Recently I have wanted to become more active in my church and found out that there was a team that reviewed books for the bookstore. What could be more perfect for me? So I'm finally reviewing my first book after months of procrastonating. The book entitled, Gotta Have It! is about today's world of excess and how people are trying to satisfy unmet needs of purpose, hope, and security with desiring things.
The author, Dr. Gregory Jantz also wrote; Hope, Help, and Healing for Eating Disorders and is the founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources. I hope to learn a lot about today's obsession with possession and at least think more about the purchases I make and if I really "need" what I'm buying or if I'm trying to feed another unmet need with my purchase. Like many others in my generation, I too have made purchases that were completely unnecessary and have come to regret some of those impulse buys. But, in seeing how many toys many children have today and how silly it is that they have so many toys that some never really get played with, I have made a decision to not do the same with my own children. I know their grandparents will spoil them, but I won't buy them so many things that they cannot appreciate the value of what they already have. This may seem a bit lofty a goal for my future children, but I think it will teach them many lessons: to share what they do have, to appreciate what they have, to take care of what they have, and to only request what they really, really want.
Well, I'll keep you up to date with this book, since I have to return it in two weeks, I'll have more blogs too. I really do want to keep this blog up in the hopes that some people will read books they might not have because of my reviews.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
So I'm reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo now and I kind of got into it by accident. My mom and dad were visiting friends in North Carolina and my mom wound up coming home with this book. Her friend Mary said she'd love it, but my mom doesn't have that much time to read, so she ended up giving it to me because she knew I would read it. So, Mary, this review is for you.
My mom's issue with the book was so many characters with names that were hard to pronounce. Well, the book does take place in the Sweden, so I'll give her that one. But once I got into the two main characters, or the two characters I feel are the most pivotal: Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, it was impossible for me to quit reading the book.
So far all I know is Salander is working for an agency that essentially finds out information about people, but good dirt, like a detective agency. So Salander has been hired through her company to follow Mikael. In the meantime, Mikael Blomkvist is holed away in some estate in another city researching a family murder mystery for a very wealthy man.
Apparently Blomkvist has made a name for himself as the part owner of a financial magazine that is bent on seeking the truth about all of the CEOs of large companies and other financial superstars. He went to trial for some information he spilled about a wealthy hedge fund guy. The wealthy guy won the slander trial and so Mikael has to spend some time away from his magazine and also some time in jail.
Before he goes to jail, he is propositioned by a very wealthy man who might be able to help him get real dirt on the hedge fund guy, if he writes a bio tell-all for this man, but that is all as a guise for solving a family murder mystery that the wealthy man has spent his life trying to solve.
I don't know what is going to happen, but I have a feeling Salander is somehow mysteriously related to the wealthy guy's missing/murdered family member. No spoilers, I will find out how it ends the right way, by reading it!
My mom's issue with the book was so many characters with names that were hard to pronounce. Well, the book does take place in the Sweden, so I'll give her that one. But once I got into the two main characters, or the two characters I feel are the most pivotal: Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, it was impossible for me to quit reading the book.
So far all I know is Salander is working for an agency that essentially finds out information about people, but good dirt, like a detective agency. So Salander has been hired through her company to follow Mikael. In the meantime, Mikael Blomkvist is holed away in some estate in another city researching a family murder mystery for a very wealthy man.
Apparently Blomkvist has made a name for himself as the part owner of a financial magazine that is bent on seeking the truth about all of the CEOs of large companies and other financial superstars. He went to trial for some information he spilled about a wealthy hedge fund guy. The wealthy guy won the slander trial and so Mikael has to spend some time away from his magazine and also some time in jail.
Before he goes to jail, he is propositioned by a very wealthy man who might be able to help him get real dirt on the hedge fund guy, if he writes a bio tell-all for this man, but that is all as a guise for solving a family murder mystery that the wealthy man has spent his life trying to solve.
I don't know what is going to happen, but I have a feeling Salander is somehow mysteriously related to the wealthy guy's missing/murdered family member. No spoilers, I will find out how it ends the right way, by reading it!
Monday, March 22, 2010
My Lobotomy
This book is amazing! It only took me one week to read and I literally could not put the book down. My Lobotomy was written by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. It is Howard Dully's memoir of his life leading up to and after receiving an "ice pick" lobotomy.
Howard's mother died when he was young and his father remarried a woman who was nothing like the loving mother Howard vaguely remembers. The step-mother tolerated Howard for a short period of time and then began a violent vengeance against him, that existed until the day she died. By all accounts, Howard was an energetic young boy who got into some trouble here and there. Nothing that would make someone want to discard him or even medically disable him. Since the story is written from Howard's point of view, there is no telling what may have really happened in his childhood home. But his father worked to make ends meet and was never at home, and the angry step-mother berated and beat poor Howard.
The step-mother, Lou, then began trying to pawn Howard off onto neighbors who took in unwanted children. When that no longer worked, Lou conviced Howard's father to look for some other place to take Howard in, citing financial burden as the reason. Lou was not satisfied, so she began visiting psychiatrists and therapists, seeking a cure for Howard's problems. The "problems" were non-existent so most doctors blamed Lou for what was happening and even went so far as to suggest she needed help. That was the last straw. Lou finally found a doctor that was willing to listen and work with her, his name was Dr. Walter Freeman, famous for the invention of the "ice pick" lobotomy that was shunned by others in the medical profession.
