Well...

Too tired to read. Real jobs are hard. If I get a minute I read "The First Days of School" by Harry Wong. Really good book if you are a brand new teacher. No takers? Didn't think so. Weekend is here and I plan to spend a good deal of tomorrow reading. So more coming. If you want to know what I'm doing instead of reading you can check out my other blog.

Catching Up

I have not been reading enough lately and have vowed to give my library card a good workout this fall. To start, I checked out Mr. Vertigo, Lamb (By Christopher Moore), Book Lust and Oaxaca Journal.
Mr. Vertigo was a wild read. I found it very entertaining - it is definitely one of the most creative books I've read lately. I loved how the kid talks in this street-wise "Hey, Mista, what's the big idea?" kind of way. I really, really liked Lamb! It was a cool spin on the old, old story, and Moore has a great sense of humor. I checked out Oaxaca Journal b/c Della said she read it on vacation, and I really like other Oliver Sacks books, like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Awakenings. I will read that next.
And as for Book Lust, well, frankly Cali, if you checked out that book you would have no need for this blog!!! I have about 4 pages of a notebook filled with a 'to-read' list from it. Better get going... ;-)

Hoot

I haven't read anything else by Carl Hiaasen, but this seems very different from his other books. I did see that he has written another young adult book now, and I think Hoot has a movie. Anyway, this was a very fast read and was pretty entertaining. A great young adult novel where kids make a difference. I thought they way they went about it was sometimes questionable. After all, usually I don't see vandalism and violence getting results, but it has a happy ending. I guess if it was all peaceful protest it would be sort of a preachy book. Anyway, it's recommended if you like new kid hero stories.

The Time Traveler's Wife

This was one of Pam's book group books that looked good (so many of them do) so I grabbed it at the library. It's a little sci-fi of course...with the time travel element. But it is the kind of sci-fi that is easy to get into and you don't have to learn a whole new language to read it (those of you who have read Dune know what I'm talking about). It's mostly a character driven plot and I love the way the author sort of lets you look at their lives big picture instead of in a linear birth to death sort of way. It very circular and if I were the author I would have a hard time deciding where to start. Here's an excerpt of the main character describing his unusual problem to a friend who's not a friend yet:

"I am a time traveler. At the moment I am thirty-six years old. This afternoon was May 9, 2000. It was a Tuesday. I was at work, I had just finished a Show and tell for a bunch of Caxton Club members and I had gone back to the stacks to reshelve the books when I suddenly found myself on School Street, in 1991. I had the usual problem of getting something to wear. I hid under somebody's porch for a while. I was cold, and nobody was coming along, and finally this young guy, dressed--well, you saw how I was dressed. I mugged him, took his cash and everything he was wearing except his underwear...."
"I find myself in situations like that all the time. No pun intended. There's something wrong with me. I get dislocated in time, for no reason. I can't control it, I never know when it's going to happen, or where and when I'll end up. So in order to cope, I pick locks, shoplift, pick pockets, mug people, panhandle, break and enter, steal cars lie, fold, spindle, and mutilate. You name it, I've done it."

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Oh, my, goodness. I'm only 2/3rds of the way through this book and I had to write about it. This is the best book I've read this year.

It's non-fiction and about food production, which may not sound like the most exciting things to some of you, but this guy is great. He's a professor of Journalism at Berkeley and has written about food before (The Botany of Desire).

This is what the publisher says about the book (I can't seem to find an excerpt on line):

"Pollan has divided The Omnivore's Dilemma into three parts, one for each of the food chains that sustain us: industrialized food, alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by dint of their own hunting, gathering, or gardening. Pollan follows each food chain literally from the ground up to the table, emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the species we depend on. He concludes each section by sitting down to a meal at McDonald's, at home with his family sharing a dinner from Whole Foods, and in a revolutionary "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. For each meal he traces the provenance of everything consumed, revealing the hidden components we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods reflects our environmental and biological inheritance."

The great thing about him is that he does not condemn the farmer or the consumer. Yet, he is reminding us to consider what we are eating and where we are shopping and what that implies. Also, he does not admonish the reader for her bad eating habits after he witnesses the industrialized food chain. Pollan does want the reader to acknowledge that the price you pay for your hamburger at the grocery store is more than just the amount of money you hand over.

For those of you who read My Year of Meats or Fast Food Nation (also recommended) this is better. I can't say enough good things about this book, and you should all run out and get it from your library right away. I think I may buy it.

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