Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Hello From Quarantine


 

Hello from quarantine.

I just finished Becoming by Michelle Obama, and it gave me like a lot of feelings.

I felt like Michelle was Dr Paul Stubbs from Star Trek telling me that, " [I] will never come up against a greater adversary than [my] own potential." Do you guys remember that episode? Probably not- I only know it because my husband is watching The Next Generation with the kids and I happened to catch this one. Dr. Paul Stubbs is a sort of mega-genius astrophysicist who is running a project on The Enterprise. He meets Wesley Crusher and recognizes in him a fellow wunderkind and gives him a word of caution. He told Wesley that he felt the burden of being a high achiever, and that he would constantly need to top his last accomplishment to keep up with his potential. Except he says it with the emphasis on the first syllable: PO-ten-tial.

Paul Stubbs (<a href="/wiki/2366" title="2366">2366</a>)
Bob Kelso dropping Trek knowledge

Obama's central thesis is that she is an ordinary person who took her situation and applied grit, smarts, planning, energy, and focus and turned it into something extraordinary. That the reader, me, you, every ordinary person could do this.  I determined a long time ago that my children have sapped me of whatever hustle I had. I have to work really really hard just to keep up with all the meals, track meets, science homework (do YOU remember how to determine how many valence electrons are in any given element?), and messes that come with raising 4 kids. So many messes. Plus a dog. It feels unfair to me that she would tell me that I could do more.

Maybe this book wasn't the best pick to read during quarantine. Where all my volunteer opportunities are extinguished and my already very limited social circle shrunk down to my five immediate family members. Plus a dog.

Instead of thinking about PO-ten-tial, with a capital P and the emphasis on the first syllable: First Lady starting several world-wide initiatives, staff of 50, with a personal hairdresser and stylist kind of PO-ten-tial; and just work on being me+1.  Meaning- how I am today, just one point better. I don't have the drive to live Michelle Obama's life, but I can live my life. Plus one. And a dog.
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Saturday, May 02, 2015

Favorite Children's Book Authors


This is not a paid endorsement, I just wanted to tell someone about this.

I have read 5-30 children's picture books a week for almost 9 years now, so I'm pretty much an expert.  There are classics that will always stand the test of time- Goodnight Moon, The Little House, Llama Llama Red Pajama, Ferdinand the Bull.  But, if you read other books by these authors, they don't quite have the same mix of comfort and surprise that makes a good short story.  Or it's the same plot with different characters.

One of the things that is challenging with kid's books is that you, the parent, have to be able to read them over and over again without wanting to claw your eyes out.  The kids have a book called Who Stole the Cookies From the Cookie Jar where every page she asks the titular question and the protagonist guesses an animal, who then explains that they didn't do it because they eat grass, or flies, or antelopes.  At the end, turns out it was the ants who stole the cookies, but they stole them to set up a party and invite all the animals to eat the cookies that they just explained at length that they don't eat (WTH?).  The kids love it, but I hate it, so I hide it on top of the bookshelf where they can't see it.

To make books interesting for parents, authors will often try to be clever, like in the Amelia Bedelia series.  The problem is that with EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. you have to spend 3 minutes explaining the joke... that pare is a word that no one uses that means peel, so when Mrs. Rogers says "pare the vegetables" and Amelia Bedelia "pairs" the vegetables, it's funny... see?  Times 20 pages.

It also can't have too many words on each page or be too long because either the kids will pick it to drag out bedtime, or it won't hold their attention.  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs has this problem- it's original enough that it takes like 15 pages to explain the premise before getting to the actual story, which is fun and all, but I just want my kids to go to bed already.

However, there are two authors that I can think of that overcome all these difficulties:

Peter Brown and Oliver Jeffers.  Every single book is just right: just the right length, just the right number of words per page, just the right amount of clever, beautiful illustrations.  And every book is good.

Although I love them all, my all time favorites are-


A bear finds a boy in the woods and takes him home.
A little boy gets his favorite shoe stuck in a tree.

If you are wondering what books to get your kids/niece/nephew/grandchild, buy them these.

