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Individual Reading Goals 2012
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ellie150 in 012
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Ellie
(last edited Dec 25, 2012 11:00am)
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Nov 16, 2011 01:45pm
This year I'm taking it easy: 150 books. This year one of my goals is actually to slow down and enjoy more!
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Smart, Ellie - reading is supposed to be fun, relaxing! as well as entertaining and enlightening. Mind you, I think it would stress me trying to read 150, lol.
I agree Ellie. I used to try to surpass however many books I had read the previous year, and it got to where it was too much pressure for me to read more each year. On the other hand though, if I don't set some sort of goal, I find I don't read as much. Kinda weird.
Yeah, I know it's a little funny thinking of 150 as "easy" but it's still a challenge without so much anxiety.And part of me thought of trying for 250. :(
I'ld probably end up only reading books with fewer than 200 pages. Or picture books (which I love but you get the idea!)
Hi Ellie. I think if I were to set up a goal of 150 books for a challenge, there would be at least another 125 books that would come along and distract me. I get distracted easily! ha ha
That's why I like the number thing-that way, I can just go with my distractions. I get distracted easily too!
Ellie,The number and variety of the books you read is amazing and inspiring. I read a lot more this year than in previous ones…and I’m not even at 50 (I think the one I’m reading now In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin is #45). But for me, this is a great accomplishment, and I enjoy the process.
I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll read next year, I’m sure I’ll get some good ideas (not that I need any more, I have so many books on my TBR shelf).
Thanks Ioana-I always wish I read faster but I think my love of reading & my interaction with the books I do read continues to deepened. I'm wanting to read Garden of Beasts-how is it?
Elli, at the risk of sounding stupid, your 150 books went right over my head. I guess I thought you were talking about named books. Now, thanks to Ioana, the light bulb went on! That is a smart way to go and I think I will try that, although 150 my be too much for me now. I am facing cataract surgery in the next few months and then look out. I do admire the vast number of books you read and I want to be just like you when I grow up. ha ha hee hee ;-)
Very funny guys! :/ I don't think I'll be "growing up" soon however.Good luck with the surgery Judi.
Yeah-for me, naming books seems to be fatal. I hesitate even when doing status updates. Making it public seems to drive me away. Fear of commitment? (lol, I think)
Ellie wrote: "Very funny guys! :/ I don't think I'll be "growing up" soon however.Good luck with the surgery Judi.
Yeah-for me, naming books seems to be fatal. I hesitate even when doing status updates. Makin..."
I have fear of commitment of most everything except my marriage and I had issues with that in the early years. I was so proud that I recently joined a bowling league that my husband is on and I even though I enjoy going, it makes me jittery that I have to go every Tuesday. {{{Psycho drama}}}!!! ha ha
Ha. Actually, I wish my fear of commitment had been great when it came to marriage!Just kidding, though-it was all worth it to have my kids!
It's funny though, I never had those issues when it comes to my kids or pets. It must be different and I'll bet there is some psychological reason for it but I don't know it.
I'm sure that's why my son feels safest with me. I've told him many times that I will love him no matter what. I might get really, really mad, but I will always love him. He was 14 the 1st time he got in trouble with the police. There were 2 other boys involved. One of the other mothers told the officer to just keep her son ... she didn't want him back home. Sadly thats not the only time I've heard a parent say that.
My son had problems with drugs and all that it entails. I pulled him out of trouble with the police so many times that it almost destroyed me but I kept doing it and now I'm glad I did.
Ellie wrote: "Thanks Ioana-I always wish I read faster but I think my love of reading & my interaction with the books I do read continues to deepened. I'm wanting to read Garden of Beasts-how is it?"Ellie,
I just love In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, but I found out lately that I pretty much like any WWII book - don't ask me why, I just do. Actually, I like any history / HF book. And just to think how much I hated history in school...
This book is about the year preceding the war, so a different time and perspective.
Ioana, I love WWII books!! I think they are my favorite wartime reads. Judi, I've never regretted helping my son, but wondered why I haven't run out of tears.
Ellie wrote: "This year I'm taking it easy: 150 books (I made my goal-or will shortly-but too much pressure! This year one of my goals is actually to slow down and enjoy more.)"If easy is 150, than kudos to you!! I couldn't agree more; i dont' want my challenge to be boring just to say i read something. I really want to enjoy my reads. good luck! :D
Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum is the second in a series by the Norwegian author (although the first I've read), featuring Inspector Konrad Sejer. Sejer is another member of the Scandinavian police force-strong, hardened, immensely attractive. This story begins as a little girl is reported missing, having last been seen getting into the car of a local eccentric. The characters are vividly rendered as is the setting.I enjoyed this book very much and look forward to reading the next in the series.
