Thursday, January 6, 2011
EARTH TO QAIT!
Posted by Qait at 1:44 PM 1 comments
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?!
Posted by Abby at 1:26 PM 0 comments
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?
Posted by Abby at 9:04 AM 0 comments
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 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.
Posted by Abby at 12:03 PM 0 comments
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 :)
Posted by raehink at 8:13 PM 0 comments
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.
Posted by raehink at 8:11 PM 0 comments
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.
Posted by Rae at 4:17 PM 0 comments