Reading and listening

I had totally different experiences with the two books I just finished, listening to the first one and reading the second one in print. In fact, my experience was the opposite of what one might expect.

I listened to the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells as an abridged audiobook. For some reason I don't remember I've been wanting to read this book for a long time.
I didn't like it as much as I had hoped, though. I guess, parents who hit their children always piss me off. At the end, Vivi, Sidda's mother, still kind of has an attitude, instead of being sorry for how she had treated her daughter, not being sensitive to her needs. I didn't connect to the "divine" secrets, either. The group did stupid pranks and made up weird stories, and even though they stayed together even when they were adults, they weren't really able to help each other out where it seemed important.

I also finished reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks yesterday. Now that is a fascinating collection of true stories describing various stories of what happens if various parts of the brain do not function. It's not depressing though, but shows hope. It also shows how a caring attitude can make a big difference in bringing out the special abilities of these people and assisting them to live a good life in their sometimes very unusual worlds instead of reducing them to troublesome people with deficiencies.

Windmills and Christmas

Another book club choice was The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. Again, I didn't make it to the meeting to discuss, it was late and cold... I hope the morning meeting in January will take place. Anyway, with or without the discussion this is a great book and I'm glad I've read it. When I mentioned it to my coworker, she said she saw William on TV. And just yesterday I found out that a documentary film is in the making. I would like to see it when it comes out.

And now I'm going through all my Christmas themed books.

Richard Paul Evans: The Christmas Box. I didn't read this book this time. I read it earlier and remember liking the story. Instead I sent it in a Secret Santa package.

Debbie Macomber: Call Me Mrs. Miracle. This book involves some people who haven't celebrated Christmas for many years because of a tragic event in their family that happened at Christmas time and others who do their best to make it the best Christmas despite difficult circumstances... I enjoyed the story and then sent the book to someone who wished for books by this author.


Max Lucado: The Christmas Child: A Story of Coming Home. A nice little story. I decided to wild release this book. It was found a day or two later by a student. Nice catch.

Joel Osteen: The Christmas Spirit. Christmas memories from his family and his friends. I was reminded that it's important to share stories and memories from the past with the children. After reading the book, I gave it to a coworker whose daughter is a fan of the author.

And now I'm reading The Purpose of Christmas by Rick Warren.

More books - great and not so great

I really liked "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I read it for a local book club, but didn't make it to the meeting. I'm still glad I read it.

"The Shack" by Wm. Paul Young was awesome. The author spoke at our church today. He was fascinating.

And I just finished “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger. Although there were some elements I liked about it, it wasn't really that good. I'm not sure why it's considered a "classic".

A few more books

In the meantime, I've read several more books. Among them:

• Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
• Six Hours One Friday by Max Lucado
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  
• The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
  
• Crazy Love by Francis Chan
• The Forest People by Colin Turnbull
  
• Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

And then there was a series of inspirational Manga, Serenity: Bad Girl in Town (Vol. 1), Stepping Out (2), Basket Case (3). Apparently, there are more, but I only had the first three.

These are the ones I remember.

and then there were three...

I just finished reading and then there were three..., a memoir by Supriya Bhatnagar

They're a family of father, mother, and two daughters. The major life changing event is when the father dies unexpectedly when the older girl is ten years old. The mother has to make all the important decisions by herself now, and the family has to relocate to a different city. The book mostly describes the life of the family when the older daughter is in her teens, written from that daughter's perspective.

What makes the book interesting is to read about all the little (and maybe not so little) things in life. The kinds of decisions and events that every family goes through and seeing how they deal with them. To see how these things may be a bit different from what we're used to because the family lives in India.

What surprised me was how little impact the caste system, political events, economic changes etc. had in their lives. I had read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry a while ago and the India described there is so different (the two books overlap in the time frame they describe). I realize that A Fine Balance is fiction and And Then There Were Three is non-fiction, but not all the differences can be explained by that. I'd like to find out more about how those two different worlds in the same country fit together.

