Pick-a-Shelf discussion

Well August is here and it's time to see what you have read and what you thought of it :0)

My review of The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment:

This is the 2nd book I have read by A.J. Jacobs and I really enjoy his style of writing and sense of humor. I would have to say that I enjoyed The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible a little more simply because it was a more in depth study than any of the experiments in this book.

Here Jacobs uses himself as a human guinea pig in order to explore various social issues ranging from telling the absolute truth, impersonating a beautiful woman and a hollywood celebrity, outsourcing his daily life and chores to India, living according to the principles set down by George Washington and doing everything his wife asks him to do. Most of these experiments last for a month.

My favorites were probably the chapter on outsorcing and George Washington. I really liked the end of each chapter where Jacobs describes what lasting affects his experiments have had on his life. I have found myself noticing and trying to change some of my behaviors/assumptions based on what I read as well.

I fully intend to read The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World at some point in time. I sincerely hope that Mr. Jacobs continues to do his experiments and as a result, comes closer and closer to perfection as a human being, because then I can read and come closer to that end myself.

A short review of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.

A review of Fahrenheit 451:

I really don't know how many stars to give this book so I guess I will give it 2.25. (I know, I'm a totally non-committal wuss).

When I was in high school I had to read (emphasis on the HAD) a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury called "The Vintage Bradbury". I hated it. It was WAY too dark and violent for me. In fact, the paper I wrote on it was called "Violence in the Vintage". So until this month in goodreads, I had judiciously avoided any more of his books. But it fit with this month, it was short, and it meets several challenges I am in so I figured "What the heck!"

The story was interesting, though dark, and I probably would have really enjoyed it, although enjoy doesn't really describe how anyone would feel about 451, if it had been written by someone else. I just don't like Bradbury's writing style. Most of this book I felt I had jumped in to the middle of every paragraph without reading the beginning which would have given me any context. I found myself having to stop every so often and give myself a recap of what had gone on so far in order to make sense of what I had read.

Having said that, I can see why several people shelved this book as "sociology" as the book bore many uncomfaortable parallels to our own society. People watch WAY too much tv, check...people don't think about what the media is feeding them, check,,,people don't think deepley enough about politics, check...people do not read, how scary to read about this in the same month that Borders is going completely out of business ( in fact the closest bookstore to my house at this point is a 40 minute drive). The one that most made me sit up and take a look at myself was how Montag's wife went to sleep every night with a "seashell earpiece". She was still plugged into the media as she fell asleep and had virtually NO coversation or interaction with her husband. This reminded me FAR too much of my MP3 player I use to drown out my husband's snoring. I really need to make more of an effort to have bedtime conversations.

The end of this book was really good and I thought long and hard about whether or not it was enough to over ride my dislike of Bradbury's style. I have decided that I am glad I read this "classic' but will probably never pick up another book by Ray Bradbury.

So many people in this group have said such wonderful things about The Cellist of Sarajevo over the past several months that I was thrilled to find it on the sociology shelf, and I wasn't disappointed. I give it 4 stars. My review here .

For this shelf I read The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. This book by lawyer and author John Grisham could be just another of his excellent legal stories but it is true. This amazing story is the biography of a man from small-town Ada, Oklahoma who is convicted of a grisly murder and sent to Death Row. Ron Williamson was a local baseball hero who doesn't make it to the big leagues. He is a hard drinking, hard smoking man who can't really take care of himself. He sinks into mental illness and after he was arrested his trial was littered with false witnesses and questionable evidence.
If this was fiction it would be disturbing but as a true story it is terrifying. The American promise that you are innocent until proven guilty just didn't apply in Ron Williamson's case and the truth is that if you are indigent you are in trouble.

Anyone who's looking for a book for the LGBT challenge should really consider reading She's Not There this month. The "T" of LGBT (transgender) is the one I have always had the most trouble getting my head around, and this book does a great job of helping with that. I give it 4 stars. My review here .

I just finished Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. This is a wonderful little fable about free speech and a government gone wrong on a small independent island nation -- and how the people of the island react to the changes. However, I mostly loved the absolute creativity of the author in putting together an epistolary novel in which letters of the alphabet are banned one by one, and therefore those letters disappear in the novel also. By the time they get down to LMNOP as the only remaining letters, the reading is a bit slower, but very entertaining.

Four stars for Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I always enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. They are just filled with things I find myself thinking about later and wanting to talk about with others. I've also read The Tipping Point and Blink.

Gladwell's books are not the type of book I generally read, but he fills them with interesting stories and facts which keep my interest while at the same time make me feel like I'm learning things. I was very interested in the section on the effects of summer vacations on students and the history behind why we have summer vacations. Gladwell says, speaking of a study showing student growth between September and June: "Schools work. The only problem with school, for the kids who aren't achieving, is that there isn't enough of it." How many students at my school are going to come to the library and tell me they didn't read a single book over the summer? Even one student saying that to me just makes me sad.