In the end, Lou got what she wanted. Howard's father consented and paid $200 for Howard's outpatient lobotomy. It was administerd by electroshocking the patient into a comatose state and then lifting the eye lid and forcing an ice pick like instrument between the eye and the ocular cavity. It was often unsuccessful and even cause death for many patients. Howard was lucky in that he didn't die, but he spend the next 20 years of his life in and out of asylums and juvenile detention facilities. In some cases he was sent to schools for "special" children.
But, a lobotomy is never the cure for normal child like behavior. Howard finally ended up on the streets, drug addicted and an alcoholic. He was constantly burdened with the thought that he may have been a terrible person or committed some heinous crime in order to deserve a lobotomy at the age of 12. He then spent the next 10 or so years trying to find out what happened and why he was given a transorbital lobotomy. The rest of the book is devoted to Howard's pursuit of the truth before all the people involved in his life as a child died. It is terribly sad, but somehow uplifting. It is a must read for those of you that are interested in memoirs and the life histories of troubled people, or vicitims of ignorance.
Howard's mother died when he was young and his father remarried a woman who was nothing like the loving mother Howard vaguely remembers. The step-mother tolerated Howard for a short period of time and then began a violent vengeance against him, that existed until the day she died. By all accounts, Howard was an energetic young boy who got into some trouble here and there. Nothing that would make someone want to discard him or even medically disable him. Since the story is written from Howard's point of view, there is no telling what may have really happened in his childhood home. But his father worked to make ends meet and was never at home, and the angry step-mother berated and beat poor Howard.
The step-mother, Lou, then began trying to pawn Howard off onto neighbors who took in unwanted children. When that no longer worked, Lou conviced Howard's father to look for some other place to take Howard in, citing financial burden as the reason. Lou was not satisfied, so she began visiting psychiatrists and therapists, seeking a cure for Howard's problems. The "problems" were non-existent so most doctors blamed Lou for what was happening and even went so far as to suggest she needed help. That was the last straw. Lou finally found a doctor that was willing to listen and work with her, his name was Dr. Walter Freeman, famous for the invention of the "ice pick" lobotomy that was shunned by others in the medical profession.
In the end, Lou got what she wanted. Howard's father consented and paid $200 for Howard's outpatient lobotomy. It was administerd by electroshocking the patient into a comatose state and then lifting the eye lid and forcing an ice pick like instrument between the eye and the ocular cavity. It was often unsuccessful and even cause death for many patients. Howard was lucky in that he didn't die, but he spend the next 20 years of his life in and out of asylums and juvenile detention facilities. In some cases he was sent to schools for "special" children.
But, a lobotomy is never the cure for normal child like behavior. Howard finally ended up on the streets, drug addicted and an alcoholic. He was constantly burdened with the thought that he may have been a terrible person or committed some heinous crime in order to deserve a lobotomy at the age of 12. He then spent the next 10 or so years trying to find out what happened and why he was given a transorbital lobotomy. The rest of the book is devoted to Howard's pursuit of the truth before all the people involved in his life as a child died. It is terribly sad, but somehow uplifting. It is a must read for those of you that are interested in memoirs and the life histories of troubled people, or vicitims of ignorance.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
It has been way too long since I have gotten back to my blog. Work has kept me really busy, but I was inspired and felt like writing tonight.
When the Tim Burton version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was coming out, I knew I had to see it. I loved watching the Disney film and felt that Tim Burton could work wonders with that template and make a much more adult-feeling version of the children's classic. But, like any bibliophile, I had to re-read the Carroll classic first. I was not surprised that it was full of the same strange characters, but I was happily surprised to find I had not remembered much of the story as Carroll imagined it.
Not only did Alice follow a white rabbit, but she also heard the story of Father William, spyed on a fish and a frog footman, and danced a lobster quadrille with the mock turtle and a gryphon. If you too forgot these wonderfully silly parts of the story I recommend you pick up a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and re-read the strange children's classic.
I'm not sure if Carroll intended this as a story about the dangers of drugs and drinking on the youth, as Jefferson Airplane thought. But I know there is more to it than a quirky and nonsensical story. Maybe the short afterward written as the thoughts of Alice's older sister are the true intentions of the whole story. Maybe, it is just a plea for grown-ups to remember what it was like to be a child.
When the Tim Burton version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was coming out, I knew I had to see it. I loved watching the Disney film and felt that Tim Burton could work wonders with that template and make a much more adult-feeling version of the children's classic. But, like any bibliophile, I had to re-read the Carroll classic first. I was not surprised that it was full of the same strange characters, but I was happily surprised to find I had not remembered much of the story as Carroll imagined it.
Not only did Alice follow a white rabbit, but she also heard the story of Father William, spyed on a fish and a frog footman, and danced a lobster quadrille with the mock turtle and a gryphon. If you too forgot these wonderfully silly parts of the story I recommend you pick up a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and re-read the strange children's classic.
I'm not sure if Carroll intended this as a story about the dangers of drugs and drinking on the youth, as Jefferson Airplane thought. But I know there is more to it than a quirky and nonsensical story. Maybe the short afterward written as the thoughts of Alice's older sister are the true intentions of the whole story. Maybe, it is just a plea for grown-ups to remember what it was like to be a child.
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