Frank Jude Boccio (Contributor of 21st Century Yoga)

Frank Jude rated a book it was amazing Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book, from it's first opening paragraph to it's final two words. I loved it so much that I consciously slowed my reading after the first few chapters so I could savor both Adichie's writing, but the world she describes her main character ...more
Oct 06, 2024 10:49AM · like · see review
Frank Jude rated a book it was amazing Rapture (Paperbacks from Hell) by Thomas Tessier	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I am a big fan of the horror genre, and whether in film or literature, the most horrifying tales have nothing to do with the supernatural. As I write this review, the film Speak No Evil is screening in theaters and it is an agonizing slow burn of psy ...more
Sep 25, 2024 10:15AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Rapture by Thomas Tessier. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Rapture by Thomas Tessier <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Frank Jude rated a book it was amazing The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Talk about a 'magnum opus,' this book, which has sat on my shelf since published in 2011 is a monumental achievement! At times, it reads like a police procedural, a mystery, at times a true sci-fi horror story, an adventure AND an inspiring tale of h ...more
Sep 18, 2024 10:48AM · like · see review
Frank Jude and 6 other people liked Brad's review of OK Computer: "Subtitle: An Academic Tries to See the Forest for the (Fake Plastic) Trees One-and-a-half stars. Using lists (tempos, song lengths, keys, words used) and an overabundance of quotes, this author showcases his knowledge of things other than the album, i" Read more of this review »
Sep 10, 2024 11:18PM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of OK Computer by Dai Griffiths. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — OK Computer by Dai Griffiths <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Frank Jude and 4 other people liked Benoit Lelièvre's review of OK Computer: "When you ask Radiohead fans what is the best book ever published about Radiohead, they all tell you the same thing: nothing good was ever published about Radiohead. I thought it was a display of the typical snobbery we tend associate this particular " Read more of this review »
Sep 10, 2024 11:18PM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of OK Computer by Dai Griffiths. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — OK Computer by Dai Griffiths <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Frank Jude and 3 other people liked Adam Witt's review of OK Computer: "Is it possible to give a book negative stars? I'd give this Minus Five Stars. You could toy with the idea of giving this a second star because Dai Griffiths brings forth a lot of really interesting music history, comparative criticism (often hopping t" Read more of this review »
Sep 10, 2024 11:17PM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of OK Computer by Dai Griffiths. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — OK Computer by Dai Griffiths <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Frank Jude rated a book it was ok OK Computer by Dai Griffiths	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Whew! What a slog of a book. Of thirteen books I've now read in this wonderful series from Bloomsbury, this is the most disappointing by far. Eleven, in fact, have been wonderful, receiving four and five stars from me, while the one on Arcade Fire's ...more
Sep 10, 2024 10:48PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of OK Computer by Dai Griffiths. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — OK Computer by Dai Griffiths <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Frank Jude rated a book it was ok The Suburbs by Eric Eidelstein	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Suburbs is the 13th book in the Bloomsbury 33 1/3 series of books about albums and, while I love Arcade Fire and their album that garnered them a Grammy, sad to say this is the weakest of the books I've read so far. It feels like Eidelstein overr ...more
Jul 31, 2024 12:10PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Suburbs by Eric Eidelstein. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Suburbs by Eric Eidelstein <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Frank Jude rated a book really liked it Emma by Jane Austen	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Emma, Jane Austen’s 4th novel, the last to be published while she was alive, is also her longest. As with her other novels, the concerns and challenges of ‘genteel women’ living in Georgian Regency England is the context for what can best be describe ...more
Jul 29, 2024 08:33AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Emma by Jane Austen. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Emma by Jane Austen <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Frank Jude rated a book liked it Inciting Joy: Essays by Ross Gay	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This book presents another where I wish we could offer 1/2 stars because 3 is a bit weaker than I would like but 4 ("I really liked it") a bit too strong. I wanted to like it more and for several of the first essays in this book I really did like it. ...more
Jun 21, 2024 02:38PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Inciting Joy by Ross Gay. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Inciting Joy by Ross Gay <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Frank Jude rated a book it was amazing

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I loved this book, from it's first opening paragraph to it's final two words. I loved it so much that I consciously slowed my reading after the first few chapters so I could savor both Adichie's writing, but the world she describes her main character I loved this book, from it's first opening paragraph to it's final two words. I loved it so much that I consciously slowed my reading after the first few chapters so I could savor both Adichie's writing, but the world she describes her main character, a woman I'd love to count among my friends!

