Happy Day of Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Copyright © 2010. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

I Declare Some More

Thank you, Dear Readers,  for all the comments on my last post where I allowed some petty ventings to be released to the interwebs and did not expect such response.     That said, I hereby must state that the current book I am enjoying — yes! enjoying immensely, is the tour book due to be reviewed in mid-December

and I am

finding

it

.

.

.

WONDERFUL.

It is nonfiction.   I love nonfiction!
It is history (the Depression years.)  I enjoy learning more about the past.
It is personal stories of family and strangers intertangled and woven over the time and mostly within a certain geographical area.   I am always wondering about old buildings and the people that built them, used them, lived in them, and what has happened since; this book does a great job of touching on the then and now in terms of place.]

It is written by an author more than capable and skilled in research and weaving stories together that deliver emotional punch.

I’m quite moved and have already shed a few tears.

I’m halfway through;   expect my review to be positive.    :)

Oh, the book?   A Secret Gift by Ted Gup.

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I Hereby Declare

I’ve decided one of my goals for 2011 is to not accept any tour books for read-alongs.    I am cursed or bewitched or hexed to find few if any ‘tour’ books enjoyable or satisfactory and thus will reject any and all requests for tourstops here in the near future.

I’m sorry!  I’m too picky?   too moody?   A snob?!    (I have been accused of that.  Sadly.)   Too stressed out that I might not like something others want me to like or I suspect they want me to like?    If I suspect any intention that my review will help or hurt in the marketing of a book, it just doesn’t seem to work out.

Really, it’s just not right that I don’t know my own reading tastes or am so easily swayed to read what I normally just wouldn’t choose on my own.   I don’t know.

I have only liked books pitched to me that were by the author Jennie Nash.   Everything else has just not inspired me to enjoy or to finish.      I don’t know why I say yes to these —  please stop me from accepting any more.     My blog is just NOT that kind of book blog.

Thank you.   That is all.   Carry on.

*  In regards to the very wonderful people who market books to book bloggers;  these incredible hard-working admirable folks who organize tours, I am truly sorry and wish you much success finding readers who are much more cooperative and enthusiastic about what you do for books and authors.   I just don’t happen to be one of those.   Kind of like people who dislike coconut; it doesn’t mean I don’t support your dreams to be a coconut farmer…

** I got to page 32 in one of the latest books I’ve accepted before rolling my eyes and thinking to myself, “Oh, COME on.”   This was a few pages AFTER I was stalled by a reference to a character being a doctor when the 10 pages prior were all about him being (wait for it!)   Yes, a doctor.

***   I have committed to reading and reviewing one more book for a tour and the review is due mid-December.     I will read this one book and it will be my last tour book for a long, long time.       Call me weak.      (Maybe by making this pledge, I will LOVE this upcoming book!?  Sigh.)

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Copyright © 2010. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Short Reviews of Two Booklets

Thoughts

Feminism is for EVERYBODY – Passionate Politics by bell hooks, South End Press 2000, 118 pages.

This did not read easy.   For a booklet with ‘for Everybody’ in the title, I assumed it would be accessible but I found it highly academic, boring and dry.    It is a treatise but not one at all to win anyone over if they had any questions about what feminism is and how it could be related to or fit into an everyday regular-mill life.       Maybe (and I admit this fully), I have too perfect a life?     I am not that interested in getting highly and actively involved with politics and this book must assume I do.     Please forgive me if I expected the wrong things.

Per the title, it read the very opposite of passionate!   Not to say that she didn’t bring up many truths; she did make claims that I understand and support but she did not win me over to action.    Frankly, when I purchased this, I expected to praise it and sing out hallelujah with each essay but, alas, no.    I fully expect bell hooks fans to tell me which book I should read; and I invite this whole-heartedly!

Thank you.   My hope is that this is only a book that should be read further in to her oeuvre?