Or, buy them for yourself, because they are great.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Things on my mind at this moment in time

In no particular order

*I'm really glad Evie takes a pacifier.  I think it's cut down on her crying by at least 60%.  Now, if I could just figure out how to get her to go to bed at from 7 to 7 like a normal baby instead of this college co-ed 12 to 12 business, that would be gravy.

*You guys: Lillian's at school and all three of the other kids are sleeping.  I know, it's miracle nap time, so I'm taking this opportunity to write this instead of doing my chores.

*I'm having a quarter-life crisis, I think. Before now, the only people who were my age who were accomplishing things of note were Olympic athletes and child geniuses.  I think we can all agree that the people that make up those two groups are not normal; they are exceptional by birth.  I'm not all that exceptional, so I didn't have to be jealous.  BUT, now, normal people MY AGE are writing books of note, conducting groundbreaking research, starting their own companies, inventing things, making documentaries, presenting at conferences, and all sorts of other things that I'm not doing.

I get that I spent all the time that those other people spent working on their business plans and/or research birthing children and making peanut butter sandwiches.  And, believe me, if I didn't think that birthing and raising decent human beings was a worth-while way to spend my time, I wouldn't have done it four times over.

The kicker is that I haven't been thinking, "I have this awesome business/book/company idea that I'm TOTALLY going to do when my kids are older."  I've mostly just been drowning in cheerios and morning sickness.  This is what makes it a quarter-life crisis: I have no idea where to go from here.  My tentative plan was to go to nurse practitioner school, which I realize I could still do, but do I really WANT to do that?  I don't know.

*I started reading The Happiness Project and the author mentions her One Minute Rule for keeping her house organized- if the task will take less than one minute, do it right now.  Put away the pen, close the cabinet, put the bowl in the dishwasher, file that immunization card, put your makeup back in the bag instead of leaving it out, etc.  I've been trying to do this, and I've found that I'm spending a lot more of my day cleaning.  Up side: I have a cleaner house which puts me in a better mood.  Down side: I spend more time cleaning which puts me in a bad mood.

*We're going to California in a few weeks, and I'm beyond excited about it.

*I got the movie Mongol from the library on my sister Anne's recommendation, and I need to watch it.  I really liked Temple Grandin, her last recommendation.

*I thought it was hilarious when I figured out why Ethan was telling everyone at the grocery store that Evie really likes nickles.  Someone, it might have been me I'm not sure, gave Ethan an anatomy lesson specifically about breastfeeding.  I laughed until my eyes watered.


 
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Thursday, November 08, 2012

Keeping Life at a 3


"Ambulation" is the medical term for walking.  After surgery, it is important to ambulate at least once on the day of surgery (usually) and then 3-4 times a day every day after that.    If you don't walk, your cells won't get the oxygen they need for healing; your lungs won't be expanding all the way, so fluid could collect in the bases causing pneumonia; and the blood could pool in your legs, giving you a blood clot that could break off and give you a heart attack or stroke; and your bowels won't "wake up" fast enough, possibly giving you an ileus. Ambulating patients drives most of what I do as a nurse.  I need to keep you rested, pain-medicated, cleaned up, and happy enough to get those walks in.

I try to keep my patients at a "3" on a 0-to-10 pain scale.  No pain is unrealistic because 1. you just had surgery and 2. if I give you enough pain medication to erase your pain, you will also stop breathing.  But a 3 you can work through and get your walk in.

Last night, I was reading my first How-To parenting book: Smart But Scattered.  It's all about "executive skills" and how to teach them to your child.  Executive skills are skills needed to execute tasks and be successful.  Lillian has problems with sustained attention, task initiation, and time management.  (I don't know where she got that from: my assessment said my weaknesses were in sustained attention, organization, and time management.)

Anyway, one of the Principles for Improving Executive Skills is to "Modify tasks to match your child's capacity to exert effort."  The authors suggest modifying tasks so that they feel like a "3" on a 1-to-10 effort scale.  This can be accomplished by breaking down the task into smaller pieces (clean just this room, instead of the whole house), decreasing the time spent on the task (clean for 5 minutes instead of 20), or increasing the reward so the task feels like less work.

