January 07, 2010
The Dance of Intimacy
by Harriet Lerner
This is a really complicated book, and way less formulaic than a lot of self-help books. It consists mostly of lengthy descriptions of clients from Lerner's practice and how they handled their intimacy troubles, with Lerner explaining the theory behind the situation and the mechanics of the solution. Having read it once, I may well read it again -- there's a lot of material for such a comparatively short book.
September 14, 2009
Catching up: Capsules
OK, I've been really, REALLY bad about keeping up with my booklog lately. So, here are capsules of the books I've finished but not blogged:
16. Will I Ever Be Good Enough? - A great self-help workbook.
17. The Principles of Aikido - a top-notch overview of Aikido, both the actual techniques and the history and philosophy of the art.
18-23. Grave Peril - Proven Guilty (rereads) - Yeah, still rereading the Dresden Files. Still loving 'em. I just got the two new ones and am stoked.
24. What Happy People Know - an interesting book about the psychology of happiness and what you need to know to be happy. The author spends way too much time bashing conventional psychology and psychotherapy for my taste, but there's some good material here.
25. The Folklore of Discworld - A wonderful look at the folklore of Terry Pratchett's Discworld and the related/similar folklore of our world. Fascinating but light reading.
26. Pride and Prejudice - rereading for the umpteenth time because I bullied a friend into reading it. Still as awesome as ever. Still so so so much better on the page than the screen, especially if that screen has Colin Firth on it, bah! Don't get me started. The only P&P adaptation I actually enjoy is the old BBC one from the 80s.
May 30, 2009
The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke
By Suze Orman
This is a pretty awesome book for folks in the 20-35 range looking to get a handle on their finances. Suze lays everything out in her classic, no-bullshit style. I don't agree with everything she says (she insists couples who live together have a joint checking account but never says why, and her system for dividing expenses between couples sort of assumes that neither person is ever going to be unemployed), but most of her stuff is really good. She has a bunch of info online too, though you need a code from the book to get access.
She lays out plans of attack, talks budgeting (though without simple, pat answers to everything), explains complex stuff in straightforward terms, and generally gives young folks everything we need to get ourselves on our financial feet. I was very pleased to note that I was already doing most of the stuff she recommended (like focusing on paying off debt before trying to start saving). Woo!
Book 15 in 2009.
May 08, 2009
Break Through Pain
By Shinzen Young
I got this book because of a coincidence -- I was in Mountain View for lunch with my Dad and stopped in front of East/West Books to look at their sale rack. I happened to have been dealing with a lot of pain lately, and so this title jumped out at me. It was on massive markdown, so I got it. I'm so glad I did, it's really interesting.
The basic premise of the book, as I understand it, is this: suffering is the result of struggling against pain. If you don't struggle, the pain stays but it's transformed. The book explains a straightforward, deceptively simple method of learning to stop resisting pain. It's based around Zen mindfulness meditation, and comes with a CD to guide you through the exercises described in the book. Shinzen shares his own experiences transforming pain, and those of some of his students as well.
I haven't done a ton of work with the process yet, but I will say that when my knee acted up this week I tried to observe the pain without resisting it, and I could feel the muscles around my knee relax as I did so -- which lessened the pain. Interesting stuff.
Book 13 in 2009. (yeah, I know, I'm behind on updating my booklog. This is book 13, I just haven't posted the other books I've read recently. I'm working on it.)
February 04, 2009
Smart Packing for Today's Traveler
By Susan Foster
I borrowed this from a friend and quite enjoyed it! It's not exactly brand new, but the advice is pretty much all spot-on. There are several clever packing tips I would never have thought of, like layering clothes with those plastic bags you get from the dry cleaner -- it helps prevent wrinkling! Some very good stuff here, and I'm going to pick up my own copy one of these days, I think.
Book 5 in 2009.
Be a Goddess!
By Francesca De Grandis
This is an interesting book. It was written a while ago and has a lot of the flaws of metahysical books from the 90s. For one thing, the author tells us up front that she uses "witch" and "Wiccan" and "shaman" pretty much interchangeably (ditto "witchcraft," "Wicca," and "shamanism"). I almost put the book down right there. That kind of imprecision in language makes me crazy. But I decided to keep reading, and I'm glad I did. There are some very good exercises in this book, and while the writing makes me a little crazy, the exercises are worth the slog in my opinion.
