On the bedside table July 7 to 20

I know, it's a two week list this time, but as you'll see, I had a lot of reading to do!  I didn't even finish one book (You're Not So Smart) before it had to go back to the library.

Here's what I've read in the last two weeks

Success Secrets of Sherlock Holmes (Acord) - An interesting book taking characteristics and habits of the fictional Sherlock Holmes and showing how we mortals can use them to be more successful in our lives.  I found the snippets of information about Conan Doyle more interesting than the self-help tips, most of which were pretty standard fare -- do what you love, pay attention to the details, etc. My take-away: I need to re-read the Sherlock Holmes books as I feel some of the traits Acord was lauding were ones that I had found grating when reading the books. 

A Wolf at the Table (Burroughs) -- I love Augesten Burroughs. LOVE him.  I've loved every book I've read by him.  That said, I often mix him up with David Sedaris, who I often confuse with Dave Eggers.  Anyway, this is a haunting memoir about the author's experience of growing up with a father who was clearly quite mentally ill, and how his mother tried to protect him in the best way she could at a time when a married woman didn't have a lot of options.  Burroughs tried vainly to elicit love from his father and the stories are sad, scary and sometimes funny.  Eventually Burrough's mother loses her grip on sanity as well, leaving him effectively orphaned and under the care of a tremendously unstable doctor (see his book Running with Scissors.  Don't see the movie, it's not good.).  Despite the abuse and disinterest Burroughs received from his father, he still tried to get the love and attention he so desperately craved right to the end of his father's life. Kudos to Augusten for turning out as well as he did and writing such great books. My take-away: Living with a crazy person can make you crazy.

The Last Apprentice series (Delaney) -- THIS is why it took two weeks to post.  I randomly picked up book 3 of this series and enjoyed it so I ordered the rest from the library, assuming they would come in at a leisurely pace. They all came in on the same day.  So I had seven books to read and luckily they were interesting enough that I read them all in one go.  Phew.  The basic premises is that the renowned Spook in the area (a Spook is a person who deals with the dark, driving away ghosts, battling witches and trying to make the area safe) has trained 30 apprentices, many of whom didn't survive, and hasn't found one that can replace him.  He takes on Tom Ward as his last apprentice and throughout the series they battle various forms of evil with the help of a young witch, Alice.  My favourite character doesn't appear until about book 4 or 5 -- Grimalkin, the witch assassin who swears she will kill Tom but ends up being his ally.  My take-away: only order one book at a time . . . .

On the bedside table, June 30 to July 6

My job recently lent me an Ipad to trial an application for work.  It's been interesting to have one.  Maybe I'm not using it right or something but I seriously don't understand the appeal of them.  I've downloaded some apps but the Ipad is too bulky to take with me everywhere, making the apps that seem most useful (Evernote etc.) much less useful.  One app I am liking is Overdrive because it lets me download books from the library.  So this week's books were downloaded and read on my Ipad.
Oh yeah, we downloaded Angry Birds as well. Stupid birds. I may never sleep again.

NurtureShock (Bronson/Merryman) -- ah, this is one of those books that I've read before and forgot until I was well into it and it all seemed familiar.  It's an interesting book about how a lot of the common wisdom we use in raising children (praise heavily to increase self-esteem, not talking about race will make children "colour blind") are wrong and actually cause the opposite effect.  I enjoyed the information in the book (yay information!) but then felt anxious and unsettled because I obviously caused my children great harm (because I belive in full catastrophe thinking) by following what seemed like the best parenting ideas at the time.  So, it's a good read for the information but not if you're looking for parenting support and tend to be insecure anyway.  My take-away: interesting bit about how babies actually learn new words which I'll revisit now that Carson is starting to talk.

Nerd Do Well (Pegg) -- I love Simon Pegg's movies. I think Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are hysterical.  And I wanted to like this book, I really did.  Unfortunately, I couldn't even finish it.  He intersperces his biographical bits with some fictious bits where he is a superhero? with a robot butler.  I ended up just skipping those bits but even with doing that it just  . . . drug.  In the introduction he mentions that writing a biography seems a little self-important and would try to downplay that aspect of it.  Which he did to the point where it wasn't intersting.  Normally I would perservere but a HUGE stack of library books, all with non-renewable return dates and the promise of something interesting inside them finally made me give up on this one.  A third through the book and he was still around 10.  My take-away: Just because someone can write a funny movie doesn't mean they can write an interesting book.

