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August 10
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Jenny
gave
 
to:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Paperback)
by Mark Haddon
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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recommended to Jenny by:
Pete's book club
read in August, 2008
Jenny said:
"Aw, that's cool. Fiction, a mystery written from the perspective of an autistic boy. Really neat to be inside his head, looking out from his perspective. For example, having extreme difficulty figuring out human interaction. He has to carry a lit...more
Aw, that's cool. Fiction, a mystery written from the perspective of an autistic boy. Really neat to be inside his head, looking out from his perspective. For example, having extreme difficulty figuring out human interaction. He has to carry a little cheat sheet with the emotion name written next to various smiley faces in order to identify what the person is feeling/expressing.
Here's a quote I like, p 12: "Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classified as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living. Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."...less
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July 24
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Jenny
gave
to:
The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue (Paperback)
by Edna O'Brien
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
Jenny said:
"That's cool, by the end it told their whole life stories. I was struck by how even though it felt like I was in-depth into the happenings, things kept progressing forward through the years, and they were growing up as I read. I definitely resonated...more
That's cool, by the end it told their whole life stories. I was struck by how even though it felt like I was in-depth into the happenings, things kept progressing forward through the years, and they were growing up as I read. I definitely resonated more with Kate, and Baba was tough to handle, especially when they were younger. I had some strong reactions to both of their characters, and the choices they made. At first I was thrown off when the narrator changed, but by the end it was neat to get into both their heads. I also reflected a lot on how even though their story sounds pretty ordinary these days, all of this was radical stuff when it was written, 1960s Ireland. How things change! In fact, you can even watch it change through the book, as they transition from rural Ireland to Dublin to London.
Here's my favorite quote, p 376: "If I saw him again I would run to kiss him, but even if I don't see him I have a picture of him in my mind, walking through the woods, saying, in answer to my fear that he might leave me, that the experience of knowing love and of being destined, one day, to remember it, is the common lot of most people. "We all leave one another. We die, we change--it's mostly change--we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable..." he said."...less
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Jenny
marked as to-read:
The Enchantress of Florence (Hardcover)
by Salman Rushdie
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Jenny
marked as to-read:
Unaccustomed Earth (Hardcover)
by Jhumpa Lahiri
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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July 12
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Jenny
gave
to:
Flight: A Novel (Paperback)
by Sherman Alexie
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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recommended to Jenny by:
Pete's book club
read in July, 2008
Jenny said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Jenny
gave
to:
Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community (Paperback)
by Heather C. Flores
bookshelves:
nonfiction-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in July, 2008
Jenny said:
"A somewhat interesting read on serious gardening. However, it's more philosophical and less technical then I was looking for. Nonetheless, there's some good info, like the Niche Guide to types of plants with certain functions (e.g. ground covers, v...more
A somewhat interesting read on serious gardening. However, it's more philosophical and less technical then I was looking for. Nonetheless, there's some good info, like the Niche Guide to types of plants with certain functions (e.g. ground covers, veggies, nitrogen fixers, mulches). It got my mental wheels turning regarding grey water systems. And I want to take the ecological footprint quiz and www.earthday.net/footprint/info.asp....less
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Jenny
gave
to:
Creating a World without Poverty: How Social Business Can Transform Our Lives (Audio CD)
by Muhammad Yunus
bookshelves:
nonfiction-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended to Jenny by:
Dad
read in July, 2008
Jenny said:
"Wow, super cool! Ever since I took econ in high school, my thoughts on capitalism ranged from confused to horrified. I was always disturbed by the dehumanization inherent in the "laws" of economics. I thought it was weird, and I wondered...more
Wow, super cool! Ever since I took econ in high school, my thoughts on capitalism ranged from confused to horrified. I was always disturbed by the dehumanization inherent in the "laws" of economics. I thought it was weird, and I wondered if I was the only person who thought so, since nobody else was saying anything. As I learned more about socialism I figured it was fundamentally flawed too, but I knew for sure capitalism wasn't the answer either. So I never knew what another option could be... until this book! Hooray for Yunus! So I'm gonna provide some of my fave quotes, to give a taste of what he's talking about:
p 21: "If we describe our existing companies as profit-maximizing businesses (PMBs), the new kind of business might be called social business. Entrepeneurs will set up social businesses not to achieve limited personal gain but to pursue specific social goals. To free-market fundamentalists, this might seem blasphemous... surely the stakes are too high to go on the way we have been going. By insisting that all businesses, by definition, must necessarily be PMBs and by treating this as some kind of axiomatic truth, we have created a world that ignores the multi-dimensional nature of human beings... we need a new type of business that pursues goals other than making personal profit--a business that is totally dedicated to solving social and environmental problems."