Ice

I just finished reading "Ice: Would you risk everything for a fairy tale?" by Sarah Beth Durst. It was the selection for the BC in DC book club. I love how it integrates today's world (the research station, GPS, etc.) with the fairy tale element.

When Cassie was a little girl, her grandmother told her a fairy tale about her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and was swept away to the ends of the earth. Now that Cassie is older, she knows the story was a nice way of saying her mother had died. But on her eighteenth birthday, Cassie encounters a polar bear who speaks to her...

It's wonderful to read how Cassie gets to use all the skills she learned growing up at the Arctic research station to get through the adventures she encounters on her journey.

50 books in 2010

I listened to an abridged version of Monk's Hood by Ellis Peters on two audio cassettes. I enjoyed listening to this mystery. An unabridged reading would probably have been even better, towards the end it felt like maybe some details were missing. It's another Brother Cadfael mystery. I finished the book close to the end of the year.

I also finished The Red Tent by Anita Diamant recently. Even if it was a few days into January, I'll still count it for 2010. I had read this book a long time ago, but didn't remember any details. I enjoyed it, but kept wondering whether the women were really so ignorant about God. The men in the family had followed him for several generations already.

So, I made it to 50 books in 2010. It's interesting to see that I really read that many books and the variety (Go back through the posts tagged "50booksin2010"). I won't repeat the challenge this year, but will still report on some books.

Asking for Trouble

Indeed Sophy is asking for trouble with the way she lies so easily. She tells a lie to her mother to sooth her only for her to become upset later anyway. It's not the type of book I would usually read, but as one among many other books it was fun. The outcome with Josh was fun to read even though it was somewhat predictable. In order not to reveal the final plot of the book, I'll only say this, Sophy is asking for trouble again right at the end of the book by the way she behaves...


(book 48 for 50 books in 2010 challenge)

I'm glad I entered the drawing - A Beacon of Hope

A Beacon of Hope by Walter E. Mark

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I received this book as a First Reads lucky winner!

I'm glad that I entered the drawing and got to read the book. The people in the story live on a different planet, but their society is similar enough to ours that I could relate to it well, but different enough to make it really interesting. There are many technological advances that enhance their quality of life (I love the one where you can create the interior design of your room buy just pointing and selecting using a computer interface, I would like to have something like that.). And others threaten to destroy the world to leave it in chaos and misery. The Sixth World is different enough from our world to make the book really interesting. But on the other hand one can relate to the issues they are going through and draw one's own thoughts for our world.

I would like to find out how the story continues in the second volume.

View all my reviews on goodreads.com

(46th book of 2010)

Booo

I listened to "Pure Dead Magic" by Debi Gliori, an audio book on tape that I got at a used book sale at the library in the summer. I thought it was kind of fun how the author weaved elements of computers the Internet into the world of magic that usually deals with wands and such.

(45th book of 2010)

Another graphic novel

This afternoon I read "Pitch Black" by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton. A white young woman and a black young man meet in an underground station and he tells her about his life. I don't want to give away any details of the story, but it's quite unusual. Some of the drawings are detailed whereas others are more like sketches. The different amounts of detail and use of only black and white and some gray tones fits really well with the subject. This story is a lot shorter than the the one I read recently about New Orleans. It kept me wondering at the end if such a life would really happen in New York or just parts of it. Interesting for sure and worth the read.

(I'm counting graphic novels as books read, so this is number 43.)

Looking for Alaska

Just a couple of days ago, I finished reading "Looking for Alaska" by John Green (the Wikipedia article has a good synopsis). I got the book from the library and finished it just in time, one day before it was due, so that I could take some notes before returning it.

My first impression when reading the first few chapters was surprise at how much smoking and drinking was going on at the school. It didn't make sense to me why Pudge would start with it, it seemed to me his friends wouldn't have minded if he had said no thanks. There was no strong peer pressure and he seemed to know that it's not good for you. I was shocked at the prank in the beginning, I mean, he could have drowned. That was a severe case of bullying. Lots of things like that seemed to be going on at the school, drinking, smoking, dangerous pranks, etc., but the teachers didn't care much, they rarely "found out", even though there was so much evidence. And the parents didn't seem to care, either. I was really baffeled by that. Anyway, the main story was still interesting, the before part where Pudge gets to know Alaska and his other new friends at this school, and the after part where they're trying to figure out what was really going on that night with Alaska. The religion class was a nice way to weave in some philosophical questions into the story.

