Book Tuesday -06/30/09- Okay I know it is July 1 - sigh

CELL

A Novel

by

Stephen King

From Publishers Weekly

What if a pulse sent out through cell phones turned every person using one of them into a zombie-like killing machine? That's what happens on page six of King's latest, a glib, technophobic but compelling look at the end of civilization—or at what may turn into a new, extreme, telepathically enforced fascism. Those who are not on a call at the time of the pulse (and who don't reach for their phones to find out what is going on) remain "normies." One such is Clayton Riddell, an illustrator from Kent Pond, Maine, who has just sold some work in Boston when the pulse hits. Clay's single-minded attempt to get back to Maine, where his estranged wife, Sharon, and young son, Johnny-Gee, may or may not have been turned into "phoners" (as those who have had their brains wiped by the pulse come to be called) comprises the rest of the plot. King's imagining of what is more or less post-Armageddon Boston is rich, and the sociological asides made by his characters along the way—Clay travels at first with two other refugees—are jaunty and witty. The novel's three long set pieces are all pretty gory, but not gratuitously so, and the book holds together in signature King style.

(I listened to this during my commute to and from work the last couple weeks and believe me I had nooooooo problem staying awake.  In fact a couple of times I was banging on the steering wheel!  Click on the title to learn more about the book and on the author's name to learn more about him.)

State Of Fear Week One

From the book group we had on Multiply:

Get comfortable with being on the edge of your seat as you get ready to read this book!  Although crammed full of environmental data,  Michael Crichton's novel, State Of Fear, moves at a fast pace propelling the reader from one crisis to another.  The writer calls to the scientific community for more in depth study of the facts involved in environmental care and warns us all that keeping the general population in a state of fear, even  an imagined one,  is a means of controlling that population.  He begins by quoting George Orwell as saying, "Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.", while initiating a debate that needs to happen.

Approximately the first forty pages of the novel lay groundwork opening with a method of murder that becomes important later in the book and moving on to some seemingly disconnected purchases of an odd assortment of equipment.   Following this back drop the story begins and a cast of characters emerge that include the following to name a few:

George Morton - an odd ball millionaire philanthropist

Nicholas Drake - the director of a large environmental fundraising organization

Peter Evans - Morton's personal attorney, young,  not real coordinated  and the main character of the book.

Sarah Jones - Morton's knock out personal secretary

John Kenner - a national security agent

Sanjong Thapa - Kenner's associate

Jennifer Haynes - an attorney who is much more than she first appears.

More curious events that as yet seem unrelated lead us to the end of the first section titled "Akama" as the group make plans to travel to Anartica.

Does the book offer a central idea or premise?  

What are the problems or issues raised? 

Are they personal, spiritual, societal, global, political, economic, medical, scientific?  

Do the issues affect your life?

How so—directly, on a daily basis, or more generally? 

Now or sometime in the future?  

What kind of language does the author use?

Is it objective and dispassionate? 

Or passionate and earnest?

Is it polemical, inflammatory, sarcastic? 

Does the language help or undercut the author's premise?  

Does the author—or can you—draw implications for the future? 

Are there long- or short-term consequences to the problems or issues raised in the book?

If so, are they positive or negative? 

Affirming or frightening?  

Does the author—or can you—offer solutions to the problems or issues raised in the book? 

Who would implement those solutions? 

How probable is

success?

Death and Restoration

 From the book group we had a multiply:

Death and Restoration

by 

Iain Pears

hosted by

Starfishred

Discussion blogs:

                                week one

                                interview with the author

                                background video

                                background post 

                                video two 

June 30, 2009

Since I am co hosting at BAM again July 09, I need a recent photo for the front page. I had a date with Mark tonight so was more "done up" than usual and got a few pictures.

Book For The Week of 6/22/09

Grow Old Along With Me The Best Is Yet To Be

Edited by

Sandra Haldeman Martz

From the Publisher

GROW OLD ALONG WITH ME-THE BEST IS YET TO BE is a celebration of aging as only Sandra Martz (editor of the million-copy bestseller WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN I SHALL WEAR PURPLE) can bring us. This honest, vibrant, and heartwarming collection of writings from both women and men explores the journey through midlife and into old age. "The voices of older Americans come through loud, clear, and artistic." (Mother Jones)

From grandmothers coaxing their muscles in dance class to fathers challenging sons in the games of baseball and of life, from a love-struck widow seeking predictions from a mysterious fortune teller to a woman tenderly reassuring her husband that she has "no hunger for young flesh," the voices in this unique volume reach beyond the page to touch our hearts, enrich our souls, and transform our perception of aging.

Whether newlyweds or celebrating milestone anniversaries, this charming collection, "written from experience and from the heart" (Publishers Weekly), will be a cherished gift. The audiocassette edition was a 1996 Grammy finalist. --This text refers to the Paperback edition. 

(The last few poems I have posted have been from this anthology.  Click on the title to find the book available for purchase.  Click on the editor's name to learn more about her.)

Poem For The Week of 6/22/09

Wisdom Women

by

CB Follett

Old women, you were the lattice

for new growing vines, used to tell

how fire was kindled, blazed,

how the years turned and seasons

swelled with new growth.

Dark eyes nearly hidden

you kept the secrets.  Waited.

Planned when to fish, plant,

harvest the tall grain. You

instructed girls in the mysteries

of blood and sex,

birth, children.  You held the moon

on a silken thread, tugged it 

around Earth so cycles interwove

with songs you sang by dark-night

while the moon slept, the sky lit

with thousands of stone fires.

You chanted our histories,

how we moved

across land and streambed to come here,

and when we moved from here, as spring

heated the land, this too would you braid

into the story, spinning it out

in thick plaits.

Now, old women don't tell us

what is carried in their wisdoms.

They live silent,

separate from the rest of us

and the long call of the owl is far.

I won't be online to post with the Poetry Wednesday Group I have enjoyed so much but wanted to post a poem when I was able to be here in case any regulars wander by checking on me.   Click on the poets name to learn more about her.

A Special Update For Those Who Miss Me

Perhaps you noticed I have not been around much the last few days?   I have decided to use the time that I normally enjoy wasting it doing fun things on my computer to work toward getting my RN.  I am currently an LPN and have always thought I would get my RN and even have started a few times.   It seemed like every time I did start I would end up in the throes of a divorce or some other life changing event that took up my time and energy.   This time it's now or never as I am now in my early 50s.   I decided to go the distant learning route as working full time it seems to be the way for me.   Being a person who likes to spend time alone with her nose in a book makes it a do able route to proceed.  So I got set up this past Friday night with the College Network and began my work.  I am finally done making index cards for chapter one.  I started Friday night after work and finished up this afternoon.   The chapter was fifteen pages long and I wrote out 120 index cards.   I hope to get through between a chapter and a  half to two chapters a week.  Which will put me at taking the Anatomy and Physiology test in about ten weeks hopefully.  Actually that is a pretty normal amount of time to get through such a class if I went to a setting where I sat in a classroom so I figure it's not so bad to expect it to take that long to sink in by myself.  I will just keep plunking away.    The good news is that of those 120 index cards the vast majority of them are things I either know pretty well because I use it a lot,  or things I know fairly well because I remember them,  or things that I need to brush up on because I have forgotten but I do remember learning at some point.   So while there is a vast amount of information,  I know most of it to one degree or another already.   It is a good thing that I am not trying to process this much NEW information.  I would be overwhelmed.    The other good news is that I really find the subject matter  interesting.  I can just get lost doing the homework.   But while it is not hard work it is tedious work so I will have to stick to it.   I tend to make index cards for a paragraph and then get up and do a sink of dishes and then do another paragraph and get up and fold a load of laundry.  That sort of thing.   But it is better to do a little and rest my mind I think.  I hope to be done with the entire thing in-between  a year and a half to two years.   I will be checking in here at MP a couple times a week on my days off and see how you all are doing.  

 

DISCUSSION ON DEATH AND RESTORATION-by IAIN PEARS

From the book group we had on multiply:

I THOUGHT I WOULD PUT THE QUESTIONS UP SO YOU CAN ALL ANSWERE THEM AT YOUR LEISURE

1.IN GENERAL HOW DID YOU LIKE THE WAY IAIN PEARS PRESENTED THIS BOOK?

2.DID YOU LEARN A LITTLE ABOUT RESTURATION OF ART IN ROME AND A LITTLE ABOUT ICONS.

3.HOW WAS THE CHARACTER JOHNATHAN ARGYLE?

4.DOES HE MAKE THE CHARACTER OF FLAVIA DE STEFANO AND HER DEPARTMENT COME ALIVE FOR YOU?

5.DID ANYONE GUESS WHO DID IT EARLY ON?

6,DOES THIS STORY MAKE YOU MORE INTERESTED IN HIS OTHER WRITINGS?

Poetry Wednesday 6/10/90

Hands
by
Michael Andrews

This year my hands turned old.

I can see the grief in them ---
the scars, of course, stand out
skin flayed by knives and glass and bites
and the blisters big as half dollars
ripped from the calluses by the high bar
and the shovels and axes and hammers
shaping the earth,
but the earth always wins.

I can see the wars in them
Vietnam and Iran and Nicaragua and Bangladesh.
I can see the years of poverty
the inability to get published.
I can see Flo's cancer
and my blackouts
and all the creditors
and promises lost.

I can see the victories in them
small
and mixed with little scars.

The nails have turned to ridges,
each one a plowed field
waiting for a harvest that will never come.
They were never strong, but my hands are.
They are big and they are kind.
I guess they could be described as capable hands.

They have made so many things.
I used them to shape wood and books
to sculpture a poem and print a picture.
They have done their share of plumbing
and automobile mechanics, electrical wiring
and, yes, squeezing triggers.

They are coarse hands, but they are gentle.
They are magic for cat's ears
and dog's rumps and tickling children.
They are healers too.
They can rub the pain away
the fear
and the tears.

I saw them change early in the spring.
I thought it was darkroom chemicals,
the gasoline and the lacquer thinner.
I saw the skin go leather
textured and knobby
with rivers of wrinkles and lines
and five years of hard living.
I rubbed them with enough grease to pack an axle.
Not a single hand cream worked s advertised.
I changed detergents.
Nothing helped.