Adichie masterfully evokes a whole community of friends and lovers -- and some not so friendly -- across three countries: Nigeria, the US, and the UK. In doing so, she skewers some stereotypes and can, with humor (sometimes caustic) and sometimes through a nuanced understatement get multiple messages across without ever being dogmatic or sermonizing. And one theme she weaves exposes the simplistic and myopic veiwpoint of identity politics. To quote philosopher Susan Neiman from Left Is Not Woke, "The life of a black person is dramatically different in America and Nigeria, as Chimamanda Adichie so brilliantly showed in Americanah. And being Nigerian is only an identifying description outside the country; in a land whose citizens are divided by fraught histories and more than five hundred languages, saying you're Nigerian means nothing at all."

Not only that, Adichie shows how a "Nigerian Black person" in the US experiences race and racialism differently than a Black person born here in the States. Her main protagonist, Ifemelu, while living in the US, starts a popular blog about race, and tellingly, when she returns to Nigeria and starts up a new blog, she is asked if it's also about race and her response speaks volumes: "No, just about life. Race doesn't really work here. I feel like I got off the plane in Lagos and stopped being black."

Seeing America through her character's eyes can be bracing, and listening in on her and her friends talking about what they love -- and what they don't love -- about America shines a light on generally unquestioned things us modern Americans may be blind too:

"Soon they were laughing and listing the things they missed about America.
'Low-fat soy milk, NPR, fast Internet." Ifemelu said.
'Good customer service, good customer service, good customer service,' Bisola said"

because apparently those in service in Lagos act like "they are doing you a favor by serving you." But then one of the others talk about how annoying American customer service can be and gives an example that made me snort with laughter:

"Someone hovering around and bothering you all the time. Are you still working on that? Since when did eating become work?" Yagazie said.

Again, I found this a wonderfully human story. Yes, it's a love story, but a love story that manages to not dominate the narrative while pervading it at the same time. ...more

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Rapture (Paperbacks from Hell)
by Thomas Tessier

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I am a big fan of the horror genre, and whether in film or literature, the most horrifying tales have nothing to do with the supernatural. As I write this review, the film Speak No Evil is screening in theaters and it is an agonizing slow burn of psy ...more

Frank Jude rated a book it was amazing

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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Talk about a 'magnum opus,' this book, which has sat on my shelf since published in 2011 is a monumental achievement! At times, it reads like a police procedural, a mystery, at times a true sci-fi horror story, an adventure AND an inspiring tale of h Talk about a 'magnum opus,' this book, which has sat on my shelf since published in 2011 is a monumental achievement! At times, it reads like a police procedural, a mystery, at times a true sci-fi horror story, an adventure AND an inspiring tale of human endeavor.

"Fuck Cancer" is something we hear a lot and as someone who has had to deal with prostate cancer, is something I certainly feel. I've lost too many people I love to it. And yet, unlike other diseases and illnesses, cancer is something unique... it is literally in our very dna (oncogenes). As he writes, toward the end of this 'biography' of cancer, "Taken to its logical extreme, the cancer cell's capacity to consistently imitate, corrupt, and pervert normal physiology thus raises the ominous question of what 'normalcy' is." As one of his patients puts it, "Cancer is my new normal" and this is something any cancer patient knows. There is BC and AC. Having gone through diagnosis and treatment, I am "good" now, but the question always lingers... will it return? And if so, how and when?

But it's more than that individually. Mukherjee continues: "...quite possibly cancer is ournew normalcy as well, that we are inherently destined to slouch towards a malignant end. Indeed, as the fraction of those affected by cancer creeps inexorably in some nations from one in four to one in three to one in two, cancer will, indeed, be the new normal -- an inevitability. The question then will not be if we will encounter this immortal illness in our lives, but when.

The reality of this malady is that we can only rid ourselves of cancer only as much as we can rid ourselves of the very processes of life, of growth: aging, regeneration, healing, reproduction. Cancer is the body's ability to heal gone crazy. As our cells divide, mutations accumulate and cancer is often the result. So our project becomes seeing if we can learn ever more ways to forestall the inevitable.

I don't want to end this review with a bracingly sober analysis that may foster despair. As I said, there is much that is inspiring in this tale and I wish to share one passage that moved me as it was the thought of my young daughter being left without her dad that motivated me to do what I could to survive:

"In 1971, about half the patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma died within twenty-four months of diagnosis; the other half died by the tenth year. In 2008, about half of all myeloma patients treated with the shifting armamentarium of new drugs will still be alive at five years. If the survival trends continue, the other half will continue to be alive well beyond ten years.