I also read Eliot's The Waste Land several times today, as well as assorted related materials (and listened to several versions on YouTube as well). So I've decided to count this as a read-especially as I plan on continuing to work with it over the next few weeks.
A Sheetcake Named Desire is the first in the proposed "A Piece of Cake Mystery" series by author Jacklyn Brady. Rita Lucero has come from Albuquerque to New Orleans to get her husband (from whom she's been separated for two years) sign divorce papers. When she arrives, she gets a telephone message that may means her still-loved "ex" wants to re-unite but by the time they meet, he's dead. The detective on the case (of course a hottie), and the mother-in-law (a well-drawn, kindly aristocratic grande dame contrasting Rita's Latina working class style) have all the makings of good back-up characters for a series. And Rita's voice is likable and fairly fresh. The mystery was well-enough plotted although the real hook is the setting and the characters. I definitely will read the next in the series.Favorite line: New Orleans Police Dept or NOPD (which stands for "Not Our Problem, Darlin'.").
I was lucky enough to win the extremely valuable Teaching Children With High-Functioning Autism: Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom by Dr. Claire Hughes-Lynch from LibraryThing. It is a highly accessible resource for teachers working to include students with HFA in their classes. These students present special challenges to a teacher-as well as the other students-and Dr. Hughes-Lynch offers a variety of strategies delivered in a format that is easy to read as well as useful. Not all of her strategies will apply for all students, naturally, but she offers enough variety in both strategies and student needs to make this book of value to any teacher working to include these special needs' students in their general education classrooms.As a teacher working with students with high functioning autism who are still in self-contained classrooms, I found this book to be particularly helpful in two ways. 1) The strategies that Dr. Hughes-Lynch offers are now added to my own repertoire to help general education teachers who receive one of my students making the transition into general education and, 2) I am using a number of the strategies to help prepare my students so that they will be better able to function in a general education classroom. I found Dr. Hughes-Lynch's suggestions to be workable within my self-contained room as well as for general education.
I found the resources at the end of the book to be extremely helpful and up-to-date and by themselves worth the price of the book.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes begins as an engaging if somewhat familiar story of a group of English boys coming of age and making their way in the world with the member of the group Adrian Finn the "different" and "mostly likely to" stand out in the world member of the group. The narrator is one of the other three boys who all meet at school and negotiate their way from the middle class into the world of 1960s' London.About 3/4 through the book, the heavily ironic tone began to wear on me but shortly after I began to tire of the tone, the (surprise) plot suddenly came alive. The end of the book takes seemingly every early thread and weaves them all beautifully together. I loved this book. I want to quote it endlessly but for the moment, I'll just suggest everyone read it!
Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year is book that is difficult to classify. It is the story, novelized but real, of author Carlo Levi, a non-practicing doctor and full-time painter who was an Italian political prisoner, sent by the fascist government in power at that time to Gagliano, a village in the poverty-stricken area of southern Italy where the peasants are starving (although taxed non-the-less) and the countryside is bleak beyond belief. Levi, a painter, renders the stark landscape vividly, so that every shade of gray, every moonscape-crater, even the different sounds of wind, stands out vividly in this land forgotten by time and progress. As the book goes on, the cumulative power of Levi's prose (strong even in translation) creates an almost unbearable, powerful world in which a pig-castration is a major event and where the lack of events are ironically measured in more words for time than Levi has known in any other dialect. The stoicism of the peasants, their children "lively, wide-awake, and sad," all pushed to the edge of the violence that comes from endless impotent suffering, presents ultimately as a dignity that is heart-wrenching while never glamorized or without the ignorance that is part of their pain.This is one of the most powerful and brilliant books I have ever read. I would like to learn to read Italian simply to be able to read it in the original. It is a passionate portrayal, rendered in vividly intense images, of an unimaginable poverty by an artist who remarks of a peasant play put on in protest of yet another restriction on their narrow lives, "Where violence and law had failed them, they had recourse to art."
Job is a book from the bible I have always been oddly drawn to and Stephen Mitchell is an author I am even more strongly attached to, so The Book of Job by Stephen Mitchell is obviously too great a combination to pass up. And Mitchell delivers a fascinating meditation on that great book of pain, suffering, and questioning. He also translates the book itself beautifully, showing what a beautiful poem it is. At the same time, it remains fresh, almost contemporary in Job's outrage and his friend's responses.Favorite line so far: God will not hear Job, but Job will see God
Job's "friends" have all the typical, conventional responses. They can't simply be with Job in his pain; it's too threatening.
Someone has to be "wrong." Someone has to be to blame.
Or no one is safe.
Which is the truth.