♦

They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different:  Stalking the Second Tier, “An Occasional Paper on Neglected Problems in Science Education”   by Sheila Tobias, Research Corporation 1990

Back of the book blurb:   They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different is a study to determine why students abandon science for other disciplines.

Whatever possessed me to purchase this (for a dime) at a library sale in southeastern Nebraska?   Well, the fact that perhaps I was not a good candidate for the degree program in college that I signed up for.    Hmmmm.   Engineering wasn’t easy but I stuck with it.   Matter of pride, of economics, of belief that I was ‘smart enough’ but that doesn’t mean I found a good fit.

This booklet describes a study of placing students into pre-engineering and science classes to find out why they would or would not MAJOR in these programs.     I found it quite interesting.   It also stirred up memories of people I met as a freshman and why people chose to major in engineering.     I recall a girl who had a one-year full scholarship to the College of Engineering who fully intended to take the money and switch to Business since she couldn’t qualify for any dollars from that college!     She knew she was ‘smart enough’ to get an engineering degree but it was ‘boring’.

I also thought this book would address how we can encourage more women to study for  traditionally male careers.   It touched on it some but its focus was not gender-based.

Anyhoo, what I got out of it was that Engineering schools have (had?) no interest in wooing over anyone who ‘might’ be interested in sciences.  They prefer to scare new students and allow that only the tough should survive.    So if ‘kids’ abandon these programs are they stupid or was it the educational style?    Who says there is a shortage of engineers, anyway?     Supply and demand – if fewer engineers are graduated, than starting salaries remain high.   What’s the problem?    No problem.

Thus, professors need not concern themselves with being excellent EDUCATORS and students only just need to study hard and really want to be scientists and engineers.     All those who pass through this system subscribe to it, endure it and perpetuate it.  Thus,  we breed ‘typical’ engineers;  the stereotypes fit.       Smart kids who could do well if they had classes that appealed to their personalities or styles of learning are not being encouraged and thus miss out on what could be an excellent career choice.   Or not.

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to know much about whether or not this is still a problem nor if any schools addressed the idea of reform pertinent to the results of this study.   The document was published 2o years ago.   I found the study interesting, nonetheless.    And it was no help in my quest to grow up and figure out what I want to do with myself for the rest of my life.    I have a pretty good gig* right now , but I feel like I should ‘do’ something more…

* ’keeping the house’, caring for and training the dogs, volunteering, reading & book-blogging, practising yoga, tutoring in math, and occasionally substitute teaching…    I am very thankful for my life and appreciate all that I have.  Happy Thanksgiving!

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Honolulu

Thoughts   Honolulu by Alan Brennert, St. Martin’s Griffin 2009, 368 pages?,Winner of Elle‘s Lettres 2009 Grand Prix for Fiction

MOTIVATION for READING:   For my real life book club, The Bookies, due November 29, 2010.   I downloaded to my iPad and read it on my annual trip to Kansas for Opening Day of Pheasant Hunting.   (I don’t go hunting; I read.)

FIRST SENTENCE:  “When I was a young child growing up in Korea, it was said that the image of the facing moon at daybreak, reflected in a pond or stream or even a well, resembled the speckled shell of a dragon’s egg.”

WHAT’s it ABOUT:    A fictionalized account of true events that happened in Honolulu between the first World Wars told through the eyes of a Korean woman who signed up to be a mail-order ‘picture’ bride.

WHAT’s GOOD:      It’s all good.   My attention was instantly caught and my interest never wavered.

WHAT’s NOT so GOOD:    It’s never quite ‘great’.    It was almost TOO full of true stuff!    About half-way, I was curious if some of the characters were ‘real’ and I was astonished to discover just how many TRUTHs were shoved into this book!     By the end, I was getting the feeling that the author had a long list of people and events he wanted to capture and couldn’t cut from the narrative.    In that regard, I can’t say it didn’t work.  But it got a bit tiresome?   And then this happens, then this happens…. Sequential and memoirish.

