Christmas Singalong

 Christmas Singalong from Danny

https://sing.thejonesfamily.app/

2025 Books

 

The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert Lustig

About sugar and addictions. Now I always notice when I or someone else urge treats on young kids, like evil drug dealers. 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

based on the Diary of Martha Ballard, which was also studied by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

re-read

The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne

a top read

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Sage read this for school. Helped me get inside the head and heart of a contemporary Black American man. 

Rough Stone Rolling: A cultural biography of Mormonism's founder by Richard Lyman Bushman

Book club with Mike, Oak and Shar. I find Joseph Smith's confidence stunning and sobering. 

Vision by David S Tatel

Autobiography of Judge David Tatel, insight into how the the US Court of Appeals works, which impressed me greatly, the process for choosing law clerks and judges, progressive blindness, analysis of the current political-legal situation in the US, Voting Rights Act, Clean Air Act, Major Questions rule. 

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt  

Yes

Chip War by Chris Miller

Why semiconductors are the new oil, and the necessary intertwining of our fates as countries if we can't continue to find ways to work together. Humans are building a modern-day pyramid together - something unbelievably difficult and requiring a concerted effort by thousands of people. 

Habits of a Peacemaker by Steven Collis

practical 

Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed

I picked this up because Joyce read it for school. Memorable.  

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 

Finished in a tent at Hancock Flat; tears running down my face, of course. 

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Classic book to have finished just the day before Nana and Gramps had their own memorable "inheritance" family meeting.

Stowaway by Karen Hesse 

Listened with Joyce on the other AirPod on the way home from Bear Lake.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K.Rowling

Continues to be our Saturday-morning-clean-the-house series. 

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan

Made me doubt my education, or, at least, realize that it was a partial and "western" education. This book re-focuses world history with Central Asia at the epicenter (the five "stans," Afghanistan, eastern Iran). 

Awareness by Anthony de Mello

interesting to contrast with Nonviolent Communication

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

Some real momentum at the end, boy.

Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber

right here in Denver

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

My heart went out to her mom 

Matrescence by Lucy Jones

My top read of the year. I felt very understood as I read this book. 

How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong

About building intentional, non-traditional familial relationships.

Lincoln and the Bardo by George Saunders

I picked this up because Sage is reading it for school. Speculative fiction based on historical accounts of Lincoln taking his son's body out of the crypt in the middle of the night to grieve. I wouldn't recommend this book to most people I know, but I will say that liked the ending very much. 

I, Claudia by Claudia Lauper Bushman

It might now look like a real page-turner to you, but I could hardly put this book down. 

2024 Books

2024 Wrap Up

The Books I Read, in the order I finished them

Rebel Spy by Veronica Rossi

An engaging YA book based on an actual historical person known as Agent 355. Agent 355 was a New York society girl who spied for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. 

The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner

“feeling angry signals a problem, venting anger does not solve it. Venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur. When emotional intensity is high, many of us engage in nonproductive efforts to change the other person, and in so doing, fail to exercise our power to clarify and change our own selves."

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

Why it's worth cultivating "habits of mind that allow [us] to dance across disciplines.”

“The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization”

All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience by Neal A Maxwell

"To ignore the hard doctrine deprives us of much needed doctrinal rations for the rigorous journey. The lyrics, "come let us anew / our journey pursue," suggest getting on with our impending mortal experiences, some of the most glorious of which will be adventures of the mind and heart, as we ponder and explore new truths."

"If it’s fair, it’s not a true trial."

Sacred Struggle by Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye

I hesitated to pick up this book because I don't relate with the cancer struggle and thought it would make me sad to read about Melissa's terminal struggle. The first chapter was about physical pain, and it was tough but worth reading. I was surprised that the rest of the chapters were about other kinds of sacred struggles. Gender imbalance at church, LGBTQ connection, global church community. I could hardly put it down once I started. It feels like the conversation that I've been needing to have, to keep from exploding - or imploding.

I feel a sharp loss at Melissa's passing this year. Melissa's obituary

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer

Werner: "I’ll be back in 2 years. Maybe I’ll learn to be a proper engineer. Maybe I’ll learn to fly an airplane." 

Jutta: "Spend enough time with boys like Heinrich and Herman and you’ll become like them." 

Werner: "I’ll write every week. Twice a week. you don’t have to show my letters to Frau Elena if you don’t want to. When I come back we’ll fly west. We’ll go to Paris." 

Jutta: "Don’t tell lies. Tell them to yourself if you want to, but don’t tell them to me." 

She saw it as a betrayal. But wasn’t he protecting her?  Chapter 43.

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Silas Marner by George Eliot

Recommended by Oak. I wasn't expecting the book to open with an exploration of faith crisis. I loved experiencing Silas Marner, the person, the hero, coming into focus.

“Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.”

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (Sam Bankman Fried) by Michael Lewis

I was interested in SBF's parenting choices, the NYC trading culture, Effective Altruism, SBF's failed attempts to create a long-term relationship. 

“We tried having some grown-ups, but they didn’t do anything,” he said. “This was true for everyone over the age of forty-five. All they did was worry."