I read in the Wikipedia article about the book that the book has been challenged at a high school for content dealing with sexually explicit situations. That's pretty ridiculous considering all the other things that are going on in that story. Although I wasn't interested in such things at that age, the sexual thoughts and actions seemed the most comprehensible to me compared to the prevalence of drinking, the severeness of some of the "pranks" etc.

So I kind of enjoyed the book even though I might not have ordinarily chosen to read it. I read it for the BC in DC book club. I hope I'll make it to the meeting next week.

(50 books in 2010 cout: 42).

A.D. New Orleans after the Deluge

A.D. New Orleans after the Deluge by Josh Neufeld is a graphic novel based on real people and events.

Wired.com expresses it well: "A.D. is a sterling example of comics with a social consciousness, and is exactly the kind of thing we need to keep the human dimension of this unimaginable disaster and its ongoing aftermath in the public eye."

I haven't really read any graphic novels before and not many comics in a while and didn't know where to begin, so I asked for some recommendations and this was first on the list. I was so impressed, I didn't even know literature like this existed. It really shows the truth of "a picture is worth a thousand words" with the way it shows the storm, the flooded areas, etc. The graphics are expressive, but not too crowded, they have just enough detail. I love that we see the experience hurricane Katrina from different perspectives through different people. The only thing I would have liked more is if the stories would have come together somehow. It was great that the author found someone with a comic collection to base one of the sub-stories on, especially fitting for the medium. The two page spreads that are spread throughout the book are great as well. So I had a great experience with my first graphic novel.

(50 books in 2010 count: 41)

Sometimes, re-reading a book is a good thing

I don't usually re-read books a second time, especially if I didn't like them that much the first time around. But Grace Community Church that I attend while here in the D.C. area was offering discussion groups based on the book, so I gave it a shot. I liked the book much more the second time around. Maybe I was used to the author's style a little and could focus more on the parts I liked? Maybe I had a bit of a different perspective from attending this church? Maybe it was just the prospect of being able to discuss the book with others? I don't know what it was, but I'm glad I re-read the book.

This time around I could relate more to the person who didn't like Christianity, but wanted to believe Jesus was the Son of God (p. 115). We need to love each other, so we can learn we are lovable (p. 146). This is probably especially important for people who didn't grow up in a loving family. The soul needs to interact with other people to be healthy (p. 154). Self-addiction (p. 182) is a big problem. The author gives Zaccheus as an example. The affection of Christ, not the brutality of a town, healed Zaccheus (p. 183). Which goes back to the importance of loving each other. Jesus was loving and kind to Zaccheus and helped him change that way, where all the rejection of the people in town couldn't change him.

We all believe things we cannot explain, You cannot be a Christian without being a mystic (p. 202). I've felt a similar way, sometimes, Christianity seems like a fairy tale, the story is so amazing, but the really amazing thing is that it's really true, not make believe like all the other stories.
If you see Christianity as religion or ritual, it's a false gospel (p. 203). The problem with the Christian culture around us is that we tend to use love as a commodity, like money. (p. 218). But instead it's a free gift. We need to give love not withholding it (p. 220). Many of us need to develop their ability to receive love as well (p. 226).

These are just a few of the nuggets of wisdom that I found in the book this time around. It turns out in discussing the book that many of us "got it" the first time reading it. For one of us it even gave her a break-through in understanding Jesus' love for her with her heart instead of just in her head for the first time.

(50 books in 2010 count: 40)

What if? 2 too boring

What If? 2 by Robert Cowley on 4 audio tapes, abridged for audio.

From the Publisher

There is no surer way to feel the danger or the good fortune of our collective past than to contemplate those moments when the world's future hung in the balance. Our brightest historians speculate on some of these intriguing crossroads and the ways in which our lives might have been changed for the better -- or the worse.