I've been trying to force Lillian to sit for 3 hours and get all her homework done (because she doesn't do her work in school, we get to do school work AND homework), when for her, that feels like a 10 on the effort scale.  This is why it's not working.  Duh, Amanda!  This is why she flops around and can't concentrate and "forgets" how to do math even though we just went over it 10 times! I don't make my patients ambulate when they have a 10 on the pain scale... I give them morphine and then come back in 30 minutes.

I'm only about 100 pages into the book, so I don't know all the tips and tricks, but I'll keep you posted on how we do.
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Tuesday, June 05, 2012

50 Cents a Cap


Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina is one of my kids' favorite books.  Somehow, we don't own it, so we've gotten it from the library a bunch of times and I've read it out loud so often, I have the whole thing memorized.

So, you can imagine the delight of my children when my friend Candie sent us 20 (roughly) little boy-sized hats with matching outfits.  I'm not sure what kind of storage system she has at her house that allows her to have all those hats and the outfits readily accessible, but we're going to take a lesson from the peddler and store them like this:


He'll just have to keep himself very straight, so as not to upset his caps.
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Monday, January 03, 2011

2010 Book Round-Up

When Tyler and I were in the car together for 10 million hours a few weeks ago, we discussed a lot of things, including, but not limited to, our favorite memories/accomplishments of the last year. I thought back and couldn't really come up with anything. "What the heck did I do last year?"

I was pregnancy sick for the first 3 months, then in labor for the next 3 months, then I went back to school and had an infant for the next 6 months. So... the answer is, I didn't do a whole lot besides vomit, sleep, breastfeed, and write papers. I did manage to read a bit, and so I present my 2nd Annual Book Round-Up.

Noah’s Compass, Anne Tyler (Book Club). I want the 10 or so hours of my life back that it took to read this book.


The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Laurie R. King. Recommended by Kylie. The funny thing is, I don't know Kylie; she's a friend of my friend Myriah. But, I think we'd be friends in real life if we ever lived by each other. We don't, so I blog stalk her, and read the books she likes on Goodreads. This book is fun and interesting and stressful, but not too stressful. A good book to read during my mom job.


When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead. Recommended by Miss Nemesis. I liked this book a lot, and I can't wait until Lillian is a little older, then I can read it to her and talk about time travel and the theory of relativity.


Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Rhoda Janzen. Recommended by Big Mama. Big Mama really loved this book and I thought it was boring and lame. This was just a small example of why Big Mama and I have gone our separate ways this last year.


Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout. I read this for my old people book club, and I'm not quite sure why it won the Pulitzer.


The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman. Recommended by Adrianne and Shannon. If you asked me out of the blue if I liked fantasy novels, I would say no way. Ever. I'm firmly against fairies and dragons and men with long hair and too many consonants in their name (with the notable exception of Ioan Gruffudd). But, I liked this book a lot.


The Help, Kathryn Stockett. I resisted this book for a long time because I thought it would be like one of those email forwards from your grandma with the kittens wearing sweaters. Not that either of my grandmas send me those kinds of forwards, but the type of grandmas who would seemed like the type that liked this book. It wasn't that type of book. It was a sort of To Kill a Mockingbird sort of book, but only about 75% as good.


True Confections, Katharine Weber. Goodreads recommendation. Just OK.


North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell. Like Bridget said, "it's like Pride & Prejudice, but with a social conscience." I liked it, but I thought it suffered from the soap-opera-like quality that serial stories get, as if they start making up random plot shifts and enter long dialogues on things like 19th century union problems in Northern England just to make the story last longer. I liked the movie much, much more.


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows. I read this last year, and then again this year for book club. Still good the second time around.


La’s Orchestra Saves the World, Alexander McCall Smith. This was a quick read that I read literally in one sitting while I was being held hostage at the hospital as the doctors were trying to decide whether or not to stop my "labor" (I was only 5 month's pregnant). They didn't stop it, and I went right on being in "labor" for the next 4 months.


