Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson

The powerful and innovative magic realm that Sanderson weaves is captivating. However, I found his writing too gory for my taste. I do not want to know exactly what the mutilated body on the floor looks like, thank you very much.

There is a constant identity struggle throughout this book that continues throughout the series as the characters learn about their own capabilities, as their capabilities strengthen, and as they change. There is a lot of description - scenes, especially battle sequences, are played out step by step so that a fight choreographer for a movie would have nothing left to do. I didn't mind knowing exactly what was being thrown at whom, but I didn't need to know what the blood coming out of each person looked like. There was a lot of blood in this book.

The main character is a young woman who grows independent in a way that is great for her, because she is alone and needs strength and has power to help others, which she does. I don't see her as a role model though because her situation is so unique (and gory).

This is one of those books that I finished and felt like the time reading it had been mostly wasted. I'm putting it on the 'not recommended' list for me.

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

This is a coming of age story and involves a lot of identity seeking and realizations about the world. I really appreciated the way each chapter ended with a thought-provoking statement - I wanted to stop and consider what Cisneros was getting at, but I also wanted to keep reading and understand more of the story and life of the main character. There are some truly hilarious stories and some almost unbearably sad stories. 

If I remember correctly, this book was pretty clean. The girls find some hooker shoes one day and get into a spot of trouble while wearing them. One man takes advantage of the main character by stealing a kiss. She was affronted when her friend let boys kiss her.

This was a book-group pick, and one of the people in the book group was Latina and commented on how true-to-form it is for Latinos to insult each other by comparing them to bad food - cold frijoles and etc. I thought that was funny.

The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate

This is a beautiful story told from Ivan's point of view - a gorilla stuck in a roadside arcade. The themes of love, loss, persistence, optimism, and survival are present throughout, as well as thought provoking scenes discussing the benefits and drawbacks of deceiving oneself.

I enjoyed this discussion of anger:

"The freeway billboard has a drawing of Mack in his clown clothes and Stella on her hind legs and an angry animal with fierce eyes and unkempt hair.

"That animal is supposed to be me, but the artist made a mistake. I am never angry.

"Anger is precious. A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger. When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do.

"Here in my domain, there is no one to protect."

While this book is short and written simply, I found it incredibly thought provoking.

The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell

I loved this book. It is incredibly well-written and has so many interesting stories and facts. The "Tipping Point" is that magic moment when there is just enough friction to light the match. Gladwell makes the case that everything has a tipping point, and his ideas are fascinating.

"When we are trying to make an idea or attitude or product tip, we’re trying to change our audience in some small yet critical respect: we’re trying to infect them, sweep them up in our epidemic, convert them from hostility to acceptance. That can be done through the influence of special kinds of people, people of extraordinary personal connection. That’s the Law of the Few. It can be done by changing the content of communication, by making a message so memorable that it sticks in someone’s mind and compels them to action. That is the Stickiness Factor. But we need to remember that small changes in context can be just as important in tipping epidemics…

                

"The Power of Context is saying that those Tipping Points may be as simple and trivial as everyday signs of disorder like graffiti and fare-beating. The implications of this idea are enormous."

I think that anyone who reads this book would find influential ideas that could make their work or personal life better.

Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett

I love-love-loved the prequel to this one - The Wee Free Men. This novel didn't have quite as compelling a plot, the the symbolism was still very powerful. I highly recommend reading this article before starting the book - the symbol of bees is pervasive and meaningful in the telling of Hat Full of Sky.

Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett

Uproarious! Taking these un-traveled women through countries patterned after Spain, France, etc and exposing the traditions of each place to the ridicule of these travelers was hilarious - I was glad to be along for the ride.

The concept of "stories" and what it takes to make an ending (ie: whether Cinderella, (or Emberella, as the case may be) gets married to the prince) is thoroughly drawn apart and put back together with enchanting and thoughtful twists. The idea that the people and their lives have to change with the times is pretty hard for one of the characters to swallow.

Mirrors are a powerful symbol and the concepts Pratchett creates surrounding their use are very creative and yet, as always, make complete sense.

Take note of all the things Granny Weatherwax tells Margret not to do.

There is some old-lady bedroom discussion that was quite forward, so for that reason this book goes on my 'not-squeaky-clean-therefore-not-recommended' list.

Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

Lovely, hilarious; a good reminder of what Terry Pratchett is all about. I want to read more of his work after reading this one!

The idea of the golem carrying out instructions, no matter what, provided a lot of pondering material for me. So many situations are presented in the book that gave me a lot to think about with Mister Pump and his fellows.

The main character was a con-man in a former life, and his innate ability to read people and provide exactly what they need was instructive. There are so many fascinating characters with valuable outlooks on life.