Book 4 in 2009.
January 27, 2009
Triumph of the Moon
By Ronald Hutton
Holy crap, I finally finished it. Never thought I'd see the day. Now, don't get me wrong: I really like this book. It should be required reading by anyone looking to call themselves Wiccan, maybe even anyone looking to call themselves pagan at all. There's so much misinformation out there about the history of Western Witchcraft that it'd do some real good if more people read this book.
But ye gods, it's dense as all get out. The type is tiny, the paragraphs are long, the language is complex. Hutton has a delightful dry wit, which I quite enjoyed, but this isn't the sort of book you curl up with for a few relaxing hours. It's slow going. Fascinating, but not at all a quick read.
Anyway. Hutton traces the modern pagan movement in the UK back to its roots and examines what, exactly, its actual history is. Lots of good stuff here, though fans of the "OMG, once upon a time, everyone was MATRIARCHAL and it was UTOPIA and then evil MEN came along and wrecked it all, and all the witches went into hiding until Gerald Gardener brought the tradition back into the public eye! NEVER AGAIN THE BURNING TIMES!" history may be rather distressed to find that's a load of hooey.
Interestingly, Hutton's dissection of the actual history behind Wicca and other modern pagan traditions doesn't negate their spiritual validity at all, just the validity of the histories people like telling. Good stuff.
Book 3 in 2009.
April 10, 2008
Women, Work, and Autoimmune Disease: Keep Working, Girlfriend!
by Rosalind Joffe and Joan Friedlander
I got this book through the LibraryThing early reviewer program.
This is a must-read for women with autoimmune disease, especially if they are interested in being/staying employed. The text is a little too self-consciously sassy in places for my taste, and I wish they went a bit more into what they mean by being a warrior and having warrior spirit (I know what I think that means, but they didn't talk much about what they think it means, which I would have liked), but there is walth of good information in this book. The authors cover interviewing when you have a chronic illness, "coming out" to coworkers, considering self-employment as an option, and plenty of other material as well. The book is filled with stories from women the authors interviewed and from the authors' own lives, which makes the ideas and suggestions seem a lot more realistic. Good stuff!
Book 6 in 2008.
April 02, 2008
Healing the Child Within
By Charles L. Whitfield M.D.
I wasn't terribly impressed with this book, but it did give me some food for thought. It's very compact, written concisely, and in a dry, non-engaging style. It was written 20 years ago and feels kind of dated.
Book 5 in 2008.
Reading stats: 203 unread books; 23 books to read until I can buy more books.
February 27, 2008
Surviving a Borderline Parent
By Kimberlee Roth
Although nobody in my family has a BPD diagnosis, this book was recommended to me as a way to look at some of the dysfunction I grew up with. I found it incredibly useful -- in large part because it is aimed at both adult children of folks diagnosed with BPD and adult children of folks with BPD-like symptoms. It's given me a lot of food for thought. I borrowed it from a friend and am thinking I may buy a copy so I can reread it after I've digested the contents a bit and work through the exercises more thoroughly.
(Book 1 in 2008)
November 30, 2007
The Millionaire Next Door
By Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko
This is a fascinating, if slightly outdated (it was written in the mid 90s), look at millionaires in the US: what makes them tick, how did they get so rich, how do they pass on (or fail to pass on) their values to their children. The authors learned a lot while researching this book and they pass it on without much in the way of judgment. The section on passing millionaire-making values on to kids was really interesting. Many millionaires have children who can't live within their means, and it's fascinating to look at how that happens.
The one thing that kind of does stick out is the unspoken bias against going to college -- accumulating debt when you can't pay it off quickly is not a sign of a millionaire in the making, according to them. I think this may be a product of the times. I hope the authors do an updated version -- I strongly suspect that becoming a millionaire without at least a bachelor's degree is very difficult in the modern age.
September 28, 2007
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
By Barbara Ehrenreich
This book is very, very powerful. I think anybody who has escaped working retail (as I have) should pick up a copy and read it now.