Two Good People: Daniel Asay Tebbs and Nedra Henrie Tebbs. amazon link

The first half of this book is my Grandma's memoir, followed by my Grandpa's in the second half of the book. Memorable aspects:

• the different family styles of the Asay's and Henrie's, 
• hardiness and skills of my grandparents as rural kids  
• Grandpa wanting to be his own boss and ranching instead of getting a job. 
• Grandpa's gratitude that his grandsons were being raised in an environment where not drinking was an acceptable way to grow up, 
• Grandma's gutsy letter that triggered Grandpa to get serious about marrying her - each of their perspectives on this moment 
• Grandpa's matter-of-fact account of his father's mental health breakdown

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Xavier Bouc- outraged at all the lies. Hercule Poirot - loved it

Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time by Natalie Hodges

"It’s as though my mind has to toggle between two time signatures, that of my ego and that of the music, the two run along fundamentally different grades like cross rhythms where triple meter fights against double. One is a self absorbed interior time…the individual mind navigating its way through the world, while the other…the other contains a possibility of a kind of communal time in which you are in sync with others."

How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key

"I wasn’t any better at being a nonbeliever than I’d been at being a believer."

“Perhaps one day we will evolve ourselves into some better arrangement for the children, where benevolent armies of solar-powered robots raise children on expansive baby farms, but until Elon funds this nightmare, marriage is what we’ve got. It’s good for us and it’s good for the kids, even when it hurts like hell. I think often of our daughters and what they have learned of love in this strange season. I suppose we’ve given them enough trauma to turn all three into artists or writers, or at least law students. But we’re here, all of us: a nuclear family, detonated but not destroyed. We won’t be traumatizing our children with our divorce. We’ll traumatize them with our marriage, as God intended.”

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen

Sage's recommendation and a great book for a backpack over the Fishlake Hightop. 

Harry Potter 5 by JK Rowling

The girls and I listen during Saturday jobs.

Undaunted Courage: Meriweather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

This book was more interesting because I had familiarized myself with the early European contact in the South Pacific. Memorable bits: sexist Virginia plantation culture, Jefferson and Lewis living alone in the White House, the differences between Native American tribe cultures, the horsemanship, and the singular focus on the fur trade as the main reason for exploration.

“It seemed unlikely that one nation could govern an entire continent. The distances were just too great. A critical fact in the world of 1801 was that nothing moved fasteA r than the speed of a horse. No human being, no manufactured item, no bushel of wheat, no side of beef (or any beef on the hoof, for that matter), no letter, no information, no idea, order, or instruction of any kind moved faster. Nothing ever had moved any faster, and, as far as Jefferson’s contemporaries were able to tell, nothing ever would.

First Bite:  How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson

I thought - before reading this book - that if I ever made healthy food choices for an extended period, this would involve denying myself foods that seemed the most yummy or the amounts that seemed the most satisfying. This book convinced me that I can change my food preferences - and I have.

"hunger cannot be canceled by food per se. It matters very much what the food is. One of the reasons that hunger is so hard to pin down is that it is a negative concept, an absence. It is not-food, not-contentment.

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty.

A classic Liane Moriarty book, so I loved it.

Topics:     post-natal depression, marriage relationships (or lack thereof), the human condition

Setting:     a fictional island off the coast of Scribbly Gum, near Sydney, Australia.

The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell

A fascinating history of two generals in WWII who had radically different approaches to bombing.

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

I aspire to nonviolent communication. I continue to listen to segments of this book every week or two, to remind myself of this aspiration and try to deepen my connection these ideas.

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks

Disease = dis-'ease'

Health = 'ease'

Sickness is a parasite on health. Health is the true self.

Familiarity with patients necessary to good medicine. No such thing as a side-effect. The disease is not as important as the palette.

"What surpasses every algorithm? It is art. Every disease is a musical problem. Every cure a musical solution. ...Music is internal arithmetic. Yet more. Since it sometimes 'works' and sometimes doesn't."

Good Energy by Casey Means and Calley Means

Implementing some changes in my life, based on this book, has made a noticeable difference in my energy and sleep. My stomach feels more comfortable, I feel lighter on my feet, I crave healthier foods, and I sleep through the night.

Solito by Javier Zamora

“Mom likes to call them my "angels," but I worry that takes away their humanity and their nonreligious capacity for love and compassion they showed a stranger.”

― Javier Zamora, Solito, about the people who helped him cross the border as a 9 year old

CU Boulder's Book of the Year, which means the author will be coming to campus for a few events.

2034: A Novel of the Next World War

I appreciated the author's interview at the end. How to make the world a better place: Education, STEM, Service to Country.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

"Historical details are sparse, but the true story of Lucrezia’s life and death – and the haunting titular portrait that survives to this day – was sufficiently juicy to inspire Robert Browning’s eerie 1842 poem, “My Last Duchess” (“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall/Looking as if she were alive”) and, nearly two centuries later, O’Farrell’s new best-selling book, The Marriage Portrait."

The Book of Mormon

I got a used paperback copy from the church library - easily marked - and used it to teach Gospel Doctrine class every other week. Teaching sunday school was one of the more satisfying and meaningful undertakings of my year. Thank you to everyone who shared a classtime with me in the Boulder Ward.

The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld 

I picked this book because Sage is reading it in AP English. I found the format somewhat hard to follow, but it was nonetheless a thought-provoking journey through the history of America, freedom of speech, and the media.

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

  "Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?"

  "Hush," said he sternly, "Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind - ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature withing the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself." p. 63