The ideas presented by the wizards were incredible - and both modest and outrageous at the same time - "Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards - not 'not doing magic' because they couldn't do magic, but not doing magic when they could and didn't. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you know how easy it is. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite so clever, and on many of them the grass would never grow again."

The filthiness of the city Ankh-Morpork was something of a fairy tale to me until I visited New York City. Then I found that Pratchetts descriptions of how vile the pigeons are (based on their diet of eating things off the streets) made complete sense. There are places in the world where one can live and never have a desire to go barefoot outside. That was incomprehensible to me before I knew NYC.

"Words are important. And when there is a critical mass of them, they change the nature of the universe."

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

I was fascinated by how different this was from Fahrenheit 451. Two completely different genres, and masterful execution in both categories.

This famous quote from Shakespeare took on new meaning after I finished this novel, which focuses heavily on time:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

There are tense and scary moments in this book and a parent should use judgement in allowing a child to read it, but I felt that it was not satanic or eery beyond reason - the author has a point to make about joy and sorrow, and a point to make about the seasons of our lives, and he makes these points exquisitely using the play of good and evil and the one caught between. It is a powerful story with a powerful message. I recommend this book especially to male tweens and fifty-somethings, and anyone who has either of those categories of people in their lives; but everyone will come away from this novel reminded of some valuable truths.

In one scene a father is looking out a second-floor window and sees his son and another boy:

"Look! he thought. Will runs because running is its own excuse. Jim runs because somthing's up ahead of him.
"Yet, strangely, they do run together."

Another contrast is drawn between the boys a few pages later,

"The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.
"Will Halloway, it was in him young to always look just beyond, over or to one side. So at thirteen he had saved up only six years of staring."

This innocence vs. experience plays out time and time again throughout the book and has a huge influence on the paths the boys take. It's also interesting to note that Jim lives with his single mother, while Will has a mother and a father at home. I think Will is partly innocent because of his parents, and that his innocence and parental protection save him from wanting the same freedom Jim wants, and so he ends up in the better situation most of the time. Now, I may be biased because I identified more with Will, but that's how I felt.

Near the end of the novel Will and his father are looking for Jim -

"And Jim? Well, where was Jim? This way one day, that way the next, and . . . tonight? Whose side would he wind up on? Ours! Old friend Jim! Ours, of course! But Will trembled. Did friends last forever, then? For eternity, could they be counted to a warm, round and handsome sum?"

The 'bad guy' in this book is the Illustrated Man, who is covered with tattoos, and at once represents one person and a mass of monsters moving and breathing with one intent. When he (spoiler alert?) is defeated, it states

"[He], and his stricken and bruised conclave of monsters, his felt but half-seen crowd, fell to earth.
"There should have been a roar like a mountain slid to ruin.
"But there was only a rustle, like a Japanese paper lantern dropped in the dust."

Once the evil is wiped out, Will asks

"Dad, will they ever come back?"
"No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No, not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road."
"Oh, no," said Will.
"Oh, yes," said Dad. "We got to watch ou the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun."
...
"What will they look like? How will we know them?"
"Why," said Dad quietly, "maybe they're already here."
Both boys looked around swiftly.
But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.
Will looked at Jin, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad.
Dad nodded, once, gravely. . .

The main take-aways are that we can overcome evil (be it internal or external) and that it's okay to take time growing up, and then it's okay to be old. Life has a pattern and we follow it for a reason.

It's very subtle, but I think the book ends just a few minutes after the boys reach the long-awaited age of 14.

Home Learning Year by Year, by Rebecca Rupp

I chose this book to get an idea of curriculum from preschool through kindergarten, so I only skimmed/read two chapters. I love, love, love that Rupp presents books to teach concepts, such as Benny's Pennies by Pat Drisson for understanding coins, or All About Seeds by Melvin Berger for basic botany concepts. There are hundreds of fabulous picture books listed for children to learn concepts from, and the trend continues with age-appropriate books throughout each grade.

This is a list for my personal use of the things I would like to make sure the child in my life learns:

PreK:
Crayons / Finger paint
Memorization
Tie shoes
Cut with scissors
Read
Addition and Subtraction
Hollidays
Famous People
Finger plays
Volume math with cups/measuring

Kindergarten level:
Art (identify color, shape, lines; discus famous works; experiment)
Music (rhythm, melody, harmony, listen to a range of genres, ID instruments by sight and sound)
Syllables
Sequence cards
Retell Stories
Group sets / take out wrong items
Tell digital and analog time, compare time (does it take longer to bathe or change into jammies?)
Right and Left


Math
Patterns
Count by 2s to 10, by 5s to 50
Count items and write the number
> < =
Ordinal positions (what came second?)