Barbara Ehrenreich spent a month at a time working for minimum wage all across the country. She worked as a waitress, a maid, and a Wal*Mart employee. She allowed herself a small amount to start each month, and then tried to earn enough to pay the next month's rent. She didn't always succeed. Nickel and Dimed taught me about the injustices heaped upon the working poor, and made painfully clear something I've always suspected: It is not true that a job, any job, will lift you out of poverty. Many jobs don't pay well enough to keep a person housed and fed, let alone handle the health emergencies that invariably crop up when you work hard all day and don't eat enough, let alone eat well. One of her coworkers when she was on a team of maids often had half a small bag of Doritos for lunch.
I also learned that those teams of maids you can hire don't actually clean - they provide the appearance of cleanliness. The rules and regulations the maids toil under prevent effective cleaning -- half a bucket of warm water is all they're allowed for mopping, for example, which merely redistributes the dirt evenly rather than removing it. And the maids are treated terribly, both by their management (a man who insists they "work through it" whenever they complain of injuries) and by their clients (who do things like leave piles of dirt underneath the centers of their throw rugs so they can have proof of vacuuming later).
This is an eye-opener of a book, and it made me angry that we live in a country that allows people to work full-time (or more than full-time) for pay so low they cannot get by.
Book 24 in 2007.
Maverick
By Ricardo Semmler
This book is AMAZING! Ricardo Semmler took over SemCo from his father as a young man and proceded to turn it into the most unusal workplace you can imagine. He slashed management and administrative roles, gave all the workers a voice, took down office walls, and generally made the company a short-on-bureaucracy democracy which survived the insanity of Brazil's economy to remain profitable even during rough times. He's a surprisingly humble for such a successful young man.
Maverick is a must-read for anybody interested in how businesses are run. I myself am sorely tempted to buy a few spare copies and sneak them into the offices of the CEO and other top guys at my job.
Book 23 in 2007.
Your Money or Your Life
By Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
This is a great book for anybody who handles money. It covers how we look at money, how we deal with it, and how to replace our bad habits with good ones. The program itself is hard and I'm not sure I could handle doing it - it involves several steps, including taking a complete inventory of everything you have and figuring out how much it's worth, calculating how much money you've made in your lifetime, and tracking every single bit of money that goes into or out of your life. I would love to sit down with the authors (I believe Dominguez is deceased, but Robin is still around) and see what their thoughts are about folks like Antwon and I, who handle improbably large sums of money on a regular basis and deal with stock and whatnot. When I was in college, this program would have been a cinch. But now, when I literally handle thousands of dollars on a monthly basis, it seems very daunting.
That aside, I loved the rest of the book. It gave me a lot to think about, particularly the idea of enough. How much money is enough for me to live on? Once you've figured that out, you can start working toward financial independence -- having enough investments that one can live off the interest.
Book 22 in 2007.
September 20, 2007
The Myth of Matriarchal Pre-History: Why a Manufactured Past Won't Give Women a Future
By Cynthia Eller
This fascinating book painstakingly skewers all the hogwash matriarchalist feminists and matriarchalist pagans have been pushing for ages. In short, the old time when all the world was run by women and everything was peace and harmony until those nasty patriarchal invaders showed up and ruined it all never existed.
This is a thoroughly scholarly work, to the point of being very difficult to read. This is actually my second time through it and I'm still not sure I got everything. Still, her writing style is engaging and has a strong thread of dry wit under all the complexity and I enjoyed reading it both times (especially once I started using two bookmarks - one for my place in the narrative and one for my place in the endnotes).
Book 19 in 2007.
September 19, 2007
Loving What Is
By Byron Katie
This is an interesting book. I read it very quickly, and found it surprisingly powerful. I didn't much care for her take on physical pain, which she seems to be that it will be perfectly bearable if we think of it as the physical memory of injury. I have a condition which makes me essentially in pain all the time, and often in entirely more pain than any circumstances warrant. This pain is not the memory of an injury, it is faulty wiring in my body. Grr. Would love to meet her and ask about this.
Anyway.
The schtick in this book is to take a statement which you think to yourself about a stressful situation (for example, "John is so damn thoughtless!") and ask yourself four questions about it:
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it's true?
