While not technically a children’s book, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins was my fastest read since, well, and please don’t judge me, Twilight.
A fellow librarian recommended this book, and during my recent illness I was not disappointed. Katniss is a wonderful narrator, an individual that doesn’t realize how admired she is, but most of all and intelligent young woman that has the skills to keep herself and those she loves alive. I_LOVED_THIS_BOOK!
You can sign up here to keep an electronic log of your reading and to see what others are reading. Then come into the library to fill out one of these:
Every other week we’ll have a drawing to give away a $15 gift card. Each review you turn in counts as 1 entry for our biweekly drawing. You may submit as many as you want, but you can only win once.
Our first drawing is July 9, so get those reviews in! You can drop them off at the desk, and we’ll give you a raffle ticket for each one.
At the end of the summer, we’ll be compiling the reviews into a book to display in the library. You’ll be able to check out what others were reading this summer and what they thought. You might find some great new reads!
I loved this book!
It is a broad and sweeping romance with prominent elements of mystery and horror. But it remains endearing. Set in the politically unstable and corrupt environment of post World War II Madrid, the tone is sad, dark and poetic.There are some scenes in the book that are so disturbing that I had to put the book down for a moment, only to quickly pick it right back up.
The overall theme of the book is obsessive passion. My take is that passion is a good thing to a degree, but when it reaches the point of obsession, it can be dismal and toxic.
This book is a big recommend!
You need to know how and when things tip.
What tipped 500 people to start dancing together with within the span of 2 minutes? Peer pressure right*? Not always the case as Malcolm Gladwell explains in The Tipping Point. He suggests they’re are other forces at work that make us do things on automatic or unconsciously.
One of the bits that really got me was the context behind the six degrees of separation. Gladwell writes “doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.” He later alludes to these people as connectors, social glue that spread the message. He uses this awesome example about a boy over hearing a British officer discussing attacking the Americans and how he spread the word that led to a massive militia ready to fight to the surprise of the the Brits! That particular passage blew my mind. Apparently its an historical legend told to every American school child. I live in a place called Canada, so thats my excuse!
He later on mentions the value of the weak tie. That they’re are people that seek pleasure and value in casual meeting, unlike others who feel they don’t have the energy to maintain meaningful contact with everyone.
He then discusses the maven, who are data banks, which provide the message. Lastly there is the salesman, who is the persuader, when we are unconvinced they convince us and are as critical in word of mouth epidemics as the other two groups. He later expands from the Law of the Few, and talks about the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context.
Lets just say I’m now a huge fan of Malcolm. I’ve read an article by him before and also the first chapter of Outliers before giving it as a gift to my brother for Christmas. Looks like I need to borrow that from him now.
Again Gladwell is unstoppable in his search for understanding the human condition. I think all marketers need to read Chapter 2 especially, where he talks about the word of mouth ‘epidemic’. The entire book is a quick read, but its very in depth. Also, I believe its valuable to push into subjects you aren’t familiar with, as later on you can base that understanding towards reads that are above your level. Anyways THIS ONE IS FASCINATING stuff and I will have to re-read again soon.
* according to Seth Godin, its Guy #3.
Remember those cartoons from the 1960’s — a thinly-inked sketch of a bearded man on a street-corner with a sign that says “The world is ending” and people walk by as if he’s invisible? It’s time to pay attention. In Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture, the bearded and quite sane Thom Hartmann calmly and elegantly spells out how to avoid the impending armagedden. Hang with me here — do you know what blows my mind…?
You’re familiar with Al Gore’s work on the greenhouse effect. And, I’ve been reviewing books in this space that advocate eating raw, eating grains, eating vegetables to lose weight or to heal diabetes. Hartmann says in Threshold that a sudden worldwide shift to vegetarianism”would have more impact on global warming than if every jet plane and car in the world would fall silent forever.” Not to make light of this, but we would also lose extra fat. Talk about a win-win. Healthier people, healthier planet.
That’s one of Hartmann’s thresholds. (By the way, I excitedly told my younger son Justin who has his BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology those stats — but it was already common knowledge for him.) The second threshold is economic. Hartmann argues there is no such thing as “free trade” — it is costly as hell (my words) for the middle class, not to mention the lower class. I privately “joke” sometimes that we live in the “United Corporations of America.”
The third threshold is population — there are seven-billion of us crowding the planet, while fewer of us grow the food it takes to sustain us. Meanwhile, terrible diseases — for which there is no cure — claim hundreds of millions of people.
Threshold is the social studies book I wish kids would read in school.
Hartmann tells of Denmark whose citizens never worry about their next job, illness, or higher education. Government pays for it. And, he reveals the beautiful story of Caral, a civilization in Peru, that existed for one-thousand years with music and peace.
There are evil-doers in Hartmann’s book — they are the sociopathic CEO’s and deregulation. And he has solutions — one, being to correct a centuries old mistake — revoking corporations legal ability to claim the rights given persons.
Theshold is a remarkably brilliant book. It arrived today, and I was compelled to read it cover to cover the moment it slipped out of the package.
There is no them, Hartmann seems to say, only us.
