Books: Sh*t My Dad Says

I read an article about Sh*t My Dad Says, requested it from the library and then promptly forgot about it for about 4 months. Last week, after I finally made my way through the very long waiting list, I couldn't really remember why I wanted to read the book but still went and picked it up.

I finished it in about an hour and a half--a particularly annoying hour and a half for Henry and his roommate, who never seemed to get used to me bursting into laughter every couple of minutes. This book is a quick read and doesn't have a very continuous plot to pull you in, but it is funny! The structure of the book is largely based around the author telling stories of times when his father shared some politically incorrect but valuable and entertaining wisdom, with each story followed by a few pages of funny quotes and advice. If you remember that this book was inspired by a Twitter feed set up to record the author's father's (mostly profane) one-liners of wisdom, you will be prepared to accept the book as it is. I would also recommend having a thick skin, as the author's dad is far from politically correct or gentlemanly.

A few of my favorites, so you'll know what you're getting yourself into:

ON THE DEATH OF OUR FIRST DOG


He was a good dog. Your brother is pretty broken up about it, so go easy on him. He had a nice last moment with Brownie before the vet tossed him in the garbage.

ON MY BLOODY NOSE

What happened? Did somebody punch you in the face?!... The what? The air is dry? Do me a favor and tell people you got punched in the face.

ON FURNISHING ONE'S HOME
Pick your furniture like you pick a wife: It should make you feel comfortable and look nice, but not so nice that if someone walks past it they want to steal it.

I would recommend borrowing this book from the library to brighten your day a little bit. As long as you're not looking for something heavy and important and are willing to not take the book too seriously, this will make you laugh and be worth the time. It's short, entertaining, and a great way to get in some laughter!

Book: Physics of the Impossible

After about a month of working on it, I finally finished Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible. It was an interesting book and well-written, and I'm a little bit sad that it took me so long to finish. Compared to many of the physics books geared towards a general audience that I've tried to read, this one was remarkably fun and easy to read. (Last week Steamboat Willie was having trouble sleeping, so I gave her one of my previous attempts at a readable physics book. After a few weeks of laying awake for 2 or 3 hours a night, she read 2 pages and not only slept through the night, but overslept the next morning. This book was much more interesting than that!)

Unfortunately, it was still a physics book for me. As much as I really am interested in physics, when I'm reading about it my attention span is even shorter than normal (which is hard to achieve). If I'm in a quiet room by myself, I can read for hours. If I'm anywhere else, I tend to get distracted by just about anything going on, which is why it took me so darn long to finish the book.

The basis of Physics of the Impossible is an explanation of the real physics of things that we've always considered science fiction, from interspace travel to telling the future. He divides the book into 3 sections, based on the probability of the event actually happening. One of my favorite parts of the book is that he is completely unabashed about the fact that many physicists got into the profession because they wanted to know about how Star Trek or Star Wars or even Batman could happen in real life. It made the whole subject more approachable to hear about the discoveries that were made because a physicist happened to read Jules Verne or watch Aliens. The author was also great at conveying some real physics information without confusing the issue by jumping into the very complicated issues too deep.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is just a little bit geeky (like me) and interested in both physics and science fiction. If you have a longer attention span than me, you'll be able to breeze through it--otherwise, plan a little bit of time when the tv is off and no one is around, and you'll learn enough physics to make yourself look like a good science geek!

Back into the swing of things--Books: Shadow of the Silk Road

I'm starting to realize how much more of a winter project this blog is for me. IN the winter, I'm generally bored from continually staying inside and bummed about not seeing the sun. Also, just about every winter I go through a funk where I forget that I'm just upset because it's thirty below outside and I only get to see the sun through windows, and decide that there's some normal part of my life that needs to change and I'll be as happy as I am when I'm swimming outside in the summer. This winter, my funk produced this blog. While it's certainly still a good project, I'm noticing that my dedication to having adventures is dulled significantly when I can substitute an evening of grilling and swimming in the pool, or trying to see if my foot has healed enough to take the dog for a walk, or really anything else outside. And for the most part, that is what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks--really, the last two months. I've stopped buying groceries for the week, because if it's a nice week most of them just sit there as I make emergency trips to the store for brats or steaks and corn or some other new grilling food. (Speaking of which--I found this blog this week, which I'm highly enjoying and also has a link to 101 ideas for grilling. Good, easy ideas. Yum.)