- How do you react when you think that thought?
- Who would you be without that thought?
Then you turn it around - reverse it. So "John is so thoughtless!" can become "I am so thoughtless" or "John is so thoughtful" -- and then you try to find ways in which these statements are as true or more true than the original one.
It's very interesting and actually has helped me lower my stress levels around some things. I don't think it's a cure-all or a panacea or whatever, but it's very very interesting.
You can learn more about it at TheWork.com.
Book 18 in 2007.
July 24, 2007
Stealing Jesus
By Bruce Bawer
Catching up on a backlog here.
This is an awesome book. Some will argue that it's too angry, but I don't blame Bawer for being angry at fundamentalists. He's a gay Christian, and fundies are not only railing at him that his basic nature is an abomination at odds with the religion he so dearly loves, but (to his mind) perverting the underlying message of that religion.
Bawer does an excellent job of showing folks who don't really get the idea of fundamentalism what the movement is all about. He draws a distinction between the "Church of Law," Christianity with a strong emphasis on rules and punishment for breaking those rules, and the "Church of Love," Christianity with a strong emphasis on Jesus' message that God loves us all and the idea of God's grace. Sure, there is really a broad spectrum of Christian churches with Love and Law as the extremes, but the book is about fundamentalist extremists, so it makes sense to focus on the extremes. Bawer dissects the tenets of Christian fundamentalism and lays out how at odds and incompatible they are with the teachings of Jesus. Good stuff.
I found this a fascinating read and highly recommend it to anybody interested in religion and the impact of religion on culture and politics in America today.
Book 13 in 2007.
June 18, 2007
The Gift of Fear
I picked this book up because Sars of TomatoNation.com keeps recommending it, and I am now going to recommend it to everyone I can. It's hands-down the best book I've read on intuition and how society trains us to ignore it, and it offers a lot of very practical advice that you can use. He writes about the difference between needless fear and justified fear, and how to tell which one you're feeling. He writes about the cases he's handled as a security consultant. This really is a cross between a self-help book and a psychological thriller, and it succeeds on both fronts. I know I'll be listening to my intuition a lot more -- and knowing when it's sending me signals based on solid information and when it's reacting to the fearmongering so prevalent in our society. Good stuff.
One of my favorite bits in the book is this one, which I feel really explains why women in America are so afraid all the time:
I want to clarify that many men offer help without any sinister or self-serving intent, with no more in mind than kindness and chivalry, but I have been addressing those times that men refuse to hear the word "no," and that is not chivalrous -- it is dangerous.When someone ignores that word, ask yourself: Why is this person seeking to control me? What does he want? It is best to get away from the person altogether, but if that's not practical, the response that serves safety is to dramatically raise your insistence, skipping several levels of politeness. "I said NO!"
When I encounter people hung up on the seeming rudeness of this response (and there are many), I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told no by a woman he has approached:
Man: What a bitch. What's your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about?
Woman: You're right. I shouldn't be wary. I'm overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I've personally heard horror stories from every female friend I've ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven't figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he'd do something tht would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I'm made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards doesn't mean a woman should be wary of a stranger who ignores the word "no."Whether or not men can relate to it or believe it or accept it, that is the way it is. Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness. Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don't experience. Ask some man you know, "When is the last time you were concerned or afraid that another person would harm you?" Many men cannot recall an incident within years. Ask a woman the same question and most will give you a recent example or say, "Last night," "Today," or even, "Every day."
Still, women's concerns about safety are frequently the subject of critical comments from the men in their lives. One woman told me of constant ridicule and sarcasm from her boyfriend whenever she discussed fear or safety. He called her precautions silly and asked, "How can you live like that?" To which she replied, "How could I not?"
...
It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different -- men and women live in different worlds. I don't remember where I first heard this simple description of one dramatic contrast between the genders, but it is strikingly accurate: At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.
Book 12 in 2007.
February 15, 2007
Gentlemen's Blood: A History of Duelling
By Barbara Holland
This book RULED. A quick, funny read, it is full of anecdotes and statistics both, so you get an accurate picture of what she's trying to tell but also get a feeling for the emotional aspect of things. Duelling has a long and varied history and it's really interesting to read about how different countries handled it at different times. Utterly fascinating stuff, especially if you're a bit bloodthirsty.
