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POETRY Richard Kennedy (Ed.). (1994). E. E. Cummings Selected Poems. Cummings earned an MA at Harvard in English and the Classics...he was also a professional painter, WWI ambulance driver in France, and nature lover. Cummings' mother encouraged him to keep a journal as a boy...he spent May-Oct (5 months a year) at Joy Farm from the time of his father's death every year. He married 3 of the most beautiful women in the US, the last for 40 years. Cummings' writing style often uses lower case letters, especially in referencing himself as "i"...he uses space on the page to convey nonverbal meaning and delights in word play, puns, intentional misspellings, word breaks, parentheses, rhyme... Most of the poems read like riddles/mysteries to me, they need to be read slowly, even them, some of the poems seem incomprehensible...i remember reading some of his poems as a boy in an english literature class and now i wanted to dig deeper...overall, i am disappointed in this sel...
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AT LAST Mary Balogh (2009). At Last Comes Love. This is the 3rd book in Balogh's Huxtable series set in the Regency era of England. Duncan Pennethore (Earl of Sherigford) and Margaret Huxtable are both desperate to be married, but for very different reasons...a serendipitous "crash" into each other at a ball leads to a marriage within 2 weeks...Duncan appears to be a rake, but his story reveals an honorable man willing to sacrifice for others. Some favorite quotes: There were certain moments upon which the whole of the future course of one's life turned...(p.61) I think love is always being put to the test...It bends, but it never breaks. Not if it is real. (p.281) Other days were crammed so full of events that it was impossible to believe so much living could be packed into twenty-four hours.(p.381) Not just "certain moments" but all moments are potentially moments upon which the whole future course of one's life turns; yet, there are particular moment...
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M.I.N.D. Emad Mostaque (2025). The Last Economy:  A Guide to                                                    the Age of Intelligent Economics. Mostaque has a BS in Math and Computer Science from Oxford, was a fund manager, and founded Stability AI (retired in 2024). Mostaque predicts that there will be an intelligence inversion in 1K days from the time of the writing...about 3 years, in 2027 [as of my writing this is on 1//3/2026...the time is not far off]. He demonstrates historical changes in power...from land to labor to capital to intelligence. Artifical Intelligence (AI) will replace humans for all knowledge jobs...this can be viewed as a disaster or a liberation....the future (3-30 years) is a time when there will be no more "jobs", firms, or labor for money, rather, our "job" will be to guide AI with wisdom prompts, ex...
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CO-INTELLIGENCE Ethan Mollick (2024). Cointelligence: Living and Working with AI . Mollick has an MBA and PhD from MIT, is professor of management at University of Pennsylvania, and is co-director of the Wharton Geerative AI lab at Univ. of Penn. As a professor, Mollick cites plenty of research while providing at times lengthy personal examples of how he uses AI (artifical intelligence...at the time of this writing, mostly Chat GPT 4.0) in teaching, research, and writing. Thematically, Mollick advocates using AI as a co-creator, a partner, a source of co-intelligence to enhance/improve the quality of what we do (he claims an increase of 20-80% productiviety when using AI) while placing human value and judgment as the final step in the process to check the AI for "hallucinations, lies," and questionable ethics.  The future challenge we as humans face is aligning our human values (like survival) with a superintelligent AI. He admits that no one knows with certainty the future ...
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AI Marc Gafni (2025). Value is a Feeling and                                          Artifical Intelligence Doesn't Feel Gafni has a PhD in philosophy from Oxford and is an ordained orthodox rabbi. The book is based on a series of talks and is written in an "oral presentation" style. 3 waves of information technology are discussed: 1) social media, beginning in 2010, is designed to hijack user attention, track every keystroke and data input, place one into peer groups based on personal data, and sell this personal information to ad/marketing companies 2)AI catbot uses large language models to simulate huma conversation based on prompts the user provides, creating a "feeling" that one is conversing a real person that is smart, funny, and uses personalized language that shows an familiarity with one's specific interests and personality...ultimately appearing to con...
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GIFTofTHERAPY Irvin Yalom (2002). The Gift of Therapy. Yalom is a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, and author of several books. He wrote this book at age 70, wanting to pass on learnings as 'tips for therapists' based on 45 years of clinical practice. He originally had over 200 tips and selected the best 85 tips for this book...there's much wisdom here...unable to summarize all 85 tips but i can share my favorites.  Note to self: reading this at age 65 with almost 45 years of teaching college, i too want to share tips for teaching/learning communication...perhaps a book someday entitled, gift of com. Note on tips: while these tips are designed for therapists, almost all of them can apply to interpersonal and small group relationships. Some of my favorite tips: one of the best ways to get to know someone is ask them to describe their typical daily routine --everything from the time they get up to the time they go to bed (in the therapeutic context, because of increased privac...
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LOSE YOUR MIND Robert Sachs (2024). Don't Loose Your Mind:                                             Re-imagining Age and                                            Reclaiming the Place of Elder and Sage. Sachs has a Masters in Social Work and worked in hospice many years and trained in Tibetian Ayurveda; also, author of 9 books on physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. some of the demintia in age 50+ is due to polypharmacies--people 65+ average 6+ prescription meds--advice to review meds with a trusted MD to see what is really needed almost everyone could benefit from: more fruits and veggies  less processed foods and meat to age with grace, spend more: time with the young seek novelty cultivate music (listenin...