This week I've been doing ok for little experiments--I made a new vegetarian recipe that turned out great and finally finished a book I've had out from the library for a few months now. (I'll post that tomorrow--hopefully breaking things up will keep me going!)

I got Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron probably 6 weeks to 2 months ago from the library, and it has really taken me that long to finish it. The book is extremely well written and I think it has a fantastic premise--the author begins in China and follows the old silk road back to Antioch. He is entirely by himself, does not speak the language of every country he passes through (although he does speak both Mandarin and Russian, which get him by in quite a lot of countries) doesn't have a plan beyond which cities he intends to stop in, and even spends a decent amount of the way hitchhiking. It's the sort of adventure that is great to read about because I know I could never do it, especially through the territory he covers--through China and Mongolia, perhaps, but he also moves through Afghanistan and Iran.

This book has a well-written travel story, showing you not only the sights that the author sees but the people he speaks to and the way they look at the world. Although we are entangled in so may of the countries he travels to, this book shows me how little I really knew about the history and the way people think in many of these countries. For so much of it, we only see the propaganda put out by one government or another (or by immigrants who have chosen to leave that country, and so probably have very different viewpoints than those who chose to stay), and never really get the opportunity to speak to an Iranian or an Afghani who chooses to stay in their country. My biggest issue with this book was probably my interest level. Depending on the chapter and my level of interest in where the author was, I either couldn't put the book down or I'd put it down for a week or two at a time. I'm glad I read the book, even the parts that interested me less, but it's a book that you might need some time to go through unless you're interested in everywhere between China and Turkey.

Unfortunately, after taking so long to finish this book I now have a backlog of requests that have come in that the library to sift through. So, expect quite a few more book posts coming up!

Books: Miracle in the Andes and Alive

When I was in high school, I watched the movie Alive in one of my lit classes. It was one of a few movies that managed to make an impression on me in spite of being shown in school. The story was gruesome and painful, but absolutely fascinating. I went on to read the book Alive by Piers Paul Read, which was different from the movie but equally impacting.

For those of you who don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about, Alive is the true story (at least the book is...if I remember correctly, the movie is based on the story but takes some creative liberties) of a rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in the middle of winter. They were far off course and deep in a treacherous area of the mountains, and searchers weren't able to find them. This group stayed alive for 72 days, before two of them finally walked out of the mountains (I believe it's the second highest mountain range on Earth) to get help. This survival was impressive enough, before adding in the details that the plane was broken in half, many of the survivors were very injured, they were completely mislead about their own position in the mountains and (the gruesome part) they ran out of normal food a week or so after they crashed. (I'll leave that jump in logic to you, and just say that they broke a very, very big taboo.) The story had incredible potential to be sensationalist, horrific and gross; instead, it was handled in a way that can't help but amaze you in the people's incredible will to survive.

Because this story made an impact on me years ago, I was pretty much stopped in my tracks when I was wandering through the library and saw a book about the Andes by Nando Parrado. Nando was the main protagonist of Alive, the young man whose skull was cracked open in the crash, whose mother and sister died beside him, and who eventually led the trek out of the mountains. I picked up Miracle in the Andes and read the whole book yesterday. It had most of the great elements that I remembered from Alive, with the benefit of being narrated first person by someone who had been on the mountain, rather than a journalist. I'm not sure I would love the book if I hadn't already read Alive and been pulled into the story--I really don't know. As it was, though, it was a great continuation of the story for me. It was extremely difficult to put down and if you have a reasonably strong stomach, I would highly recommend it. It's the sort of story that makes you slow down and appreciate how good your life is. When I read both Alive and Miracle in the Andes, I was surprisingly humbled. It's hard to be upset about the little things in life when you're faced with a story of people who had such a horrible experience and still fought so hard to live.

