The Birth of Venus

I read this book because I ran into a friend at the library and she pulled it off the shelf, handed it to me, and said, "Read this."

The Birth of Venus belongs to the "historical fiction with an anachronistically feminist heroine" genre. I tend to like these books, despite the anachronism, and this one was no exception.

It's set in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century. Don't know who Savonarola is? Neither did I until I started this book.

That said, there are a couple of scenes that are a little graphic, so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

scroogenomics

Want to freak out your kids? Check this book out from the library: scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays. Bonus points if you do so in November or December.

The author doesn't actually suggest you make any changes in the gifts you give your young kids, but the kids don't know that. The title of the book and the picture of the crying child on the cover are enough to strike fear into children's hearts.

That was an unintended consequence of checking out the book. I saw it sitting with the new books in the library and thought it looked interesting. It wasn't until I saw the look of horror on IM's face when she skimmed over my books that I realized how it must look from her perspective.

In any case, this book looks at gift-giving from an economic perspective. The author's main point is that since gifts usually provide less satisfaction dollar-for-dollar than money we spend on ourselves, holiday gift-giving provides a net economic loss. I'm not entirely convinced, but it was interesting to see him lay out the argument.

What I did find fascinating was the comparison in holiday shopping between the United States and other countries and between the present and the recent past.

When comparing the bump in spending attributable to the December holidays (as a percentage of sales), the United States is lower than the median. Not only that, the bump's percentage has not grown since 1935. And in fact, holiday spending is a smaller share of the economy now than it was then.

A Long-Overdue (and Long) Post about Books

I've been reading, but not blogging about it. I like to blog about my books because it helps me remember, so here is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of my reaction to the last several months' of reading.

Wild Designs--Fun fluff.

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour through the Beautiful Basics of Science--Reading this book should be a prerequisite for a high school diploma. If you are over 18 and haven't read it, go read it now. Chapters cover thinking scientifically, probabilities, calibration, physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, geology, and astronomy. I read the library's copy, but this is definitely a book I want to own. That will make it handy to assign it to EM in a couple of years.

A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles--My first Sir Conan Doyle, if you can believe it. It was interesting to see the birth of Holmes and Watson. Both books were enjoyable, although I personally found the shift from London to Utah halfway through A Study in Scarlet to be disconcerting. Interesting to see an outsider's view of Mormon polygamy.

The Year of Magical Thinking--Joan Didion's account of the year after her husband died.

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.

Bridget Jones's Diary--I found this a pathetic excuse for a Pride and Prejudice retelling. Just like the movie, the characters start out amusing but grow tiresome halfway through. Unlike the movie, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth weren't there to distract me.

Passage--An intriguing look at Near Death Experiences by Connie Willis. Good, but not as good as The Doomsday Book.

The Martian Chronicles--Fascinating but grim.

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire--Young adult page turners. Quick reads, with lots of interesting issues to discuss. I'm already anticipating the release of the third book sometime in 2010 (I hope).

Life Together--I picked up this book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer because I'd been impressed with some of his essays I'd read last year in an Advent collection. I didn't like this quite as much, I think mostly because it conflicted with my universalism. I copied many quotes, but quite often I'm not sure I agree with them.

rabbit, run--This would be a depressing book if I actually cared a whit for the characters. Since I didn't, it left me feeling numb. Which I rather think was the point. I don't see me reaching for another Updike book anytime soon.

The Language of Bees--The latest in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. This was not my favorite, but it was still quite enjoyable. With every book of Laurie King's I read, my curiousity grows: what is this woman's religious background?

Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys--I checked this out looking for insight into parenting my middle son. It was helpful, although the take away message was (as it so often is) Be Present. Some days I think if I could just manage that consistently, I'd solve most of my problems in life.

Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story--This book was a gift from my friend Shirley. Michael and I own a lot of Lonely Planet guide books (we converted during our trip to Spain, when we realized the wretched binding of our England Rough Guide was a feature of those guidebooks, not a fluke), so it was fun to read how the company started. At times the book dragged, and there were sections whose primary purpose seemed to be to drop names I didn't recognize, but the travel sections and the chapters on writing guidebooks were very interesting.

Holy Silence--This is a book about Quaker silence. It's an easy read and gave me more of an understanding than I had going into it. Silent meditiation is something I'm increasingly drawn to, while simultaneously being really bad at it. I'm slightly less bad at it after having read this book.

How bad was the sleep deprivation?

I'm sorting through the Christmas stuff in the basement, trying to tame the mess.

I stumbled across a box of unused Christmas cards. Or so I thought. Imagine my surprise to discover twelve addressed envelopes with signed cards inside.

I know the cards were from a Christmas after LW was born, but I don't know exactly which year. I'm assuming 2005, because an infant seems like the only even partially acceptable excuse for that level of brainlessness.

Did I write other cards? Did all of you not receive cards from me that year?

How tired was I?

Offense against Nature

I like candy corn. I like them a lot. Since I have become an adult I have not let a Halloween go by without buying at least one bag for me to eat all by myself. (It helps that Michael detests candy corn. It's pretty hard to hide treats from him.)

Tonight, however, I saw something that just should not be.

Christmas candy corn. Red, green, and white.

I will not be buying them.

Not even when it is actually Christmastime.

My name eez Treebeard

Today at the bus stop, the kids and I were singing Christmas carols. (Carols before Thanksgiving is normally a punishable offense around here, but they need to practice for a holiday play they're in.)

NB interrupted to ask, "What's a French ent?"

A what?

NB: "You know, 'on the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me three French ents.' How is a French ent different from a regular ent?"

(If you're having trouble remembering what an ent is, refresh your memory here.)

Halloween

I love Halloween in the village. We've been here long enough to know the traditions and look forward to them. The weather is unreliable this time of year. Some years it's freezing cold, and we put gloves on the kids and nurse cups of hot cider. Some years it's unseasonably warm. I've heard stories of the year it snowed so much that they cancelled school the next day. This was the first year since we moved here that we had to deal with rain.

Lots of rain. Even with umbrellas and the judicious use of house porches during the worst downpours, we were soaked. LW had a great time for half an hour and then voted for taking refuge in our church, where he cheerfully chatted up the adults who were handing out the candy there and checked out everyone else's costumes while we waited for Michael and the twins to finish up.

Here they are, as we were getting into the car and watching the first sprinkles fall:



LW has wanted to be a vampire for the past 365 days--ever since last Halloween. NB is a ninja. IM is a penguin.