Book 4 in 2007
July 25, 2006
Patience and Fortitude
by Nicholas Basbanes
Hooray! I have been looking forward to reading this ever since I finished A Gentle Madness. Yay!
FINALLY finished! This book was long and slow going, but very very good. Depressing in parts, mind you - nothing makes me sad in quite the same way as reading about the destruction of books - but good. I utterly adore Basbanes.
Basically, he traces the history of the library from the Library at Alexandria to the present (well, okay, to the year 2000 or so, when he wrote it). I really enjoyed reading it, even if it did take me ages and ages to finish it. I ripped through two fiction books in a matter of days after finishing this, I think out of the sheer joy of reading something lightweight after reading this weighty, well-researched tome.
July 11, 2006
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
by Lynne Truss
This is an awesome book. I really enjoyed it. Loads of fascinating punctuation info, and an author I can relate to. I'm a punctuation and grammar stickler myself, and boy howdy, she makes me look laid back about it. She talks about protesting outside a movie theater showing the film Two Weeks Notice with an apostrophe on a stick (it should be Two Weeks' Notice) and going about armed with a small kit to correct misused or absent apostrophes. Awesome.
Admittedly, the book is British and therefore has some stuff in it that made me blink (their rules for punctuation differ from ours in a few places and she defends those differences passionately), but overall I adored it. Good stuff.
Sticklers, Unite!
The Life and Death of a Druid Prince: The Story of Lindow Man, An Archaeological Sensation
by Anne Ross and Don Robins
This is a fascinating book! It's a quicker read than one might expect from a book on archaeology because it blends plenty of speculation and extrapolation with accounts of test results and fact-finding. The man of the title is a body found in a peat bog. Testing shows him to have died two thousand years ago, and the more the archaeologists study his remains, the more fascinating things they discover. He was killed ritually - axe blows to the head, garrotted, and his throat was cut to let the blood out of his body. Then he was heaved into a pool of water in a peat bog.
More intriguing is the fact that he is unscarred. he lived during the wars between the Celts and Romans, and never saw battle even though he was 30. He also has fine, well-kept hands. The authors put all of this in context, and the result is a sort of murder mystery.
This is a nonfiction book, but it almost reads like a novel. Fascinating stuff. Also, a must-read if you have a "sweetness and light" mental picture of the Celts. Hoo boy, they were some barbaric folks.
June 20, 2006
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
Man. This is a depressing book. Good, but depressing. Written in the 90s, it called out plenty of things I could remember from my own adolescence - the incredible pressures girls are under in our society, the way our culture harms them, and so on. I was glad she included numerous examples of adolescent girls who were doing well, and I was intrigued by her comparison between overly restrictive households (where the girls may be happy and feel safe but where they aren't encouraged to grow) and overly permissive households (where the girls often run wild and harm themselves).
Good stuff. I hope she updates it for this decade.
Book 8 for 2006. Man. I'm not doing all that well with reading this year, am I? I think I may have read a couple books which I then managed to forget to note here, but I'm not sure. Grrr.
The Body Sacred
by Dianne Sylvan
Another hit from Sylvan. although it's very Wicca-centric, there's lots of good material in here for women struggling with body issues (ie, just about every American woman). There's everything from meditations to dance suggestions, and it's a treat to read.
March 29, 2006
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubne
Wow, this book is awesome. You wouldn't think that a piece on economics would be a page turner, but this one is. I will write about it more thoroughly when I'm done, but so far lemme just say it rocks.
January 17, 2006
Feeling Good
by David D. BurnsAnother book started in 2005 but not finished by the end of the year!
It's an interesting book - much of what he says about fighting depression by changing your thoughts is not new to me. I mean, I've been struggling rationally against depression since I hit puberty. But he does have some interesting methods for fighting back against nasty automatic thoughts, which is cool.
Now that I've finished the book, I'll add that it was a pretty darn good book overall. Sometimes he lapses into oversimplification and egotism, but it's pretty rare, and a lot of his techniques have actually been pretty useful to me.
