[Book a Week 2017 - BW7: Happy Valentine's Week]

I liked the how-to-read-200-books article; I am always looking for inspiration. But the reality is that there are a few other worthy (to me) things that compete with my reading time. It isn't as simple as ditching facebook and trash TV. My biggest hobby see-saw right now is between reading and learning two foreign languages. 

 

My updates:

I finished The Bear and the Nightingale. I really enjoyed the story, but I felt like both the author and I rushed through the ending. Then I went back to Dr. Zhivago, which is impossible to rush through if one does not want to be lost in a maze of characters. Dr. Z is going to be a slow, delicious read for me.

 

One of my most bookish IRL friends visited from out of state last weekend. :001_wub: There was much discussion of books, book clubs, and bullet journals. And there was book swapping. I was on the receiving end of My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.

 

On a not-so-fun-note, I spent yesterday morning in the ER with mysterious chest pains. I brought Dr. Zhivago along, but was unable to concentrate on it. I was able to read something lighter, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. In fact, I was there long enough to read the whole thing...The source of the chest pains remains a mystery, but did not appear to be heart related. 

 

The Power of Habit has a bit of self-help, but it is really more of an anaylsis of habit. Case studies include Alcoa, Starbucks, and the civil rights movement. Go elsewhere if you want the nitty-gritty on how to quit smoking or stay off of Facebook.

 

 

 

[Book a Week 2017 - BW6: Pick a book by the cover]

Still following, but we have stomach flu in the house :(

The little book of Hygge arrived through IBL, so maybe we will feel better soon... ;)

Hope you feel better, loesje. I will be curious to know what you think about the hygge book. 

[Book a Week 2017 - BW6: Pick a book by the cover]

Here are my updates:

 

One Thousand and One Nights: A pleasant read, but I never lost that feeling that I was reading a Junior Classics version of a classic.

 

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: I am reading this with DS, one bad argument each day. Stellar!! This little book is succinct and entertaining. We love it.

 

I started Dr. Zhivago, and every minute I spend in the book is sheer joy. But I have set it aside to read The Bear and The Nightingale. I just got it from the library, and it won't be renewable of course. I don't read quickly, and I want to make sure I get it done on time. So far it hits a trifecta for me: fairy tales, Russia, and winter. As Rose noted, the author deftly hits that intersection of time in the north when Christianity was overlapping with the older beliefs. It reminds me of Kristen Lavransdatter in that sense.

 

We saw a great documentary over the weekend at a film fest. The Babushkas of Chernobyl tells the story of the babushkas who live in Chernobyl exclusion zone. I recommend it if you get the opportunity. It was interesting, and also quite funny in spots. For me, it is the perfect segue to my Eastern European bingo read, Voices from Chernobyl The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster.

 

 

 

 

[Half time show was good!]

Agreed. I thought she was fantastic.

[Book a Week 2017 - BW5: festive february]

My dad loved this book and told me how good it was. We started cleaning some things out of his house and this is one of the books I brought home with me.

 

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

My dad died in 1995 and this is the book I most associate with him.  He loved it. To this day, I see that book and picture him holding it.

 

 

:grouphug:  :grouphug:

[Do you eat a low salt diet? Please name your favorite snacks.]

Nutrional yeast is awesome stuff. Yumm.

[Do you eat a low salt diet? Please name your favorite snacks.]

Not to derail the thread, but too much salt gives me a food hangover. I have chosen to limit the sodium in my foods so I can eat some olives or a bit of bacon and not end up feeling ill.

[My dad passed away]

My sincere condolences, and an offering of many hugs.

Your father sounds like a wonderful man who will be deeply missed by many.

 

:grouphug:  :grouphug:

[Do you eat a low salt diet? Please name your favorite snacks.]

I have these in my pantry right now:

 

Simply Jif Peanut Butter (3% sodium)

Full Circle Organic Almond Butter (0% sodium)

Wegman's Cashew Butter (0% sodium)

[Do you eat a low salt diet? Please name your favorite snacks.]

I love the no salt tortilla chips from Whole Foods.

Utz salt free potato chips are good.

 

There are several crackers with low sodium: Ritz and Triscuit, I think.

 

Not that any of the above should be eaten in vast quantities for non-sodium reasons, but that wasn't the question. :lol:

 

I avoid dairy for other reasons, but both goat cheese and ricotta are on the low end of the sodium spectrum.

Most prepared humus is around 5%, and my prepared fresh salsa is 2%. Do check the labels.

 

edited for clarity/detail

[Is there a good older chemistry text without colored-box-disease? :)]

I think that Novare's Chemistry for Accelerated Students, which is recent, does not suffer from the disease. Relatively speaking, of course :)

 

Sample pages here:

http://novarescienceandmath.com/catalog/chemistry/cas/sample-pages/

[Book a Week 2017 - BW5: festive february]

I finished Weed the People last week. It would have been so much better if the author would have kept himself out of the narrative. By the end, he was sitting on my last nerve. He really should have stuck to journalism and kept away from personal story. And how can you have a discussion of legal marijuana in a chapter called "Going International" that does not even glance at the Netherlands?

