read a book a month in 2008

sometimes I do that. Finally finished “Salt Dancer” by Ursula Hegi-didn’t grab me like some others of hers. Just read a book called “Mister Pip” which was quite good. Reading Cathleen Schine’s “The New Yorkers” which I’m really enjoying—makes me feel like I’m back there, in the middle of one of my former lives. So, that’s 11 in 2008. not too bad. Maybe there’s more, but at the moment I can’t remember…

I was in need of a new book to read, and tah-dah! This one showed up in my mail today. Paul’s sister Linda finished it and wanted to pass it on. It’s infinitely sweeter to find a little hardcover book in the mail than hoards of bills and leaflets…

Persuasion
Jane Austen

I didn’t really enjoy this book as much as my all-time favourite of hers, Emma. Anne, the heroine, was a bit too sanctimonious for my liking (although Captain Wentworth was everything that a hero should be).

“Unmarried at twenty-seven, Anne Elliot fears that she is destined to be a spinster forever. The only love she ever felt was for a poor naval officer named Wentworth who proposed to her eight years ago. Because of his lack of family ties, Anne was persuaded to break off her engagement to him, and as a result ends up living with her father, Sir Walter Elliot, a self-centered baronet who rarely notices his second daughter.

Anne longs for her deceased mother as her female companions comprise mostly of her older sister, Elizabeth, who resembles their father in temperament too much for Anne’s taste, and her younger sister, Mary, who is nervous and arguably co-dependent.

Wentworth and Anne’s paths cross again when his brother-in-law, Admiral Croft, takes over the Elliot family estate. Austen, who often focused her works on themes centering on women and the gender roles of the day’s society, writes about the daily lives and interpersonal relationships between the members of this typical family. Her trademark subtle references to the irony of life and her satirical social commentary are also peppered throughout the novel, making it another of Austen’s classic works.” – Krystle Hernandez

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!”

“You pierce my soul.”

A Guide to Rational Living
by Albert Ellis, Ph.D & Robert A. Harper, Ph.D
(253 pages)

“Emotion is a life process that includes perceiving, moving, and thinking. It is a combination of several seemingly separate, yet actually closely related, element. Because you mainly react to other people, your emotion is simultaneously physiological, psychological and social.”

I shouldn’t have started reading this book because I’m still not done with May’s or April’s books. Maybe I should concentrate on reading these three before I pick up another one.

the sixth book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King was finished on my birthday. I just started the last book of this series, The Dark Tower.

I am excited, happy to come to an end and anxious to move on to something a little different. I am also a little sad that the characters that I have come to know will no longer be a part of my life.(?) Does that make sense?

Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand

The story of the man who said that he would stop the motor of the world, and did.

I don’t think I can express yet what a profound impact this book (and Rand’s personal philosophy: objectivism) has had on me. The issues that I have struggled with and the problems I have identified with the world all surfaced in this text, and were all dealt with in a manner that I will endeavour to incorporate into my own life.

Production; merit on ability rather than need; our greatest joys the result of the greatest fact of our existence; the reclamation and triumph of individual aptitude and responsibility. Wow, just wow. Highly recommended.

“Who is John Galt?”

“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors – between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.”

Last night I started reading Arcadio by William Goyen (who wrote The House of Breath in 1950). I’m not that far in yet though, my reading abounds with distractions lately!

Creative Visualization, Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life
by Shakti Gawain
(170 pages)

“Imagination is the ability to create an idea, a mental picture, or a feeling sense of something. In creative visualization you use your imagination to create a clear image, idea, or feeling of something you wish to manifest. Then you continue to focus on the idea, feeling, or picture regularly, giving it positive energy until it becomes objective reality…in other words, until you actually achieve what you have been imagining.

When we create something, we always create it first in thought form. A thought or idea always precedes manifestation. “I think I’ll make dinner” is the idea that precedes creation of a meal. “I want a new dress” precedes going and buying one; “I need a job” precedes finding one, and so on. The same principle holds true even if we do not take direct physical action to manifest our ideas. Simply having an idea or thought, holding it in your mind, is an energy that will tend to attract and create that form on the material plane. If you constantly think of illness, you may eventually become ill; if you believe yourself to be beautiful, you become so. Unconscious ideas and feelings held inside of us operate in the same way.”

I haven’t been keeping up with entries of what I’ve been reading, and I haven’t had a fat amount of book time lately, but since my last post here, I’ve read (or am still reading):

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (John Gottman, Ph.D.)
Simple Abundance, A Daybook of Comfort and Joy (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
X-Files Confidential (Ted Edwards)

Relationships, happiness, and Scully & Mulder. Yes, sort of an odd trio, and I’ve had to take a few things and leave a few things here & there, but I’d say all 3 have been worthwhile. And I love the pink satin bookmark in the daybook.

I’m really feeling the need for something… meatier though.

the fifth book of the Dark Tower series from Stephen King. It was a great book. I am so pumped up to be this far into a series that I started so long ago. I am on the verge of completing it. I have started the sixth book and there is only one more left after this one. I have an idea of what may be found at the Dark Tower, I am anxious to see the end. (But endings can be so sad, what will take its place? But then it will just go hand in hand with my life. My life as a caregiver to my children is coming to an end. Perhaps learning to deal with smaller endings will make me stronger to deal with bigger endings.) What is the saying? For every ending is just another beginnings end, so we move to a new beginning which will surely have an end as well.

full cirlce.