Ron > Recent Status Updates

After a difficult encounter with L'Oréal, the author wakes up the next morning and decides that she's taking control of her health. Her body doesn't know what's good for her, but Science does. We'll just give Science a little nudge: the nutritionist recommended 1,400 Calories, let's bump that down to 1,000. Except company's coming, so let's say 800.

Not bad, but I think we've learned about as much as we're going to. We're just kind of circling with more examples of how good communication helps. For example, when doctors make medical errors the advice from their lawyers is never to admit to anything in case it comes to trial. However, if the doctor admits to and apologizes for the mistake, he/she is much less likely to be sued in the first place.

Fantine, Book VII, ch. 8-11: This is a key point in the story, so I won't even summarize. Spoilers to come in the comment below.

Fantine, Book VII, ch. 5-7: Mr. Madeline, still not sure what he intends to do, presses on with his trip making every attempt to overcome the obstacles thrown his way. Whatever happens to him and those around him in the next few days, it won't be because he quit. If something proves to be truly insurmountable, then we can call it Providence.

Fantine, Book VI: As stern and inflexible as Javert is, he's consistently so. He insists on holding himself to the same rigid standards as he would hold anybody else.

The author hasn't specifically gotten into the causes of her eating disorder, but her mother raises some red flags. If Portia competed in something and didn't win, Mom wouldn't tell anybody she'd ever competed. And in one contest that Portia narrowly won, Mom seems fixed on "narrowly".

Fantine Book V, ch. 5-8: We meet Inspector Javert, one of the most unpleasant men in France. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious, and callous. He wouldn't lift a finger to save his grandmother from the gallows without orders signed in triplicate.

Do actors really not start work until 11:00? I thought that was just one of those things they did in movies so they didn't have to shoot at night. Like you're supposed to pretend it's 6:00 am even though it's blinding outside.

Naturally the book starts with the author's early experiences as a model, and goes up to the late 1998 when she joined "Ally McBeal". Back in those days, being outed was a career-ender, so this big break was not without its burdens.

I'm familiar with the obsessive calorie math and the negative self-talk that the author experiences, but she's on another level. We're just in the prologue and she's planning her whole day around the need to make up for losing control last night. And by losing control I mean she ate six ounces (one normal container) of plain yogurt.

So far the book has been lots of anecdotes about the need for good communication and the benefits of doing so, like he recently mentioned a camp for kids w/ autism and how theater games helped them be more accepting of and responsive to uncertainty. Not much yet in the way of "how", but hopefully we'll get to that.

Fantine, Book V, ch. 1-4: We go ahead of Fantine to the town where she grew up, which has itself grown quite wealthy thanks to the ideas and the generosity of a drifter who decided to stay, a kind but odd and private man named Mr. Madeline.

Fantine, Book IV, ch. 1-3: Enter Cossette.

Fantine, Book III, Chapters 1-9: We leave JVJ to chart his course and join Fantine, a young Parisian lady, orphaned from the start but doing okay as a working-class woman.

Fantine Book III, Chapter 1: Book III opens with scene setting, not unlike that in a period film of the 1950s. The author indulges the reader's nostalgia with a flurry of cultural references, both those things that occupied our thoughts and those that would soon be important but few knew it yet.

Fantine Book II, Chapters 9-13: The Bishop sends Jean Valjean off, in the process neutralizing all the anger that Valjean has been carrying with him for years.

Fantine, Book II, Chapters 5-8: As the Bishop directs Jean Valjean to his bed for the night, we get a look at his past and how the years in prison have changed him.

Chris definitely comes off as creepy and predatory at times. Maybe it's just natural adolescent curiosity and a lack of outside partners, but there also feels like some grooming going on, like he tries to steer Cathy toward situations where she'll be undressed.

Fantine Book II, Chapters 1-4: Enter Jean Valjean.

Fantine, Book I, Chapters 13-14 (end of Book I). Further musing about Bishop Myriel's beliefs, making it ever more clear that his focus was on doing good works. Others can ponder the nature of existence, his job is to feed and comfort.

Fantine, Book I, Chapters 9-12: This was brutal, nearly an hour for 16 pages. I don't remember the book being this difficult, its language so elaborate or its story so full of references to people and things I've never heard of. Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

Fantine, Book I, Chapters 5-8: Further tales of Monsignor Myriel and his unwavering commitment to serving the people of his parish.

The kids have now spent a year in the attic, mostly without incident, but Cathy is really starting to question whether Mom's actually doing all she can to get them out.

[I didn't finish this before year end. I'll keep going and count it toward my general 2018 reading goal, but not for Mount TBR since I'm more than halfway through.]

Fantine, chapters 1-4: Meet Mr. Myriel, a man who grew up being groomed to inherit his father's place in the legislature, but having watched the Revolution from afar, he found the priesthood called to him. He now lives a simple life in Digne, giving the vast majority of his church stipend to charity.

This year instead of one big read I'm doing four. First quarter is Les Mis. The book has 365 chapters, so basically I'm just doing four chapters (about 15 pages) per day for 90 days.

Putting this on hiatus. It's not bad, just a bit tedious for me right now. It has some neat stories about how British taxes on window glass affected the development of biology (short answer: lower taxes meant more amateurs building greenhouses and tinkering in their yards), but there are so many side stories. Every scientist involved with a project has to get a biography and (admittedly fun) anecdote.

Through Book Four Part Three. Just one more Part and the appendices to go.

Greene gets the standard "how did we get here" part out of the way first. Through Newton, Leibniz, Mach, and Einstein, he shows how our concept of space, time, and now spacetime has changed to accommodate new discoveries. That's not to say that Newton was wrong and Einstein right. Newton's models worked perfectly well for the kinds of things that we knew about in the 17th century.

I'd heard good things about Greene's other book, The Elegant Universe, so I checked out the audiobook from Scribd. Not the best idea, for two reasons. First, the audiobook is highly abridged, six hours to cover 500 pages, and the hardcover (thank you library) includes lots of helpful illustrations.