memoir

In Which I Wimp Out About Trevor Noah’s Memoir.

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Book cover of Trevor Noah's autobiography, Born A CrimeBorn a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah, available in multiple formats from multiple outlets. Visit the author’s website at trevornoah.com.

I have never watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, so it made no blip my on my radar screen when he left the show and Trevor Noah, a South African comic, was installed as his replacement. I had heard Noah being interviewed on NPR about his memoir; he sounded funny (good for a comedy show, I guess) and self-deprecating, with a lovely, lilting British-sounding accent.

At some point I needed to get an audio book to take advantage of a freebie from Audible.com; by that time we had watched a number of video clips from TDS featuring Noah and thoroughly enjoyed his eviscerations of Donald Trump and American voters in general.

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Two for the Price of One

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Cover for Plato at the GoogleplexPlato at the Googleplex:  Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.  New York:  Pantheon Books, 2014. Link is to the author’s website.

So . . .a 400+-page book on philosophy.  Real promising, isn’t it?  I hope I can persuade you to read it, even though parts of it are quite challenging and dense.  Sometimes you finish a book with a feeling of satisfaction:  “I made it through.”  Sometimes with almost a sigh of relief:  “So that’s what happened!”  But once in a great while, at least for me, there’s a feeling of regret:  “Now I won’t get to be in the company of these characters any more.”  And that’s how I felt about the character of Plato in this book.  Suddenly I realized, “Oh no!  I’m almost finished, and I don’t want to be.  I want to go along with Plato into more of our modern world, hearing his take on all sorts of other situations.”  I hope I can get across in this post what a charming, gracious, focused person Plato is in this book.

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