Be Careful What You Wish For
205. The Wishing Year: A House, A Man, My Soul: A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire by Noelle Oxenhandler
I’ve wished for this book for two months now and last week it finally came in at the library. I rushed over to pick it up right after school.
Big disappointment. Oxenhandler wanders all over the place. She is a Zen person but has parents who were Christian and Jewish. She has friends and neighbors who believe in every sort of practice out there. What in the world does Oxenhandler really believe in? She tries wishing, but finds that she often suffers when her wish is fulfilled.
As did I. What was I thinking, wishing for this book?
1 | Comment (0)Reading about Reading and More
202. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Everywhere I looked on blogs, on book lists, on book review sites was this book. Almost every review was a rave. I liked it, too. A solid story, about intriguing people in a little-known part of the world, a bit predictable, with a happy ending that was unlikely but not impossible. The characters were good, but real, and never sappy.
203. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Just as I felt certain things would turn out okay in Guernsey, I felt certain things were going to be bad on The Road. The plot is quite simple: A man and his son are traveling down a road, headed south, away from the terrible cold. Something awful has happened to the world. Everything has burned and ashes lay everywhere in drifts. Death is on every page of the story. If the man had simply been traveling down the road on his own, the story would not have had the power it has. The boy was the only hope of the story, though how the world could ever be restored I don’t know. I hated the story at times, but I also found it very true. It was beautifully written and very thoughtful.
204. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf
I’d planned to browse through this book, but once I got started I couldn’t stop reading. I was reading about reading and it was fascinating. Here are some thoughts I want to save and think about:
“While reading, we can leave our own consciousness, and pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, another culture.”
“The implications of cognitive automaticity for human intellectual development are potentially staggering.”
“…by five years of age, some children from impoverished-language environments have heard 32 million fewer words spoken to them than the average middle-class child. In another study, which looked at how many words children produce at age three, children from impoverished environments used less than half the number of words already spoken by their more advantaged peers….In the most underprivileged community, no children’s books were found in the homes; in the low-income to middle-income community, there were, on average, three books; and in the affluent community there were around 200 books….One of the major contributors to later reading was simply the amount of time for ‘talk around dinner.’ The importance of simply being talked to, read to, and listened to is what much of early language development is about….”
“Some up-front costs, such as transfer errors and substitutions from one language to the next, are less important than the advantages, if…the child learns each language well.” (learning two languages)
“When one realizes that children have to learn about 88,700 written words during their school years, and that at least 9,000 of these words need to be learned by the end of grade 3, the huge importance of a child’s development of vocabulary becomes crystal-clear.”
“An enormously important influence on the development of comprehension in childhood is what happens after we remember, predict, and infer: we feel, we identify, and in the process we understand more fully and can’t wait to turn the page.”
‘Recent reports from the National Reading Panel and the “nation’s report cards” indicate that 30 to 40 percent of children in the fourth grade do not become fluent readers with adequate comprehension….the entire school system (has) different expectations for students from grade 4 on. This approach is encapsulated in the mantra that in the first three grades a child “learns to read,” and in the next grades a child “reads to learn.”‘
1 | Comment (0)201 Books!
198. Dubliners by James Joyce
My new reading strategy is making me very happy.
I’m choosing to read books recommended by two or more persons or groups. Dubliners, as you might guess, is on numerous great books lists. But it was because it was on the list of an online friend that pushed me into reading it last week.
Each story feels like the author wrote a complete book and then savagely cut a hunk out of the middle and threw it into this collection of short stories. The endings never felt like real endings, just stopping points. The people all seemed to suffer deeply, but tragically, almost as if they destroyed their own lives, yet could not stop themselves. Like other great books I have read, I could have happily started the book all over again just as soon as I finished it. It was the kind of book you can see would be an even richer read had you had an experienced guide to take you through it or a group of other readers to talk about it with.
With books like this in the world, it feels sad to think of people reading their lives away in silly romance novels or stilted mystery books.
199. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
A leisurely reread of an old favorite on my new Kindle. Good advice for writers; good advice for life.
200. Judy Moody Goes to College by Megan McDonald
I am raving to every kid I see about how good this book is. Judy gets a little distracted at school and gets sent to a tutor for math help. Judy is elated to learn that her tutor is a college student; thus, Judy Moody Goes to College. And is college ever a wonderful place! Judy learns a whole new vocabulary, gets to do all the really cool college things (like eating at a salad bar—not just for teachers), and even acquires a little helpful math knowledge.
201. Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer
Dyer is a brilliant fellow and a fantastic writer who is an awful failure at life. He’s always trying drugs or new experiences or travel to help him make it to the next day and, at forty, these things are no longer working for him. Yet he can’t seem to find anything else that does work. This book is a compilation of Dyer’s struggles.
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Thanks! and Three More
194. Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert A. Emmons
Emmons serepititiously began to study gratitude during a conference on the classical sources of human strength: wisdom, hope, love, spirituality, gratitude, humility; he signed up for humility but was assigned gratitude. Emmons was surprised to find that by practicing gratitude, people can increase their happiness. Apparently, the brain can not experience both negative and positive emotions at the same time. Emmons proposes ten ways for adults to practice gratitude: keeping a gratitude journal; remembering the bad parts of the past and being grateful for getting through those times; asking three questions (”What have I received from ___?” “What have I given to ___?” and “What troubles and difficulties have I caused ___?”); learning prayers of gratitude; “coming to your senses”; using visual reminders to be grateful; making a vow to practice gratitude; using the language of gratefulness; going through the motions; and thinking outside the box for things for which to be grateful. He also calls for gratitude training in childhood, in order to develop a tool that will foster well-being.
195. Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost
Just in time for the 2008 Olympic Games, I get a behind the curtain look at China. And that look at China is not pretty. Despite all attempts to appear as a modern nation, China’s leaders continue to rule the country with an iron hand. The law is wielded despotically and seemingly at a whim. Capitalism has somehow managed to sneak into the country, but it is an ugly capitalism, run with the tired hands of a weary people desperate to make a living and with side effects of rampant pollution that threatens the air and water of every large city in China. And there are people, people, people everywhere, one and a half billion altogether, with all the horrors that such a large population brings.
Not a place I wish to visit.
196. Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States; 22,000 Miles; 200 Shoes; 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband; and a Bus with a Will of Its Own by Doreen Orion
After the virtually joyless trip I just took with Troost in Lost on Planet China (not Troost’s fault…China is just not a pretty world these days), I was happy to climb aboard with Doreen Orion in Queen of the Road and travel around the (relatively) clean U.S. of A. Orion’s husband convinces her to buy an enormous bus, convert it to a travel-mobile, and set out on a yearlong adventure across America. Orion is a fun traveling companion and seems to find every quirky spot and person in the country. A great summer read.
197. A Death in the Family by James Agee
There are good reads that satisfy and are thoughtful and have lovely writing. And then there are the truly great reads that leave the reader longing to start the book over and reread it just as soon as one turns to the final paragraph. A Death in the Family is a great read.
The story is very simple. Jay Follet, the dad and the husband in the family, receives a call from his brother that his father is very ill and is near death. Jay goes to be with his father and on his return is killed in an automobile accident.
But there is so much more to this book that makes it a great read. The writing is beautiful, filled with wonderful words and phrases that feel fresh and new without feeling artificial. Agee gets inside each character’s head so that each character seems unique and genuine. The reader is left with the mysteries of the story that so often occur in real life: Had Jay been drinking when the accident took place? Was Jay’s father really seriously ill and, if not, why did Jay’s brother call? What will happen to Jay’s wife and children? How will the accident change their lives?
A must read.
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