Books: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I read about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks months ago and requested it from the library; apparently I wasn't the only one! It took months to get here, but it was worth it. This book tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern woman who went in to a free clinic to receive treatment for cancer. Her doctors took a sample of her cancer to use in research without her knowledge, which turned out to be the first cells that could stay alive and continue dividing indefinitely. These cells are still used in research and have been important to everything from space travel to the polio vaccine.

The book is fascinating and covers a lot of ground, from what is known of Henrietta's life to the lives of her children and the science and ethics involved in the situation. Her cells have grown into a multimillion dollar industry, none of which is being given to her children; for years, no one even knew Henrietta's name. Later, more research was conducted on her children without them knowing or understanding what was going on.

This book is difficult to read at times because it can be almost overwhelming; there is so much to think over and try to understand. It is well worth the effort, though!

Book Reviews: The Lightning Thief and Eat, Pray, Love"

I finished two books yesterday. I ended up along on an "adventure" with Henry as he played some very geeky card games with his friends, so I made him stop so I could get another book to read when I finished my library book.

I got Eat, Pray, Love from the library on a friend's recommendation. The book is basically about a woman who goes through a very painful divorce and decides to find peace with herself by travelling and searching out three important aspects she needs in her life: pleasure, discipline and balance. It was an interesting story; the author spent four months in Italy learning Italian and eating, four months in India meditating and learning traditional Hindu yoga, and four months in Bali studying with a medicine man, healer and learning to live in society with people again. There were some really interesting ideas in this book, and I really liked the premise. There are also some great one-liners of wisdom that I took away. On the negative side, the author herself drove me up the wall. I don't think I really fully understood that in the book about a depressed woman trying to find herself would be full of a lot (for lack of a better word) whining. There would be long spells when I could sympathize with her and find her story interesting, but every so often it just reminded me a little too much of a teenaged girl crying because she didn't have a date for Friday night. All in all, I have mixed feelings, but I'm glad I read it. It's a good travel read, and provides an interesting introduction to some ideas that normal Americans don't usually have a ton of exposure to--like yoga and traditional Bali life.

At my emergency stop, I found that the best book I could find in Best Buy was The Lightning Thief. It's a kids book and has the simplicity of a kids book, but it was entertaining. The story is about a kid who learns by being chased by monsters that he's the son of one of the Greek gods, who are still very much alive and involved in the world. It then follows his training and quests. It can be a little cheesy (in particular, some of the jokes are a little groan-worthy!) but if you take it as a kids book, it's a good read. It's also a very fast one--I think I finished it in three hours or under. There's not a lot I can say about the book without giving away important parts of the story, but I liked it enough that I'll be seeking out the next books in the series.

Tomorrow I'm going to be holding real (not mini) golf clubs for the first time. After Steamboat Willie got called out for mocking golf as a dumb game when she had never played it, we planned a group outing of a bunch of people from work to a driving range. Most of us have either never golfed before or are terrible, so I'll be in good company. My goal by the end of the evening is to be able to actually connect with the ball most of the time when I swing...I'm pretty sure my first few shots are going to miss entirely!

Books: Scheherazade Goes West

I bought Scherezade Goes West as an impulse buy at Half Price Books a few months ago. I was interested by the idea of a book by an Eastern Muslim women who had spent a lot of time in the West talking about the challenges she faced travelling in the West and the differences she saw. After wading through my library books, I picked this up. It was absolutely not what I expected, but I still enjoyed it.

