The fine print on this toothpaste telling folks to spit not swallow lol....really

I recently got all three hunger games books.. I'm going to enjoy some down time and read ...

just finished a couple ok commuter books
both are full of action - so you won't fall asleep on a bus/train ride
but neither were so engaging that there is danger of missing your stop

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and

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The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka

The only word to describe this book is “exquisite”.
It’s a beautifully written (almost poetic, mostly haunting) narrative of Japanese “picture brides” in California during the 1920s. Rather than being told from one character’s perspective (or even several) it’s written in a collective voice, unusual and deeply effective. It’s a short book (only 129 pages) best read slowly in order to savor one word at a time.

finished health at every size...i started wild by cheryl strayed yesterday, after a strong recommendation from a friend and reading some really positive reviews. i'm still in the first quarter of the book and finding it hard to digest...she talks a lot about how she lost her mom, which i can relate to because i lost both of my parents when i was just a bit younger. so the grief passages i can relate to a lot. but a lot of the writing comes off as...excessively self-centered and martyr-ish, even for a memoir. i'm going to give it a chance, though...maybe i'm being overly harsh.

I'm reading The Happiness Project and about to start The Hunger Games.

The Happiness Project is written in a sort of simple but effective style. I usually prefer lusher denser books. It reminds me a lot of Eat, Pray, Love in the writing style and intent. Woman goes on personal journey of discovery sort of idea. However it is often touchingly funny as she comes face to face in some rather ironic ways with things we all struggle to contend with in her efforts to increase happiness. I've actually burst out laughing a couple of times which is really unlike me.

I want to excerpt an extended passage of text from a book that I’ve been reading from over the past month (or so). It’s from the chapter called “School,” from the book:

The Color of Water (McBride, 1996).

“The sixties roared through my house like a tidal wave. My sister Helen’s decision to drop of out school and run off at age fifteen, though she returned home with a nursing degree and a baby girl, was the first sign of impending doom. Now that others began to act out, and the sense of justice and desire for equal rights that Mommy and father had imparted to us began to backfire. Kind, gentle, Sunday school children who had been taught to say proudly, “I am Negro,” and recite the deeds of Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson now turned to Malcolm X and H. Rap Brown and Martin Luther King for inspiration. Mommy was the wrong color for black pride and black power, which nearly rent my house in two.

One by one, my elder siblings broke with her rules, coming home bearing fruits of their own confusion, which we jokingly called their “revolution.” An elder brother disappeared to Europe. Another sister had an affair at college and came home with a love child, fairly big news in 1967. My brother Richie got married over Mommy’s objections, divorced, then entered college, and was home on summer break when he got stopped by two cops while walking down the street with a friend. A group of boys who were walking about ten yards in front of Richie and his friend ditched what appeared to be a bag of heroine as the cop car approached. The cops grouped the boys together, lined them up against a fence and demanded to know which of them had jettisoned the bag, which later turned out to be filled with quinine, not heroine. All denied it, so the cops searched them all and found ninety dollars of Richie’s college-bank-loan money in his pocket. When the policeman asked him where he got the money from, Richie told him it was his college money and he’d forgotten he’d had it. If you knew Richie, you’d nod and say, “Uh-huh,” because it was perfectly in character for him to forget he was carrying around ninety dollars of precious dollars, which was a huge sum in those days. We used to call him he “Mad Scientist” when he was little. His science experiment would neatly blow up the house because whatever he created, he’d leave it bubbling and boiling while he went searching for food, forgetting it completely. He could remember the toughest calculus formula and he had nearly perfect pitch as a musician, but he literally could not remember to put his pants on. He would play John Coltrane-type solos on his sax for hours and be dressed in a winter jacket and gym shorts the whole time. He was the kind of kid, absentminded, and very smart, and later in life become a chemist. But to cops, he was another black perpetrator with a story, and he was arrested and jailed...” (pp. 96-97).

I’ve laughed and cried so hard while reading this book. I see myself in much of the story James McBride weaves about his mother and the life, all of them led (McBride and his 11 other siblings – I hope I have that figure right). Back in the day when McBride was growing up, they lived in the worst ghetto in Brooklyn, New York and because they lived in an era of pronounced segregation, he and his siblings would often travel up to two hours by bus - just to attend schools that his mother found for her children to attend. I simply have to say that if anyone wants to learn about the hardships people of color have faced and still face today, you have to read this book. McBride’s book was on the New York Times Best Seller list for a couple of years (still should be, in my heart felt opinion). ~D

books
 

"Toxic Psychiatry"
by Dr. Peter Breggin

Greco

Would love to hear your thoughts on this book. I read it many years ago. It certainly will raise one's skepticism scale related to use/misuse of ECT, psychotropics in adults and in children.