The Eight, Katherine Neville. Again for book club. I'll never forgive this book for the scene at the end when the male protagonist has a major head wound and instead of taking care of that, he instead chooses to be intimate with the female protagonist on the deck of their boat. Then she's got his blood all over her and it was gross. Head wounds bleed a lot, he could have died. Plus they were on a boat, didn't all that salt spray sting?


The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Alan Bradley. Another Flavia deLuce mystery. I don't think I liked it as much as the first, but it was a good time, nonetheless.


The Underneath, Kathi Appelt. I read this book more towards the beginning of the year, and I've mostly forgotten what it was about. I think it has a dog and a cat in it. Two cats? Oh yeah, and their owner is really mean...? I think I liked it at the time but felt it was a little slow.


Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn. Recommended by Miranda. Another quick read.


Non-Fiction

The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs. I laugh every time I think of the most polite stoning in the world.


Diaper-Free Before 3: The Healthier Way to Toilet Train and Help Your Child Out of Diapers Sooner, Jill M. Lekovic, M.D. I don't know if this book helped or not because it seemed like it pretty much advocated doing the same things that I did with Lillian (who, as you may recall, was not fully out of diapers until she was 3.5), and Nora was diaper-free before 2. I think it's because I have all tile and I was more willing to just let her go.


The Kindness of Strangers, Don George (Editor). Vivian sent me this book in a chain-mail-type book exchange. It took me a long time to read because I lost it (it was behind the couch). It's a collection of short stories about the kindness of strangers to people who are traveling. It reaffirmed my faith in humanity a little bit.


How to Sew a Button, Erin Bried. Or, "how to do things that you should have listened to you mom when she said, 'one day, you're going to want to know how to do this.'"


Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, Julie Powell. Skip the book, the movie is much better. The real Julie has a potty mouth and tells her friends to cheat on their husbands.


Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Mary Roach. A long time ago, I was in high school and working part time at the ice cream shop. I spent this income mostly on food and books. (Ah, to be so young and carefree again!) I was browsing Borders and I came across a book that caught my eye. It was called Stiff and it was about cadavers. I bought it and loved it. I've read pretty much everything by Mary Roach ever since. I've actually read this one before, but I've been looking for this fact about wood sprites that I read once and have been trying to relocate for quite some time. It wasn't in this book.


Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Recommended by Amy. I was really surprised that I liked this book so much, especially because I pretty much thought A Midwife's Tale was the most boring book I've ever read in my life.


Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach. I like Mary Roach, OK?


Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes, Alan W. Hirshfeld. Archimedes was one smart man.


Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void*, Mary Roach. This one isn't quite finished. We got it as an audio book to listen to on our trip. Until right this second, I thought they had Mary Roach herself reading it, and I was going to say that her voice got kind of annoying after a while, so I could only listen to it for so long. But, I looked on YouTube for a video of her talking to prove my point, but she actually has a very normal voice, so I'm not sure why they chose the voice talent that they did. Interesting, but not my favorite book of hers.


NPR Books

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, Randy O. Frost & Gail Steketee. Before I switched to nursing, I studied psychology at UCSB. I decided to swtich because the kinds of things I wanted to do required a lot of schooling. I picked nursing because it combines some of my favorite aspects of psychology (science, physiology, biology) with interpersonal interactions and it (theoretically) only took 3 years to finish. Eight years of school later, I may as well have just stuck with psychology. Then I'd be doing fascinating work like Randy O. Frost and have super interesting stories to tell at parties.


The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot. I was thinking of this book the whole time they were drawing up the cord blood after I had Ethan. They didn't ask if they could have it and they never told me what they were planning on doing with it. The thing is, they don't need to: if you go to the hospital to have something removed be it tumor, limb, or placenta, they have to ask your permission to take it out, but after it leaves your body, it NO LONGER BELONGS TO YOU. They could be using my cord blood to make two-headed babies for all I know.


The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall. Recommended by Slate Magazine. This was such a beast of a book, I'm very surprised that I liked it so much.


Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions, Susan R. Barry. Another psychology book. Susan R. Barry was born with a lazy eye which was fixed cosmetically with surgery, but because her eyes weren't exactly lined up, she only saw in 2 dimensions. This book is about how she taught herself how to see in 3D.


School

Sunset Western Garden Book. I even took a whole class on gardening, and I still killed my garden.


Professional Nursing: Challenges & Concepts, Chitty & Black


Health Promotion in Nursing, Maville & Huerta


Evidence-Based Practice for Nurses, Nola Schmidt


Technical Communication, Mike Markel. This was the first class I took that Tyler actually helped me a lot. Turns out, I wasn't very good at writing technical documents.


Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. I feel like I read this thing front to back, and yet I still made APA errors on my term paper.

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Friday, January 22, 2010

Crossword-ease

Tyler got me Will Shortz's Greatest Hits: 150 New York Times Crossword Puzzles Personally Picked by the Puzzle Master for our anniversary. I love it when he gets me non-traditional quirky things (like a few years ago, he got me this special kind of floss that I really like). Anyway, I'm a little rusty when it comes to crosswords. It's not like riding a bike, and it's not a matter of just being smart. It's its own particular language. I've been doing the Mondays and the Tuesdays in the book (they get progressively harder during the week) to warm up. Today, I thought I'd try a Wednesday. Here is a list of facts that I didn't know that I had to cheat and look up:
  • Sammy Cahn wrote the lyrics to "High Hopes"
  • There's an Italian auto maker named Alfa Romeo
  • Olio is another word for a hodgepodge
  • Dirty Harry worked for the SFPD
  • Jonathan Swift wrote a pamphlet titled "A Modest Proposal" in 1729
  • Bill Cosby was in a TV show called I Spy
  • Gary Lewis and the Playboys sang "This Diamond Ring"
  • Paula Abdul and Stevie Wonder sang a song called "Will You Marry Me" (The puzzle was a marriage proposal for a woman named Emily Mindel, which, if I were her, I would have no idea it was meant for me because these clues and a mention of Emily Dickenson are as specific as it gets.)
  • There's an artist named Paul Klee
  • Cassis is a kind of black current liqueur
  • Stephen Foster wrote a song called "Old Uncle Ned"
  • Sedge is a kind of reed
  • Rollo was a character in an old comic strip called "Nancy"
  • Tyrol is the capital of Innsbruck, which is an Austrian state
  • Yente is the matchmaker on Fiddler on the Roof (I think I did know this at one point)
  • Enero is Spanish for January
So... it doesn't look promising for progressing past Wednesday.
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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Books of 2009

This is the first full year that I haven't been in school, so I decided to try to read 50 books. Done. I'm copying Bridget and publishing the list, with my favorites in red. Also, I tried to give you credit if you recommended a book. Here we go:

Juvenile Fiction
Gideon The Cutpurse, The Time Thief, Time Quake, Linda Buckley-Archer, recommended by my SIL Chantel. I liked this series. I read the first two early in the year, and then had to wait for the third to come out later. Because so much time had passed between numbers 2 and 3, I was pretty confused as the author doesn't rely on that age-old device of explaining the whole plot of the previous book in the first chapter. So, read them all at the same time.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, Jessica Day-George, recommended by Allison. Cute. Compelling.

Graceling, Kristin Cashore
Fire, Kristin Cashore, recommended by GoodReads. I quote my original review:
I read this book in 1.5 days, much to the dismay of my family. I think Bridget said it best (although she was talking about a different book):
The point here is that Catching Fire is one of those lovely, delicious books that sucks you into its world and makes you want to ignore every other responsibility in your life, every other engagement, commitment, or member of your family, even the tiny helpless ones, and just READ. As much as I love reading, this particular kind of book doesn't come around very often (the Twilight series and some of the Shannon Hale books come to mind as other examples...)

This book did remind me a lot of Goose Girl in style and the mythical world milieu but edgier and it didn't end quite how I wanted it to end. But, I couldn't put it down, and will probably read the companion prequel, even though the review says it has dragons in it, and I usually draw the line at dragons. And Fairies.
Fire did have dragons, but it wasn't so bad. Not as good as Graceling.