These unabridged essays range across the full span of history. Geoffrey Parker describes ramifications that might have included a divided Reformation movement, a strengthened Catholic leadership, and no European settlements in the Americas. And Caleb Carr argues that we could have been spared the horrific last six months of World War II in Europe if Eisenhower had seized his chance to destroy the Nazis in the fall of 1944.

This could have been so much more interesting. Most of the descriptions of what if stopped just when it started to become interesting. Or they were too abstract.
I can't comment about the details of most of them, because I didn't know enough about the original events to say how the what if scenarios could have been described in a more interesting way.

The first one, though, was about what if Jesus hadn't died when he said he would, but had lived until he had died at an old age. The author of that essay seemed to think that it would be considered blasphemous to imagine this, but in fact, it's even kind of addressed in the Bible. See 1 Corinthians 15:14 "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." There are so many things that could have been addressed, e.g. it is generally believed that without Jesus' death and resurrection, Christianity wouldn't have all developed like it did, but may have slowly died out. The author of the essay in the book, though, seems to believe that Constantine would still have made it the state religion and church fathers would still have met in the 4th century to discuss things the way they did in reality.

In general, I would have expected a descriptions of some exciting differences but in the abstract high level way the essays were written, even for the "what if the potato hadn't been introduced into Europe" you couldn't imagine the consequences too well.

Books finished today

I kind of finished three books today.

Moominpappa's Memoirs by Tove Jansson. I had received this one in a book ray. It was so much fun to read Moominpappa's Memoirs, about his childhood and his adventures, and the friends he made. At the end we even find out how he met Moominmamma! I enjoyed the drawings so much as well. I had known the Moomins from the comic strips, but this was the first non-comic about the Moomins that I've read.

Refuge on Crescent Hill by Melanie Dobson. I decided to join a book club like swap about this book on swap-bot. This is a Christian suspense novel, I'd say it is more like a mystery novel, though. I really liked it. Maybe I'll post some questions I answered about it later.

What If? 2 By Robert Cowley (abridged for audio). This wasn't as interesting as I would have hoped. More about this in the next entry.

In September, I also read A Mercy by Toni Morrison for the Bookrossing in DC book club.

(50 books in 2010: 38)

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

I just love the series of No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith. I just finished The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, the eighth in the series. I love how down to earth they are. And it was also fun to read about all the things that went wrong this time and how all those things resolved.

(50 books in 2010: 34)

Reading about faithful and not so faithful people

For our online book club, we've been reading "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott. When we voted for what to read, I believe I didn't vote for this one, but I'm glad I read it, I really liked it. The story basically follows the life of four sisters from their teens to later when they are adults - there are two parts to the book. The title of my post alludes to "The Pilgrim's Progress" by John Bunyan, each of the daughters got a copy of that book from their parents. They read it pretty regularly and refer to it sometimes. I've had that book on my to-read list for a while and would read it right now for reference, but it's back in California on one of my bookshelves. So I guess I'll get it from there on my next visit.

And just in the last couple of days, I've read "A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael" by Ellis Peters. It contains three classic stories featuring Brother Cadfael. The first one seems to be set shortly before he decides to become a monk, so we find out a little bit about his life before he became a monk and the events that lead up to it. The other two are tales featuring the monastic sleuth solving mysteries around the monastery at Shrewsbury. Each of the stories is only about 50 pages long, but each is as captivating as a whole novel. They were a joy to read and now I'm giving the book away to someone else who likes books by Ellis Peters. Obviously monks are usually faithful people, too, but sometimes they're not as faithful as it may seem...

(50 books in 2010 book count: 33)

Eat pasta and try to meditate or walk on water?

Wow, it's already been a while since I last told what books I've read. After reading The Color Purple, I've already two more books by women authors.

Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle is a good read for any creative person. She has some thoughts on whether there is such a thing as Christian art. The artist must trust himself, his work, and be open to revelation. Creativity is not limited to artists, though. It can even extend to the freedom of choosing an academic career or having the priority of nurturing your family and helping your husband with his work behind the scenes. And the intuitive and intellectual parts of ourselves are not incompatible.

