on working just 1% toward reaching your goal, and you repeat that process each day, you are cumulatively closer to reaching your goal as opposed to being farther from it.

Clear encourages his readers to follow his four laws of creating a good habit.  They are: Make it Obvious, Make it Attractive, Make it Easy and Make it Satisfying.  Once good habits are formed, these come together to create a system for a person, that will allow him or her to obtain their goals successfully.

I listened to this book in digital audiobook form.  The book is narrated by the author and includes true stories of the accomplishments of athletes, artists, entertainers and businesspeople which emphasize the successes of Clear’s way of re-thinking habit changing behavior.  I thought that Clear’s “system” approach whereby a person aims to create good habits in order to stay motivated and on track, was a new way of thinking about attaining our goals. This is a very interesting book.

Find it in the catalog

 

 

Ultimate Pound Cakes Classic Recipe Collection

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Ultimate Pound Cakes Classic Recipe Collection       by Phyllis Hoffman Depiano
Format: Book
Who it’s for:  Adults

The old saying “Never judge a book by its cover” is the exception with this book.  When I came across Ultimate Pound Cakes, which features a delicious looking pound cake on the cover, I had to check it out for myself.  I have not been disappointed.  I was lucky enough to have checked this book out before the corona virus caused the library to temporarily shut down.  Stuck at home for the past several weeks, I have had the time to try two of the recipes featured.

The author begins her book with the history of the pound cake.  Did you know the pound cake dates back to the 18th century?  The cake’s name is derived from the fact that it is created using a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and a pound of eggs.  The intent was to make a cake that would be large enough to feed more than one family.  At that time in history baking ingredients were hard to come by, as some of us have found to be true during the recent pandemic.

Ultimate Pound Cakes is divided into three sections based on the type of pan used for the recipe.  There are recipes for tube pans, bundt pans, loaf pans and mini bundt pans.  Although the two cakes that I made called for a tube pan, I made them both in a bundt pan, which is all that I had available to me.  I was a bit limited by ingredients as well, so I had to choose recipes whose ingredients I already had in my pantry.  I made Grandma’s Favorite Pound Cake and Chocolate Pound Cake.  They were both scrumptious and very easy to make.  In fact, all of the recipes looked like they would be easy to make.

There are all kinds of other pound cake recipes in the book, and a corresponding picture for each one as well.  Some of the cakes made my mouth water just looking at their pictures. There is a Cream Cheese-Filled Red Velvet Pound Cake, a Peanut Butter and Honey Pound Cake, a Vanilla Bean Pound Cake with Honey-Orange Drizzle, a Fresh Peach Pound Cake and a Strawberry Shortcake Pound Cake just to name a few.

Add this book to your Library Wishlist.  You will not be disappointed.  Find it in our catalog.

I am always interested in learning about the authors of books that I love, just to see where they get their inspiration.  If you are interested, you can take a look at Phyllis Hoffman DePiano’s website Ribbon In My Journal, where several of the author’s recipes are listed for free.

The Wright Brothers

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The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Format: Eaudiobook
Who it’s for: Adults

If you think that you already know everything there is to know about the Wright Brothers and their contributions to the Age of Flight, you should read The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. McCullough does an excellent job of sharing with the world, not only the brothers’ first attempts at flying at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, but also the years of research, correspondence and events leading up to their first sustained flight on December 17, 1903.

David McCullough gives a detailed account of the brothers’ young lives in Dayton, Ohio, their strong family background and values, their education, the accident that kept Wilbur from attending college, and their bicycle shop where they raised the money to allow them pursue their dream of flying. McCullough describes life on the Outer Banks during the late 19th century (it was fairly treacherous at times) and what Wilbur and Orville had to go through just to travel there.

What is intriguing about this book is the amount of research the author presents about the lack of interest that the U.S. Government had in their work until the Wright brothers demonstrated the success of their flying invention in France. McCullough also brings to light the stories of the other people who were trying to create flying machines during that period of our history and thus competing with the brothers for notoriety and patent ownership.  By going through family scrapbooks, notebooks, correspondence, and diaries, McCullough has created in his book a living picture of what the lives of the Wright brothers was really like.

