January's reading
Jan. 31st, 2007 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coffeesnob318Wow. This semester may be crazy, but I'm going to have a lot of time to read between classes. Observe:
Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott
This is somewhat of a coming of age book. What I like about it is that it's not just the adolescent coming into her own, but her mother as well. She writes moments of discovery and healing beautifully. She makes me want to grow things.
Auden quote: “You shall love your crooked neighbor. With your crooked heart.” I love that.
This is the first time I read this one. This is one of those that affect me in spurts, so I’m not quite through processing. I’m not sure I am in a place to have read it, but I’m glad I did. I recommend it, along with everything else she’s written.
The Bad Girl’s Guide to Getting What You Want by Cameron Tuttle
Common sense with a kick. My favorite part was the “Are you a bad girl?” test, especially the question “I ____ to get what I want.” The best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) answer was “exist.” I love it.
The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Open Road
On code words – “Ideally, it’s a word you wouldn’t normally use in conversation, something like ‘responsibility,’ ‘chimichanga,’ or ‘catechism.’” I laughed for a long time about that one. I'm not sure why, but it was funny to me. As was her tutorial on how to use non-gun weapons you already own.
The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Party Life by Cameron Tuttle
This was my favorite of the three (and not just because it was sparkly). This one kept me in a constant state of must-dance-must-dress-up-must-wear-lampshade-as-hat.
I am so throwing a bad taste party. And a single power shower, for which I would register, of course. Maybe I’ll just combine the two…
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Great stories, much like Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris is hilarious, which made it an easy read.
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules ed. by David Sedaris
I have never read a collection of short stories where I actually enjoyed reading all of the stories until this book. In the introduction, he told about when he first started appreciating short stories. “A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. This led to a kind of trance that made the dullest work, the dullest life, bearable.” And his selections for this book do just that. I enjoyed them.
God’s Politics by Jim Wallis
First off, I have to say that I respect and admire Jim Wallis. I am a regular reader of Sojourner’s magazine and his blog. He writes well, and he speaks well. And if someone with his politics ever ran for president, the candidate might not win, but s/he would have my vote.
The book started out great. The basic premise is a call to use a consistent moral sense in our involvement in politics, and that for Christians, this consistent moral sense is not limited to (or does not even necessarily contain) the pet agendas of the Religious Right but rather all the teachings of Jesus (e.g., caring for the poor, talking care of the sick, pursuing justice and life, etc.). And he gave example after example.
My difficulty in reading the book is the typical difficulty I have reading political texts. Either they are written by traditional political scholars, who tend to use a lot of jargon and explore every crevice of their theories (which is commendable for a researcher – one should be thorough), making it a lot more trouble than it’s worth to me (someone whose interest in politics can be described as surface, at best), or they are written by those I would term more social analysts than scholars, which means the theory, no matter how enlightening and wonderful it is, is simple enough to be sufficiently covered in five pages. The latter was my experience with this book. I enjoyed the first chapter immensely. He explained his ideas and gave an example. But by the time I hit the fifth chapter, I felt like I had read the same thing five times, the only difference being the example to which it was applied. And upon skimming the rest of the book, my impression is that feeling would only continue with every chapter.
The book may not read that way for everyone, though. In fact, my experience with the book probably stems from the fact that I was pretty familiar with the overall concept before ever picking it up, so the experience may be much different for someone who isn’t. I’ve had several people, both online and face-to-face friends, who loved it from cover to cover, which is why I was so eager to check it out. I’m not sorry that I did, but I didn’t quite make it all the way through.
Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott
This is somewhat of a coming of age book. What I like about it is that it's not just the adolescent coming into her own, but her mother as well. She writes moments of discovery and healing beautifully. She makes me want to grow things.
Auden quote: “You shall love your crooked neighbor. With your crooked heart.” I love that.
