reading notes, entry 3...

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande.

A few reasons why I loved this book:

*It was well-written and informative.
*But even more importantly, it was insightful, passionate, and thoughtful...and it never felt heavy-handed.
*It reaffirmed my love of essays.
*It made me think about issues I'd never before considered.
*It reminded me that there are always more than one side to a story.
*While the essays all fit his overriding theme of what it takes to be a good doctor (his opinion is that there are three major qualities--diligence, doing right, and ingenuity--and the essays were divided into sections based on these qualities), there was a wonderful variety of topics covered, from the care of soldiers in war zones to doctors who participate in executions and from the continuing battle against polio to the state of childbirth in the United States, to name just a few.
*I was impressed with the author's honesty, and with his humility.

A couple things I am grateful for:

*I already own his collection Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science.
*I'm not a doctor.

*****
So May is "medical/psychological issues theme month." And yes, as always, we're (by we, I mean Chris and I, as happily for me, he decided to join me in this themed reading experiment) trying to keep the themes very broad...so issues such as dealing with trauma and the like are also included. I gathered up the books from my shelves that jumped out at me for this month:

I haven't even raided Rich's shelves yet. Of course, let's face it--I don't actually need to. It's already the 8th day of the month...and yeah, I've finished *one* book. I think I'm going to read A Cool Moonlight by Angela Johnson next. It's pretty short though, so is there anything in that pile that you'd strongly recommend for after that?

reading notes, entry 2...and a couple other tidbits...

Burning for Revenge by John Marsden.

Max and I are still working our way through this series, and yes, we're still enjoying it. (Burning for Revenge is the fifth book.) This series is violent. Not surprising, as the books are about war and how a group of teenagers try to survive. In a sense, I'm almost glad they're violent, because I just wouldn't want war to be sugar-coated. And these books ask a lot of good questions...questions about humanity, about morality, about friendship, about trust.

But last night, this book pissed me off. And I found myself for the second time this year censoring one of my children's experiences with a book. This was much different than the first time though. Luckily, my brain reads just a tiny bit ahead of my mouth, and I was able to exercise the option of deleting a few words.

Here's the sentence, told from Ellie's point of view:

I know they taught us at school that girls shouldn't feel under pressure from guys, and guys won't die if they don't get what they want, but in real life it's not that easy.

When I read it to Max, I deleted that last clause, "but in real life it's not that easy." In a sense, there's truth to the whole thing, because no interaction between two people is ever simple enough to be fully explained in a few words. But face it, that's not what's being said here. Nope, what we've got here is just another perpetuation of the same old, same old--guys can't control themselves so it's up to girls not to be raped. So yeah, I didn't read that last bit because THERE IS NO "BUT"!!! And yeah, we were still able to have a conversation about the topic, without the reinforcement of a troublesome idea.

*****
Okay, enough of my pissed-offed-ness...let's move on to a bit of happy stuff...

*I just want to say a GARGANTUAN THANK YOU to Lu for directing me to The Old Reader. If there's anyone else out there who hasn't figured out what to do about Google Reader going away, especially if you're not particularly tech-savvy, The Old Reader might be your answer. Seriously, it was easy even for me to figure out, being as non-tech-savvy as the come. And thus far, I must say that I am loving how it works!

*Dewey's Read-a-Thon is just a few days away now! And I am sooooo excited! Dewey has been on my mind a lot lately, even more than usual. Not sure why. But I feel especially grateful right now to be looking forward to this day of joyful reading that Dewey gave birth to.

*And look what just arrived on my doorstep:

From my incredibly sweet husband, I'm assuming. I put it on my wish list but didn't actually order it as we've been trying very hard to not spend unnecessary money the last several months. So yeah, I think he broke the rules but I am exceedingly appreciative that he did. :)

reading notes, entry 1...and some really cool news...

I made an executive decision. It's my blog so I can do that. In fact, it's pretty much the only place I can, so why not take advantage of that power, huh? :P Yeah, anyway...it's no secret that I pretty much suck at anything remotely bordering the lands of book reviewing. And because I feel that way, it's really not a lot of fun. BUT! I do love books, and reading, and talking about books and reading. So what's a person to do? Well, I'm going to try a little experiment. I may find out that I hate it, in which case it too will go to the wayside where so many of my other experiments have gone. No biggie.

Reading notes. Yep, as in the kind of notes I write down in little notebooks while I'm reading when I'm not feeling too lazy. (Unfortunately, I feel too lazy a lot.) But I've decided to use my blog as my little notebook. Now let me warn you, these are *not* deep thoughts we're talking about here. More just my observations, reactions, quotes, ponderings and wonderings. Or the "how frickin' cool is that?!!" stuff I learn. That's what today's entry is (though I fully understand that I may be the only person to rate it as such).

A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer.

Okay, so I didn't even realize there were viruses in ocean. But hey, until less than twenty years ago, scientists thought marine viruses were fairly rare, so I don't feel so bad about my ignorance. Turns out viruses in the ocean are rather abundant (understatement alert).

Yep, a graduate student, Lita Proctor, decided to look more closely, and what she found astounded scientists. Her finding were replicated by other researchers, and scientists now generally agree that there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses in the sea. (That number is one nonillion--I had to look it up.)

It is hard to find a point of comparison to make sense of such a large number. Viruses outnumber all other residents of the ocean by about fifteen to one. If you put all the viruses of the oceans on a scale, they would equal the weight of seventy-five million blue whales. And if you lined up all the viruses in the ocean end to end, they would stretch out past the nearest sixty galaxies.

My mind is officially boggled.

*******************
OMG OMG OMG!!! This has absolutely *nothing* to do with the above, but I just had to share because it's just so damn exciting!!! Ms. Annie got some incredible news today!!! She had entered the college's annual writing contest. I'm not sure how big the English department is, but the college itself has between 17,000 and 18,000 students, so it's not a tiny school. Anyway, there were five categories, and Annie entered a piece in three of them--poetry, short story, and literary essay. She came in first place in the literary essay category and second place in the short story category. The professor who called to let her know made it point to tell her that it's a rare event when someone places in more than one category. To say she is over-the-moon happy would not be an exaggeration. :D The only downside--she has to speak at the awards dinner, and she is definitely not looking forward to that. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't really put that big a dent in her current elation. Another little bit of awesomeness--the literary essay she wrote was on Sarah Water's Tipping the Velvet. (Read the damn book already, Debra Anne!)

LOL--you know, in a way this does sort of tie in to what I was saying above. Here I am, can't even write a book review worth squat to save my life...and the kiddo is here winning an award for a literary essay. Switched at birth perhaps?

Annie, I know this was evident from the screaming I did over the phone when you called to tell me, but sweetie, I am SO. DAMN. HAPPY. for you!!! Way to go, Sugar...you are so awesome in so many ways!!!