The biggest change that I found from what I expected when I picked the book up was that it is much more focused than I expected on feminism in the East and West. I still found it very interesting and full of things I had no idea about, but I'm a little disappointed that it didn't have a bigger picture. I learned a lot about Muslim culture (mostly in Morocco, which is where the author lives) and about its recent history with women. I also learned a lot of traditional stories that were told about Muslim women and got to understand a lot more about the Thousand and One Nights, which are stories that I love and have been reading since I was little. (Even if you don't think you know them, you probably do: Aladdin, Sindbad and Ali Baba are all characters from Scherezade's stories. Side note--they are absolutely worth reading, but you'll have to get them in several volumes. Above I have a link to just the first volume, as the only complete set I saw on Amazon was $2500 dollars, and even I don't love my books that much.) Throughout the narrative, the author's points and observations are held together by her struggle to understand Scherezade, harems and their different perceptions in the East and West.

One of the largest things that turned me off about this book is unfortunately something that give feminism a bad name; far too much of it was focused on the ways that men enslave and entrap women. Many of her observations were probably accurate to a degree--she looked at the different ridiculous expectations that women are held to (or hold themselves to) from wearing a veil in the East to wearing a size 4 in the West. However, she had a bad habit of continually blaming those restrictions specifically on men, rather than looking at society as a whole. If you can overlook this, though, Scheherezade Goes West is a really interesting, easy to read introduction to the differences between Eastern Muslim and traditional Western roles and views of women. I'm very glad I read it and I would recommend it, but I do very much wish that it had contrained more information about how an Eastern Muslim woman, brought up in such a different culture, perceived the Western world and the misconceptions that she found on both sides.

Books: Peter and Max

I resisted being pulled into comic books until I was in college. Before that, comic books were for weird boys like my brother. But after freshman year and a few too many literature classes, comic books because one of the things I could read and enjoy no matter how high my burnout level. They were also one of the few things I could read without automatically finding 6 layers of symbolism in every sentence.

My interest in comic books (and my brother) eventually led me to Bill Willingham's Fables comics. For someone who grew up loving fairy tales and stories, these are a great grown-up version of the characters I  used to love. The series is based around the idea that the storybook characters that we know as fairy tales and fables are real, but were driven out of their own worlds and into ours by an army driven by an evil character known as "the adversary." The story of all these "fables" living together in their own community and trying to fight the adversary creates a wonderful new, if very dark, fairy tale. Even if you aren't a huge fan of comic books, these are absolutely worth reading for anyone interested in fairy tales.

Peter and Max, also by Bill Willingham, is a novel based on the ideas and characters of the entire Fables series. This could be a great place to start if you're interested in the idea but not ready to commit to becoming a comic book reader--you don't need to have read the comic books. You will benefit if you know at least the gist of some common fairy tales and nursery rhymes--in particular, the Pied Piper, Little Bo Peep and the Peter Piper nursery rhymes. The story is based around the lives of Peter Piper and his brother Max. Peter is living in the current-day Fables world with his wife, Little Bo Peep, while they are both being hunted by his brother Max. It is full of unexpected twists--for instance, the idea that Little Bo Peep was once an assassin and that the Pied Piper was once just part of a family of travelling minstels. It's hard to talk too much about this book without giving away some of the twists and turns that make it so delightfully entertaining, but I will say that the way the book develops the lives and personalities of characters who are so familiar and yet so vague is extremely satisfying. Reading this book is like meeting a childhood friend or bully decades later and finally learning what that person is all about and what really drove them to be your friend or enemy as a kid. You get all the pleasure of finally figuring out why you felt the way you did so long ago, as well as the surprise of seeing the unexpected futures of people who once seemed so familiar.

I liked it. Read it, and when you're done, get started with Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile. The trade paperback version makes it look a tad less juvenile, and chances are by the time you're done with the first one, you won't be worrying about much except for what happens next.

"Brain Rules" and pastels

Yesterday when I was looking for more glass paint, I instead found a cheap set of pastels. Remembering how much fun I had with them when I was a kid, I bought them, along with a big sketchbook. I am now slowly dying my keyboard all kinds of colors with the pastel colors that are still all over my fingers. It was still a lot of fun, but I have no more drawing skill than I did when I was a kid! I'll hope that I can acquire some with practice. Tomorrow I'll try to post some links for where I learned a few of the basics and maybe scan some of my lovely first attempts. With any luck, in a few months I can look back and see progress!

