#1-7 Books Finished So Far

Since I made this blog a little late, here I'll post about the first 7 books I've read this year.

#1 - Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Finished in January.
Brief Synopsis: In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born. 

I was quickly grabbed in from the beginning.  I totally loved this book from start to finish.  I came away with a lot of favorite phrases and a favorite name now (Ezekiel). I wrote a really lengthy review here: Boneshaker Review.

Favorite quotes:
"...and truth travels slowly when rumors have wings of gold."

"Across the Pacific Northwest, big machines and small machines were tinkered into existence." (I really just loved how that was phrased).

And in the mind of the protoganist, the 15-year-old, after he meets one of the very old characters inside the wall,

"No one gets to be that old without being smart and strong." 

#2 - NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman 
Finished in January.
Brief Synopsis: In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel?  Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter?  Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated?  If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie?  What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language?

Alright, this was a very interesting book.  However, as soon as I finished and though I promised a review and some spoilers to a few people, I felt the need to do a re-read first.  I can tell you my first impressions, though.  Remember this is coming after several months since I finished the book so I don't remember very much, which is why I need a re-read.  This book does explore the many myths of parenting and childraising in why so many "methods fail".  And they explored it well in asking very important questions and finding data/statistics that are unsurprising in some ways, very surprising in others.

The thing is, their statistics really validate the Unschooling Lifestyle or Freedom to Live and Learn lifestyle.  They don't have that sort of mindset, though, and while they say this book isn't for conventional parents who want to hold on to conventional beliefs, they came to somewhat conventional conclusions or maybe they were trying to be unbiased.  I don't really know or remember.  I just knew that from other data apart from the book, these data make sense in a different way to me than it did to them.

But this book really confirmed the fact that nurturing is important.  It also confirmed that there *is* such a thing as nurturing in a damaging way, like invalidating a child's true need in the effort to focus entirely entirely on the child and not allowing the child some sort of balance, continuum.

In any case, I really liked the information they shared and I loved the anecdotes and stories that came with them.  The book didn't totally flow very well, and that's because of my issue with their strange over-use of verbs.

#3 - Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Finished in January
Brief Synopsis: Dumbing Us Down reveals the shocking reality of today's school system and has become a beacon for parents seeking alternatives to it. This special hardcover edition celebrates the fact that the book continues to be highly relevant in setting the agenda for a complete overhaul of how we educate our children - and for what.

From a review I wrote on Goodreads:
This book made me wish I had those little sticky tabs to mark my favorite pages because I had so many and I ended up folding little corners.

Let me begin by saying it had a tremendous impact on me. It gave me goosebumps, brought tears to my eyes several times, and made me gasp and read pieces out loud to my fiance. Those pieces I read out loud, I knew, would convince him to read it. This is a book I will re-read many times to come.

There are five pieces of work in this book, not including the foreword, postscript, introduction, publisher's notes, and afterword. Each of these five chapters were essays and speeches that were given at some point or the other, and each of these has been elaborated for the purpose of the book. Each were written with powerful thoughts and words, written in the way that makes you feel what he is talking about.

I learned much more from this book than I thought. I learned the way the system really works from the teacher's perspective, which helped me to understand the frustrations I had as a student. The book really helped me to pin down what was wrong with networking as versus to real communities. It explains so many of our cultural pathologies. It reaffirms that Americans, as a whole, are "addicted to dependency". In the book, we look at Massachussetts, Socrates, Cathedral of Rheims (a new thing I learned!), and many others as a way to decipher exactly what Gatto is talking about.

The simplest quote I enjoyed in the book is this:
"Children learn what they live." - pp. 68.

Another one that had almost the greatest impact on me is this:
"This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children." - pp. 100

 #4 -  Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison
Finished reading in February.
Brief Sypnosis: Rachel Morgan, witch and bounty hunter with the Inderland Runner Services, is one of the best at apprehending supernatural lawbreakers throughout Cincinnati, but when it comes to following the rules, she falls desperately short. Determined to buck the system, she quits and takes off on the run with an I.S. contract on her head and is reluctantly forced to team up with Ivy, Inderland's best runner . . . and a living vampire. But this witch is way out of her league, and to clear her name, Rachel must evade shape-changing assassins, outwit a powerful businessman/crime lord, and survive a vicious underground fight-to-the-death . . . not to mention her own roommate.

 Fun read! I have to grab the second book for this.  My favorite character was Jenks, the pixie with an overload of kids and a beautiful pixie wife.  For a little thing, he's got an attitude, but he's all fluff inside, too.  When drunk or poisoned by fairies, he launches into reciting poetry that is actually very deep for him.

The main character, Rachel, on the other hand, annoys the crap out of me.  I like her humor, but I don't like how she completely ignores common sense and get into trouble constantly where everyone else has to bail her out.  Actually, that sounds all too familiar to me.... hmm...

#5 - City of Bones (Mortal Instruments, Book 1) by Cassandra Clare
Finished in February.
Brief Synopsis: When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder - much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing - not even a smear of blood - to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?
Okay, first glance, the title looked absolutely awesome.