As with Gladwell's other two books, even though I do feel like I've learned interesting things, I'm not quite sure what to do with what I've learned. Is there anything I learned in Outliers that I can apply to my life and bring about some of the success he talks about? Well, here are some of the things I learned:

* Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness. Even if you are highly talented at something, you cannot reach a level of greatness at that thing until you have practiced for at least ten thousand hours.

* One reason Asian people are better at math than Americans is because of the differences in the way numbers and math words are expressed in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese as opposed to English!

* Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for a long time without giving up.

* Success comes from luck, from decisions others make that you have no control over, and being ready and willing to go for it when the time is right.

I really like the concept of a magic number for greatness. I like thinking that I could become great at something of my choosing just by putting in the time - although some innate ability is necessary as well. I think I'll choose reading as the thing I want to do for ten thousand hours. :)

LynnB wrote: "I just finished Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. This is a wonderful little fable about free speech and a government gone wrong on a small independent island nation -- and how the people ..."

Oh, I didn't realise this was labelled as sociology, I might get something read this month after all :)

Sarah wrote: "Oh, I didn't realise this was labelled as sociology, I might get something read this month after all :)
"

It's sort of low on the shelf list, but it's there! I was surprised to see it there, too, but one of the theme lines is how all the people on the island react together.

Luann wrote: "Four stars for Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I always enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. They are just filled with things I find myself thinking about later and wanting to ..."

Are you sure you haven't already read for 10,000 hours? Great review. I already wanted to read this book, but now I am even more disappointed that my library doesn't have it (I am on a no buying books pledge for 2011). I think I will tell part of your review to my sons who aspire to be college (maybe pro athletes) and they are very good.

Lynne wrote: "Luann wrote: "Four stars for Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I always enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. They are just filled with things I find myself thinking about later a..."

Luann,
Outliers is such a well-known book by now that I bet your library would respond favorably to a request to purchase it.

I read Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I chose this book to read thinking I would learn about economics. Instead, I learned about questions and how important the right question is to finding the answer. I gave it 3*.

Lynne wrote: "Are you sure you haven't already read for 10,000 hours? Great review. I already wanted to read this book, but now I am even more disappointed that my library doesn't have it (I am on a no buying books pledge for 2011). I think I will tell part of your review to my sons who aspire to be college (maybe pro athletes) and they are very good."

Wouldn't it be interesting to know how many hours you've spent reading in your lifetime? I would love to know. That's one reason I was so interested in Goodreads - I want to create a list of every book I've ever read. Impossible, I know - especially since I haven't keep lists over the years. But since starting on Goodreads, I'm closer to achieving it than I ever would have been.

I agree with Susan, Lynne! Ask your library to purchase it. And if that isn't a possibility, ask them if they have an ILL system to borrow books from other libraries outside of their system.

Following LynnB's lead this month, I also read Ella Minnow Pea. This is a fun, quick read that does have an interesting social commentary without the weight of a serious, or real life, situation. You're guaranteed never to look at the sentence "the quick brown fox..." in the same light ever again.
Very enjoyable. 4 stars

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers both fun and interesting reads, 4* for both of them.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, while this was an interesting read I didn't enjoy it as much as the other books I read by this other so I'll give it 3*.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and As Long As It's Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste, both were interesting reads but very dry and they never really grabbed me. 3* for both.

The Devil's Dozen: How Cutting-Edge Forensics Took Down 12 Notorious Serial Killers 4*

This was an interesting read, each chapter dealt with a different serial killer and the different forensic techniques that were used to convict each one.

I only have one problem with this book and that is the final sentence

"These stories are better than fiction, so let's hope for some real-life sequels."

while I do like reading true life crime I'm not hoping that more people get murdered to give me something to read.

Karen - Maybe they mean that forensics can help to capture more of the already existing killers. At least I hope so because I agree with you!

Even so, you would have thought that SOMEONE (editor, friend etc.) would have realized how that sentence could sound and have it clarified before published!

you would think...lol!

I just finished The Chosen One which has been on my TBR for a long time. Its place on the sociology shelf is probably due to the fact of child and spouse abuse which plays a part in the story. It was a terrific story, which I'd recommend for mature young adults and anyone older. I gave it 4 stars.

My review here .

I readThe Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard E. Nisbett. It strikes me as a book that would be good to read in a social psychology, Asian studies, or cross-cultural communications class. It would also be an absorbing read for non-Asians who are planning to travel,study or work in Asia. It's hard to imagine, though, that most people who just happen to think the topic is interesting would find a close read of this book very engaging. The author goes into too much detail for many of the various studies he cites and provides too little compelling narrative about the real world manifestations of East-West differences.

To summarize some of his main points for any who might be tantalized:
Western thought focuses on individuals and categories, Eastern thought on relationships and context. Western parents put great emphasis on teaching their children the names of entities, Asian parents pay more attention to teaching children how to correctly use language as part of social interaction. Westerners tend to believe that people have many fixed characteristics, Easterners are more likely to see people's natures as subject to the effects of environmental factors. The author even shows evidence that Easterners are more likely to think visually and Westerners to think verbally.