Take some time to read this book, or listen to it in Eaudiobook or audiobook CD form. You will learn much more about the lives of the Wright family, their work, and their days on the sandy dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.

Find it in the catalog

The Dutch House

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The Dutch House
By: Ann Patchett
Who It’s For:  Adults

Narrated by Tom Hanks

The Dutch house is a lavish estate in the suburbs, just outside of Philadelphia.  Just after World War II, Cyril Conroy purchases the home for his wife and daughter.  Cyril has finally made it as a successful real estate investor and with the purchase of the home, Cyril pulls his family out of poverty into a lush new existence of opulence.

As told from the perspective of Danny, the youngest of Cyril’s two children, the purchase of the Dutch house begins the family’s undoing.  Danny’s mother, who lives her life helping the downtrodden, cannot rationalize this new existence.  She has a nervous breakdown, and leaves her husband, her children and the Dutch house behind.

Danny, his sister Maeve, and their father are left behind to pick up the pieces.  They live a peaceful life at the Dutch house, until Cyril remarries a woman with two young daughters.  In a domino effect, life as they knew it falls apart.

In the audio version of this book, Tom Hanks does a wonderful job of portraying Danny and the events that take place over the course of five decades.  Danny’s loss of his mother, his reaction to his stepmother, his relationship with his sister, and their extraordinary attraction to the Dutch house are all woven together into a powerfully emotional story.  For me the story was even more moving as I listened to it through the inflections, feelings and emotions of Tom Hank’s voice.  Find it on hoopla digital.

 

The Late Show

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The Late Show by Michael Connelly
Overdrive Audiobook
Narrated by Katherine Moennig
Who it’s for:  Adults

Fans of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch Mysteries, will love this book.  The Late Show is the first in Connelly’s new series called the Renee Ballard Novels.

After filing a sexual harassment complaint against her supervisor, LAPD Detective Renee Ballard has been reassigned to the night shift.  Protocol requires her to give her cases to the day shift each morning.  But two new cases, the death of a young woman in a nightclub and the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in parking lot, have her so intrigued she refuses to pass them on.

While secretly searching for justice for these two victims, against her partner’s wishes and department orders, Renee Ballard finds her courage, determination, and intuition tested.  Her career and her life are on the line.  As fear mounts and the cases become more intriguing, Harry Bosch, who never seems too far removed from the most notorious cases of the LAPD, steps in to assist.
Find it on Overdrive

What the Eyes Don’t See A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City

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What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City
By Mona Hanna-Attisha
Who it’s for:  Adults

In 2014, the water source for residents living in the city of Flint, Michigan was switched from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River, which was considered less costly.  Residents were immediately concerned that the water smelled and tasted bad, and looked dirty, but public officials continued to say that the water was fine.  In August of 2015, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and professor at Hurley Medical Center in Flint was informed by a friend that the residents’ concerns were well founded.  Not only was the water dirty, it also contained very high levels of lead.  Concerned about her young Flint patients, Dr.  Mona (as she likes to be called) immediately sought out test data which would reveal whether high levels of lead were actually present in the blood tests of these children.

In What the Eyes Don’t See, Dr. Mona gives her own account of the crisis.  Armed with data that confirmed high levels of lead were present in the blood of Flint children, Dr. Mona stopped at nothing to get local government to switch the water source and save Flint’s children from the devastating, life-long effects of lead poisoning.  She shares stories of her heritage, her belief in activism, her work at Hurley Medical Center, and the small team of supporters who helped her initiate this change.       Find it in our catalog.

What the Eyes Don’t See has been chosen as the 2019 One Maryland One Book.  Take some time to read this gripping story as it is shared through discussion and programming throughout the state of Maryland this fall.  Register to join us at the Leonardtown Library for the Director’s Book Club on Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 12:15 p.m..  St. Mary’s County Library Director, Michael Blackwell, will host a book discussion of this book.