I'm not that far into it, but its pretty good. Its less one big story and more a lot of 3, 4 or 5 page (so far) little stories. All about the same woman and her life, but each can be read separtely of the others and still be funny and complete. Did that make senses?
I'm also reading (did I tell you this?) Michael J. Fox's book "Always Looking Up". Very good. Not easy to read, its about his Parkinsons Disease (PD). My dad was diagnosed with PD in the last few years. The book is funny, timely, informative and has given me some peace about the disease.
Someone just handed me a book called "Garlic and Sapphires".
Sounds very promising.
Author: Anne Fadiman
As I start: I've had this book, borrowed, on my bookshelf for something like 8+ years. Honestly, the cover just never called my name. Yes, yes, the cover of books has a bit to do, sometimes, with whether I want to pick up a book or not. Trivial, maybe. True, yes. During: Its a bit, looooong. The book isn't really all that many pages, just an average number, but some of the information, I just don't care for much. Some is interesting and I breeze right through those parts. Some, I've started skimming. I just sort of want this book to be done so I can move on to something I really want to read. Yes, I'm a committed person, for good or bad, committed. Oy! Done: I'm, sort of, glad I read this book. Its the story of a little Hmong girl with serious medical conditions and how her traditional Hmong family's beliefs clash in horrifc ways with the western doctors who only have this girls' best interest at heart, but can not see past what they know as science. The family does not understand what the doctors are doing and think they are trying to kill their daughter and the doctors can not understand that the family views illness as something spiritual rather than physical and that they have, for all their history as a race, dealt with illness very differently.
Its really a study in the clash of cultures and how we, as humans, each so deeply imbedded in our own culture and world, have such a difficult time beginning to understand other cultures and their very different ways and the fact that 'they' are not necessarily wrong, but just different. I know, long runon sentences, but it was a difficult book. Its not easy to read that what you conceive as right and true and 'the only way' (duh) is not necessarily right and true for someone else. I try to live my life with this thought in mind. I try to live and let live and not to push (too much) of my own agenda on others. But, so many people (I hazard to say maybe most people) see their way as 'the' way. I have (striven, stroved, strived...?...) to do this since about the age of 19 when (D, you'll probably remember this differently than I do, but this is my true memory of things, which, I've learned as an adult, isn't necessarily the way others remember things.... ahem) so, I was 19ish and making an apple pie with my best roommate. I think she was cutting up the apples (or we both were?) and I said to her, in a curious state, not a bossy state, although with me, they can sound exactly the same.... ahem... anyway, I asked why she was cutting up the apples the way she was cutting them up because certainly 'my' way was better. I think she may have taken it as me being bossy and/or rude although that wasn't what I had in my head. In my head, I just wanted to know why so I could decide whether I should change my tactics on apple cutting. Anyway, my point being that I'm just that very strange person who is always in my head trying to figure out the best way to do stuff. And though I can be very locked into my own ways, I endeavor to learn new stuff, if I think its a better way. Oy, this is sounding like I'm on some high-horse or something, and as usual, that's not what my meaning is.
What I am trying to convey is that in reading this book, I realize that I am probably like most people who think my way is the best way but most of my life decisions (i.e. how to cut up apples) does not affect the lives of others. When it comes to physicians it does. And then there is the legal aspect we impose on everyone in this country about health care specifically. Those of certain religious denominations who do not believe in doctors and medicine. Do we have the right to intercede? I'm not making any judgement, its just a curious thing to think about. What if YOU were one of those people who did not believe, for whatever reason, in western medicine, or medicine at all, and someone forced you to take your child in for medical care? What if that child did not survive? What if they did survive? How would you possibly change your core beliefs?
So many questions. I'll let you get on with your lives for now.
A heavy book, in case you could not tell from my ramblings.
PS - I hope I got the apple story at least partly right... maybe we were cutting up onions for stir fry?... Anyway. It comes up in my mind every so often because if memory serves, I think I ticked off my best roommate and I wanted to learn from that, learn to be more tactful that is. Oy, here I go again.