I finished the Brain Rules book by John Medina last night. I started this book for work, to try to gain some understand of the way people learn. I'm hoping to move my work into developing online courses (from writing manuals where I currently am) and I'm doing my best to understand how to make some incredibly boring procedures interesting enough for people to remember.

Brain Rules was a book that I saw recommended when browsing through Instructional Design blogs (such as this one or this one). It was advertised as an easy introduction to some important rules of how people learn, and it certainly seemed to be for me. While I'm sure this book was presented for a general audience and leaves a lot of information out (at least, if you're a psychologist or someone with a lot of knowledge in this area!) it really is a great, well-written and friendly introduction to the way people learn. He presents the material broken up into chapters of each "rule" (e.g., "People don't pay attention to boring things" or "Stressed brains learn differently") and takes into account every one of his rules throughout the book. It is filled with interesting anecdotes, spaced well to peak your interest after a more technical section, is easy to read and is continually related to the concerns of most readers. The book is also supplemented with a DVD and a website. He strongly encourages everyone to take advantage of all three media types, since the repetition and the variety will help people learn--but being the bookwork I am, I have yet to move past the book.

If you're interested in a quick, light introduction to human learning, this is a great book. It is easy to read and has a lot of practical knowledge that people should be able to enter into their own lives, whether to help their own learning or to help teach others. The tone is comfortably conversational, without the overly technical voice or the feeling of being talked down to that too many scientific books fall prey to. And for anyone interested in how the human brain works (yours or anyone elses!) it's a great, interesting read.

Books: City of Thieves

I found out about City of Thieves from Kevin Slowey's blog. Based on my experience with the last book I read on his recommendation, I was a little nervous, but I really enjoyed this book. Actually, I guess "enjoyed" might not be the best description--City of Thieves is set in Russia during World War II. In particular, a large part of the story takes place in Leningrad (or Stalingrad or St. Petersburg, at different times in history) while it was under siege by the Nazis. I never went much farther with history than what I learned in school, so before this I wasn't really fully aware of what that meant--starvation, terror, abandonment and death, in a nutshell. So I can't say I enjoyed reading it, but I am glad that I read it, and I would highly recommend it.

City of Thieves follows two young men who have been caught and thrown in prison for minor crimes. They are taken out of prison and given a task by a powerful colonel--bring him a dozen eggs within a week to make his daughter's wedding cake, and they will be absolved of their crimes rather than being shot. In a city where people have been eating bread made of sawdust and not much more for half a year, this is quite a task. To make things a little more interesting, the men are polar opposites--the narrator is younger, more reserved and inexperienced, while his companion is an outgoing, arrogantly likeable playboy.

City of Thieves is well written, fascinating and hard to put down. The story draws you in continually, and along the way you learn quite a lot about WWII Russia. It is not a pretty story by any means--it's filled with death, sex, war crimes and starvation. It is narrated almost completely by a seventeen-year-old boy, and his thoughts and opinions are as politically incorrect as any teenage boy. But it's hard to put down--I finished the book in two days--and now, three days later, it's still on my mind. Read it. Don't expect to laugh the whole way through, but expect to learn a lot and be entertained, if sometimes a little horrified.

Books: The Count of Monte Cristo

My dessert challenge of pumpkin bars for this week is underway, but since they have to cool before I can add the frosting, I doubt I'll be able to taste them until tomorrow. I sense a sugary, pumpkin-y breakfast coming on! I will post my results tomorrow, if I'm not comatose from eating the whole pan...I love pumpkin-flavored anything.

In the meantime, I've picked up one of my favorite all-time books to read, since I haven't read it in probably 2 or 3 years: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It is a huge book and incredibly intimidating at first sight, but absolutely worth it. It has to be that big because it is, quite literally, epic. And no, you can't substitute watching the movie for this one; both have good stories, but the stories are almost completely different.

