Currently being read by KjO
Current Reads
The Olsen Library
or what we fill our minds with.
Below is a list of the books that we are currently reading or have completed.
One new addition for this year is a direct link to Amazon.com. If you see something you like, just click the book and make a purchase from Amazon. Not only will this make you happy but it will make us happy as we get a little something, something from Amazon each time someone purchases a book from our list. Happy, happy, joy, joy!
Ok...let's get to the list...wait one last thing. KjO = Kristian and EbO= Emily.
Now, onto the library.
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KjO - Completed March 3 2010
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KjO - Completed Feb 2010 - Great read on creativity and how schools today are killing it. Author talks about how our current school system is the same system designed to produce workers for the industrial age. This is a problem as we are now in the knowledge or conceptual age.
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KjO - Completed Jan 2010 - Quick read on the life styles of some of the oldest living folks in the world. It basically boils down to eat more plants, walk a little more, have friends, and love life.
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KjO - Completed Jan 2010. Interesting read about the wonderful things humans have achieved since 800 B.C. The book is very academic filled with statistics, facts, theories, and insights behind those theories. By the end of the book I realized how rare true genius is.
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KjO - Completed Feb 2009 - Graphic Novel about the evils of Regan's approach to the cold war.
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KjO - Completed Feb 2009 - An approach to fixing education in America
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KjO - Completed Feb 2009 - Classic Hemingway. About a characters time in Spain watching the Pamplona Bull Fights.
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KjO - Completed Feb 2009 - Wonderful collection of short stories about soldiers in the Vietnam War
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KjO - Completed Dec 2009 - This is by far the greatest novel I have read. I have to admit, at times it is a bit of a slog to get through, but by the end you realize the shear brilliance of the work. It is a story of faith and doubt, of love and hate, of lust and passion. It is a wonderful story of human emotion and how we are interconnected. I highly recommend it. A warning, this is not easy reading, but it is worthwhile reading.
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KjO - Completed Oct. 2009 - Fun, quirky, and smart. It the story of soldiers, aliens, and adventure. Not really sci fi and not really a war novel. It is in a category all its own.
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KjO - Completed Sep 2009 - A collection of short essays published after the authors death. It is a fun and quick read. Very entertaining and incredibly smart.
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KjO - Completed Sept 2009 - Academic read debunking myths about public education such as schools are underfunded and teachers are paid less than peers in other industries.
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KjO - Completed Aug 2009 - Very quick fun read about an autistic boys journey in solving the mystery of who killed the neighbors dog.
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KjO - Completed Aug 2009 - Quick read on the need to reclaim the personal liberties that have been lost since the publication of the original pamphlet Common Sense by Thomas Paine.
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KjO - Completed Aug 2009 - I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the direction of education. This is the fantastic story of Geoffrey Canada's approach to solving poverty in Harlem. I fully believe he has found the answer.
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KjO - Completed Jun 2009 - Classic dystopia novel from the angle of manipulating human biology in order to create a happy people who serve the state.
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KjO - Completed June 2009 - Interesting look at how we as a society need to move from being left brain dominated to whole brain dominated. The author argues that the left brain worked great for the industrial age. But in the current conceptual age we need to be a whole brain thinking society to retain our economic edge.
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KjO - Completed March 2009 - Interesting book outlining the difference between statists and conservatives.
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Currently being read by EbO
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Finished by KjO Aug
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Finished by KjO March '08
Quick read on sitiuational leadership.
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Finished by KjO on Feb. 20th.
This is a quick short pop leadership book. There were a few golden nuggets. But I am going to let you discover those on your own. :)
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Finished by KjO April
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Finished by KjO on 2/13. This was a fascinating read. Cicero (106bc - 43bc) was one of Romes greatest citizens around the time Caesar rose to power [he opposed the dictatorship of Caesar]. On the good life talks about how to be happy, patriotism, being an orator, and the divinity of the soul. What is fascinating is the issues Cicero deals with are just as relevant today as they were over 2000 years ago. Here are a few quotes out of many that I really love.
- Good men are always happy
- Moral goodness is in itself sufficient for a happy life
- Everything that is good is desirable.
- The whole point of morality is its independence.
- Folly, even after it has attained what it was seeking for, is still never satisfied. But wisdom is invariably contented with what it has got. It never has anything to feel sorry about.
- Bounty is a bottomless pit. For how can it be anything else, when those who have got accustomed to being subsidized are bound to want more, and persons who have never been at the receiving end want to go there?
- Good deeds if badly placed become bad deeds
- It is also incumbent on everyone who holds a high governmental office to make absolutely sure that the private property of all citizens is safeguarded, and that the state does not encroach on these rights in any way whatever.
- The human soul is divine. When it leaves the body...it has the power to take the road back to heaven; and the better and more decently it has behaved in this life, the easier the road will be.
- Friendship...is the noblest and most delightful of all the gifts the gods have given to mankind.
- There is nothing more insufferable than a fool whom fortune has blessed.
- Nevertheless, nobody can reach any objective at all, however hard he tries, without first mapping out the path which will lead him to his goal.
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Finished by KjO Nov
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Completed by KjO Oct.
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Completed by KjO Nov
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![Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Z1scnqz1L._SL75_.jpg)
Finsihed by KjO and Ebo May
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KjO - Completed March 2009 - Good book on KIPP charter schools and their approach to improving education in America
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Click to View on Amazon