It's a new year! I hope to do a better job on reviewing the books I read. I have several books lined up:

1. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

2. Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks

3. The Light Fantastic by Terry Prachett

4. The Universe book in the Big Questions series by Stuart Clark

5. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Let's see how it goes...

Books on CD

Work is interfering with my reading time! Grumble, grumble. I have managed to listen to a few more books on CD. Let's see. I've listened to The Jane Austen Book Club, Notes From a Small Island, and most of Kite Runner.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler is about the lives of a group of people who meet to discuss...you guessed it...Jane Austen books. Each month features the story of a different member of the group. My impression of this book was that the author did a good job with character development. If I had read more Jane Austen books besides Pride and Prejudice, I would have understood more of the subtleties of the discourse. This book was made into a movie in 2007. I was severely pregnant at the time the movie was released. I only recently discovered the movie existed. If you've seen this movie, I am interested to know how you liked it.

Notes From a Small Island is by one of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson. I appreciate his kind of humor. He is the kind of person I'd like to share a drink with in a pub somewhere. In this book, Bryson recalls his farewell tour of England before moving to the U.S. after having lived there for 20 years. Unfortunately, I know very little about England in terms of geographic regions. Some of the humor in this book is lost on me. I DO enjoy listening to him read his own book.

A friend of mine gave me The Kite Runner as a birthday present years ago. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I wasn't sure I could read this book. I already knew that a boy is raped. As I have said in a prior post, I read to be entertained, not depressed. Anyway, I thought that I could listen to this book and skip the rape scene. However, the story was just so awful and depressing to me that I had to stop after the protagonist returned to Afghanistan to retrieve the son of his old friend (half-brother). I appreciate the craft that went into this story, but it is not for me.

Lately I haven't had much time for reading. What's that? "Blasphemy," you say. Well, sometimes one must work extra hard even when there are no red velvet cupcakes waiting at the end.

Fortunately for me, it turns out that they have gone and put books on CD. :) Both my sisters have been pestering me, ah..hum, I mean suggesting to me that I really must listen to "Wee Free Men" by Terry Pratchett. Both of my sisters are awesome librarians who read far more than I. When they tell me (repeatedly) to read something, the proper thing to do is to listen. It also helps that the whole set of CDs was placed into my hands on my last visit.

I never expected that listening to a book on CD would be so enjoyable! This book is meant to be heard rather than read.

The protagonist is a nine year old girl, Tiffany Aching, who does not care for babysitting her younger brother whose birth ruined everything (foot-stomp). Tiffany encounters a fierce race of creatures known as the Nac Mac Feegles, aka Wee Free Men. Although they are only six inches tall, they are vera' brave. Ach!

If you get bored with your regular iPod selections and are looking for a new diversion, check out "Wee Free Men" on CD.

Interesting experiment in Colorado

I just happened upon this news article of an experiment in doing away with grade levels in the Adams 50 school system. Outliers talks about problems with not staggering students based on their ages.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090210/ts_csm/agradeless

A little light reading

I'm currently reading Firmin by Sam Savage. Firmin is a rat who learns how to read and is thwarted by his inability to communicate with humans and his alienation from other rats. I consider this book to be an homage to literature.

Normally this is a book I would finish easily in one day. Now that I have children, though, I have to snatch reading time when I can. Although I haven't finished the book, clues point to a sad ending. In general, I steer clear of works of fiction that are not going to end well. I read to be entertained and/or educated, not depressed and reminded that there is only one outcome for us all. If I know right from the start that things aren't going to end well I can steel myself.

I think you will appreciate the literary references and the book titles that Firmin dreams up. If you've just slogged your way through Collaspe by Jared Diamond, for instance, you might appreciate a little light reading and Firmin is just the ticket.

Someday I'll get around to it...

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I thought he did a good job of making his point, which is that success is not just the product of the individual's hard work and perseverance. As Gladwell states,

"[Outliers] are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky...".

This book is a quick read. Gladwell doesn't drone on too long on the same point. He also provides additional reference material, which is always an indicator of a good non-fiction writer. I recommend it.

I was skimming through the reference material at the back of the book thinking that I'd like to read some of the books and articles he mentioned. In particular, Gladwell thinks highly of Richard Nisbett. I guess I'd add him to my ever-expanding list of authors to read. If you've read Nisbett and have an opinion on his work, I'd loved to hear about it.

As a graduate student in Library Sciences, my sister took a book arts class. One of the fun little projects they had was creating their own paper and turning it into a clever bookmark. My sister's bookmark contained a quote from Robert Lawson's Rabbit Hill -- "Reading rots the mind." Of course, as a future librarian, this was a bit tongue in cheek. My blog name is a play on that expression (just in case you were wondering).

When I was growing up, my mother would take me and my siblings to the public library almost every week. She never censored anything I read that I can remember until I reached 3rd Grade. She and my older sisters read Harlequin romance novels. I was not allowed to read those novels. The only romance novels they would allow me to read were the novels of Barbara Cartland. Looking back, these historical romances were pretty wretched, but I learned a lot of new words. My English teacher at the time returned papers back to me with words circled and comments in the margin of the paper -- "Archaic use of this word!"

Reading DOES rock the open mind. There's no help for the other kind of mind. So, for my opening blog, here's to reading (chink, chink).

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish. --S.I. Hayakawa