 

He quoted The New Jim Crow a few times, and I have seen that book mentioned here so I am putting on my TBR list.

 

Three stars. I learned some things, but it could have been much better. I am, however, eager for the book club discussion this week. Yay for meeting new people who read!

 

 

[The 2017 Acceptance Thread]

Creekland, I can only echo what other posters have already said. Based on what you have written about your son, I am stunned. I really know nothing about med school admissions, so all I have to offer are hugs. And another echo: you are very generous to share your family's story.

 

My son is a senior getting a BA in psych, and he hopes to enter a MS clinical mental health counseling program. Advising from the school? Utterly useless. I am trying to be the guidance counselor, but am ill-equipped for the job. I really did not foresee myself in this position at this point but such is life. Sigh I hope to be posting an acceptance in this thread at some point, but who knows. Maybe yes, maybe no.

 

ETA: Congrats to thoes who recently posted acceptances. I did not just glance over those posts :) As I am well-aquainted with the acceptance rates at both NC and MD schools, a special shout-out to y'all.

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

Thank you for clarifying, Robin. I am sure my newbie questions will die down by February.

 

 

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

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Here's Robin's list of Bingo rules (from her blog):

 

Bingo Guidelines and Clarifications

• Page count minimum is 200 pages.
• Novellas and rereads don't count as that would be too easy.
• Book has to be started and completed this year, no carry overs from last year.
• No double dipping.
• Free space is book of your choice. Yes, you have to read a book to tick off free space.
• Audiobooks are fine as long as has substance and the actual book is over 200 pages in length

Clarifications:

• There isn't a category for play this year so no plays.
• Children and Young adult books are iffy and depend on if they have substance. The young adult novels today are like the regular adult novels of the 70's. Yes Harry Potter counts. Use your best judgement.
• Finance – Can be fiction or non fiction
• Western - As in cowboys, outlaws, lawmen and indians up through the 1900's. Can be fiction or non fiction and from any country and just not U.S. related.
• Debut author – Author’s debut from 2016 or 2017
• Outer space books -- space as in outer space, not of this planet, no air. Space beyond the atmosphere of earth. Can include climbing in a rocket and leaving our world or life on another planet or alien worlds.

Thanks for posting that. I am not sure if nonfiction is specifically noted for Western and Finance because someone specifically asked about those two, or if it is because the others squares must be fiction.

 

Probably just me being dense, but I do want to play by the rules :)

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

I didn't realize there was a limitation to fiction on any of the categories except the ones that made them by definition fiction (Flufferton, SciFi, Dystopian, Short Stories, Steampunk?).  I'd also assume Mystery and Classic to be fiction, unless True Crime type books counted, and there could be some old nonfiction that could qualify as Classic???  Origin of Species? No idea.

 

I hope it's no limited to Finance and Western... currently other than Finance I have nonfiction down for Local Author (which I also contemplated using for the Seaworthy square) and Prime Number (if I can use The Imaginary Tale of the Square Root of Negative One for that....?)

 

Anyway, if there are limits to other squares, someone let me know now so I can adjust. :)

Yes, that is why I asked for clarification. I had thought that either fiction or non-fiction were fine for all squares, but then there were some bits in posts and in the rules summary that led me to second guess that assumption.

 

Certainly early enough for me to adjust, too :)

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

Can someone help me with a Bingo clarification? Can any category be nonfiction, or is nonfiction limited to Finance and Western?

 

Thanks for your patience. While I have tried to be diligent with the threads, I may very well have missed previous discussion on this point.

[Looking for non-pharmaceutical recommendations for lowering/controlling blood pressure.]

Going low (not just reduced) sodium did it for me. Took about three weeks.

 

Once I got it where it needed to be, I did not have to be so strict. Just careful.

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

Good Morning! (At least for me)

 

Just popping in to update my reading. I finished Sous Les Vents de Neptune by Fred Vargas. I really like her (yes, a woman) as an author. I ordered another of her books but I am thinking about joining Alliance Française online library so I can read the rest without having to buy them all.

 

Still reading Jane Eyre..Just looking at it a bit on the kindle cloud reader. Going to let it drag out a while because I am trying to read as many paper books as possible before I have a baby in April and have to switch back to my kindle for the next 2 years :)

 

And I got a fun book (for me) in the mail this week from another author a really like, An Old Man's Toy by Anthony Zee. He is a physicist and just so good at writing and explaining things.

 

And I started Le Chardon et Le Tartan which is the first book of the Outlander series translated into French :) I would guess it doesn't count for the chunky bingo square if I have read the book 3x before but never the French translation lol

And this leads me to a question:

Do bingo rereads count if you have never read the book before in that language?

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

I finished Norwegian Wood and while I didn't like this as much as Kafka on the Shore, I did enjoy this more than some of his other books. It is also shorter than some others, which I think has something to do with it. I would sometimes get bored of tedious details in 1Q84 and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and I didn't have that problem with this one.

