The Book Club: “big Time,” “western Wind” And More Short Reviews From Readers

Many adults can identify with the challenges of trying to focus on work tasks when they haven’t had breakfast or skipped lunch. Lisle Reed, the coordinator with Whole Child Initiatives at Adams 12 Five Star Schools, wants people to imagine the same situation but for children with growing bodies and developing brains. “They can enter a classroom with everything they need.

Franklin Ramirez felt duped. When he moved to Denver a little more than a year ago, he was told monthly rent at his two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in the downtown Civic Lofts building cost $2,355. Then came the monthly fees. Ramirez pays nearly $25 a month for “valet trash,” in which someone collects garbage outside the apartment doors of the 14-story, 176-unit building and walks it to the dumpster.

Patricia Dore had multiple concerns on her mind when she pored over her lengthy Denver ballot for the Nov. 5 election. Public safety was high on the list, and fiscal responsibility factored into her decision-making, too. RELATED: Where to find housing — from tax proposals to rising prices — on your Colorado ballot But housing also shaped her thinking — even though she’s an 81-year-old retiree who has lived in the same southeast Denver home for five decades. “It just blows my mind, the cost of housing,” Dore said after depositing her ballot in the drop box outside the Cook Park Recreation Center last week.

Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share their mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer?

Jared Bednar spent most of his hockey career trading punches with some of the meanest, toughest players in whatever league he was playing in. Avs coach Jared Bednar poses with his first pronghorn antelope, shot in Colorado in 2022. (Photo courtesy of Jared Bednar) But how many of those brawlers can also say they’ve plunged a knife into a wild hog’s heart? Bednar, when he is not a Stanley Cup-winning coach of the Colorado Avalanche, is a man of the woods.

(To receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and decisionmakers, click here.) Richard Attias has been gathering global elites for more than 30 years. He was executive producer of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos for 15 years, launched the Clinton Global Initiative, and has produced Nobel Laureates Conferences.