Author: Christopher Paolini
As I start: I've been waiting for this to come out for what seems forever. Actually I'm not all that 'with the times' so its been out since Sept 2008, but I just picked it up. I couldn't wait to be done reading Middlesex so I could start this one. Nothing against Middlesex, I was just excited about this one. Anyway, as I start reading I've realized its been too long (Oct 2007) and my memory fails me on the details of the previous book Eldest. Brisingr starts out with a very curt recap of past events. I realize that most readers aren't as forgetful as I seem to be so that makes sense, but I keep thinking I'll need to go back and read Eldest again when I'm done with this one. Probably won't happen, I have too many other book I want to read to start going backwards. We'll see.
So, in the paragraph above, I note how my memory had failed me because I could not quite remember all the references in the book. As you may remember, I listen to quite a few of the books I blog about in my car as I commute, this was one of those. I get those books from Audible and they often come in parts because the download would be too large otherwise. Turns out, I'm a dork, and somehow, must have been gremlins, started on the 3rd section of the book instead of the 1st section, where most people would start. Grrr. Somehow I realized this little problem and started back at the beginning and it all made much, much more sense. Oy!
The book was good, more long-winded with less actual action than the previous two. The information was interesting and delved into politics and history of the races. When I read the book, I was under the impression it was the third in a trilogy. Boy, did it have a crappy ending! Turns out, Paolini's 3rd book got too long and had to be broken up into a 3rd and 4th book, hence its now a "cycle" rather than a "trilogy". That is a good thing because there were SO many unanswered questions at the end of Brisingr. Duh, there's another entire book coming at some point. I'm probably the only person who did not know all this, but, there's probably a lot I don't know.
This book to me was decent, but sort of like the "Two Towers" from Tolkien. It was necessary for the whole, but not the best of the series.
IMHH
As I start: This is an audible book for me. It makes my commuting more enjoyable. The narrator's voice, bugging me. I hope it doesn't color the way I feel about the book.
During: I'm liking this more and more. The narrator (well, really the writer) has taken a leap backwards into the past and is recounting the story of the grandmother. This is really where it all sort of begins or begins again with the recessive genes mixing. The grandmother and grandfather just happen to be sister and brother from a very small village in Greece. I didn't quite understand it, but since the village was so small, they were not only siblings, but also third cousins. They end up married and procreating. Sounds sort of gross by today's standards, ok, so by just about any standards I guess, but they loved each other. Ick, I've got to move past this, its freakin' me out. So far, so good. At this midway juncture, I'm recommending it. The storyline is quite interesting. The story is told from the perspective of Cal, born Calliope and due to the time in which the book is set and the prudishness of the people in the story, family and doctors alike, is raised as a girl. No one knows there is a problem, except for Calliope. And she only thinks she's strange and underdeveloped and can't quite get a grasp on why the other girls are filling out and getting their 'monthlies' and she isn't. So, in the interest of fitting in and getting her mother off her back, she fakes it. I would think, and I could be wrong, that today, this would have been figured out at birth, but, its a story, its fiction, so all the pieces have to fall into their place.
Its a tragic and sad and, in a way, hopeful story about coming of age and finding oneself. A thing that, even in the best of circumstances, isn't an easy transition for a girl, or for a boy. I can't imagine how difficult it must be for someone who is sort of neither, but a little of both.
Done: It took me forever to get through this book. It took a long time not because the book was boring or difficult, once I got past the beginning and into the rhythm of it. Its just that I listen to the book while commuting and I spent some time commuting with Mister. Saving gas and parking money are on our list of things to accomplish, so the sacrifice was worth it. No listening to my book for those weeks though. Also, my commute is so much shorter now than before Mister and I moved in together. I only get about 10 minutes each way and that's on the days that I'm not otherwise engaged in NPR or with something else on my brain.
I thought this was a good book. Worth the read. An interesting peek into intersexualality and some of the whats and whys and wherefores (sp? or is it just a made up word?)
