Thursday, January 6, 2011

EARTH TO QAIT!

I wrote this for my blog but thought I'd share since I've been neglecting this book blog. :) But this blog is in my thoughts fairly often! I've only recently let myself dive into books in a big way again...

Michael was trying to talk to me while I read my book, and when I finally realized it, I had to remind him that he has to call my name first or I'll miss at least the first half of what he says. 
Then, after our little conversation, I went back to my book. 
Back into its world, completely immersed.
So much so that when I talked to Michael later, he grinned and asked if I'd heard his little speech...and I hadn't! 
He said he tried a little experiment when I went back to reading. He spoke in a dull voice, like a bored horse-race announcer, and said "Kathryn Faith Wahlquist...I have spoken your name, yet you do not react..." (something like that, going on and on until he finished) "...this has been a message from Michael Wahlquist." 
I missed it! 
It made us laugh a lot, though, when he told me about it later. 

By the way? The book that had me completely bound is called "The Maze Runner" by James Dashner. He's a Mormon author, not that it shows. And his style of writing is borderline for Deseret Book--they won't carry his sequel. But not for the same reasons they wouldn't carry the rest of the Twilight books. It's perhaps a bit graphic...well, yes, it is. It's very heavy material on the whole. The subject matter is comparable to Lord of the Flies at first, since it's a group of boys with no adult leader...but beyond that, it stands alone as a very original plot. Kind of post-apocalyptic, sci-fi in a very thought-provoking way. I loved it. 

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Lynness- Oliver Sacks

Just finished reading Oliver Sacks latest- The Mind's Eye.  It is shorter and more personal than some of his other books: one whole chapter is entirely about his own experience with losing vision in one eye.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'm a nerd.  Makes me want to write to him and ask about my own head.  Maybe the fact that I don't visualize much of what I read is that my reading is so visual instead of oral?  By that I mean that I concentrate on the look of the words on the page rather than speaking them to myself as I read.  I do not have a photographic memory, but- without consciously trying to commit this to memory-  I remembered a word's approximate location on the page and the shape of the word when I later decided to go back to find the word and look it up.  (If my memory were photographic, I could scan my page in memory to find the word I wanted to look up!)  I can't hold an image in memory for very long, and I can't focus in on it- I can recognize people in my "mind's eye", but if I try to examine them more closely or look for more detail my image kind of 'falls apart', even with people I know very well, like my family.  I can draw, but I have to have an object to draw in front of me.  I cannot hold a realistic image in my mind and draw from it.  Sign language is a visual language and to describe location and spatial relationships with sign language, you have to have a visual image of them yourself, which I rarely do.  If I were describing my own living room I imagine I would have a general image, but interpreting for others requires one to place people and object in various places in your signing space so that you can refer to them, and I have a harder time keeping straight where they are, because I have no actual visual construct....

ANYWAY, Oliver Sacks books always make me think about thinking.  Won't it be amazing when we have all the answers about how our minds work?!

Monday, November 15, 2010

Lynness- Recent reads

I just finished the complete Sherlock Holmes, over 1000 pages.  It wasn't taxing, though- because all but 4 are short stories, so I'd read a few every night, etc. over several weeks.   Most books I speed through because I want to find out what happens. With this, you get that every few pages, so you can stretch it out over a longer period, but still get the satisfaction of resolution and answers.  Many of the stories do tend to be similar: more of a feel though, than actual details of cases.  Two of the stories, however, had THE EXACT SAME conversation in the opening scene....oops.
I also read Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.
Wondering what to read next...any assignment or really good reads lately?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Lynness: reading for Aug-Sept

I posted about the bios I read in August, but while searching for bios to read, I came across Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time.  I didn't get around to reading it for August and I almost returned it, but decided to renew it and maybe I'd give it a whirl.  I was just starting it last week when I decided to look for some books that would fit the bill for this month.  I clicked around a bit and found Powell Book's Puddly Awards list.  What was the non-fiction winner?  This book.  Turns out it's won a fair number of other awards as well (pasted from the Wikipedia article on the book):

  • Kiriyama Prize
  • Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year
  • Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association – Nonfiction Award
  • Montana Honor Book Award
  • Borders Bookstore Original Voices Selection
  • Banff Mountain Festival Book Award Finalist
  • Dayton Literary Prize Nonfiction Award – runner up
  • People Magazine – Critics Choice
  • Publisher’s Weekly – Starred Review
  • Mom's Choice Award 2009 [14]
  • 2009 Italy: Premio Gambrinus “Giuseppe Mazzotti” [15]
  • Powell Book's Puddly Award (nonfiction), Portland [16]
  • 2010 The Christopher Award: "To affirm the highest values of the human spirit" [17]
  • 2010 The Mason Award - Extraordinary contribution in literature (George Mason University DC)[18]
I finished it and requested the next.  It's the kind of book that makes you want to do good and change the world too.  I highly recommend it.

I also read the Hunger Games trilogy.  I liked the first book, but each successive book left me a little more dissatisfied than the one before.  I'm not sure why.  I don't know if it was the plot or the writing or the characters or what.  I wanted to finish the books because I wanted to see how it all turned out, but not because the reading compelled me like it did in the first one.
I know one thing: if they ever make this into a movie, I will not see it.  Waaaayyy too graphic.  I don't want to see what I read about.  (Good thing I don't visualize what I read about unless I make an specific effort.)  I agree with Rae- not for kids.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Raehink: My August reads

For my biography, I read two books about Laura Bush--one written by her and one about her. I learned a lot about her and have decided I would love having her as a friend. She loves books, birds, Texas, reading, this country, her family, her bed, and her husband. And probably her husband in bed :)


I have finished Mockingjay and am fully satisfied with the trilogy. My one misgiving is the fact that they are being marketed to children who probably don't need to be reading them. It's pretty mature material, in my opinion. I was completely taken aback by one particularly violent scene. It caught me so off guard that I actually gasped out loud and clutched my shirt. Wow. Effective writing.

Lynness: I adore the Candy Bomber (Gail Halvorsen). I first learned about him when I stayed in Berlin with the Boatrights. I read a couple of books about the Berlin Airlift as well as a biography of him. I've always wanted to meet him and was so disappointed to realize that the whole time I was at BYU, he was part of the administration. I could have walked into his office any time, I imagine. He's an amazing man. Glad you discovered him.

Someday when I have lots of disposable income...

Happy reading!

Raehink: September Reading

Read an award winner--any award. We did this one before, but it's been quite a while. And I'm limiting it to just the past ten years. That should narrow things down a bit. So--an award-winning book written in the past decade. Return and report.


Happy reading!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Lulu: WOW

I wholeheartedly and strongly recommend reading Confronting the Myth of Self-Esteem: Twelve Keys to Finding Peace (by Ester Rasband). The author is LDS and bases her findings (about self-esteem and confidence) around gospel truth. It is perspective-changing, necessary.