The Pagan Book of Living and Dying
by Starhawk and M. Macha NightMare
Another book I started in 2005 and still haven't finished. It's taking me ages - as you can tell from the title, it's not easy going. I bought it shortly after my Grandfather passed away last Spring, and have been slowly working my way through it. I'm not sure how to count these books I start in one year and finish in another toward my annual totals. Maybe they should only count as half a book?
Well, now that I've finished the book, I feel like I ought to write something about it. It's a very moving piece, especially the personal stories of memorials and experiences near the end. Some of the rituals are absolutely beautiful, and all of them are good. I would highly recommend this for anyone of any faith, not just Pagans. The eloquence and compassion with which Starhawk and Nightmare write is touching.
Word Freak
by Stefan Fatsis
I started this in 2005, but am still not done, so it goes in my 2006 pool. I'll update with more detail once I'm finished, but so far I'm really enjoying it. Fatsis paints fascinating, detailed pictures of pro Scrabble players with his words, and is honest and hilarious without being mean. So awesome.
Updated 3/22/06: Huzzah, I have finally finished this book. Go me. It isn't really the kind of book you put your feet up and read for a good time, but it's very interesting to someone like me who plays Scrabble for fun. This book makes me want to study really hard and get better - if only because the author notes that there are very few female Scrabble players in the top ranks.
Actually, that fact makes me want to do a book about female Scrabble players. I think that would be really interesting. Hm...
July 26, 2005
Abundant Peace
by John Stevens
Just started this. It looks fantastic, though.
(book 21 in 2005)
Well, this was a really good biography of O-Sensei! Lots of interesting stuff, plus big sections on how Aikido works and whatnot.
The Art of Peace
by Morihei Ueshiba
Translated and edited by John Stevens
Also includes two essays by Stevens about Ueshiba.
This is a great, if brief, look at the foundations of Aikido philosophy. The essays examine Ueshiba-sensei's life and his martial teachings, and gave me a great deal of insight into the man. I am now reading Abundant Peace, Stevens' full-length biography of Ueshiba-sensei, and it looks to offer even more.
(book 20 in 2005)
May 25, 2005
The Mourner's Dance: What we do When People Die
by Katherine Ashenburg
After my grandfather passed away last month, I was at a loss for ways to mourn. This book was recommended to me by a friend studying to be a funeral director -- she read it for one of her classes.
It's a stunning book. When Ashenburg's daughter's fiance died suddenly, the entire family was thrown into mourning. The daughter went through traditional mourning rituals almost instinctively, and Ashenburg set about researching the history of mourning.
It's fascinating, really, and Ashenburg is a wonderful writer. She weaves the story of her daughter's grief together with numerous stories and historical asides covering everything from tribal mourning in Africa to widow-burning in India to Queen Victoria's extended mourning for her husband.
There's also some beautiful retellings of stories about death, including the one about a woman who brought her dead child to a wise man (in one version, to the Buddha) asking him to resurrect the child. The wise man told her to bring him a handful of rice (or seeds, depending on the version) from a house that had never known death. The woman went from house to house in vain, and finally returned to bury her child and go on with her life when she realized that everyone knows death. It's a universal constant.
And that, really, is what is so marvellously comforting about this book.
(Book 17 in 2005)
January 11, 2005
West With the Night
by Beryl Markham
I'm finally getting around to reading this after receiving it as a gift a couple of years ago. I read part of it right after I got it but didn't have the time to really appreciate the slow, thoughful, descriptive prose. Markham grew up in Africa (born in England in 1902, she was taken by her father to British East Africa in 1906). She learned how to hunt from local native tribesmen and was apprenticed to her father as a breeder and trainer of horses. She went on to become the first female brush pilot in Africa, and later became the first person to fly the Atlantic from East to West. Fascinating woman!
(Book 6 in 2005)
The Cat Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Troubleshooting Tips, and Advice On Lifetime Maintenance
by Dr. David Brunner, Sam Stall
It's hard to decide how to classify this - it's a useful book on cats, but it's also really, really funny. It's written up like the manual for a piece of technology (like a computer or a complicated graphing calculator). Frickin' hysterical.
Also, very useful. Rawk.
