Book stuff

There are a lot of activities I enjoy that have either had to be cut back or discard since Scott was born; however, reading hasn't been one of them.  In the past 9 weeks, I've spent A LOT of time with a baby attached to my chest and not much else to do except read - much of it I've done aloud for his "benefit"*.  Here's a snapshot of the books I've read since Christmas:

Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams

Part travelogue, part history (think Bill Bryson), the book details a middle-aged adventure magazine editor's trek through the Peruvian Amazon with his surly guide as he learns about the Inca and their incredible public works projects.  I hiked part of the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu when I was a senior in college, and it was fun reading about places I'd visited and learning more about them and their history.  It was a quick, easy, and fun read, although I don't really recommend trying to read it aloud because the Quechua (native Peruvian language) names are impossible to pronounce.

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey by the current Countess of Carnarvon

This book is about the real Countess of Carnarvon who lived in Highclere Castle (where Downton Abbey is filmed) during the Edwardian era.  She was an amazing woman who, similar to some of the plot lines on the show, became a nurse during WWI and offered her home up to be a hospital for wounded soldiers.  In her spare time, she accompanied her husband on trips to Egypt while he was looking for antiquities.  Sadly she wasn't there when he, along with Howard Carter, discovered King Tut's tomb.  Again, this book was a fun and easy read with lots of cool pictures.  If you like Downton Abbey, I think you'd like this one.

Twelve Hours of Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old - by Suzy Giordano

Blah - I wish I could say I liked this book.  Actually, it wasn't that I didn't like it or think it was good, but for some reason whenever I read a book on parenting advice, my natural reaction is to rebel and do the opposite.  The idea is that by 12 weeks old, a baby is old and hearty enough to get four feedings, four hours apart during the day and sleep for 12 hours at night (plus about 3 hours of napping during the day).  This is good for the baby because he needs that much sleep and good for the family because they need sleep and time to do things that are more difficult to do when the baby is awake.  

While those things are all well and good, my rebellion comes in because it's not just Scott that finds it comforting to be nursed to sleep, I do too (well, I find it comforting to do the nursing), and I truly don't mind feeding him in the middle of the night.  Yeah, waking up after 4 hours makes you tired, but nursing at night is such an intimate (please don't take this in a creepy way) experience that I'd be sad to be done with it.  From reading comments on other blogs, many families have found this book very helpful, but I've decided I'm just going to let Scott continue to do whatever he does and not try to get him onto a schedule (more that we already are).  It might take him longer than 12 weeks to sleep through the night regularly and his naps might not happen with the clock, but I'm okay with that.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John LeCarre

This book was probably the biggest letdown of anything I've read in the last... I don't know how long.  I love British mysteries, and I mistakenly though that that's what this book was going to be.  Instead it was the most un-action-packed action story ever.  The main character, George Smiley, is an agent in the British secret service trying to discover a Russian double agent in their midst.  Sounds cool, right?  Wrong.  Waaaayyyy too many characters are introduced so it takes most of the book before you figure out which ones you are really supposed to care about, the main character discovers the mole, not by doing cool spy stuff, but by holding court for the whole book, and there's not enough character development for you to be surprised or really care once you find out who the mole is.  This is a book that lots of people love, but like The Lord of the Rings, it just wasn't for me.  I do plan to watch the old mini-series with Alec Guiness, though.    

  

Read anything good lately?

*He doesn't seem to care about content so I've just been reading things that are interesting to me.  And thanks to my reading of The Atlantic, he's been exposed to all the bad words.  Can't do that for much longer...

    

Book Review - The Help

I finished The Help several weeks ago, but it occurred to me yesterday that I never did a review of it.

First, I learned that having (but not being) a maid is totally awesome.

Second, this is not a book I would have picked up by myself, but a friend was raving about it at the same time as my mother-in-law asked if I wanted to borrow it, so I decided to give it a try.  And I'm glad I did.

The story (which you probably know by now) is about the lives of maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s and one white woman who helps them write a book about their experiences.  In general, I'm suspicious of historical fiction.  Too often the main character comes off as an unrealistic goody two shoes because the author would rather have a protagonist that comes out on the right side of history rather than one that is actually interesting or believable.  I have no patience for characters who are purely good or purely bad.  That's a big reason why I thought Water for Elephants was terrible.

