Finished This Week

 

What Am I Reading?

I heard about this one because I saw someone’s retweet of the author’s post on Twitter.  She had me at the city of Oakland being a sentient magical being that needed to be protected.

“Hephzibah Euphrasia Joséphine d’Albret hates her name. She hates the life she comes from, the fourth daughter of a legendary family—and, perilously, the one with negligible magical potential. And that suits her fine. Fleeing the Authority allows her to choose her own path: software engineer and startup founder. Finally, Zizi’s found a life she loves. One that doesn’t care about the magic she doesn’t have.

Zizi never wants her life to change. She loves her job, loves her freedom, loves her city, whatever its problems… and Oakland has problems. Mythological creatures are loose in the streets, predators and monsters feed recklessly. Criminals are bolder, disasters more frequent. Protected humans are coming up drained of blood—and if the Authority gets irritated enough, it’ll be her vampire best friend they kill for it.”

 

What Am I Listening To?

“When American mom Lenora Chu moved to China with her little boy, she faced a tough decision. China produced some of the world’s top academic achievers, and just down the street from her home in Shanghai was THE school, as far as elite Chinese were concerned. Should Lenora entrust her rambunctious young son to the system?

So began Rainey’s immersion in one of the most radical school systems on the planet. Almost immediately, the three-year-old began to develop surprising powers of concentration, became proficient in early math, and learned to obey his teachers’ every command. Yet Lenora also noticed disturbing new behaviors: Where he used to scribble and explore, Rainey grew obsessed with staying inside the lines. He became fearful of authority figures, and also developed a habit of obeisance outside of school. “If you want me to do it, I’ll do it,” he told a stranger who’d asked whether he liked to sing.

What was happening behind closed classroom doors? Driven by parental anxiety, Lenora embarked on a journalistic mission to discover: What price do the Chinese pay to produce their “smart” kids? How hard should the rest of us work to stay ahead of the global curve? And, ultimately, is China’s school system one the West should emulate?”

 

New To Me This Week

 

This was my Kindle First selection for October.

“In the tradition of Schindler’s List comes a thrilling novel based on the heroic true story of Fritz Kolbe, a widowed civil servant in Adolf Hitler’s foreign ministry. Recognizing that millions of lives are at stake, Kolbe uses his position to pass information to the Americans—risking himself and the people he holds most dear—and embarks on a dangerous double life as the Allies’ most important spy.“

 

 

 

“Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: by the time she was 19, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to make a life for herself in the North, she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her.”

I follow her on Twitter for her sled dog pictures.  Her book is on sale now for $1.99 so I grabbed it.  I think I’m going to save this one for Nonfiction November.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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