Peggy Recommends Two Upbeat Films; Romantics Anonymous and The Women on the Sixth Floor

No time or money to take in Paris this springtime? Pick one or both of these delightful  and feel-good DVDs and be in France instantly courtesy of your remote.

 In Romantics Anonymous, Jean-Rene and Angelique fall in love drawn together through a shared passion for chocolate but neither is able to express how they feel. Sadly, their crippling shyness is driving them apart. But eventually, they manage to overcome their lack of self-confidence, and risk baring their true feelings. The Huffington Post called this "one of France's best new films."

  In The Women on the Sixth Floor it's Paris, 1960. Jean-Louis lives a bourgeois existence with his neurotic socialite wife Suzanne while their children are away at boarding school. The couple's world is turned upside down when they hire Maria, a Spanish maid who introduces Jean-Louis to an alternative reality a few stories up on the sixth floor. Befriending a group of sassy Spanish maids, the women teach him there's more to life than stocks and bonds, and their influence on the house ultimately transforms everyone's life. PM

Rethinking A Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking by Eran Ben-Joseph

Rethinking A Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking by Eran Ben-Joseph

Ben-Joseph, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at MIT, attempts to answer the question, "Are there any good examples of notable or 'great' parking lots?" As basic parking lot design has not changed since the 1950s,, where to put the 600,000,0000 passenger cars in the world has become a critical issue. The author provides a visual history of of this vital space and presses us to consider that parking lots could be rendered into significant public spaces. This is a fascinating and absorbing read that will make you think differently about a space you visit almost everyday--a parking lot. PM

Beacon Street: Its Buildings and Residents by Robert J. Guarino

Ever walk or drive down Beacon Street and wonder about the stories behind the houses that line this venerable street? This gem of a book traces the beginnings of Beacon Street from its earliest inhabitants the Massachusett tribe of Algonquin stock, through William Blackstone the first European in 1624 to the 1950s when changes to the street essentially stopped with the exception of the building of One Beacon Street in 1974. The journey down Beacon Street from Tremont to Arlington Streets gives the reader a fascinating glimpse into life in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries with many photos, maps and renderings. The book can be used as a visitor guide to this beautiful part of the city or a imaginative sojourn from the comfort of one's armchair through the history and architecture of Beacon Street's past. PM

The Art of Uncertainty: How to Live in the Mystery of Life and Love It by Dennis Merritt Jones

As Yogi Berra so famously said “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up somewhere else.” Dennis Merritt Jones’s compact guidebook The Art of Uncertainty will help you understand, reconcile, and spiritedly handle the currents of uncertainty in your life. Jones, a regular contributor to The Huffington Post leans heavily on the tenets of New Thought and the writings of Ernest Holmes. The reader can dip into any of the 14 short chapters of this book ( with engaging headings such as “Like it or Not, This too Shall Pass”) to gain encouraging insights and wisdom or use a study guide available at the author’s website. PM

The Art of Confession: Renewing Yourself Through the Practice of Honesty by Paul Wilkes

“Deep within every human heart, there is the desire to be good.” So begins Paul Wilkes’s little gem of a book on confession. Wilkes who has written numerous books on religion, including the biography of Natick priest and pastor Joseph Greer (In Mysterious Ways), traces the origins of the practice of confession from its earliest roots in human society through its expression today in various faith practices. Short sidebars about confession from a rabbi, a priest, a psychiatrist, and a Roman Catholic nun who ministers in bookstores are included. Wilkes maintains that confession is part of the need to realign ourselves with our highest good and is a necessary and important step in releasing guilt and amending our lives. He addresses some thorny problems such as when not to confess, guilt, the types of confession (moral, psychological, personal), secret confessions, and his method of “praying backward through the day.” Wilkes maintains that confession is a kind of grace that ultimately can reunite one with oneself. Don’t miss the opportunity to understand how. PM

Peggy Recommends: Boston Irish by Edward Delaney

A cursory browse of the Boston Globe review Boston Irish by Edward Delaney intrigued me enough to put it on my “remember-to-read” list. Southie, tough Irish characters, corruption, feuds, the Catholic Church, all sounded to me like an interesting, but perhaps predictable mix. I was more than surprised to be deeply drawn into this complex novel and its characters that inhabit the late 1990s world of South Boston and the widening scandal of sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese. The towns of Wellesley, Needham, Newton, Brookline and Milton get nods as do Boston College, Cardinal Law, and the Chancery. I felt I entered into the lives, and more importantly into the minds, of this interlocking set of characters, and particularly into the minds of the most unappealing ones. There are few books that have done that for me. Don’t miss this dark but stunning novel. PM