Concept of half
Know (+) and (-) signs
Invent and solve story problems
Money
Length, weight, capacity (longer than, taller than, more full, less full, rulers, scales, measuring cups, containers, standard and non-standard measures, books: Math Counts Series by Henry Pluck Rose)
Thermometer (hotter than / colder than)

Social Studies (history, geography, civics, economics, culture {family life at different times and places around the world})
Indians / Columbus / Pilgrims
Revolution (4th of July, Flag, national anthem)
Presidents (White House, Statue of Liberty)
Globe / continents
Maps (simple too: bedroom, house, yard)

Science: is a process
Nature
Sort/classify
Magnets
Light and shadow
Living/non-living
Deciduous/evergreen
Sun/soil/water
basics of photosynthesis
Needs of animals/babies/pets
5 senses / body
Earth (Soil/rock/water/air, seasons, weather)

Again, this list is for my personal use and does not represent the complete list of items Rupp presents for children in either the preK or K levels. The lists of books she includes with these concepts is a fabulous resource. Happy learning!

The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge, M.D.

This was a fascinating and exceptionally informative read. Our brains are capable of so much if we know how to use them. My favorite take away was "Things that fire together wire together." It goes back to Pavlov's dogs, I suppose: If you ring a bell and present food, pretty soon the dogs will begin to salivate when they hear a bell because those things go together. This explains how people can wire their brains incorrectly (getting pleasure out of disgusting things, etc) and how it is 100% true that we can re-wire those things. It takes a lot of time and effort to re-wire reactions, but it can be intentionally and specifically done. The two most important factors for changing brain function are real intent (focusing and desiring the change) and oxytocin. Oxytocin makes the connections between neurons more easily broken. Oxytocin is a hormone that is released during happy/peaceful/loving times, stimulated by things such as touch, seeing pictures of your baby, intimate physical relationships, and eating.

So many of the maladies that face adults result from neurons being wired incorrectly as a child. Truly, the family is the central unit of society, and a family that functions properly has a much greater advantage in turning out children who will function properly in society.

Neuro plasticity can erase phantom limbs, reduce the effects of autism, strokes and ADD, cure retardation, masochism, pornography addictions, and obsessions, and increase the pleasure we get from physical and spiritual relationships. It affects every part of our lives and is a powerful aspect of our brains to have an understanding of. The "talking cure," or the benefits of using a psychologist, are proved through plasticity research.

I recommend skipping the disgusting depths of pornography discussed from pages 102-112.

Here are some quotes from the book that I want to remember:

Page 41-2: "Up through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a classical education often included rote memorization of long poems in foreign languages, which strengthened the auditory memory (hence thinking in language) and an almost fanatical attention to handwriting, which probably helped strengthen motor capacities and thus not only helped handwriting but added speed and fluency to reading and speaking. Often a great deal of attention was paid to exact elocution and to perfecting the pronunciation of words. Then in the 1960s educators dropped such traditional exercises from the curriculum, because they were too rigid, boring, and "not relevant." But the loss of these drills has been costly; they may have been the only opportunity that many students had to systematically exercise the brain function that gives us fluency and grace with symbols. For the rest of us, their disappearance may have contributed to the general decline of eloquence, which requires memory and a level of auditory brainpower unfamiliar to us now. ... Today many of the most learned among us... prefer the omnipresent PowerPoint presentation--the ultimate compensation for a weak premotor cortex."

Page 213: "Everything your "immaterial" mind imagines leaves material traces. Each thought alters the physical state of your brain synapses and a microscopic level. Each time you imagine moving your finders across the keys to play the piano, you alter the tendrils in your living brain." This has powerful implications for positive self-talk/image and for pornography addicts. Things that fire together wire together, and we can change what we allow to fire together. Thoughts are the pathways to action. A beautiful and frightening truth.

Page 243: "Because our neuroplasticity can give rise to both mental flexibility and mental rigidity, we tend to underestimate our own potential for flexibility, which most of us experience only in flashes.
"Freud was right when he said that the absence of plasticity seemed related to force of habit."

Page 252: "This theory, that novel environments may trigger neurogenesis, is consistent with Merzenich's discovery that in order to keep the brain fit, we must learn something new, rather than simply replaying already-mastered skills.
... "Thus physical exercise and learning work in complementary ways: the first to make new stem cells, the second to prolong their survival."

Page 255: "Simply walking, at a good pace, stimulates the growth of new neurons."

Page 256: "Nothing speeds brain atrophy more than being immobilized in the same environment..."

Page 308: "Listening to an audio book leaves a different set of memories than reading does. A newscast heard on the radio is processed differently from the same words read in a newspaper." ... each medium creates a different sensory and semantic experience--and, we might add, develops different circuits in the brain."

Page 309: "The cost [of watching TV] is that such activities as reading, complex conversation, and listening to lectures become more difficult."