Prof. Walter Willett is an interesting doctor who manages to talk about health, nutrition, and balance in great terms while backing things up with data from some of the longest running nutriotional and epidemiological studies conducted. I learned an awful lot about what to eat and what not to eat… and what precautions are probably a good idea.
Clip-sized references of the info and updates can be found at the Nutrition Source.
This was one of the few Murakami books that I could nail down in my local library. It seems this man is hot hot hot.
Anyhow… i liked this book, though not so much as Dance Dance Dance. Why? Well… I just never really cared for the main character… rather i developed a sense of pity for the women who cared about him.
This is a book about bugs. It’s a great book. Sue Hubbell seems, to me, to be a great speaker of the greatness of critters with an exoskeleton. Seriously, this book, with each chapter devoted to another interesting thing with many legs, will give you at least some appreciation for creepy crawlies.
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is worth the hype and more than well worth reading. It was wonderful fun and effortless reading, and for the first time in a couple of years, a book I read a dreaded the fact that it would end.
This is one that, even though I’ve already read it (thank heavens for Boston Public), I will keep on my wishlist, because it is just amazing and funny and worth perusing again.
Part of the fun was seeing so many gods and myths i recognize, and discovering many new ones.
I finished reading The Powerbook while I was away in Baltimore. Jeanette Winterson writes excellent books, and I love to see what she does with language, imagery, and especially touch. Her storytelling is indirect and mysterious yet intimate, so I found myself flying through the book waiting to see how it all goes together, how all the pieces work.
On top of that, I even managed to laugh out loud while bits of the book on the T.
I especially recommend this book to anyone who has partaken in the silliness that is instant messaging and email storytelling.
This story is fantastic. I breezed through the book in a couple of hours, and i think it’s a great book for sassy and smart fifth and sixth graders. Heck, even a fourth grader so long as they don’t scare easily. I love Coraline’s attitude and faith in herself, her resourcefulness makes her a great strong girl character that seems more like a normal girl who just has a level head. I look forward to sharing this book with my neices and seeing what they make of the “other mother.”
The Future of Life ~Edward O. Wilson
I learned a lot from the first six chapters of this book. Enlightening, insightful, and interesting bits of information about the diversity found on earth, the places it can be found, and how it benefits humans to have other organisms around. Wilson gives so many examples from various ecosystems around the globe, and its easy to find inspiration in even the smallest microbe. This is the mark of excellent writing and awe of the environment.
Unfortunately, to me, the book falls short in the last chapter. Wilson is trying to give suggestions and possible solutions for the future, but they feel week and a little too tree hugging to be practical to me.
I love books that manage to take the very real world and hold it up sideways so that different things come to light. Murakami has a lot of fun. The characters all have such brazen, honest moments that I laughed often reading this book. There’s a build of uncertainty and suspense but, like the main character, I didn’t find myself overly concerned. I just hung on for the ride.
I climbed into bed and stared at the phone. … At times like this, the telephone becomes a time bomb. Nobody knows when it’s going to go off. But it’s ticking away with possibility. … The phone either looks like it’s dying to say something, or else it’s resenting that it’s trapped inside its form. Pure idea vested with a clunky body. That’s the telephone. (dance dance dance)
The main character spends the whole story tgrying to keep himself from spinning off the face of the planet, and all the while the story avoids becoming a distinct genre piece.
Vernon God Little was much fun for me as a title because the strength of the title does not become apparent until the last two chapters of the book. I’m not much of a person to get hung up on titles, but it was a bit of a question rattling around in my head through the whole book.
There’s much talk about the book being a foray into satirical comedy pointed at the US. This is very true and very admirable in the book. Still, in reading the book I felt like I was reading a hip contemporary version of The Stranger, written in vernacular. This book was written by a man who was born ain Australia, lived in Mexico and the US, and currently resides in Ireland. I can’t help wondering if folks who aren’t American by passport are better suited to telling the world about America. Interesting that the author seems closer to his characters than I would have imagined.
I just finished reading The Bridegroom, a collection of short stories by Ha Jin. The book read really quickly for me, three sittings altogether.
This collection includes 12 stories, all speaking about life in 1980’s Harbin, China. The context of the stories is well handled, and enough background is woven into the stories to give the reader unfamiliar with Chinese history and idea of the societal backdrop of the time. There were only one bit of language in the book that loses its meaning for the non-Chinese speaker. I find that universal grace of Ha Jin’s writing very refreshing.
The stories are all dark, and deeply sad or unfortunate in one way or another. Of the stories, while I particularly enjoyed “The Bridegroom,” my favorites were “In The Kindergarten” and “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town.”