Read this today, this is the most lovely woman!

http://covers.booktopia.com.au/big/9...1928806196.jpg

Musical chairs/books
 

Reading 3 different books in different formats- anyone else do that?

-The Help by Kathryn Stockett (hard copy, on loan from library and overdue...oops)
-My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler (on Kindle)
-The Consequences of Love by Sulaiman Addonia (I own it, but reading it oh-so-slowly because I keep getting caught up in other books)

The Joy Diet by Martha Beck *10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life* (Awesome book!)
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche (Awesome book!)
Extreme Measures by Vince Flynn (Mindless political thriller...)

i loved the color of water and the tibetan book of living and dying :)

i finished wild and wasn't very impressed with it...maybe my friend saw something in it i just can't. i've started rereading maggie stiefvater's wolves of mercy falls trilogy - it's a ya fantasy series that i read the first two books of a few years ago (and got to meet maggie! she's awesome). i haven't read the third book yet so i'm rereading the first two and reading the third after. the titles are shiver, linger, and forever. she also has two books about fairies called lament and ballad - they're really good too.

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's
John Elder Robison
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Look-Me-Eye-Life-Aspergers/dp/0307395987"]Amazon.com: Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's (9780307395986): John Elder Robison: Books[/ame]

Eli Pariser,"The Filter Bubble"



http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser...r_bubbles.html

Heroes for my Daughter
By Brad Meltzer

I confess...

I'm reading Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm only twelve pages into it, and it's horrid. oKAY, oKAY, she's getting all flushed and flustered during the interview, no doubt responding to his natural dominance or some shit. I GOT it. Is the whole book this overplayed???

i heard it was one of those books that was originally an online published fanfiction and the author remade it into an original fiction piece. as a fanfic fan/author myself...it tends to be a little overwrought. i haven't read the book yet though.

Ohhh, got it! That makes so much sense! What character/show/concept was the original focus of the fanfiction?

still slowly meandering through sex and disability...also slowly going through spiritual journaling: writing your way to independence by julie tallard johnson. i was looking for journaling books and this one's aimed at teens but i liked the kindle sample so i bought it. a friend of mine rated it badly but i'm not sure how i feel about it yet.

i'm trying to decide which other book i want to read next, now that i've finished the wolves of mercy falls trilogy. maybe madness by marya hornbacher. her book wasted is one of my favorites...it's been a constant companion for most of my life.

i think it was originally an erotic twilight au (alternate universe) fanfiction.

sometimes turning erotic fanfic into original fiction works out pretty well...a friend of mine who is also a fanfiction author managed to get one of her ncis fanfic works published and it's quite good. i've read lots of fanfic that is better than some original fic i've read.

but i think twilight, and fanfiction in general, kind of lend themselves to overwrought, melodramatic sort of romance...so i'm curious to see the reception of fifty shades of grey.

Okay, I'm 50 pages into it, and now that I know it came out of Twilight fanfic, it's ALL I can see. It's set in the Pacific Northwest...narrated in first-person by a young woman described as "closed-off" who spurns all previous romantic overtures, and falls head over heels in love (and hate, and love, and hate) with a rich wise-beyond-his-years and strikingly handsome man with all-knowing eyes and an ever-present smirk. Oh, and there's even a competing love interest, a dark-skinned muscle-bound easy-going best friend. Yep, sounds like Twilight alright.

But then Twilight was based on Pride and Prejudice (as Stephenie Meyer admitted), with the independent and outspoken Elizabeth Bennet having her own love/hate reaction to the rich and aloof Mr. Darcy.

So maybe Fifty Shades of Grey is actually the BDSM version of Pride and Prejudice? Hmmm.

I'm reading this book as well:)

THIS is so apropos.....
 

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As we read this book, I find myself craving a little more than one page on each person, and a little less of the author's "she didn't give up...narrative." As an intelligent reader we can get that without it repeated on every sentence. :)
I think material like this would make for an interesting magazine series. After seeing young girls boycott/petition 17 Magazine this last week for no airbrushing, and seeing the trailers for Miss Representation; I think many girls would welcome this type of material. Personally, I know my daughter does. :)

just finished up madness by marya hornbacher. it was really good. not sure what's next.

Just picked up...
 

Carly's Voice - Breaking through autism
By Arthur & Carly Fleischmann

And also grabbed several back issues of Organic Gardening from the library.

:)

prayer and celebration of discipline by richard foster.

Going beyond just 'being'....
 

a novel for a change
 

"Manual of Painting and Calligraphy"
by Jose Saramago

Giovanni Pontiero (translator)

a nice break after "Toxic Psychiatry"
by Dr. Breggin which I re-read after
many years and continue to stand
with his findings T.

Greco

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. How the hell have I never read this before? Brilliant.