Author Archives: polloplayer

About polloplayer

Empty nester searching for meaning of life through the occasional chicken epiphany.

2018 Reading Re-cap: The Best of the Rest, Part I

Posted on February 16, 2019

“Acquiring even simple pieces of information physically alters the structure of our neurons”   writes John Medina in Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (264 pages, paperback, published 2009) Maybe this is why I … Continue reading →

Posted in Books and Reading, Life, Music/Art/Literature/Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

He Said, She Said: Memoirs and Biographies, Part II

Posted on February 9, 2019

Alas, I will never travel to most of the nooks and crannies of the world I’d like to see, but sometimes I’m tempted to buy one of those travel maps and put pins in it for the places I’ve gone … Continue reading →

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He Said, she Said: Memoirs and Biographies, Part I

Posted on February 2, 2019

“Hell is other people” said Sartre. Maybe so. But reading about them is an absolutely delicious pastime. I got up close and personal with some extraordinary folks via an even dozen biographies and memoirs in 2018. Here’s half of them: … Continue reading →

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Friends don’t make friends read Faust (and other 2018 reading mishaps)

Posted on January 26, 2019

There we were, minding our own reading business, when out of the blue, our couples book club friend announced our next assignment: Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Yes, both volumes, I and II. (Insert Munch scream emoticon here) I … Continue reading →

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2018 Reading Recap: books that made my heart beat faster.

Posted on January 19, 2019

I can be made perfectly happy by long books in which almost nothing happens. In general, the longer and the nothinger, the better. After all, there’s quite enough drama in the chicken yard to satisfy my need for suspense. But … Continue reading →

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A different kind of travel: the 2018 book list.

Posted on January 12, 2019

Let’s put a bookmark in the river cruise for a bit – time to do the annual reading retrospective. To make it just a bit less jarring, we’ll start with four books from the 2018 reading list that echoed places we … Continue reading →

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Engelhartszell.

Posted on January 5, 2019

It wasn’t on our bucket list, or on any list at all. Yet looking back on our trip, I often revisit that Sunday morning in Engelhartszell as a favorite moment of our river cruise. Here we were, standing with a … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments