A Million Words

Creating a Home for Body, Soul, and Spirit by Bernadette Raichle rating: 4 of 5 stars I borrowed this book from the local Steiner playgroup. I've enjoyed the parent-toddler group, and have picked up a lot of ideas about education and childrearing from its Steiner/Waldorf based activities, but I've always been a bit uneasy about its philosophical underpinnings. Here, at last, was a book which was explicit about how Anthroposophy informs the operation of a daycare centre, and man, is there some whacky stuff in there! The anthroposophical jargon about creating a "penetrated" environment and the four sheafs (Physical, Etheric, Soul/Astral, and Ego) would turn off most people I know, but it does explain why Waldorf kindergartens are organized the way they are. I gave this book four stars because it was exactly what I was looking for, and because I think it is useful, but it is not particularly well-written. Some sections are less well-developed than others, and as I ...

The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff My review rating: 3 of 5 stars My first and strongest impression of this book was that I knew the author. Although she came from the generation before mine, I feel like I knew dozens of people like her, privileged, intelligent, half-educated and profoundly dissatisfied with their home culture. I felt that I was a bit like her, but less starry-eyed. The author's central theory is that human evolution has primed us to expect certain experiences which are necessary to our fundamental sense of well-being. She argues that tribal/primitive cultures which have evolved slowly over millennia and are resistant to change provide more of these "continuum" experiences. The most important of these is the in-arms phase for the infant, from birth until the baby begins to crawl. She blames many of the ills and discontentments of modern society on the fact that most of us missed out on that essential early expe...

Baking Bread with Children by Warren Lee Cohen My review rating: 4 of 5 stars I got this book on loan from the local Steiner/Waldorf playgroup, and didn't have time to work my way through the whole thing, but what I did see, I liked. I was mostly interested in the bread recipes, because my daughter is too young for wordy stories, but I'd like to look at it again in another year or two. The recipes included a lot of very different breads; bagels, soft pretzels, and chapati, along with the usual range of loaf breads. I tried two of the recipes, a basic whole wheat loaf and the Roman Army bread. I made enough modifications to the first recipe that I couldn't really judge it, but the second one I tried was very good. I look forward to getting another copy of this book in the future and doing more of the bread-related story telling and perhaps even make the outdoor oven, which looks like a fun project. View all my reviews.

May has been a good month for reading. I read Mort , by Terry Pratchett, , which was good fun, and I finally knocked another item off of my to-do list: Read Strunk & White. Many years ago, I read that every writer should read The Elements of Style , by Wm. Strunk and E. B. White , study it, and re-read it every year. This struck me as such fine advice that I went out, bought the book, and read the first ten pages. With less then 90 pages to go, it shouldn't have taken me another six years to get to the end, but somehow it did. I got caught up on the mysteries of colons and semicolons, two punctuation marks that I have never fully understood. The book slipped back onto my bookshelf and has stayed there ever since, near the front of the pile but rarely opened. I am now happy to report that I have finally read the whole thing. I felt its influence on my writing immediately, as if I could tighten sentences better than ever before. I felt my critical eye sharpen as I read. I did...

I've read another book already!   The Princess Bride is a good bit shorter and lighter than the last two books I read, and it's good... but not as great as I thought it was at the beginning.  In the final third of the original story I became impatient with the narrator, and in the hundred page added-on section at the end, Buttercup's Baby  I just wanted to be done with it.   That said, I'm thrilled  that I've managed to read a whole book in less than a week, and it was highly entertaining a good 3/4 of the way through. I also enjoyed all the commentary on life as a rich and famous wrier, even if the narrator was a jerk.

I have never been an especially fast reader, but I used to be able to get through a book in a week or so, most of the time.  So, when I made my new year's resolution to read one good novel a month, I thought I should be able to manage it.  Three and a half months into the year, I'm starting to slip. Well, my book for March wasn't a novel, and I didn't get properly started on it until well into the month.  I finished reading White Mughals around midnight last night, and I must say it was worth the effort and more. I picked it up as research for the historical romance that I'm supposedly working on. I wanted to learn a bit more about the East India Company around the beginning of the 19th century, as background for the male lead in my story.  It gave me what I was looking for and greatly broadened my perspective on that period in history.  In addition, it had a compelling plot and was excellently written.   I had checked the book out of the library, but made such slo...

For my February "good novel" I chose to read Oliver Twist , a classic which is more often quoted than read.  I learned just now that it was Dickens's second novel. I have also read Great Expectations and Tale of Two Cities, and it's clear that Dickens wasn't at the height of his craft with Oliver Twist.  I found it slow going in parts, and was occasionally annoyed by the young Dickens's tendency towards melodrama.  Still, the characters were memorable (if not multi-faceted) and there were moments of brilliance, particularly his descriptions of London and one chapter close to the end, entitled "The Flight of Sikes." I chose to read Oliver Twist largely because I thought it would help me with two of my own writing projects, a romance set in roughly the same time period and a fantasy novel which features a cadre of young thieves.  It certainly helped me see areas in which those stories need work, but for the most part I'm just glad to have finally g...

I made a small New Year's resolution:  to read at least one good novel every month.  Last year was not a good year for reading, for me.  The first half of the year was simply chaotic, with a transatlantic move, living with a whole lot of other people, looking after a very young baby, getting married, and wrapping up loose ends from years past.  I read less than two books in those six months, South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami, and the later parts of What's Going on in There , which I'd started reading in November or December. 2009 is getting off on a better foot.  For a while, I've been wanting to read The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. I had heard that it was good. The first fifty pages or so were fantastic, and the author's world-building is awe-inspiring, but as the story wore on I started to get bored.  By page 200, he hadn't even introduced the main antagonist, and I was so thoroughly bored by the cleverness of it all that I clo...

Last night, I finally finished reading  What's Going on in There ,  which I started in December or thereabouts.  Since then, long weeks have passed in which I did not read at all, or picked it up only to read one or two pages. Between January and mid-May, I don't think I read more than ten pages on any one day, and usually much less than that. When Nova went to sleep earlier than usual three nights ago I set out to read 15 pages and wound up reading nearly 40.  It felt so good to really get into a book and feel my brain stir to life again.  I nodded off with only one chapter left to read (the second-to-last, because I'd skipped around).  The following night I was too tired to pick it up at all, but last night I read those last 15 pages.  I have now read a full-length book with Nova at my side. What's Going on in There was pretty good, but like many books, it dragged in the middle. I found myself more interested again towards the end when it started talking about languag...

I'm fully enjoying motherhood, but one of the things that's beginning to drive me crazy is the fact that I'm having an awfully hard time reading anything longer than a short article.  Since December, I've been reading What's Going on in There , and a few weeks ago I started reading my friend Nicki's book, Crossed.   I had hoped to finish at least one of them by the end of May, but no dice.  I resolve to finish reading both  of these books in the next few weeks, or at least by the end of June.  Wish me luck.  I'll need it.