The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, Forrest Born
, Shannon Hale. Check 'um out. You'll probably like them, even if you have to pretend you don't to keep up your rep.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins, recommended by Bridget by way of Stephenie Meyers. Hunger Games: don't start this unless you have at least 20 hours of free time. Right then.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin, recommended by Myriah. Both books from my childhood that I wanted to read again to see if they were still good. They are.

The Calder Game, Blue Balliet. I only grabbed this one because of the title. It was lame.

Harry Potter #6, Harry Potter #7, J.K. Rowling. Always a good time. We re-read #6 to prepare for the movie, and then had to read #7 for closure.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley. Another Goodreads recommendation and a right good one at that. I liked this book so much, I read it twice. I can't wait for the next Flavia book to come out in March.

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fannie Flagg. Not as funny as everyone says it is.

Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale. I like Shannon Hale, ok?

A Year Down Yonder, Long Way From Chicago, Richard Peck. When Allison told me to read these she said, "I want you to read these so I can say, 'hey, wasn't that book funny?' and you'll say, 'yeah, it was.'"

The Girl Who Could Fly, Victoria Forester, recommended by Bridget. Fun at the time, but mostly forgettable.

The Host, Stephenie Meyer. I think of this book almost every time I see Picacho Peak. (Which Tyler and I for a long time pronounced it peak-a-chu, because we didn't know better, and we thought it was funny. Our real estate agent informed us it's pick-aw-sho, or even slightly pick-aw-sha. So now, you won't make the same mistake as us.)

The Thief, The King of Attolia, The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen-Turner, recommended by Lu. I had the same problem as Bridget as the author's mind's eye worked differently than mine, and I often had trouble visualizing rooms, or how people were situated in relation to each other, which meant I had to re-read complicated passages more than once to figure out what the heck happened.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg. For book club.

Replay, Sharon Creech. Not as good as Walk Two Moons.

Peter and the Sword of Mercy, by David Barry and Ridley Pearson. A recently discovered FOURTH Peter and the Starcatchers book. How exciting. I hope they write more, they are so much fun to read.

NPR Books (which I heard about on NPR, or Tyler did and then told me about it.)
*You Are Here: Why we can find our way to the moon, but get lost in the mall, Colin Ellard, recommended by Tyler. I didn't quite finish this one by the time it was supposed to go back to the library. It was really interesting, but I couldn't quite digest all of what he was saying between all the baby vomit and potty training.

Alphabet Juice: the energies, jists, and spirits of letters, words and combinations thereof; their roots, bone, innards, piths, pips, and secret parts; with examples of their usage foul and savory, Roy Blount, Jr. I wish I owned this book so I could dip into it every now and again when I need a pick-me-up.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith. Or, as Tyler called it, Pride and Prejudice and Not Enough Zombies.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David Grann
American Buffalo: In Search of A Lost Icon, Stephen Rinella. I had the word vomit about both these books. I couldn't stop telling people about the worms in the Amazon that live right under your skin that tormented early explorers until they learned that the indigenous people could whistle a special way to make them pop their head out for easy removal. Or, I told more than one person who didn't want to hear about it how buffalo weren't over hunted until there was a breakthrough in the tanning process that allowed both the winter and summer coats to be processed, thus not allowing their numbers to bounce back in the winter months. Both were really interesting, I thought.

Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese. My attempt at reading serious adult fiction. It was ok.

How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer. I read this book before, except it was called Blink and it was by Malcolm Gladwell. The two books are different to a certain degree: How We Decide was much more focused on how the brain works to make decisions, while Blink focused on the types of decisions we can make without thinking.

I thought it was interesting enough, the writing was pretty good, and it made me understand why babies make me so superstitious. The author uses the example of slot machines and explains that our brains are addicted to making predictions and then being right and that slot machines are so alluring because our brains can't figure them out (because they operate on a complicated random number generator). This is exactly like babies with colic, to me anyway. My brain can't figure out what is wrong and all that trial and error is very taxing. So, when you make a prediction like, 'the baby will stop crying if the swing is set to level 3' and it works, you hold on to it with all your might.