(Book 5 in 2005)
January 07, 2005
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation
by Olivia Judson
Very, very funny look at the evolution of reproduction. There's everything about sex in here, from weird mating habits of various creatures to hermaphroditisim to necrophelia. And it's all done like a Question and Answer column, with letters from animals! Awesome.
(Book 4 in 2005)
January 05, 2005
The Nature of Alexander
By Mary Renault
Fascinating biography of Alexander the Great. I borrowed this edition from my Mom, and it's a great one - oversized, hardcover, and packed with illustrations. Rawk!
This is also my first book of the 50-book challenge. I'm too busy to keep up with the livejournal community for this, but want to give it a shot. I read 39 books last year, it looks like (or at least, 39 that I posted about here). I gotta work a little harder at this, I guess. :) But I used to read a couple books a week, I think I can read 50 in a year, for crying out loud.
December 10, 2004
The Dance of the Dissedent Daughter
By Sue Monk Kidd
I can tell it's winter, I'm reading introspective books. I'm re-reading this one, which is about a woman who was raised Baptist but became dissatisfied with the Christian church's minimalization of women and set out to find the divine feminine presence. It is incredibly cool.
I will probably start re-reading my Starhawk books after this, then go in search of new stuff.
November 29, 2004
Archimedes' Revenge
Wow. Was loaned this fascinating book by the bf, who sez it's one of his favorites. That's high praise from someone who doesn't usually read stuff not on a computer screen, so I was expecting it to be great... and it was!
It takes a neat look at a number of fields in mathematics, from computer design to game theory. Very, very interesting.
November 05, 2004
September 14, 2004
Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century
by Philip Hoare
I'm about halfway through this book and am loving every minute of it. It examines the conflict between those who admired what Oscar Wilde stood for and those who hated what he stood for. The conflict finally came to a head in yet another libel trial - this time by an actress starring in Wilde's scandalous play Salome against a Drudge-report style yellow journalist.
May 12, 2004
Red Blood and Black Ink
by David Dary
This is a great book about Journalism in the Old West. FANTASTIC! It's everything you think and more. Gunslinging editors, tramp printing press men, fistfights over articles, the works.
Well written and well worth the read.
April 19, 2004
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
by Stephen King
So far, so good. I am starting to think I should reread some of his fiction. His writing about writing is fantastic, and it's hard to believe someone whose books are as bad as I remember thinking his were back in middle school/high school could be this good.
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor
By Bruce Campbell
Bruce Campbell is GOD. Bruce Campbell is a blue-collar working actor and I kowtow before him for this book. It's funny as hell, informative, and inspiring (or a dire warning, I'm not sure which...).
Read it.
'nuff said.
March 30, 2004
February 18, 2004
M
by Anton Kaes
This is part of the BFI Film Classics series, and it covers the brilliant Fritz Lang movie "M," which starred Peter Lorre. This was Lang's first sound film, and it ROCKS.
Anyway.
The book is cool, if slim, and it talks about all kinds of things, including Lang's use of parallel visuals and sound to build tension and make a point. This is a great movie, and it's out on DVD. It's worth seeing, and then this book is worth reading to get more out of the film.
Witchcraft Today
by Martin Ebon
Wow, this is an old collection of essays about the occult, and it varies from mildly amusing to really annoying. The folks who wrote most of it don't differentiate between different branches of the occult (witchcraft = Satanism = new-Paganism). Still, it's an interesting look at what people thought about the occult back when it was written (in 1963).
February 04, 2004
Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life
Got this as a Christmas gift and so far am really enjoying it! Lots of Peanuts cartoons, with little essays by established authors mixed in.
January 12, 2004
CatSpeak
by Bash Dibra
Interesting little book about cats, from general heath and feeding to understanding body language and training them.
I really liked some of the stuff in there, especially the more complex training tips. If I had more time, I would totally train my cats to do all kinds of cool stuff!
On the downside, it's a little precious at times and ignores the fact that some cats are insane and some cats are kind of unpleasant. It's definitely got that "the universe is a friendly place, my child" feel to it in spots, which is annoying. Also, he's a bit over-the-top with some health stuff (putting mineral oil drops in a cat's eyes when you bathe it? Good grief! Just don't get soap in the cat's eyes, it's not that hard!).