In the end, Job says to "the Voice in the Whirlwind":
I have spoken of the unspeakable
and tried to grasp the infinite
I struggled with my reactions to Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding throughout my reading of this highly engaging novel. It's a book about baseball that's not really about baseball, a book in many ways about one of the lead character's (college president Guert Affenlight) obsession Moby Dick, a novel about obsession that's not especially obsessive, a book filled with stereotypical characters who come to a life beyond their stereotypes.Henry Scrimshander is a college shortstop with talent and Ahab-like focus on the game. With catcher and Mike Schwarz's mentorship, he is being wooed by pro-scouts when suddenly a crisis of self-doubt paralyzes him. Meanwhile, his roommate and friend Owen is involved in an affair with President Affenlight who is obsessed with Owen and reckless about the possible effects on his career-or his grown daughter Pella.
Although I wrote that the book is not about baseball, that is not completely true. The metaphors of the game permeate the book as, in turn, the books metaphors are enacted in the game. And for a baseball-formed-though-not-current-fan like me, the descriptions of how the game is played are technically sound and beautifully cadenced. You may not have to love baseball to enjoy this book, but it certainly helps and I'm not sure what someone who doesn't have a fair understanding of baseball would make of the book.
So although I felt the book was maybe 100 pages longer than I would have wished and more predicatable than I'd have wanted, I also found I could not stop reading it. I was pulled into the lives of the characters and Harbach's world and (almost despite myself) I very much enjoyed The Art of Fielding.
Just finished Fire in the Soul: A New Psychology of Spiritual optimism by Joan Borysenko which was ok, although kind of a New Age-y self-help spiritual book with more self-help/New Age lingo than spiritual insights. But definitely a "feel good" book for me, and a very fast read. Like a nice chat with a good friend.
Ellie wrote: "Although I wrote that the book is not about baseball, that is not completely true."Ellie,
Do you think that someone (like me) who knows absolutely nothing about baseball, its history and game rules would enjoy The Art of Fielding?
I've been to one baseball game- and left sometime in the 5th inning to miss traffic. Plus, I'd already eaten which ended my interest in the whole ballpark experience. (I'm trying to convey my deep loathing for baseball.) I loved Art of Fielding- one of my favorite books of 2011.
I agree. I think knowing something about baseball enhances the book but isn't essential. (I love baseball-not that I spend much time watching it-and I usually dislike books about the game or using the game as a metaphor but I loved Harbach's descriptions)
(Me and Bobby Mcgee) by Chad Coenson is propelled by the energy of its prose and its "hero" sarcastic, criminal Keesey Cypher is funny, criminal, and full of life. It's not necessary to be familiar with the old song to enjoy this book but it doesn't hurt either since the song is woven throughout the story.
I really liked A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness by Nassir Ghaemi. It's an excellent contribution to the de-stigmatization (if that word doesn't exist, it should) of mental illness, especially in the arena of politics. In a world in which mental illness of some degree is fairly common and treatable, it is unreasonable to think some of our leaders won't be affected and their ability to access the possible benefits (empathy, for example, as well as increased creativity and energy)and to obtain treatment for its negative consequences seems both practical and desirable. It is also good to hear that mental illness can also bring benefits. However, I felt,at times, that Ghaemi almost made mental illness a requirement for good leadership and inappropriate treatment (in Hitler's case, too many amphetamines to medicate his bi-polar condition) as responsible when mental illness resulted in catastrophic results. As a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Tufts University in Boston, he is clearly familiar and careful to acknowledge how devastating mental illness can be. Nevertheless, this caveat can get lost in the lush prose describing the possible advantages depression and bi-polar illness can bring. His dismissal of Bush's alcoholism and, somewhat more convincingly, Nixon's paranoia also seemed to pat to me. And I grew uncomfortable with what seemed a too-easy exploration of great men's most inner, private lives from such a distance of time.
My "neverthelesses" and "howevers" essentially convey my response to this book. Well-written, fascinating, intriguing-but also invasive and a little too slick. But I would definitely recommend it despite these drawbacks to everyone. It addresses important, and generally under-recognized views regarding mental illness and leadership.
Shay wrote: "I've been to one baseball game- and left sometime in the 5th inning to miss traffic. Plus, I'd already eaten which ended my interest in the whole ballpark experience. (I'm trying to convey my deep ..."Thanks - I don't even know what an inning is (I keep hearing about innings though from others who like the game), but I'll give the book a try.
Ellie wrote: "I agree. I think knowing something about baseball enhances the book but isn't essential. (I love baseball-not that I spend much time watching it-and I usually dislike books about the game or using ..."Ellie, thanks a lot. I'll get the book hopefully later this year. Now I am in the middle (well...20%) of 1Q84, which I love, and have a few others lined up....I need more time :)
All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen made a big splash when it came out a few years ago. I remember that. I also remember lots of complaints about it being too self-consciously self-conscious. Also self-indulgent. In that odd sense of ruminating on one's suffering that is caused (mostly) by oneself. One's drinking, not committing enough to relationships.I think all of the above is true. Nonetheless, I really, really enjoyed this book. I found it funny and kind of true and, did I say, funny?