Non-Fiction
The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment, A.J. Jacobs. Funny, impressive. Inspiration for my own unitasking experiment, which is floundering, but that's a different post.

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, Ammon Shea. Ammon Shea and I are completely opposite in temperament and ideology: he is a painfully introverted, psycho-leftist whiner, and I'm normal. He had something negative to say about every word concerning marriage (as in it's an outdated fascist-Nazi institution perpetuated by the unwashed masses who have yet to become enlightened on The Better Way To Live) and children (as in they are screaming brats who do nothing but annoy and take away your freedom to do whatever you want. Which, in the author's case, seems to be complain about sitting in the library for 8-10 hours a day.

I liked the words he found, but his commentary on them made me want to punch him in the face.

Two words I especially liked:
1. Minimifidian: (n) A person who has the bare minimum of faith (in something). As in, you assume movies will be horrible before you see them (but then they turn out great so you are always pleased and never let down).

2. Obganiate: (v) To annoy by repeating over and over and over again. See: my 3-year-old daughter.

Something Cleverish, Various. Good cause, clever-ish, but not clever. Actually, kinda lame sometimes.

Outliers, Malcom Gladwell

The Places In Between, Rory Stewart, recommended by Carrie. This guy is gutsy, and a little crazy, and probably very smart.

Braniac, Ken Jennings, recommended by Bridget.

*Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, Cheryl Mendelson. Every homemaker should read her essay on housework and homemaking. So good. I like her empowering view of housework as a part of homemaking, even if I think her views are a little extreme (I mean, she insinuates that if I don't do my dishes as soon as dinner is over or dust weekly, my family will fall ill and die). The asterisk is because this book is like 5,000 pages long and I've just been skimming what I feel are the relevant parts. I mean, I don't really need to know how to care for antique furniture or marble statues.

Adult Fiction
The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

Tomato Rhapsody: A Novel of Love, Lust, and Forbidden Fruit, Adam Schell. I won this book off Goodreads and I liked it... mostly. One too many mentions of bastones for my taste, however.

The Actor and the Housewife, Shannon Hale. Lame ending.
Austenland, Shannon Hale. Eh.

These Is My Words, Nancy E. Turner. This book really struck a chord with me. Maybe I read it when I was all hopped up on post-partum hormones, maybe I was feeling really lonely here in Tucson (just like the main character), but I loved it.

Persuasion, Jane Austen. I think the movie is also excellent.

Charms for the Easy Life, Kaye Gibbons

Playing For Pizza: A Novel, John Grisham. Yeah, he should stick to thrillers and stay away from regular fiction.

Abandoned
The Hour I First Believed: A Novel, Wally Lamb. People really like this, I didn't.

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz. Won the Pulitzer so it must be good, WAY too much swearing for me to handle.

Paper Towns, John Green. Not interesting enough, too high school-y.

She's Gonna Blow!: Real Help For Moms Dealing With Anger, Julie Anne Barnhill. I'd say (from what I skimmed) 80% of this book was the author's experiences with her own anger and trying to deal with it. And from what I could tell, the 'real help' was "pray more," which is not helpful at all. Ok, well, probably a little helpful.
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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you liked The Goose Girl, you'll probably like this book. It has the same elements: little known fairy tale retold with some twists, oddly compelling, and squeaky-clean writing.

Before I knew it was based on an old Norse folk tale, I thought the author had totally ripped of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe- land of never ending winter, gowns made for giant women, fawns. But, turns out, she didn't. I tried briefly explaining the plot to my husband, but he didn't get much past "enchanted polar bears and talking wolves." So, if you just get over the fact that it's fantasy, but with only cursory mentions of fairies, dragons, and brownies, and it's written for teen-aged girls, you'll do fine. And, I think you'll like it too.

View all my reviews >>
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Gaps in my education


I was thinking about a class I took in nursing school; I think it was called something like Prioritization and Decision Making. Although it sounds boring and irrelevant (at least it did to me when I registered for it) (I mean, I know how to prioritize, right?) it was actually really helpful. The academic part was kind of boring. We studied Maslow's Hierarchy (pictured above), and really, once you read it through, what else is there to talk about?