It's difficult for me to summarize this book, simply because it covers so much territory. It follows the life of Edmond Dantes, who is arrested on the cusp of gaining his perfect life and is left to rot in prison for 14 years before finally escaping, and the story of how he lives after escaping and discovering a huge amount of treasure. It also takes in the lives of the people who he affects either through his gratitude or revenge and touches on politics and history in the time of Napoleon. All in all, it is probably the best story of both revenge and altruistic gratitude that I have ever read.

The Count of Monte Cristo takes patience to finish. Alexandre Dumas was extremely popular in his time (he also wrote The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask) and he didn't have to compete for the attention of people who today would just watch the movie instead; he had the luxury to take his time to show you every little details of Dantes' life and transformation from an idealistic boy into a man who focuses his life on revenge on the people who betrayed him. For the most part, Dantes is a character who you cannot help but identify with even as you feel a little horrified at his capacity for cruelty in pursuit of "justice." And in spite of that, it still has a relatively happy ending.

In short...find one of those weeks when your life is going to be slow; I used to read this book over Christmas vacation at my parents' house, when I was still too wired from college to feel comfortable with just relaxing. And read it. It's good, I promise.

Books: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

This book was a birthday present from my roomie that I've been saving to read on my Mexico trip. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery caught my attention both for its name and because it was recommended on Kevin Slowey's blog. (Yes, I still love baseball that much.)

To tell the truth, a week after finishing this book I still don't know how I feel about it. I know that this was a book that I probably would have adored in college. Today, while it still has a lot of aspects that I enjoy, I found it a little bit overdramatic and preachy in its dedication to fine art. Also, it certainly wasn't the light, funny story that I expected from its title.

In a very small nutshell, the book is about two incredibly intelligent and artistic women who, for various reasons, don't want anyone to know about their talents. The writing style was delightful, and the characters of a middle-aged concierge and a 12 year old teenager play a beautiful counterpoint to each other in their views of the world. It is fun to watch these two people grow into their worlds and find their own meaning of life, and even though the storyline in the book is very simple, it's draws you in. Unfortunately, the author uses too much philosophy and preachy rhetoric for my taste to explain their search for meaning. This continuous extolling of art is constant enough to alienate people who may have an everyday appreciation of art rather than a liberal arts major's addiction to it. While a lot of people might appreciate a painting, many of those same people will lose interest after reading about how only intelligent and refined people properly appreciate Dutch still lifes.

All in all, I would recommend this book for anyone with a strong, passionate interest in art and philosophy. For those of you who don't, I would still recommend this book if you really appreciate good characterization and can stand a certain amount of preachiness. For those of you who prefer high action storylines and enjoy reading for entertainment more than abstract thoughts, I would save your time and skip this one.

Book Recommendation: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

I'm not much for history books. I think history is interesting to a point and I like to hear about it, especially when it affects things that are more interesting to me--literature, movies, religions. But I generally have a hard time sticking with books that are strictly historical.

When I bought Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford at Half Price Books, I had a feeling that I was wasting my money on another history book that I would never finish.

On the contrary, I found myself more sucked into the book than I have been to any nonfiction, let alone history, book in quite awhile. The storytelling is compelling, the author relates the history well to modern perspectives and familiar happenings, and the writing is extremely easy and pleasant to read. It begins with the author's own journeys in Mongolia to discover Genghis Khan and covers the known history from Genghis Khan's parents to the time when his empire finally fell apart. It was an interesting perspective that I haven't often heard before, and opened my eyes to the possibility that much of our modern culture and knowledge (and that of the Renaissance period) began with the Mongol conquest and their thirst for knowledge and openness. My only issue with the book is that I feel like the author may have given more importance to the Mongol conquest and its effects on culture than it may deserve, out of his respect for the Mongols. I unfortunately don't know enough about history to make a firm declaration, but it's something I feel might upset some of the more historically-minded people out there.

This book has some valuable knowledge for anyone with any interest in Genghis Khan, the Mongol history or the influence of the East on the development of Western medieval or Renaissance culture of knowledge, and (unlike too many history books) presents it in a fun and interesting way for readers.