And a lot of it takes place in New York City.
And I've read a lot of reviews on GR with the same complaints and I find myself nodding at the reviews and laughing in some kind of agreement.
But then I have to admit, I liked the writing a lot. I was interested in the 3 main male characters (even if they really are sort of only one actual person and not very distinguishable from each other-I liked him in his different guises). And if the book didn't make me laugh out loud, it did make me smile. Often.
So I'd recommend it, if you like reading about boy-men trying to figure out their lives during their twenties & mostly making mistakes and behaving badly but able to endlessly articulate their feelings and thoughts on the subject.
Which apparently I do.
Meet Helen Hawthorne, star of Elaine Viets' Shop Till You Drop. Helen on the run after an incident with a cheating husband and a crowbar and has left affluent (though dowdy) St. Louis for an impoverished life in chic (but sleazy) Ft. Lauderdale. Working off the books for cash, she is an assistant in a high end boutique. But anorexia and kleptomania are the mildest problems she sees. There are drug sales, hit men, and the murder of a co-worker to contend with as well.This book is a breathlessly fast read and lots of fun for lovers of cozies. I'm off to find myself the next in the series asap.
Until Thy Wrath Be Past, the fourth installment in Åsa Larsson's Rebecka Martinsson Swedish thriller series, finds Rebecka having left Stockholm and settled in Kiruna working as a prosecutor. Actually, the book begins with a spirit of a young woman who has been murdered searching for resolution, visiting her family as well as Rebecka. Rebecka just does not seem to be destined for happy endings or peace.The book moves at a slower pace than Larsson's last book, The Black Path, which I loved so much it probably resulted in Wrath getting 4 stars from me instead of 5. Nevertheless, I still loved the characters and Larsson's bleak world filled with tortured souls, twisted lives, killers and victims-and odd combinations of the above.
Ellie wrote: "Meet Helen Hawthorne, star of Elaine Viets' Shop Till You Drop. Helen on the run after an incident with a cheating husband and a crowbar and has left affluent (though ..."The series goes down hill after a while. Can't say why because it's a spoiler, but I think you'll notice it yourself. I like her other series better. Dying in Style is the first in the other series.
I enjoyed Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. I guess I just wanted it to be more...life-changing. And I resented its movement between a theoretical examination of memory, a history of memory and memory techniques, and the author's experience with a group of hard-core champions of memory contests. The author happens upon the world of memory training in which people perform amazing feats of memory and claim that their memory is only average, that we could all (pretty much) do what they do if we trained ourselves. The book is a recounting of Foer's year training with the experts to compete in memory championships. Along the way, Foer recounts the history of memorization-its one-time primacy, its fall into disrespect and its current championship by some educators. He has some fascinating stories to tell and raises some interesting questions as well.
Before writing, memory was the only way to transmit information, culture, and history. Even after writing was invented and became common, even, in fact, after the printing press was invented, books were (Foer informs us) more of a memory aid than a source of information. As books became more sophisticated, it became easier to access the information they contained and gradually at first, then, with the advent of the Internet, extremely quickly, memory no longer seemed important. Foer raises an important question: Although memory does not constitute understanding, facts are an essential foundation to learning. As a teacher, I find myself defending the need to memorize a sets of basic facts so that the students can then proceed to think about them and analyze them.
Stories about individuals whose memories have been damaged along with stories of "savants" were of more interest to me for the questions they raised about the function of memory in forming our identity and as a necessary constituent of relationships than for their anecdotal pleasure.
Generally, my dissatisfaction with the book came from what is also its major attraction: a lot of information is covered in a relatively short space. In fact, not just a lot of information, but a lot of different areas-history, education, psychology-along with the current tale of Foer's training and the people he meets along the way. The book left me dissatisfied in that it didn't seem to offer a coherent starting point for further investigation because of the rapidity with which it covered so many important issues.
On the other hand, I was fascinated by much of the book and will spend time trying to sort out the questions it raised and decide where to go next with it. And that's a great thing for a book to do.
Ellie, it seems to me you were hoping for something more like you would get with Oliver Sacks. Reading your review I think I, too, would have been much dissatisfied by what I got.
Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is excellent for the first half, then drags (for quite a bit) and picks up speed during the last 20-30 pages. I really wanted to love it-the blurb talked sounded so good, medieval, myths, etc.-but I only liked it.
The Book Addicts!
Books mentioned in this topic
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (other topics)Don't Look Back (other topics)
The Waste Land (other topics)
A Sheetcake Named Desire (other topics)
Teaching Children with High-Functioning Autism: Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Karin Fossum (other topics)Jacklyn Brady (other topics)
Julian Barnes (other topics)
Carlo Levi (other topics)
Stephen Mitchell (other topics)
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