Body Soul & Spirit Expo, Keynote Presenter, Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy ~ Vancouver Convention Centre, October 23-25, 2009
Body Soul & Spirit Expo, October 23-25, 2009, Vancouver BC, Canada
Vancouver BC Convention Centre
999 Canada Place
www.VancouverConventionCentre.com
(866) 785-8232
Organizer: Chandler Stephon Armstrong
Website: Body Soul & Spirit Expo Vancouver BC
Contact Chandler Toll Free: (87… or info@bodysoulspiritexpo.com
Saturday, October 24, 2:30 PM ~ Convention Center Theater
Keynote Presentation by Katie Davis
Body Soul & Spirit Expo
Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver BC, Canada
“Awake Joy ~ The Essence of Enlightenment”
Explore, Experience and Enlighten!
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Sunday, October 25, 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM ~ Register Now
Body Soul & Spirit Expo
Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver BC, Canada
“Awake Joy ~ The Essence of Enlightenment”
Intensive with Katie Davis
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Monday, October 26 and Tuesday, October 27
Private Appointments with Katie Davis
More information at www.KatieDavis.org/Private.html
Holiday Inn Downtown Vancouver
1110 Howe Street
Vancouver BC, Canada
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Appointments are available to everyone. If you do not attend the conference or if you would like to be sure of availability, contact Katie now to request an appointment time at awake@katiedavis.org.
Visit Katie Davis in the Keynote Exhibitors Booth:
Book signing, meet the author, free drawings, intensive coupon redemption, schedule a private appointment or register for the Magnificence! Retreat in Maui, Hawaii February 11-16, 2010.
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Visit the Katie Davis Event and Satsang Schedule 2009-2010:
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Seattle Satsang
Mediterranean Silent Retreat, September 16-20, 2009
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Conscious TV, London, England
Satsang in Bristol, London and Paris
Magnificence! Silent Retreat and Satsang, February 11-16, 2010
Maui, Hawaii ~ Register Now
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Katie Davis Website: www.KatieDavis.org
This book has four long plays very well written. Two things which I loved about this book was the theme chosen for the plays and secondly the character names chosen in the plays. Agatha Christie has done a great job in choosing the character names; it’s all very coherent to the scenes. . It pretty much makes the reader imagine the ambience while reading the book, that’s how enthralling the writing is. One more noticeable factor being the detail level of each scene, any person who wants to put up a play can just blindly read this book and put up a great show.
Out of the four plays couple of them are just outstanding namely “And there were none” and “Appointment with death”. In the former play ten strangers are invited to an island to lodge. They all arrive there and are in for a surprise of their life time. Their host who invited them is nowhere to be seen, but a strong message is delivered. The message being that they will all be killed for their misdemeanors. The author goes on to describe each characters profile in depth at this point of moment and also the way they start guessing who their unknown host could be. Just before they are done with the discussion one of them is killed and they start jumping to conclusions. The book keeps you stuck to your desk because this is the place where the story gets real interesting and it’s at full pace. Within no time more people die and everyone’s death plot is so very well planned that it confuses the others badly. The suspense is so very well maintained and the plots are so immaculate, it keeps making the readers guess as to whom the culprit is but till the end the guess is wrong. The author has thought out of the box, kudos you have pulled out a great play.
The second one is again a murder mystery but this one has a completely different set of characters in a totally different situation proving the authors ability of creativity. The overall delivery of this play is just mind-blowing just for the fact that this would have happened in many peoples lives. The story is about an old rich lady who is counting her days due to a heart disease. She happens to be uneducated and hence in fear that her sons will one day leave her, has made their lives miserable by not educating them too. She curtailed every single freedom of theirs. Whenever they asked her about why they were not educated, she used to say we have all the money on earth and that we need not work at all. However her daughters in laws were a rebel and wanted their husbands to work too, much to the dislike of their mother in law. The kids too wanted to go out and lead a normal life like everyone. The old lady dies all of a sudden one day and the police inquire everyone who was present along with her. There is enough evidence for everyone to be thought of as a murderer; for once I was wondering who killed the poor lady. The author’s narration was with such eloquence that no one could have guessed the ending; it just kept me glued to the book. The old lady in fact had committed suicide and just wanted to prove everyone that she was still in control of the lives of her kids even after death. It will become pretty evident that the first person who goes out of the family and joins work would have been the murderer, and hence each one will stay back and at the end of the day things would not change. However finally they find out that this was a setup and that she committed suicide.
The real reason why I liked this story was that we would have encountered such characters in our life at some point or the other. Domination, despotism is something no one can stand, but the ugly fact about it being every one has a taste of it at some point of time. The best stories or the movies are the ones where you can relate your life to it, that’s what this play is all about. Agatha Christie, hats off for choosing such an intricate and controversial subject but yet one of the best ones.
The third play is “The hollow”, this one is also a decent play but not living up to the reader’s expectations who have read the first two. The fourth one is “The mouse trap”, unfortunately this is one of the most boring plays in the book. I don’t know why she named the book after this play, wrong choice made madam. An absolute waste of time to read this last play, there is good enough plot but the story looks very straight forward with not much thrill maintained.
Overall a great book with the queens English, definitely worth reading any day. It can be one of the best gifts you can give your friend, a book that can go on to your library collection for sure. Special thanks to Nithya, my friend who lent me this book.
Balaji