 

I then read a quick dusty book, Saint George and the Dragon, which I had picked up at the library book sale thinking that I will probably never read The Faerie Queene, and this much is better than nothing. There were a couple of points in the story that made me laugh and I was glad to see King Arthur make an appearance. This adaptation is in verse and the book has simple, all red illustrations.

 

I also finished listening to Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders. Part of the book is narrated by Mark Ruffalo. He pronounced "Asia" with three syllables and "virulent" with a long I.Other things too, but those were the most shocking pronunciations, for me.

 

Books I started:

 

One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan Al-Shaykh - This is a "reimagining" of nineteen of the stories from The Arabian Nights. "Reimagining" is the word used on the back cover, but I have no idea how these compare to other tellings. There are some odd phrasings, missing words and weird commas that are a little distracting here and there, but overall it is light and fun - also bawdy. I enjoy the interconnectedness of the stories and the multiple frames.

 

Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art by Mary Anne Staniszewski - This is another dusty book I purchased from the library book sale (a couple years ago). It was on a table of children's books, but didn't look like a children's book, so I thought it was probably about teaching art appreciation to children or something like that. Nope! Just on the wrong table. Looking at Amazon reviews, it appears that this book is commonly used as a textbook (though I imagine not the only textbook for a course). It is heavily illustrated and feels like I'm sitting in on a lecture with a power point presentation for the first few weeks of a course in art appreciation or art history. The author argues that, as far as we know, art as we think of it has only existed since the eighteenth century.

 

The Obesity Code by Jason Fung - Thanks to Negin and anyone else that brought this book to the BaW threads! I am listening to this while I run. It's light and easy to listen to. I have listened to about three hours of it. I suppose I am always skeptical of diet books, but about three hours in, the information about experiments showing insulin as a cause of weight gain is interesting, so I'm a little less skeptical now and almost wishing I had somewhere to drive so I could listen to more. I lost seventy pounds last year and am hopeful for anything that will help me keep it off. 

First of all, congrats on the weight loss :)

 

I am not sure what I think yet about One Thousand and One Nights. For better or for worse, I am reading it concurrently with a traditional version. So far, this retelling/reimagining just seems like a junior classics version of Haddawy's Arabian Nights - well, with the erotic bits left in of course. I was expecting Hanan al-Shayk's Shahrazad to be more of a participating character. So far, she no different from the Shahrazad in the traditional telling. But these are only preliminary observations and I will reserve judgement. I'm only on page 62.

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

I lived in Denmark from 2011 until just a few months ago. I have mixed feelings about reading The Little Book of Hygge. I am curious about the book, but I already have my own ideas about what hygge is and what it isn't.

 

Getting used to the lack of sunlight was difficult the first winter. Having my then 5th grade son walk to school when it was pitch black out nearly did me in, particularly since part of the walk was through a public park.

 

Candles, candles, candles. You cope with candles. And lit candles are found in places that I would be shocked to find them in the USA. Like on the children's play table in the dentist waiting room. On top of the head of the young girl chosen to play St. Lucia in the procession.

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

Oh, Sadie: :grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:

[11th grade planning thread]

Still working on it. Except for Russian, none of these are firm yet.

 

English: Either AP English Language with PA Homeschoolers or DE

Precalculus: Derek Owens

Physics: Clover Creek

U.S. History: Home

Russian II: By the Onion Sea

Geography (Sem1) / American Govt (Sem2)

Keep working on Fine Arts credit and Health/PE credit.

 

Much depends on whether or not he starts DE at the local university. He will apply next week.

[Book a Week 2017 - BW4: The shape of culture: past, present, and future]

My pinterest account suggested just this map of Literature:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/danieldalton/map-of-literature

 

I like it :)

And did you see that the creator is 17 yr old?! Wow.

[Book a Week 2017 - BW3: Author Oulipo Mashup]

I finished my first book for the year "the pleasures of reading in an age of distraction". Kind of ironic how long it took me to finish it! I do have several books on the go at once though so hopefully will finish a few more. The book was interesting and outlined some of the problems of trying to read now, and did offer some solutions. I didn't feel like it was going to be life changing or anything and there were a lot of citations. I think it's more aimed at those who are already readers of good books but are struggling to read with the internet so available. It wouldn't be overly helpful for complete non readers wanting to get started on the way well educated mind is.

I just added it to my TBR list - thanks. I hardly read any books last year, and in all honesty not so many the year or two prior, either. And that was completely out of character for me. The internet only gets partial blame; I was distracted by life events. Normally, I would distract myself from my distractions with escape into a good book, but something went awry. One thing I am trying to get over now is the idea that I got "behind" on books. I am working to banish the inner silly voice that says things like "You never read The Goldfinch? WHAT?! Shame on you, everyone read that in 2013/2014. Why bother, now?" So thanks for the mention!

 

ETA: This is my new self-talk: If The Goldfinch was good in 2013/2014, it will be good in 2017. Or 2018. A good novel has a longer shelf life than that! If not, I don't think I missed much after all.