I am so out of practice here!   I can’t think at all of how/what I want to say next but it’s something along the lines of emotional-manipulation but not that strong…   I felt that as a reader, I was told how to feel.    Is manipulation the correct word?    Maybe because I didn’t disagree with the emotions that it didn’t feel forced on me exactly but it was obvious that I was supposed to not agree with how the white people treated the ‘locals’ of Hawaii.   Yea, I get that.      Just more saying it than showing it, perhaps…   And one more thing – the narrator was TOO likeable, if that makes any sense.   She seemed too good.    That doesn’t even make sense to me, but I stand by it.

FINAL THOUGHTS:   So, I liked it well enough.   It was a fast read; I enjoyed learning about things I didn’t know; I would recommend this to many people if they like historical fiction. But I can’t in good conscience claim it to be great literature.    But hey!  Who says I have to only read great literature?!

RATING:   Three stars.     I do want to read Molokai, Brennert’s other highly-rated historical fiction novel set in Hawaii.

A road need not be paved in gold to find treasure at its end.

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The Yellow Wallpaper

 

I was fortunate to substitute teach for a High School English class this past week and one of the exercises was to read and discuss the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.     It IS short; I was able to easily read it during the lunch break and was eager to see what the students would bring up to discuss on the next day.     It was wonderful to have a bit of overlap, of continuity when I sub – usually it is a quick glimpse into a big work of literature and …   that’s it.

Since I had the next day to look forward to, I printed off Nymeth’s review and the article of CPG’s “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”.   I read the last piece to the class before we dove into discussion.   The other part, I just left in the folder for the teacher.

Some of the class thought it was boring.    Some were confused as to the ending.   It was delightful to see the respect and acknowledgement given to classmates when one would share their thoughts and another would say ‘Thank you.  I hadn’t thought of that.”  or “Oh, I didn’t see that; now I get it.”    Can you tell I was very impressed with the quality and consideration that these ‘kids’ exhibited?    I got a big sense of how wonderful it is to be a teacher.

The word ‘creepy’ came up a lot.     They were a bit more sympathetic to her husband than I was.   “He was only a product of his times.”   I think they may be overloaded on the century-old female protagonist topic;   they had papers due on Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and we had a lively discussion comparing the two fates of these women.  What they had in common and what they didn’t.    [They offered that Edna had more control over her situation.]

OK, so if you don’t know [it's available online for free at gutenburg] what TYW is about, I guess I better tell you just a bit.    It is the secret journal writings of a woman in Victorian times who has been advised to ‘rest’; she is suffering from ‘nerves’.   She should not stir her imaginings by writing, reading or doing anything ‘intellectual’ since, of course, we all know that woman shouldn’t do such things!   Her husband is her physician and she respects and trusts him as a good wife and patient should.  But…    Well, she really hates the wallpaper.      He won’t change it since they are only there for a short stay – she IS getting better, yes?   and she would only find something else that bugs her, anyway…

It is creepy.    It is light, sometimes humorous.   Wonderfully written, pacing is perfect, packs quite a punch!    Our narrator/protagonist both understands (or says she does) the treatment and revolts against it (and that is why she is said to be an unreliable narrator?)   If ONLY they had changed that awful wallpaper!!   It is an astonishing look at what women were put through back before anyone understood such things as mental illness and postpartum depression.     And it is an example of the spirit of Ms. Gilman for writing it.

So many terrific covers, too!   

REVIEWs:    Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot, SSM Guest Review at NextRead.co.uk, Aarti at BookLust, and MORE! results courtesy of Fyrefly’s Book Blog Search.

WORDS:   incipient - in an initial stage; beginning to happen or develop.     “Another physician [...] wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen…” From CPG’s “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”

I thank the Women Unbound Challenge for introducing me to Charlotte Perkins Gilman.    I also read Herland for this challenge.

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Copyright © 2010. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.