Here are the books I read in 2022 that I liked enough to award five-star ratings in Goodreads....
My Beatles Top 40
I’ve been listening to a lot of Beatles music lately so I figured I’d try to identify MY Top 40 Beatles songs....
My Top Reads In ’21
Some of the best books I read last year: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen; A Promised Land by Barack Obama....
So Long, Downtown
After 30 years spent working downtown, I'm happy with an office move that keeps me in the suburbs....
She Said, He Said
Both Michelle and Barack Obama have written best-selling books, so I guess now we can call them a “power couple.” I recently finished reading A Promised Land, Barack Obama’s memoir of the first part of his presidency. And just a couple of months ago, I read Becoming, Michelle Obama’s telling of their family’s life...
Construction In The Time Of Coronavirus
Here’s a tip from experience: before you undertake a major house renovation, be sure to check the pandemic forecast. In the fall of 2019, Jean and I had grown tired of our tiny kitchen and tiny dining room and decided to see if we could remedy both problems at once. We engaged Dylan—a nephew...
Welcome To The ‘New’ Shoulblog!
After 11 years under the wordpress.com umbrella, today marks a new beginning for Shoulblog, now at its own, self-hosted site, johnshoulberg.com. Along with the new address, the blog has a completely different design; the home page features a slider across the top for featured posts, and a grid pattern below offering post excerpts with...
Five-Star Reads
For as awful a year as 2020 was, at least it was good for me in one respect: I read a number of great books last year. Here are the books I liked enough to give five-star ratings to on Goodreads in 2020: The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey. You will have read...
Books From The ‘Teens
When I think about the books that are honored as the top reads in a given year, I usually find that I haven’t read even a tiny percentage of the “best” books listed. I’m a decent reader; I have an annual goal of 25 books in a year, and I usually get fairly close...
The Singers
My dad said he didn’t sleep well his first night in the assisted-living facility. It was because of the music. This was in October. After some eight years in an associated independent living facility down the street, he’d had two hospitalizations in six months, each followed by a short stint in a rehab facility....