Driving into L.A. on the Harbor Freeway
my hands were caught in that fierce
morning sun
and they were old.
These days
when they have nothing to do
they are hiding in my pockets
or laying in the shade.

Still,
they are big and clumsy and friendly.

The kind of hands that brush tears away.

(click on the poet's name and follow the link to learn more about him) Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on e

 Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on Laurita's page

Book Tuesday 6/9/09

Dude Where's My Country
by
Michael Moore

(From the website of Barne's and Nobel:)

If Moore's earlier work Stupid White Men didn't shake up the Bush administration, this latest exposé is another shout for attention. Moore, whose credits include the bestseller Downsize This! and the award-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine," challenges Dubya to either step down or explain his 25-year involvement with the bin Laden family, his relationship to the Saudi royal family, the Taliban's visit to Texas, and the Saudi connection to 9/11. He also attempts to sort out Bush's web of tall Texas tales regarding Saddam Hussein and the war in Iraq. In addition to pages of notes and credits, Moore includes a helpful chapter called "How to talk to your conservative brother-in-law." Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR 

(I enjoy Michael Moore's sense of humor and found that even though  written prior to the election of 2004 listening to this book on audio was a delightful way to spend my commute the last couple weeks.  The back ground information was interesting as was realizing that some of the foresight was correct as now proven by history.  Be sure and click on the title of the book to read an excerpt and to click on the author's name to learn more about him.)

VIDEO ON ICONS AND THEIR MEANING TO THE CHRISTIAN WORLD-

From our book group we had on multiply:


THOUGHT I WOULD PUT UP A LITTLE VIDEO ON ICONS AND WHAT THEY MEAN TO THE CHRISTIAN WORLD

OUR BOOK IS ABOUT A MISSING ICON SO ENJOY

Stolen From Suz!

You are The Hermit

Prudence, Caution, Deliberation.

The Hermit points to all things hidden, such as knowledge and inspiration,hidden enemies. The illumination is from within, and retirement from participation in current events.

The Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. You do not desire to socialize; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. You prefer to take the time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent but these feelings eventually lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity.

The Hermit represents a wise, inspirational person, friend, teacher, therapist. This a person who can shine a light on things that were previously mysterious and confusing.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

The Serpent On The Crown

from our book group on multiply

The Serpent On The Crown

by

Elizabeth Peters

hosted by 

Starfishred

Discussion Blogs:

                                 Week One

                                 Week Two

Links:

                                 Background

                                 Videos

                                 More Videos

                                 Author Interview

Creek Mary's Blood

From our book group on Multiply:

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Literature & Fiction
Author:	Dee Brown

This novel concerns Mary Musgrove who was the Creek wife of John Musgrove, an Indian Trader who had a trading post near the Savannah River when Oglethorpe brought the first settlers to Georgia in 1731. After Mary's husband was killed, she was eventually forced to abandon her home and people. The novel sets out the problems she encountered and follows her children (Mary's Blood) on the trail of tears westward and ends up with some of her descendants involved in the battle of Little Big Horn. This novel transports the reader into the person of Mary Musgrove and allows us to feel the pains endured by the natives of this country during a period of disgraceful acts committed by some of our forefathers in the name of patriotism.

Book Tuesday -06/02/09

The Balance Wheel

by 

Taylor Caldwell

Back in about 1976  I watched a mini series on television based on a novel by Taylor Caldwell called Captains and The Kings.   As is often the case,  after watching a television show or movie based on a novel,  I then read the book.   In the case of Taylor Caldwell,  this meant I read several of her books.  I read:  Dynasty of Death, The Balance Wheel, The Listener, Testimony of Two Men, and Captain and Kings.   To be honest I did not care for The Listener at all and after reading it I didn't read any more of her books.   But the Balance Wheel was a book that made an impression on me.   It has been many years since I read it, and I could not find a good review to re-post, so I will try to say what impressed me about it.  (And lets hope I don't have my books mixed up!)  The Balance Wheel has two brothers in it who are running a family business that is a factory in a time when workers are rising up and forming unions.   To me, one brother represents unbridled capitalism and the workers represent socialism while the other brother is "the balance wheel".   He is the fair boss who while able to make a profit is also able to provide a living wage and decent working conditions for his employees.    The book contains a great deal of conflict over this trio of interests.   I wanted to post "The Balance Wheel"  for my Book Tuesday this week because of recent current events regarding the US auto industry.   Remember,  if you click on the author's name you will follow the link to learn more about her.  

The following is a video about the mini series that first peaked my interest in Taylor Caldwell's writing.

Poetry Wednesday 06/03/09

Illusions

by

Michael Glaser

With age, with reluctance,

I lose my illusions,

look back on those sweet desires

I imagined as prize

as though I knew

what I was being drawn into.

Only late am I learning

what attention must be paid

and how help comes

not to blaze a path of light

but to sustain our faltering steps,

to see us through the night.

Link back to the poetry tour on Sans Souci's page