Delve in deeper and you get a hint of Twilight so that's a bit of an ugh because I got tired of that a long time ago.  I liked Twilight at first and found the twisting of mythologies very interesting.  But, I dunno, after the 2nd book, I got tired of it AND the latest craze over it has drove me crazy.  Camp Jacob? Camp Edward?  Are you kidding me? How about Camp Get Over It?

But this book does hold its own and has its own fun story to tell.  There is even semi-incestual kissing in the book where both parties are unaware they are siblings, though I am not fully convinced yet that they are.  The author, at the end of the book, left it too easy to twist it in the next book and be like, AHA I FOOLED YOU.  Then again, I don't know if she'd do that.

I did enjoy the intelligence through-out the book - I loved some of the dialogues and interactions between the characters.

#6 - Redwall by Brian Jacques
Finished in March.
Brief Synopsis: As the inhabitants of Redwall Abbey bask in the glorious Summer of the Late Rose, all is quiet and peaceful. But things are not as they seem. Cluny the Scourge, the evil one-eyed rat warlord, is hell-bent on destroying the tranquility as he prepares to fight a bloody battle for the ownership of Redwall. This dazzling story in the Redwall series is packed with all the wit, wisdom, humor, and blood-curdling adventure of the other books in the collection, but has the added bonus of taking the reader right back to the heart and soul of Redwall Abbey and the characters who live there.

Loved it! Talking animals, a mouse hero, the abrasive and wise badger, and the wise mice monks -- what more can you ask for?  I loved the descriptions in the book, too -- Cluny with the longest tail known to ratkind, the summers and flowers, and the way these animals talked. 


#7 - The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci
Finished in March
Brief Sypnosis: When Christopher Creed, the class freak and whipping boy, suddenly disappears without a trace, everyone speculates on what could have happened to him. Soon fingers begin pointing, and several lives are changed forever.

 I was thoroughly impressed with this book.  There are so many thoughts expressed here that you normally wouldn't see otherwise.  The thought processes people go through, the behaviors in the circumstances, the memories they shared about Christopher Creed.

I was especially impressed by the mystery that remained through-out the book.  Also, the main character changed so much from the beginning of the book to the end.  Basically, he is tired of the kids joking about Chris' disappearance and making so much fun out of it.  But he realizes, as does his mother, that kids do it in the face of something they don't understand, something incredibly scary.  And as his mother proves, some people never grow out of it.  There are many adults in the community that remembers the last similar disappearance but never changed their perspective on it, only kept it a dark, sad secret.

It's well worth a read.

My Reading Challenge

So, my idea to go ahead and start up another blog came from Sandra.  I love how she said that it's kind of like having notebooks meant for different things, which I do in real life.  Except I still end up mixing things together because I'm cluttered like that.  However, this shall be different (or not, I'm not worried about it).  I'm linking my original reading challenge post from our family blog to here. 

Kay's Reading Challenge 2010

The slight difference is, my To-Be-Read (TBR) pile is longer than that now and a bit more cluttered since I have physical books given to me by my brother-in-law and I've yet to sort out what's going on my list to be read.  I also have read some things that were NOT on my TBR list, but they count.

This blog will chronicle my annual reading challenges, reviews, author spotlights, personal favorites, and musings.  There are some simple rules I set for myself, if you want to join me.  I took some ideas from the 100 Species Challenge, as well as some of the reading challenges already going on everywhere.

1) This challenge is simply for the pleasure of reading.  There is no fixed amount of books that needs to be read except what amount you choose for your reading year.  For example, mine is 50.  I have seen people put down their goal of 70, 90, and/or 100 a year.  Or even just 3 books a month, 2 books a week, etc.

2) Every time you have completed a book, you should have a post that has a title of  # and title of book, and then the content about when you started and finished, and what you think of it.  It can be as detailed or as quick as you want it to be.  However, not all your blog entries have to be like this if you want to do an extended review or talk about an author or share some thoughts.  An example of a blog title for a completed book would be something like this:

#1 Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

And a blog title of a book in progress, a review, or anything else would be anything you want, like Review #1 : Author Name or whatever.

3) Books are books.  They can be physical book, e-book, audio book, etc.  Anything that required reading or listening more than several pages.

4) When you have accomplished a challenge of the reading you wanted to do, remember to tag or catalog the next challenge as the next challenge! The best example at the moment that I can give is this: as tags, you could have Reading Challenge #Year or Reading Challenge #Month.  Mine would be Reading Challenge 2010.  Next year, I'll have Reading Challenge 2011 tag.  I have seen some people choose to read a specific genre or author only for a long period of time, so perhaps that would look like Author Challenge # or Fantasy Book Challenge #.

I really enjoy seeing what other people do with their challenges.  My rules don't have to apply, only that you are participating in a reading challenge of some sort.  Just let me know and I'll check it out! I will also add you to my blogroll or in a list of participants.