Mother Teresa by Navin Chawla

I was completely and totally humbled and even shamed by this book. It was wonderful, yet it makes me so sad. Mother Teresa and her sisters of the Missionaries of Charity gave up absolutely everything so that they could be on an equal level with the poor, diseased and dying people they serve. They have no more material possessions than the clothes they are wearing and maybe a toothbrush. It makes me ashamed of how materialistic I can be, and I pride myself, on NOT being that materialistic. Their lives are about Christ and the people they serve, and that fills them up completely. All I can say is GOD BLESS THEM!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I guess this blog should really be called "What Kristin Has Read" since I wait until I finish something before I post about it. I was reading The Road before I read Harry Potter 7, but some things take precidence, and HP is one of them. Anyhow, since I finished Harry, I went back to the Road and finished it up as well. I liked it. It was an interesting story, about the relationship between a man and his son, after the world as we know it has ended and they are some of the last people on earth. I loved the innate goodness of the boy, whereas the man has become jaded and suspicious, yet the boy remains compassionate and hopeful. Their relationship is quite beautiful and pure and the man does the best he can to protect the boy from the harsh realities that surround them. It does end up happily, in a way, and overall, I was pleased. My only complaint would be that McCarthy doesn't really give you any background information about them, and you're never sure why all the other people died. Nuclear bomb? Plague? What gives?

Harry Potter # 7

Well, for most of the last two days, I've been reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I finished it last night. Very satisfying. If I had been JK Rowling, this is exactly how I would have ended it. I even liked the epilogue, which some people were complaining about. Come on people! It's not the Lord of the Rings! I think it might even be the best book in the series, but they're all pretty good. Maybe I'll read all of them again sometime. Anyhow, HP#7 takes its place on my bookshelf and awaits for Katherine and Caroline to become old enough to read it. Well done JK! You rock!

The Read Aloud Handbook By Jim Trelease

Every once in a while I read a book that inspires me to change the way I do things. This is definitely one of those books and I highly recommend it to all parents. I've always thought we were pretty good about reading to our kids, and both Katherine and Caroline have fairly large vocabularies for their age, but it's stumped me that although she loves being read to, Katherine doesn't particularly care to read. Why is that? Well Trelease's book has given me a new prespective on things, and I'm so glad I bought it. I've implemented a nightly ritual where both the girls can read 15 minutes after being put to bed before I turn the lights off. Trelease's idea and it's working great. I've also started reading to them even more, even Ben too, though he get different kinds of books. We read for probably a good 45 minutes to an hour broken up thoughout the day. I think this has already made positive changes in our family, and I love reading to them as much as they like hearing it.

Loving Your Children Is Not Enough

Okay, I've read a few things since my last post, but with the move and all, I've forgotten what they were. So forgive me for putting this latest book and skipping all the others. It's another parenting book and it's a really really good one. I bought a couple of this authors books to help me deal with some anger issues that constantly get in my way as a mom. This book makes perfect sense, and when I remember to do things like the book told me to, it works. It's so good that I think I need to read it all over again, because it was a few months ago when I actually started it. So that's on my to do list. Highly, highly recommended if you are a parent.

Alphabet of Thorns by Patricia McKillip

Okay, this was my first Patricia McKillip book. And it was pretty good. There have been fantasy books that I've read that I've found more compelling, but it was well written and had an interesting premise, free of the the traditional fantasy characters, like dragons, ogres, elves, etc. I got it from the library so that encouraged me to finish it quickly so I wouldn't have to renew. It was basically a story of a girl who was an orphan, and raised by librarians to become a scribe/translator, who, in interpreting this book written in a secret language only she can understand, finds out that her real parents are actually a king and his lover from long ago and they are going to come through time to take over the land she lives in and make her queen. In a nutshell, anyway. There's more to it than that, but I didn't want to make the world's longest run on sentence. I give it a B+.

