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A review of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook by Bob Stahl and Elisha Goldstein

As the title suggests, this is a very practical and application oriented book. It comes with an MP3 CD with guided meditations that follow the written ones in the book. These meditations are softly and clearly spoken by the Stahl, and are designed to address a range of situations. They are deeply relaxing and can, in particular, help with high-stress situations where the mind won’t stop racing.

A review of Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott

We all of us choose what we do with our lives from a finite set of alternatives; and for Theo, in his darkest moments at any rate, love is not on the menu: ‘If I could love I would have loved by now.’ Happy Baby is about a person for whom love, as a possibility, has been taken away. It isn’t any kind of answer, it cannot be.

A review of The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C Morais

Morais keeps the plot both basic—a young man’s journey to become a top French chef—and elegant, as the book’s three main locations (Mumbai, London, and Paris) add a touch of the exotic. Hassan tells us about himself more through his experiences in the kitchen than anywhere else. He lives, he loves, he mourns the losses of his parents and mentors, but his greatest love is his kitchen.

A review of Mastering Positional Chess by Daniel Naroditsky

We are given a good number of mainly modern games and positions, rather than the usual tired examples (or classics as they are sometimes called), with a fair number of them Daniel’s own. As you might imagine, Naroditsky’s annotations are especially candid and lucid when he comes to commentate on his own games.

A review of Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Though Millay plays to the gallery a bit, mindful that she has a bit of a reputation to keep up (Byron did it too), she is a poet of substance. This fine, generous selection of her poetry includes also Aria da Capo, a one-act verse drama about xenophobia and the suspicion of the stranger.

A review of Phoebe Nash, Girl Warrior by Justin D’Ath

Its fast pace and relatively simple vocabulary makes it perfect for struggling readers, but it’s also a pleasurable and powerful tale for good readers of all ages, coupling action with deep characterisation and enough plot complexities to keep readers reading until the end.

A review of The End of the Circle by Walter Cummins

These are bitter stories. All of the men, women, and children of the stories are imprisoned by circumstances. Redemption for the reader is in Cummins’s pitiless depiction of his doomed characters. Truth is what matters and he makes truth transcendent.