In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months. In 2009, bound to a wheelchair, he watched his daughter graduate from college. The wheelchair had nothing to do with his cancer. The man had fallen down while coaching his youngest son's baseball team." ...more

Frank Jude and 6 other people liked Brad's review of OK Computer:

"Subtitle: An Academic Tries to See the Forest for the (Fake Plastic) Trees

One-and-a-half stars. Using lists (tempos, song lengths, keys, words used) and an overabundance of quotes, this author showcases his knowledge of things other than the album, i" Read more of this review »

Frank Jude and 4 other people liked Benoit Lelièvre's review of OK Computer:

"When you ask Radiohead fans what is the best book ever published about Radiohead, they all tell you the same thing: nothing good was ever published about Radiohead. I thought it was a display of the typical snobbery we tend associate this particular " Read more of this review »

Frank Jude and 3 other people liked Adam Witt's review of OK Computer:

"Is it possible to give a book negative stars? I'd give this Minus Five Stars.

You could toy with the idea of giving this a second star because Dai Griffiths brings forth a lot of really interesting music history, comparative criticism (often hopping t" Read more of this review »

Frank Jude rated a book it was ok

OK Computer
by Dai Griffiths

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1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Whew! What a slog of a book. Of thirteen books I've now read in this wonderful series from Bloomsbury, this is the most disappointing by far. Eleven, in fact, have been wonderful, receiving four and five stars from me, while the one on Arcade Fire's ...more

Frank Jude rated a book it was ok

The Suburbs
by Eric Eidelstein

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The Suburbs is the 13th book in the Bloomsbury 33 1/3 series of books about albums and, while I love Arcade Fire and their album that garnered them a Grammy, sad to say this is the weakest of the books I've read so far. It feels like Eidelstein overr ...more

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Emma
by Jane Austen

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Emma, Jane Austen’s 4th novel, the last to be published while she was alive, is also her longest. As with her other novels, the concerns and challenges of ‘genteel women’ living in Georgian Regency England is the context for what can best be describe Emma, Jane Austen’s 4th novel, the last to be published while she was alive, is also her longest. As with her other novels, the concerns and challenges of ‘genteel women’ living in Georgian Regency England is the context for what can best be described as a ‘comedy of manners’.

Interestingly, even before she began to write Emma, Austen wrote, “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like”. Emma is spoiled, self-satisfied, and headstrong. She repeatedly overestimates her psychological insight into others feelings and her own “matchmaking abilities” and intrusively involves herself in the lives of others in ways that create difficulties for herself as well as others.

And yet, despite – or perhaps because of these character attributes – Emma is arguably the most interesting of Austen’s protagonists and the novel may be the best introduction to Austen as it reads as more contemporary than her previous novels. The story is less intricately plotted than her earlier novels. It is a quick read after the more densely packed Mansfield Park. Indeed, there have been from the first some criticisms that there is not much “story” in Emma, but Sir Walter Scott’s review captures the energy and even fun this novel can provoke writing: “Emma has even less story than either of the preceding novels...The author's knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand: but they are finished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.”

Another interesting point to be made about Emma, the novel, is the many parallels between the main characters and plots of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, but with a sex reversal: Respectively there are proud central characters (Darcy and Emma); a critical foil who ends up being the love interest (Elizabeth and Mr Knightly); a nearly thwarted romantic aspiration (Jane and Martin); and a wrong choice for marriage with the central character (Anne de Bourgh and Frank Churchill). Such sex reversals plays at the gender dynamics of the time allowing a critical examination of different roles and expectations held by society for men and women especially in what is referred to as the “gendered space” in Emma. A particular example is how Jane Fairfax cannot walk to the post office in the rain without a huge outcry among the village gossipers, while no one comments on Mr Knightly riding all the way to London.

The sheer number of adaptations from manga to theater, tv, film, and fictions inspired by it such as Joan Aiken’s Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen’s Emma, and the mashup Emma and the Werewolves: Jane Austen and Adam Rann, and even an Amish retelling prove that either Austen was wrong about Emma, or she was being a bit arch. I tend to think more the latter. The most recent film version starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma was released in 2020 but others include the 1996 version starring Gwyneth Paltrow, an Indian modern adaptation, Aisha, and of course 1995’s Clueless. ...more

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Inciting Joy: Essays
by Ross Gay

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This book presents another where I wish we could offer 1/2 stars because 3 is a bit weaker than I would like but 4 ("I really liked it") a bit too strong. I wanted to like it more and for several of the first essays in this book I really did like it. ...more

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	21st Century Yoga: Culture, Politics, and Practice by Carol Horton (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Roseanne Harvey (Editor), Frank Jude Boccio (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 3.90 avg rating — 184 ratings — published 2012 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mindfulness Yoga: The Awakened Union of Breath, Body, and Mind by Frank Jude Boccio (Goodreads Author), Georg Feuerstein (Foreword by) 4.08 avg rating — 146 ratings — published 1993 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sit With Less Pain: Gentle Yoga for Meditators and Everyone Else by Jean Erlbaum, Michelle Antonisse (Illustrations), Frank Jude Boccio (Goodreads Author) (Foreword) 3.74 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 2014 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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