For the BC in DC bookclub, I read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Even though I had seen this book in the stores a lot, I didn't pick one up until I found out that the BC in DC Book Club would read it.

When I started reading, I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I kept reading. The first thing that stood out to me was that the author had a love affair right after (or even during?) a difficult divorce. Later, she doesn't even manage to spend that entire year in celibacy like she sets out to do. Hm.
Even though she says she won't tell about the failure of her marriage, she keeps giving us bits and pieces. Either tell us the whole thing or leave it all out!
What I did like was that even though she has a totally screwed image of who God is, at least she lays out what she thinks and defines what she means.
It's unfortunate how she falls for the new-agey spiritually stuff. I hope she'll continue her journey to find the truth eventually.
What made it a bit more interesting for me to read was that I can relate to living for a few months in a different environment/different country, not exactly like a tourist, but more like a short term resident.
Unfortunately, the book didn't have as much substance as I would have hoped, covering her journey through three countries and the time frame of about a year. Another book I read recently, "13 Little Blue Envelopes" was far more interesting that way.

What a contrast between those two books. The first one is really nurturing in a healthy way whereas the second one is self-absorbed and over-indulgent in a way. Once you have a real relationship with God, all this spirituality stuff falls really flat. But even some of us who are now Christians have been in a phase were we were searching in all the wrong places before finding the one true path that can save us. Unfortunately, Eat, Pray, Love wasn't very good as a travel narrative either, the only exception being the culinary adventures with pizza and pasta in Italy.

I listened to an abridged version of this book on cassette: Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson The story was kind of interesting, but not as exciting to me as I had hoped, reading that "Kidnapped is considered by many to be the best book Stevenson ever wrote."
Maybe it was because I had to concentrate so much to understand Robbie Coltrane's accent (he's reading the audio book). Or maybe it was because those settings and names etc. were not really my cup of tea. Or maybe, the abridgment left out vital parts. Somehow, the ending of the story came quite abruptly. While checking out the story online after reading it, I discovered that the book has numbered chapters, it would have helped if they had been announced on the audio version. I discovered in the Wikipedia article about the novel that it's set around real events and some of the people portrayed are real people. That in hindsight makes the novel more interesting to me.

I listened to an audio adaption on cassette of Star Trek The Next Generation: Imzadi by Peter David. At first I was a bit skeptical when the romance started, but it developed really well. It's a great novel that combines science fiction with a romance.

(50 books in 2010 count: 31, not counting those children's books in the previous post)

The local library

Just last Thursday, I had walked over to the local library to get a library card. I noticed that there would be a library book sale on Friday and Saturday, so of course I had to go. I got a couple of books on Friday, they were the same price as in the little book store the library has. On Saturday, you could get a whole bag of books for only $5. Since I saw some that I was interested in and some for my sister-in-law, I got a bag filled to bursting! After the purchase, I had to divide the books between two bags and still the bags were heavy!

So I got a whole bunch of books for my sister-in-law. She's teaching English to elementary school kids in Germany and would like to start a little library so they can read English books on their own if they'd like. I think I found a nice variety on different reading levels. I've read the following in the last couple of days:

• The Nancy Drew Notebook #4 - Bad Day for Ballet by Carolyn Keene
  
• Boy Can He Dance by Eileen Spinelli
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a graphic classic based on the novel by Jules Verne
  
• Night-Time by Eileen Pettigrew
  
• Bonny's Big Day by James Herriot
  
• The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night (this is an illustration of an old song and has especially detailed drawings)
  
• When the Wind Blew by Margaret Wise Brown
  
• Bear Mouse by Berniece Freschet
  
• Disney's Brother Bear

It wouldn't be fair to count these for the 50 books challenge (unless I get desperate towards the end of the year ;) ), but they were fun to read, I think the students will enjoy those and the others I included (even a couple of the Narnia novels by C.S. Lewis - I read those a few years ago).

Of course I like books on tape, and there were a few of those as well, so I added those to my bag as well.