Pinna's Picks

When Geneen Roth and her husband, Matt, lost their life savings in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi schemes, she started to realize that her relationship with money unconsciously resembled, in many ways, her relationship with food. She concluded that how we form our beliefs about what we need or desire are very similar whether those beliefs are about food or money. Feelings of deficiency prompt the desire for more food or money, but this trance of deficiency doesn’t disappear with when more is obtained. She found that sufficiency is knowing that there is enough and that we ourselves are enough. Enjoying what we already have without feeling shame or guilt guides us to sufficiency. Lost and Found takes us on a journey to understand that investing in our inner lives can change how we live on this earth. —Pinna

It’s not easy to come from China to the United States and integrate into the culture comfortably. In A Good Fall, Ha Jin, a National Book Award winner, gives us a fresh view of the lives and minds of his characters, many new to the US. Personalities interact. Whether they are grandparents and their children’s offspring, couples learning about each others’ pasts or a student helping his most respected professor, Ha Jin reveals their minds most astutely.  He is a fine storyteller. It’s not all pleasant or predictable, but certainly very enlightening and beautifully written.
—Pinna

Twyla Tharp was born a Quaker, living in a community of Friends where families help each other. In her life as a dance choreographer, she continued to work closely with individuals and groups to create dances, working together professionally with dancers, assistants, audiences, and other choreographers. The story of her collaboration with Jerome Robbins stands out as particularly inspiring as their friendship survived the collaboration! In her book, she also tells stories of her work with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Elvis Costello, Billy Joel and Bob Dylan. Her main motivator has always remained her sense of quality. Twyla Tharp is truly an original thinker who believes that "In any collaboration, there is not one way. Go with whatever works." —Pinna

Dennis Lewis’ work with breath, as described in Breathe Into Being: Awakening to Who You Really Are, is a process of returning to the breath of life itself—the “hereness” and the “nowness” of being. It is the process of relaxing the constrictions of your breath and your life by paying attention to and changing your breathing with simple exercises that focus the mind and the body. Exhaling fully and effortlessly is as important as the process of inhaling. It is an “awakening to who you really are!” More info: dennislewis.org. —Pinna