By Mark Dunn
This is such a fun novel. It is about an island nation off the coast of North Carolina where the citizens highly value the spoken and written word. Unfortunately, they distrust science and technology. They hold the author of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" Mr Nevill, in a prophet-like, almost God-like regard. So when a letter on the statue in his honor falls to the ground, they have no choice but to banish that letter from their daily lexicon. If the citizens use a word with the offending letter they face serious punishments. As the novel progresses, more and more letters fall from the statue, and therefore out of the novel which is written in letters between people.
This is a really funny and ingenious novel. The townspeople who write the letters have such large vocabularies and when they are challenged and their words are diminished they become even more resourceful.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Flash and Dazzle
By Ronald Anthony
This book won the reader's choice award in the Salt Lake County Library System.
I really enjoyed it because it appeals to my generation X post-modern schema. Another reason why it is appealing is because there are a lot of novels about friendship relationships between women but rarely novels about male friendships.
Flash and Dazzle are the nicknames of two guys who met in college. Flash is a copywriter, and Dazzle is an artist. They worked together since their freshman year of college and find a jobs together at a hip advertising firm in New York City. They live the ideal young bachelor lifestyle. They have access to the best restaurants, girl friends to go out dancing with, disposable income and high tech games in their apartments. When Flash discovers the illness Daz had been hiding, their relationship based on games, girls and fun deepens. Flash finds out things about his friend that he had never known, and reframes his focus to the things in life that really matter.
The thing that's so cool and post-modern about this novel is that it has a built in soundtrack. It is framed around the CD's of mid-90's pop songs that the characters listening to at different points in the novel. A play list is included in the end note.
This book won the reader's choice award in the Salt Lake County Library System.
I really enjoyed it because it appeals to my generation X post-modern schema. Another reason why it is appealing is because there are a lot of novels about friendship relationships between women but rarely novels about male friendships.
Flash and Dazzle are the nicknames of two guys who met in college. Flash is a copywriter, and Dazzle is an artist. They worked together since their freshman year of college and find a jobs together at a hip advertising firm in New York City. They live the ideal young bachelor lifestyle. They have access to the best restaurants, girl friends to go out dancing with, disposable income and high tech games in their apartments. When Flash discovers the illness Daz had been hiding, their relationship based on games, girls and fun deepens. Flash finds out things about his friend that he had never known, and reframes his focus to the things in life that really matter.
The thing that's so cool and post-modern about this novel is that it has a built in soundtrack. It is framed around the CD's of mid-90's pop songs that the characters listening to at different points in the novel. A play list is included in the end note.
Healing the Shame that Binds You
by John Bradshaw
I read this book because I am going through a Psychology, self-help book and personality test phase. A funny thing about this book is that some of the pop-psychology words in movies and TV come from this book. Phrases like "shame spiral" "inner child" and so forth are common to the vocabulary of our media today.
Bradshaw believes that problems such as addictions, overachieving, and depression, are caused by toxic shame messages that we picked up from adults in our childhood. He points out that not all shame is bad and differentiates between two kinds of shame. "Toxic shame" leads to insecurity, hiding, and neurosis. "Healthy Shame" is similar to humility. We are able to love ourselves in spite of and because of our human weaknesses. We recognize a higher power.
The first half of the book talks about the ways that toxic shame can hurt, and bind us. The second half gives examples of therapeutic exercises to help us move past what hurt us in the past and recover our self-esteem.
I read this book because I am going through a Psychology, self-help book and personality test phase. A funny thing about this book is that some of the pop-psychology words in movies and TV come from this book. Phrases like "shame spiral" "inner child" and so forth are common to the vocabulary of our media today.
Bradshaw believes that problems such as addictions, overachieving, and depression, are caused by toxic shame messages that we picked up from adults in our childhood. He points out that not all shame is bad and differentiates between two kinds of shame. "Toxic shame" leads to insecurity, hiding, and neurosis. "Healthy Shame" is similar to humility. We are able to love ourselves in spite of and because of our human weaknesses. We recognize a higher power.
The first half of the book talks about the ways that toxic shame can hurt, and bind us. The second half gives examples of therapeutic exercises to help us move past what hurt us in the past and recover our self-esteem.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Man's Search For Meaning
By Victor Frankl
A lot of people have recommended this book to me, especially therapists and people who found it inspiring. It helped me discover my point of view.
In the first section of Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl, memoirs his experiences surviving the concentration camps: Auschwitz and Dachau. Victor Frankl, was a psychiatrist who wrote books about healing through finding meaning in life. He was taken to Auschwitz, clutching the manuscript of the book he was writing. It was hidden in the pocket of his jacket which was taken by the prison guards.
How was it that he survived when so many others did not? A big part of it was luck; the guards chose at random who would survive. He survived because he cared for others--he was he was a doctor who could help in the infirmary. He survived because he had a reason to live--he spent his time visualizing his wife, and thinking of the words to the book he was writing. Many of the prisoners became so despondent that they soon got sick and died. Only those who had hope for the future and fought for their lives survived. However, many of the survivors who hoped for the future found that when they returned home, the people that they hoped to see were dead and assimilation back into society was grueling.