This is the first time I read this one. This is one of those that affect me in spurts, so I’m not quite through processing. I’m not sure I am in a place to have read it, but I’m glad I did. I recommend it, along with everything else she’s written.
The Bad Girl’s Guide to Getting What You Want by Cameron Tuttle
Common sense with a kick. My favorite part was the “Are you a bad girl?” test, especially the question “I ____ to get what I want.” The best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) answer was “exist.” I love it.
The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Open Road
On code words – “Ideally, it’s a word you wouldn’t normally use in conversation, something like ‘responsibility,’ ‘chimichanga,’ or ‘catechism.’” I laughed for a long time about that one. I'm not sure why, but it was funny to me. As was her tutorial on how to use non-gun weapons you already own.
The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Party Life by Cameron Tuttle
This was my favorite of the three (and not just because it was sparkly). This one kept me in a constant state of must-dance-must-dress-up-must-wear-lampshade-as-hat.
I am so throwing a bad taste party. And a single power shower, for which I would register, of course. Maybe I’ll just combine the two…
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Great stories, much like Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris is hilarious, which made it an easy read.
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules ed. by David Sedaris
I have never read a collection of short stories where I actually enjoyed reading all of the stories until this book. In the introduction, he told about when he first started appreciating short stories. “A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. This led to a kind of trance that made the dullest work, the dullest life, bearable.” And his selections for this book do just that. I enjoyed them.
God’s Politics by Jim Wallis
First off, I have to say that I respect and admire Jim Wallis. I am a regular reader of Sojourner’s magazine and his blog. He writes well, and he speaks well. And if someone with his politics ever ran for president, the candidate might not win, but s/he would have my vote.
The book started out great. The basic premise is a call to use a consistent moral sense in our involvement in politics, and that for Christians, this consistent moral sense is not limited to (or does not even necessarily contain) the pet agendas of the Religious Right but rather all the teachings of Jesus (e.g., caring for the poor, talking care of the sick, pursuing justice and life, etc.). And he gave example after example.
My difficulty in reading the book is the typical difficulty I have reading political texts. Either they are written by traditional political scholars, who tend to use a lot of jargon and explore every crevice of their theories (which is commendable for a researcher – one should be thorough), making it a lot more trouble than it’s worth to me (someone whose interest in politics can be described as surface, at best), or they are written by those I would term more social analysts than scholars, which means the theory, no matter how enlightening and wonderful it is, is simple enough to be sufficiently covered in five pages. The latter was my experience with this book. I enjoyed the first chapter immensely. He explained his ideas and gave an example. But by the time I hit the fifth chapter, I felt like I had read the same thing five times, the only difference being the example to which it was applied. And upon skimming the rest of the book, my impression is that feeling would only continue with every chapter.
The book may not read that way for everyone, though. In fact, my experience with the book probably stems from the fact that I was pretty familiar with the overall concept before ever picking it up, so the experience may be much different for someone who isn’t. I’ve had several people, both online and face-to-face friends, who loved it from cover to cover, which is why I was so eager to check it out. I’m not sorry that I did, but I didn’t quite make it all the way through.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 07:23 pm (UTC)I think I read it all because I had really wanted to know what he had said in what I missed and also because I get so used to writing a lot of the same things over and over. . .because sometimes it seems I have to write continuously to get one point across (I'm not even sure why I deal with those people online. . .)
Also, I have been reading Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and have about 50 pages left at the moment. Our library did not have "Me Talk Pretty One Day."
Stein Auf!
Bridget
no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 02:18 am (UTC)...There was definitely something else I wanted to comment on but I can't seem to come back to it in my head...
Wait...there it is...
I purchased the "Bad Girl Calling Cards" and the BG's Guide to The Party Life for Esther one year...I don't think it was for a holiday/birthday but that's beside the point. I don't recall reading it myself, but I remember flipping through it and thinking to myself "This would be great to get Esther...it's so very much unlike her. Okay, I'll get it."
And there is that...
Miss you,
Magz