The helpful part was mostly the professor's little tips she gave us on how to manage our time, the main one being "Fast First." She would list out all these nursing tasks that had to be done NOW and you had to figure out the order in which you were going to do them. Like: you have a new admit who need their paperwork done, a patient with pain 7/10 who's requesting meds, the doctor needs you to assist in putting in a central line, and another patient who needs help getting to the bathroom. Assuming you had only a CNA to help you out, you would tell the CNA to get the guy to the bathroom on your way to get pain meds, help with the central line, and then do the admit paperwork.

At work in the hospital, I started applying Fast First, and I saw that I was actually able to get more done. I thought, "This is the kind of stuff I need to know!"

I was thinking about all this because I was thinking they need to teach a class like this for motherhood. I learned how to change diapers, how to sew, how to cook, how to clean a bathroom, how to play Chutes and Ladders but, I came at the tail end of my siblings, so I never really saw my mom raise young kids and thus I never learned those "other" skills that you need to be a mother of preschoolers. How to make it all work.

I'm not explaining this very well. Um, I asked around when I had Nora for advice on how to raise two kids and people would say things like, "you need to be really patient." True, but not helpful. The best advice I got was when my sister said, "when you're getting into the car, put the baby in her car seat first, and then do Lillian. Then, when you're getting out, get Lillian out first, and then the baby second." That is the kind of stuff I needed to know!

When I was chatting with my mom about my sick kids, she mentioned that she used to have a book called The Art of Homemaking, or someone she knew had it, and it offered helpful tips on how to keep your house clean while caring for sick kids (it is besides the point that she did not find these tips helpful). That is the kind of stuff I need to know! Who knew that such a book existed? I don't know why I didn't guess; there are books on everything else.

So, I requested a book called Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House from the library (because they don't carry The Art of Homemaking) and I'll let you know how it goes.
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Monday, November 16, 2009

Happily Ever After?

I'm sick and not a little bit tired. I feel un-attractive, un-funny, un-wifely, un-momly, and especially as I'm trying desperately to come up with something to post about, un-creative.

I have the aches, a sore throat, a headache, stuffy nose, alternating periods of extreme sleepiness with insomnia, aaaaand pink eye. That's right, I now have pink eye. I get all the good stuff. A few days ago, Tyler asked me if I thought his eye looked red. Coming from him, this is a silly question because his eye is always red. On account of the bionacle.

He has an irregular astigmatism and keratoconus, just in one eye, which means he has to wear a combination soft/hard contact. The bionacle. It irritates his eye, so it's often red and angry.

I woke up this morning and my eye was gooed shut. He told me that this happened to him too, but his went away. Mine did not go away, it got worse. I told myself that I'd go to the doctors tomorrow, but around dinner-time, I got desperate and put neosporin in my eye. Which goes against the warning on the label, but my mom assured me that 1. the doctor would just give me neosporin drops and 2. she put neosporin directly in my brother's eyes as per doctor's orders when some bug spray exploded in his face and burned his eyes. So, I'm fairly sure I'm not going to go blind.

A n y w a y.

The only thing that happened to me today, besides being sick, was that I finished a book which was by no means the next Great American Novel. It was the literary equivalent of comfort food and it did not end the way I wanted. I feel betrayed. I read this thing for a predictable happily ever after, and I feel like I got cheated.

I'm the first to admit that I don't really read to be enlightened. I don't read to become smarter. I don't read so that I can have witty things to say to my friends. (Friend?) A lot of what I read, I read to escape. To have a little moment of silly fun before I have to fold the next batch of laundry. I try to tempter this tendency and read serious books from time to time, but mostly I don't.

The book was Shannon Hale's The Actor and the Housewife, and I guess it had some brand of it's own HEA, but this is Shannon Hale- authoress of the Extremely-Mega-Happy-Scooby-Doo HEA, which is what I was expecting, and didn't get.

You've won this round Shannon. I'll still probably read your next book, but don't think that I'm going to forget this.
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