In the second section of the book, Victor Frankl talks about his philosophy and his style of therapy called Logotherapy (therapy that centers around finding meaning in life). In difficult and even horrific (in the example of concentration camps) circumstances a person can survive if they can find meaning in the experience. If they die, their death is not senseless but becomes a meaningful martyrdom.
In some ways I disagree with Frankl's philosophy (which makes me feel guilty after all he has been through!) In Frankl's view--existentialism-- it doesn't matter what your life means, you can pick anything. There is no God and no Truth in existentialism, but believing in God is fine as long as it gives your life meaning. Its just like saying that there is nothing wrong with thinking you are Cinderella as long as it makes you happy.
I think existentialism grew out of the turbulence of the early twentieth century. When philosophers saw how people kill each other over totalitarian truth, they began to question if anyone really knows the truth. Maybe truth is variable and morals are relative. Maybe there is no truth at all so pick what makes you feel right (and does the least damage).
This book got me to think about what I believe. I believe there is absolute truth. It can be dangerous to believe in absolute truth because those who believe they have it at the expense of all others are known as fundamentalists, who blow up buildings. I think truth is an all-encompassing sphere. Different peoples have different parts of it. The more of the truth sphere you have seen, the greater good will you have.
Anyway, this book prompted me decide what I believe, so because of this book I wrote a This I Believe Essay, and sent it in to NPR. We'll see how that goes.
A lot of people have recommended this book to me, especially therapists and people who found it inspiring. It helped me discover my point of view.
In the first section of Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl, memoirs his experiences surviving the concentration camps: Auschwitz and Dachau. Victor Frankl, was a psychiatrist who wrote books about healing through finding meaning in life. He was taken to Auschwitz, clutching the manuscript of the book he was writing. It was hidden in the pocket of his jacket which was taken by the prison guards.
How was it that he survived when so many others did not? A big part of it was luck; the guards chose at random who would survive. He survived because he cared for others--he was he was a doctor who could help in the infirmary. He survived because he had a reason to live--he spent his time visualizing his wife, and thinking of the words to the book he was writing. Many of the prisoners became so despondent that they soon got sick and died. Only those who had hope for the future and fought for their lives survived. However, many of the survivors who hoped for the future found that when they returned home, the people that they hoped to see were dead and assimilation back into society was grueling.
In the second section of the book, Victor Frankl talks about his philosophy and his style of therapy called Logotherapy (therapy that centers around finding meaning in life). In difficult and even horrific (in the example of concentration camps) circumstances a person can survive if they can find meaning in the experience. If they die, their death is not senseless but becomes a meaningful martyrdom.
In some ways I disagree with Frankl's philosophy (which makes me feel guilty after all he has been through!) In Frankl's view--existentialism-- it doesn't matter what your life means, you can pick anything. There is no God and no Truth in existentialism, but believing in God is fine as long as it gives your life meaning. Its just like saying that there is nothing wrong with thinking you are Cinderella as long as it makes you happy.
I think existentialism grew out of the turbulence of the early twentieth century. When philosophers saw how people kill each other over totalitarian truth, they began to question if anyone really knows the truth. Maybe truth is variable and morals are relative. Maybe there is no truth at all so pick what makes you feel right (and does the least damage).
This book got me to think about what I believe. I believe there is absolute truth. It can be dangerous to believe in absolute truth because those who believe they have it at the expense of all others are known as fundamentalists, who blow up buildings. I think truth is an all-encompassing sphere. Different peoples have different parts of it. The more of the truth sphere you have seen, the greater good will you have.
Anyway, this book prompted me decide what I believe, so because of this book I wrote a This I Believe Essay, and sent it in to NPR. We'll see how that goes.
My Antonia
Last week,I read My Antonia, by Willa Cather, for the 3rd time. (the 1st two times were on tape and this time I physically read it) It is the assigned reading for my ward book club next month.
In the book,the narrator, Jim Burden, becomes orphaned and moves to the Nebraska frontier with his grandparents. A Bohemian immigrant family, the Shimerdas, arrive with him on the same train. Jim becomes close friends with their oldest daughter Antonia, who is a few years older than he. He teaches her English and his grandparents bring food and supplies to her family during their difficult first winter.
Antonia is a symbol for the American Frontier. The Immigrant families left wealth and social status in their old countries, but when they first arrive in America they are desperately poor, and ignorant about farming in the foreign soil. The oldest daughters of immigrant families, must sacrifice a great deal for their families to give their younger siblings a better life. Their parents, mired in their old country ways, find it more difficult to adapt.
Antonia and her girl friends work and plow the land themselves, and later move to town and work as maids so they can send the money home to their family farms. The immigrant working girls in town are looked down upon in the community, but Jim admires their courage and passion and watches as they grow up to become successful Americans.
I love this book! The landscape is described so beautifully. Willa Cather paints indelible images of the hardworking fortitude of the pioneer settlers.
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