p 49: "If the poor are to get the chance to lift themselves out of poverty, it's up to us to remove the institutional barriers we've created around them."
p 56: "To me, the essence of development is changing the quality of life of the bottom half of the population."
p 82: "the social-business concept: a self-sustaining company that sells goods or services and repays its owners for the money they invest, but whose primary purpose is to serve society and improve the lot of the poor."
p 114: "But if you spend enough time living among the poor, you discover that their poverty arises from the fact that they cannot retain the genuine results of their labor. And the reason for this is clear: They have no control over capital. The poor work for the benefit of someone else who controls the capital."
p 213: "The urge to consume without regard to the long-term social costs is a natural, even inevitable outgrowth of the breakneck quest for profit maximization. When we put profit first, we forget about the environment, we forget about public health, we forget about sustainability."
p 214: "I strongly feel that we need a parallel voice in the marketplace, offering consumers a different set of messages--messages like:
**Think about whether you really need it!
**The more you buy, the more likely it is that you are exhausting earth's nonrenewable resources.
**Check the packaging--is it wasteful?
**Buy from a company that will take back your last purchase and recycle it.
**Create a socially responsible home.
**Are you spending like a citizen of the world?"
p 225: "Let me give a wish list of my dream world that I would like to see emerge by 2050... There will be no poor people, no beggars, no homeless people, no street children anywhere in the world. Every country will have its own poverty museum. The global poverty museum will be located in the country that is the last to come out of poverty."
p 239: "Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives."
p 246: "I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue."
What? Are you still reading? Stop reading this, and go get the book!
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June 08
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Jenny
gave
to:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Hardcover)
by Sherman Alexie
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in June, 2008
Jenny said:
"Oh wow, Sherman Alexie can always make me bust out laughing while my heart is breaking at the same time. That's amazing. This says it's a kids' book, but I'd say it's a great read for adults. Although it's pretty straight up and in your face, as u...more
Oh wow, Sherman Alexie can always make me bust out laughing while my heart is breaking at the same time. That's amazing. This says it's a kids' book, but I'd say it's a great read for adults. Although it's pretty straight up and in your face, as usual for him.
My favorite quote, from p. 129: "If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing."...less
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June 03
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Jenny
gave
to:
The Deportees (Hardcover)
by Roddy Doyle
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in June, 2008
Jenny said:
"Oh wow, I always loved Roddy Doyle's stuff, cuz it was so quintessentially Irish. And here he goes again, with this collection of short stories, telling the story of what it means to be Irish now, in the new multi-cultural Ireland. In the intro he ...more
Oh wow, I always loved Roddy Doyle's stuff, cuz it was so quintessentially Irish. And here he goes again, with this collection of short stories, telling the story of what it means to be Irish now, in the new multi-cultural Ireland. In the intro he writes "I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one. That was how it felt, for a while. It took getting used to. I'd written a novel, The Van, in 1990, about an unemployed plasterer. Five or six years later, there was no such thing as an unemployed plasterer. A few years on, all the plasterers seemed to be from Eastern Europe. In 1994 and 1995, I wrote The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. It was narrated by a woman called Paula Spencer, who earned her money cleaning offices. She went to work with other working-class women like herself. Ten years later, I wrote Paula Spencer. Paula was still cleaning offices but now she went to work alone and the other cleaners were men from Romania and Nigeria..."
The stories are a great look at the inside, the outside, the cultural core, the marginalized, all that stuff I love considering. From "Home to Harlem," p. 212:
"--In Ireland, he told her,--there are rules.
--You haven't noticed some here?
--I know, I know, he said.--But, like, here you can be called an African-American or a Native American of a good American or a bad American or a liberal American or a neo-con whatever-the-fuck American. But you're always American. You're never less American.
She said nothing; she let him at it.
--But not in Ireland. You can be less Irish. I am. At least, I used to be.
--Explain.
--I'm black.
--And?
--That's not Irish. Or Irish enough. And my dad used to say there was a Dublin thing too. Dublin wasn't really Ireland. And there's the language. The fuckin' cupla focail. You're not fully Irish if you can't fart in Irish... I always felt I was being pushed out."...less
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