Coraline By Neil Gaiman

Is a very creepy book. It's a kids book, written for about 4th to 6th grade, I would guess. I finished it this morning. It's a story about a girl who inadvertantly wanders into a parallel world on the other side of her flat, and ends up having to go back to it to save her parents from her "other mother" who has taken them hostage so that Coraline will be her daughter. I thought it was great. Definitely one of the better kids books I've read. Katherine wants me to read the whole thing to her, and I've already started to, but I'm not sure she's ready for such a scary book. It's not gory or anything, just really weird.

Danse Macabre

Okay. I'm going to finally lay the Anita Blake books to rest in my own mind. Anita's not dead in the books yet, but for me, she is. I started reading the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series more than eight years ago. For about the first five or six books I read, I really liked them. I think Danse Macabre is number 13. I love the characters Laurel K. Hamilton created and like old friends, I keep wanting to come back to them. But now I'm tired of reading about Anita's sexual exploits. I want her to solve a crime or something, but instead, she and everyone around her has become obsessed with sex, due to the ardeur. I just don't enjoy reading the books anymore. Don't get me wrong, a little sex is okay, I'm not a prude, but come on, LKH! She is seriously sacrificing what used to be a really great series on the altar of self indulgence. I'm done now.

Unstrange Minds

New book to report. It's called Unstrange Minds by Roy Richard Grinker. It too is about autism and they way different cultures treat autism. He goes into depth about South Korea, where autism carries a heavy stigma for all of the families affected by it. Again, the issue of confusing autism with Reactive Attachment Disorder comes up. Many South Koreans think that if you can blame Autism on bad parenting and cold mothers, then you can deny that any genes are involved and that the gene pool might be "tainted" in a particular family. Unfortunately, very little effort is focused on actually educating their autistic children as they are seen as a lost cause by many and not worth the effort. It reminded me of a conversation that I had with our next door neighbor about how, according to him Asians don't have autism (he is Filipino). He thought it was an American thing. I told him that there was most certainly autistic kids in the Philipines, but they were probably hidden, not talked about and perhaps institutionalized. I'm glad that autism is being talked about and accepted more often today. It brings hope that when Ben grows up, there will be more tolerance and compassion for him to enjoy. One controversal point this book makes is the author doesn't think there has been a significant rise in the incidence of autism. He maintains that the rate of autism has always been about the same, but it was only in the late 20th century that we've started classifying it correctly. Interesting things to think about, definitely. I recommend this book!

Autism and the God Connection

Okay, so I'm cheating a little here. I've actually read a few books since my last post and I'll catch you up. Autism and the God Connection was the first one and it wasn't a bad book. I liked it. I lent it to Ben's OT so she could read it, but it's probably not something I'm going to read more than once. It's theory is persons with autism are more closely linked with God, and can see and hear things us regular people can't. I often think Ben sees things where we can't, how else do you explain flapping at nothing? The other book I've been reading rather reluctantly is Lisey's Story by Stephen King. And I'm giving up. I don't like it. I've read about 150 pages and it's just not compelling me. I guess I'll sell it on ebay. Life is short. No sense wasting my time. I've also recently finished a book I got from the library entitled "Not Buying It". It's written by a journalist who, along with her boyfriend goes an entire year without buying anything but the most basic of needs, like food. It's written as a journal, and I liked it quite a bit. I found it inspiring. I had a garage sale this weekend and it was amazing how much stuff I've collected and paid hard earned money for that I really don't care about! So, lesson learned, at least for now.

THE COLOR OF MAGIC and LITTLE WOMEN

Well, okay so I'm cheating. I read most of the Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett but I got a little bored and couldn't concentrate to finish it. Everyone talks about how great the Discworld novels are so I thought I'd give it a shot. It was just okay. I also started reading Little Women again before Christmas, but I'm not sure I'm going to finish it. It's great and all that, but I have so many other thing to read!!! At the moment, I'm reading Strength Training for Women by Joan Pagano in an effort to start the new year out right. Rob got me Lisey's Story, the new Stephen King book, for Christmas so I'll be starting that soon too!