Amazingly, The Help is not like that.  The maids are not portrayed as completely selfless defenders of civil rights and the ladies of white society are not completely heartless racists.  I wasn't alive during the 1960s so I can't say for certain how realistic the story line was, but at least to me it was believable.  I thought the character development was good and there was enough drama to keep the plot moving along.  It was a long book, but I read it pretty quickly.  I'd recommend it to anyone who likes character driven novels and doesn't mind books that are "about" a controversial (at the time) issue.

Would you hire domestic help if you had the money?   
I really don't have a  problem with the idea as long as you treat the person you hire with respect and pay decently well.  I would totally hire someone to do heavy cleaning and other nasty household tasks if I had more money than time.

Last night's menu:
Simple stir fry courtesy of our meat CSA and Trader Joe's precut Asian veggie mix and General Tso's sauce.

I work out:
60min David Farmer yoga download podcast.  I always forget how hard holding my arms out in warrior two is after doing a million sun salutations.

Time to break out the down jacket

It's a gym morning, but "feels like 26" makes a cold bike ride.

Like it or not, winter is coming.

Book Review: The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Finishing the third book in Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series feels a little bit like finishing the last of the Harry Potter books.  On one hand, I wanted to be through with the last book so I could find out what happened to all the characters, but on the other hand, I'd been reading this series for so long, I wasn't sure what I'd do with myself after the last book was finished (answer: back editions of magazines I've been ignoring).

This book builds so heavily on the second that it's almost impossible to say anything about it that wouldn't 1. be totally meaningless to anyone who hadn't read the first two books or 2. give something away to someone who was still reading.  What I will say is that even though the characters were the same and each book in the series builds on the previous ones, it was a still a very different book from the first two.  More like the second than the first, but still different.

All in all, I give the series two thumbs up.  Yes, there are some disturbing parts in the first two books that probably didn't need to be quite as graphic, but the characters and story line were new and interesting enough to make up for it.  Also, the books are long so if you don't have a lot of time to read, I'd suggest trying to borrow from a friend rather than the library.  I felt like the last novel ended in a satisfying way that wrapped up all the plot points.  There was only one thing that I felt Larsson left unfinished in the last book, and I wonder it it would have been the subject of a fourth book had he lived to write it.

Now I have to catch up on magazine reading but I have three other books in the queue:

• The Blind Side 
• The Help 
• The Lady Tasting Tea 
• 
  

Is it cold where you live?  Reading anything good?

Book review: The Girl who Played with Fire

Credit

This is the sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I read back in July.  I almost bought the third book at a Borders closeout when I was visiting my parents in Orlando (they didn't have any copies of this one), but I'm glad I stuck to reading the series in order because this book gives a lot of the back story and ends with something of a cliffhanger that draws you into the third.  Books 1 and 2 were different in many ways, so rather than go into the details of the plot, which is somewhat complex, I'm going to write about what I liked best from each.

I ended up enjoying the back story and the character development in Fire more than I thought I would.  I was not sure if I would like the Lisbeth Salander character better if she remained mysterious, but I thought Larsson kept her "more personal" character true to the character in the first book.

I thought the mystery part of the first book was more intriguing and more "mysterious".  In fact, I'd call the first book an actual mystery novel and the second an action novel.

Although Fire starts with a disturbing scene, overall there was less really nasty violence in the second book.  I remember finishing the first, thinking I would never want to see the movie, but I think I would see the second. 

I liked the ending of Fire better.  The only part of either of the books I really didn't like so far was the long, drawn out end to Dragon Tattoo.  All the action was over, but there was one plot point that had to be wrapped up.  Unfortunately it took like 75 pages to do it, and I spend the whole time just wanting the book to be over already.  The end of Fire takes you right into the next book in the series. 

If you are the second to last person on earth to read this series- and you like mystery/action/adventure novels and can handle some disturbing/violent scenes- I'd recommend reading them.  I don't think they are THE BEST THING EVER, but they are good and entertaining books and I look forward to reading the last one sometime soon.