Nesbitt ends the book with a hopeful vision of East/West thinking becoming integrated. I think it would have stregthened the book if he had co-authored it with an Asian scholar (many of whom are cited) who could more clearly articulate the experience of this difference from the other side of the divide.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett *4

Mississippi in the 1960's was a difficult place to live if you were an african-american but one white person decided to make a difference. Making friends with maids of her childhood friends Skeeter learns whats it really like to be a maid. You never know what one will hear when your a maid in their house. The ups and downs of the black and white community are shown. I laughed my butt off and I cried my eyes out. The Help is a book that keeps you coming back for more and can't out it down till you finished it.

yay, i finally finished a book!!

finished up Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything last night and have to admit i was impressed - wasn't sure at the beginning what i was going to think of it - but I liked the way that Levitt proposed the information. And actually understood all the regression analysis stuff he was talking about (I cannot believe i'm saying that)...would love to see the chapter on kid's names redone today and then compared with the stuff from 1990 and 2000 and see how close his predictions for 2015 are...

3.5*'s

Blindness is an amazing book. I give 5 stars very sparingly, but I couldn't convince myself that it deserved any less. It's fiction, but it earns its place on this shelf because of the picture it draws of various ways people might invent their own societies when what they know becomes impossible.

My review here .

The Hiding Place 4 stars

A true story about a family that helps hide Jews and smuggle them to safety during WWII. Eventually they are betrayed and end up in prision camps. Through it all they never lose their faith and trust in God. This book is full of miracles, especially the miracle of forgiveness.

i loved the Hiding Place - listened to it a few months ago - at times I really felt like i was with Corrie and her sister n the camp

also finished up The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty - it basically focused on the idea of empathy and how is that related to a person being evil or not...and the 4 main types of individuals who lack empathy - 3 identified and zero negative and 1 as zero positive (individuals who fall into the autism spectral disorders) - good read - as a complete side note, the author is the cousin of the actor Sasha Baron-Cohen (Borat) and he actually mentions him in the book, which I found to be kind of cool

The Rain of God has been on my TBR for a long time, but I hadn't banked on how long it was. It tells the saga of a (real) Mexican-American family in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It's considered a classic of Mexican-American literature, and it does not disappoint: I gave it 4 stars. My review here .

Wow! This is what I love so much about this group. I would never have discovered Ella Minnow Pea if someone hadn't mentioned it here. I loved it. My review here .

And it was a great break from Slaughterhouse Five which I've been listening to for a couple weeks and finally finished.

ETA: Slaughterhouse Five isn't on the month's shelf, just Ella Minnow Pea.

I finished up Out of Shadows - when I started reading it, sociology showed up on the first page as a shelf, but it has since be pushed over to the second page - but i'm going to post my review anyways

this was an interesting YA set in Zimbabwe right after Mugabe came to power - I figure it was on the sociology shelf because it did a good job looking at the interactions between the various classes of people, and within the classes themselves

Dee wrote: "I finished up Out of Shadows - when I started reading it, sociology showed up on the first page as a shelf, but it has since be pushed over to the second page - but i'm going to post..."

Dee,
To count for being on the month's shelf, it can be on any page of the shelf lists. I've found some wonderful books to read way far back some months.

Dee wrote: "I finished up Out of Shadows - when I started reading it, sociology showed up on the first page as a shelf, but it has since be pushed over to the second page - but i'm going to post..."

Dee,
Question about Out of Shadows: Now that you've read it, do you think it would count for the revolution/independence challenge? The description says it starts "just after the war for independence," but if there are a lot of flashbacks or talking about the results, it might be reasonable to count it. And I'm still looking for some interesting ones for that challenge.

it def. talks about the results - the people killing others, the changes that they made from the british rule to Mugabe's rule - small stuff like changing the name of the boarding houses to reflect the changes; bringing in teachers who were Zimbabwe (and the way they were treated)...I hadn't even thought about it counting for the independence challenge ;)

Dee wrote: "it def. talks about the results - the people killing others, the changes that they made from the british rule to Mugabe's rule - small stuff like changing the name of the boarding houses to reflect..."

So maybe we need a ruling from Karen/Kazza?

i say go for it ;) and I realize I have another africa one that I can use as well maybe - set in Liberia - And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation

I finished The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York but it wasn't too good.

**2.5 Stars**

I thought this book was going to be different. The 'Traveling the Globe' part of the subtitle gave me the impression that this book would tell me about all the different cultures in NY and which neighborhood I should go if I wanted to get a taste of it.

To be truthful there was a bit of that, but the book was inundated with nostalgia. Most chapters were about elderly people complaining about the way things it used to be and how the neighborhood had changed. This was BORING.

I think I would only recommend this book to fellow New Yorkers if they want to know more about their City.

I finally got around to reviews on the last two books I read from this month's shelf, Musicophilia and A House in Fez. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy either of them very much. I gave them each 2 stars. My reviews here-Musicophilia and here-A House in Fez .