The Book Review that Ignited a Firestorm

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin and translated by Chi-Young Kim was a runaway best seller in Korea. It has been reprinted five times since published in the US and is due to be published in 20 countries. It's the story of a mother who becomes separated from her family in the bustle of the Seoul subway station and cannot be found when the family swiftly returns to the stop. In the subsequent efforts to find her, each member of the family must look at their relationship with this humble and self-sacrificing woman. A bruising, harsh, and some claimed racist review of this book by Maureen Corrigan which appeared on the NPR web site ignited an unprecented firestorm from readers. Read this sensitive and absorbing book and compare your thoughts with Corrigan's and those reponding to the review. You'll have a lot to think about. PM

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children's Book: Life Lessons from Notable People from All Walks of Life, edited by Anita Silvey.
Settle into your favorite armchair and relish turning the pages of this ingeniously designed treasury of favorite children's books and the readers who loved them. Anita Silvey of Simmons College and Westwood, Massachusetts has gathered the beloved books of 110 society leaders from the sciences, politics, sports, and the arts. Each entry includes an illustrated page from the book, commentary on the book, and the reader's description of how it impacted their lives. The books are grouped in the categories of inspiration, understanding, principles and precepts, vocation, motivation, and storytelling. Find out what Peter Lynch learned from the Hardy Boys and how Beatrix Potter taught Ken Follett to write. Be charmed by David McCullough's debt to Robert Lawson's Ben and Me and be inspired by the wisdom Anne Tyler found in The Little House by Virgina Lee Burton. Reading this book will cause you to recall with pleasure the books that deeply and lovingly spoke to your imagination and to your heart. PM

Peggy Suggests: Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

Interested in why change is hard at every level-personal, organizational, and social? Then put this clear, engaging, and illuminating book on your must-read list.. Authors Chip and Dan Heath (Made to Stick) simply present the factors that encourage and compete with the desire for change. You'll learn how to direct your rational side, how to motivate your emotional side, and how to shape a path that supports the change you've been seeking. Case studies in the Malcolm-Gladwell style, such as Massachusett's own Don Berwick's 100,000 lives campaign and Ellen Langer's study of hotel maids light up this book that just might bring about the change you've always wanted for yourself or your organization. --PM

Authors Speak at Free Trinity Lecture Series

Barbara Brown Taylor author of the spiritual memoir An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith and Diana Butler Bass author of the new A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story will speak at the upcoming Price Lectures at Trinity Church in Boston. Both titles are part of the Wellesley Free Library collection. PM

Did you Know?

Michael Yapko, Ph.d takes on depression in Depression is Contagious: How the Most Common Mood Disorder is Spreading Around the World and How to Stop It. Yapko asserts that our current biochemical approach to depression does not do enough to help heal those suffering from this very common condition. As depression is both formed and healed in the world of people more emphasis must be placed on learning positive social skills. A detailed action plan is provided to build stronger, healthier social connections. This book will give the reader a whole new take on depression and its effects on relationships, work environments, and communities. You will think differently about what the World Health Organization predicts will be the second greatest cause of human suffering and disability by 2020. PM

Peggy Suggests Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibilty by Suzanne Langer

Immerse yourself in Harvard professor Ellen Langer's fascinating study, Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibilty by Suzanne Langer, of elderly men who radically altered their health by living as though it was 1959. Langer examines the myriad of ways we unconsciously limit our health and emotional well-being. PM

Peggy Recommends: Who Would You Be Without Your Story? Dialogues with Byron Katie

Stuck in the same old story that has defined and limited your life?

Byron Katie, author of the best-selling Loving What Is, offers four simple questions called "The Work" that will help the reader release painful thoughts that cause suffering. PM

Peggy Suggests: My Antonia

My Antonia by Willa Cather

In Jim Burden's accounting of his life with, and without, Antonia Shimerda, readers are transported to the hardscrabble Nebraska prairie and the rural immigrant experience. When Jim first sees the Shimerda family, immigrants from Bohemia, disembarking from the same train that is taking him West to live with his grandparents, he has no idea the impact they will have on his life. Nostalgically, he remembers the good and bad times they had on their respective farms and creates his portrait of Antonia, an independent and tough survivor.