Benedict

Oftentimes the first thing I do when I log onto Audible is check if there is a new story by Alexander McCall Smith. If there is, I always immediately download and by the next two days I have listened to the whole story.

I really love this series because of the delightful characters and the main character's concern on how to live an ethical life with the situations that come up in front of her, rather than a theoretical situation. I think the author, Smith, does this intentionally.

Not to worry if you are not "down" for ethics in good stories! But if you do decide to get this book, I would suggest starting with the first of the series and moving forward.

The narration by Davina Porter is just so gorgeous!

As an aside, it is simply amazing how the author can invent a three-dimensional, new character and bring the reader along to "get it" on the spot.

I hope you do listen to this book and enjoy it.

I am continuing to enjoy this series of readings of Marshall Burlingame's biography of Abraham Lincoln.

I had heard that Mary Todd Lincoln was difficult but I did not know HOW difficult. I appreciate the author cited source after source for his description of Mrs. Lincoln because it is almost unfathomable.

The other minor highlight was Lincoln's role in moving the capital of Illinois to Springfield. He also served to get the State of Illinois into debt over its head to the Rothschild family, a debt for canals, roads and other improvements -- a debt so large that Illinois defaulted and finally was able to pay off about 50 years later in the 1880s.

At one point, members of the legislature were so angry with Lincoln that he had to climb through a window to escape their wrath uninjured. It is hard being a lawyer for bankers!

I really appreciate the author's ability to portray Lincoln's astonishing great character and his ability to get others to get along and for himself to get along.

I am really liking this biography. For me it gives a clearer understanding of who Abraham Lincoln really was.

He was born really, really poor, and lived that way for most of his childhood. I really had no idea. His father discouraged his studies and actually tried to interfere. His mother fixed him up in a kind of dress and a bonnet for his first day of school.

Aside from all that, Lincoln clearly was a man apart. He would have to be to rise above this miserable environment. But he read his books, was honest, a peace maker and was one of the finest ever examples or rising above one's circumstances.

The author is very good at laying this out and I am looking forward to listening to the rest of the series.

Many years ago, I walked into a store here in San Francisco that sold trinkets, but had this book up on a shelf.

I asked the woman about it and she said get it, read it, and it will change your life. Even if I just read it once.

It did.

I found out about Seneca from reading Tim Ferriss' books, and I am so glad I followed up and got this Audible presentation.

Seneca had a crazy boss: The Roman Emperor Nero. But Seneca was able, till the last, to administer the Roman Empire. Seneca's philosophy is born of life experience at the highest levels of human existence.

For anyone who is interested in a deeper understanding of life, life that is not made up, I highly recommend this book.

The book is set up as letters to a friend so you don't have to worry about a wall of inscrutable words, and you should know this text is Not inscrutable!

I really enjoy Alex. McCall, particularly for the sophisticated quality of his writing and his apparent notion that we should make an effort in life to make it better for others, and to not grasp too hard at the apparent unkindnesses we are dealt in life.

The writing quality is very high in that Alex. tells a wonderful story with little understandings between the characters that I really adore.

Paul Hecht the Narrator really is wonderfully able to communicate these underlying meanings to the listener: What the characters say in their words and what they Really mean. I would love a talent for doing that in my own life!

Alexander McCall Smith is perhaps my favorite living author of fiction.

This latest book is one of his most moving and touching, I think. Mr. Smith's sense of humanity is so uplifting it leaves me a little weepy by the end of the book.

I highly recommend this book particularly for anyone who would like a little warmth and humanity, which is so hard to find in literature these days let alone the world.

This books seems like a rewrite of Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

I highly recommend that book over this. Confessions of an Economic Hitman is one of the most important books ever written to explain how the world really, really works.

The author is one of the guys who really did the stuff that makes other nations refer to us as "Damn Yankees." Author Perkins had his feet on the ground and tells us the words and daily activities he used to break the economies of many contries around the world.

He was there during the Arab Embargo in the early 1970s and was helpful in solving that problem. The solution is astonishing even today.

I have bought all the "Best 50 Jobs to Work Out of Your Home"-type books over the years.

This is the best by far because it shows how to tailor your own future based on your own skills and interests, and has excellent examples of people who have actually done this.

The author has done a tremendous amount of research to produce this book. So it was not just a one-off book written from the kitchen table.

I think everybody should get this book to understand its philosophy and to help protect against the future.

Very highly recommended.

This point of this book is hard to grasp so I went to Wikipedia to pick up the main idea. That helped a lot. It is a satire on politicians of the early 1700s that shows how "great" politicians are just like great criminals. Altogether, it shows the power of humor to attack political enemies (in this case, Prime Minister Horace Walpole).

I got onto this book by listening to Tom Jones by the same author. That is a great book which I better recommend. It has the same extraordinary writing and a pretty good story.

Jonathan Wilding is better viewed as an example of great satire that could be used today. It is in the line of "Onion" newspaper.