On the bedside table June 23 to 30

ugh! Not much reading done this week as the family (except for Aaron) has been down with gasteroentinitis, which is Latin for "Sucks to be you".  I only finished one book.

Peter and the Shadow Thieves (Barry/Pearson) -- The next book in the prequels to Peter Pan, I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first, but that might be because I was reading it between vomiting spells.  In this book Peter returns to London to warn Molly (from the first book) that she's in danger.  He briefly meets J M Barrie, author of the original Peter Pan, and we are introduced to George Darling. My take-away: Don't read while you're sick, just rest. Or your dreams get weird.

On the bedside table* June 14 to 22

Although I call this blog "wilditude", the sharp-eyed may not that the website is "bookgeekbabe.blogspot.com".  That's because I am a huge book geek. (And a moderate babe).  I LOOOOOOOOOVVVVVEEEE  books.  So much.  Reading is my number one form of entertainment and stress relief.  I don't drink, take drugs, watch much TV, or exercise and I'm trying not to over-eat (HA!) so my first and last line of stress relief is reading. 

Many years back, my work sent me on a speed reading course.  I'd asked for a course on team leading but apparently speed reading is close enough - maybe because they kind of rhyme?  In any case, before I took this course I was a fast reader at 700 words a minute.  Now, depending on the type of book, I can get up to 2,000 words a minute, although reading too long at that speed makes me kind of dizzy. I still have 93% comprehension and 85% retention at that speed.  This is pretty much my sole claim to fame. 

I've often thought I should keep a book journal where I can record the books I read and what I thought of them. I usually read several books a week and, since I read so much, I sometimes find once I start a book that I've already it.  Disappointing!  Anyway, I've tried keeping a journal in various notebooks but I tend to get one or two entries in and then misplace the notebook, or forget, or let the kids draw in it, or spill tea on it . . . .

Last night it occurred to me -- I could keep a list on this blog!  Sometimes I amaze myself.  So here are the books I have read in the last week:

*"Bedside table" also means floor beside the bed, back of the toilet, passenger seat of the car . . .

Brain Rules (John Medina) -- Interesting book on how the brain works.  I enjoy books like this although what they mostly say is "We have no idea why the brain works the way it does."  Which this one mostly said.  What I liked about it was that the author set out 12 "brain rules", devoting a chapter to each one, and at then end of each chapter summarized the content and made recommendation on how to change school/work life to optimize our brain power.  My take-away: Chapter 1 was about how our brains evolved to work best while our body was in motion, so maybe I should reconsider exercising.  May also explain why exercise is so helpful for people with anxiety, depression and ADHD.

Guitar Zero (Gary Marcus) -- Another brain book, although I didn't realize it at the time.  I had ordered a bunch of books on guitar playing from the library for Aaron and this was among them.  The author was approaching his 40th birthday with a burning desire to learn to play guitar and absolutely no musical skill, in fact he is congentially arrhythmic. He is also a brain researching guy (I can't remember his actual title and I've taken the book back to the library), so he decided to take a brain researching approach to learning to play.  It was interesting to see the impact music has on the brain, and how difficult it is to explain!  My take-away: I'm not going to learn music because holy cow! it seems hard.  And I have a much greater appreciation for my guitar-playing man.

Tanglewreck (Jeanette Winterson) -- A  YA fantasy novel set in 2009 London that involves time tornados, worm holes, time travel and parallel universes.  I thought the book was kind of interesting, although the protagonist, Silver, is an 11 year old girl and I had a hard time following the time manipulation plot so I suspect most children would have a hard time too.  My take-away: In the "holding area" (300 years away and in another galaxy) there is a cat named Dinger, as in Schrodinger, who is sometimes dead and sometimes alive. This is cool.

Peter and the Starcatchers -- Dave Barry and Ridley Scott wrote the "prequel" to Peter Pan and, while I love both of their work individually, I was prepared to be disappointed as prequels tend to have an afterthought feel to them, or you can see so clearly where they are going that it's barely worth reading.  This one was great! The story was awesome stand-alone but also nicely tied in the Peter Pan story details we are familiar with. Excellent characters, good action and lots of humour.  My take-away: I totally wish I'd though of the name "Black Stache" for a pirate name.

The Woman Who Changed Her Brain (Barbara Arrowsmith-Young) -- Another brain book -- what was with me this week?  I should be super smart about the brain now.  This was an interesting book about Barbara who was severely learning disabled throughout her school years yet managed to achieve a graduate degree through sheer determination and mind-numbingly hard work. As an adult she heard of some research in which researchers where able to change the make-up of rats brains through training.  Using herself as a guinea pig, she developed training exercises to learn to tell time on a clock, something she had never been able to do.  She found that not only was she able to (with a LOT of hard work) learn to tell time but doing this also helped with other seemingly unrelated difficulties with symbolism, speech etc.  She eventually opened several Arrowsmith schools where people of all ages can learn to overcome their cognitive difficulties. The book highlights the journeys of several students and draws a good picture of the shadow LD can cast over an entire life, and how it can change when the LD is addressed.  My take-away:  Two really.  1-- Sam has poor handwriting and maybe some of the tracing excercises they have their students do would be helpful.   2.  I wish I had the money to send Nathan to this school because I think he would benefit the most.

Wallowing in the Rain

This picture doesn't have much to do with my subject, except that ducks like rain.

It never rains but it pours.  The mysterious "they" say that and I have to agree.  Things have been rough around here.  Money's tight, kids are difficult, and I've run out of the energy and gumption to keep it all going.  It feels like it's one step forward, five steps back.

I topped it off by getting into a car accident.  A minor one, no one hurt. A fender bender, however the other fender is apparently going to cost $1,200 (accident was my fault). And I have a grand total of $3 in the bank right now. It's enough to send me to my bed for a week except, of course, that's not an option for me.  I have to pull up my boots and keep on going.

Everyone is saying it will get better. Money will get better, kids will get better.  Maybe but right now I don't want to hear it will get better, because I know it may not. It hasn't for a while now.  Right now I want to wallow in my misery.  I want to cry and moan and picture life living on the street as we get kicked out of our home because we have no money and the kids are so bad.  I want to consider whether life as a crack whore would be better than this (I get overly dramatic when I'm in this mood).

This is what I don't want to hear:

Everything will get better.
Stiff upper lip!
Every cloud has a silver lining.
It could be worse (especially if this is followed by a story of someone who has it worse than me).

When I'm in pain, I want to be allowed to feel my pain, not be told to suck it up or get over it, which is what those responses, however nicely phrased, are saying.

This is what I do want to hear:

This is hard.
This sucks.
Life isn't fair.
You don't deserve this.
I love you.

So, if you're going through hard times, take a bit of time to wallow if you need to.  Because life is hard, this isn't fair, and you (probably) don't deserve this. And I love you.

*Note: this was better the first time I wrote it. Then my computer froze when I went to add the picture and it was lost, because THAT'S THE WAY MY LIFE HAS BEEN GOING. So, always hit the save button.

When I die it will probably be because someone who said they loved me didn't step up to the plate .. .

Me:  If someone kidnapped me, what would you do to get me back?

Aaron: Whatever they want me to do.  You know, within reason.

Me:  What do you mean "within reason"?  What would be unreasonable to save the life of the woman you love, who also happens to be the mother of your child?

Aaron:  I don't know but there's probably something that would cross the line.

Me: Would you have sex with 6 men?

Aaron:  What?

Me: Would you have sex with 6 men to save my life?

Aaron: Why would 6 men kidnap you to force me to have sex with them?

Me: I don't know, kidnappers are a mysterious, twisted bunch.  Would you do it?

Aaron:  Am I pitcher or catcher?

Me: Both. 3 pitching and 3 catching.

Aaron: Depends.  Would Carson ever find out?

Me: He might, if the kidnappers taped it and put it on the internet and some day in the future he's looking at gay porn sites and comes across it.

Aaron: No, I meant would he ever find out I let you die?

Pitiful.  For the record, I would have sex with 6 men to save his life.  BECAUSE I'M THAT SELF-SACRIFICING. But only if they were going to kill him, because I'm also faithful. Except in life or death situation.

i can assure you, i was totally freaked out

I've had a few rough days but I found this video and it makes everything better.  Just to note, I don't speak French but there are subtitles (although some stupid ad covers part of them and you have to click the x to get rid of it). 

I watch this and laugh and laugh and feel better.  Then I think about how I'm laughing at baby ducks being blown around and feel bad because I'm obviously a terrible person.  So I have to watch it again so I feel better.