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Becoming by Michelle Obama, 421pp
This book is the choice for Women's History Month at my work. There will be a book club meeting in Queens next Friday and I might actually make a trek up there. This book was on my radar and I was thinking of eventually reading it, so I was excited for the excuse. I borrowed it from my co-worker and read it over the first two weeks of March.
She is a really great writer. I think I was surprised but I shouldn't have been. I really like her writing style and her honesty. She doesn't seem to be holding back. I enjoyed the early parts of the book more before she gets into politics. I just like seeing her trajectory and experience from her childhood in close knit family in Chicago to Princeton to Harvard (she didn't really talk about her law school experience though) to Chicago law firm to deciding to switch careers. And of course her relationship with Barrack and her daughters. (She had both her girls at the same age as I did, so that was interesting to me to see her experience - She is a lot more social than I am though. More Mom friends and going out that I ever do). The years about politics and campaigning and dealing with fame and living in the White House held an interest too but I just like the stories of her childhood a lot.
I didn't know that much about Michele Obama, the person, despite her being in the public eye. And this book make me really like her and appreciate her and everything she tried to do for the country and community. This was a really great autobiography; I highly recommend it.
Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks, 131pp+notes
This book was my least favorite of Sacks so far and I think it is because of lack of too many first person accounts. There were a couple of examples of people who became deaf or were born deaf and their experiences but not too many or with too many details. When I got to the section about the revolt in the Gallaudet University, it was much more interesting because there were more personal stories.
It also seems a little outdated as it is trying to convince the reader that American Sign Language (ALS) is a real language and should be used as soon as possible with babies and small children for their development. He is showing how ALS has grammar and is much better for education of the deaf, especially prelingual deaf. And to me this seems a common thing - perhaps because so many things changed since this book was written almost 30 years ago. My assumption is that if you discover the kid is deaf, you learn Sign and communicate in Sign. Maybe it is because Sign interpreters are more common now. Even some of the YouTube songs my kids watch have some ASL signs in them. And New York State does an automatic hearing test while the baby is still in the hospital.
It was interesting to think about the acquisition of language and grammar and how it builds a person and what happens to someone who doesn't grow up with language as a child. How crucial exposure to language is. I also liked the neurological studies of what learning Sign Language does in the brain and how it activates the same right hemisphere as regular aural language plus the left hemisphere visual component. So while the book was not as good as his other ones, it was still educational to me and made me think about the way we human function, which is why I like reading Sacks in the first place.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, [In Russian], 77pp
Before I read this book last week, I never got past the first chapter and I tried several times. I wasn't really aware of this book as a kid or as a teenager. In my last year of college I took French for two semesters. That June, right after my graduation from college, my parents and I went to Belarus for a visit. In one of the bookstores there I saw an edition of this book in French and Russian, aimed at students who study French and want a bilingual version. Since I just took French, I bought it. This was in 2001 and the book has been sitting on my shelves. At one point I lent it to Marianna, who loved this book as a child and was taking French because that's her husband's language (he is from Mali originally). She had it for a while before I took it back. Now it is sitting on my daughters' book shelf, but she isn't interested in it yet.
I decided to finally read it this year and I read it in Russian, since that is the version I had. It was cute enough and pretty weird. My favorite part was probably when the Prince was traveling and going to these small planets and meeting various characters representing the ridiculousness of humanity.
I'm not too attached to it and at times I enjoyed his mocking of the world but overall it was just ok for me.
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells [Murderbot Diaries 3], 160pp
This series continues to be fun and I already put the last book on hold in the library (for ebook). I laughed outloud at one point and was endlessly amused as he had to turn on his TV feed for six minutes at the dramatic moment when it was human' turn to save the day - he was bored.
I caught on to one plot twist before the main character did but then again the clues were there, he is just not as adept to read human motivation at times. I did like that many characters were women where you would not expect them - like security officers. It was nice an pleasant, since the default is to assume it's men. Also Miki was pretty adorable.
I think it is easier for me to see the series as one novel split into four parts rather than separate novellas, since it does have one overarching plot. And I'm curious to where this series will end.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. The Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling, 272pp
Bear gave me this book for New Year. At the time I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. So it was just sitting on Bear's shelf and he has been unsure if he picked a good gift. He finally got the movie in the library last week so we watched it over the weekend. And since I finished my previous book on Tuesday, I figure I would just take it for my Wednesday commute with me, mostly because I didn't want to see Bear's sad face. Since it is a movie script, I was done with it this morning already.
And I really liked reading the script right after I saw the movie. I was able to understand nuances I missed when watching the movie and some emotional underpinning that the author meant to convey. And it reinforces many points. The movie stuck pretty closely to the script, although I could see some editing choices that did a great job conveying the point. I'm also glad I saw the movie so I knew what the action scenes and spells were supposed to be like. I'm not a visual person but I do remember the movie (without visualizing it) so it helps understand the scene.
This book is the choice for Women's History Month at my work. There will be a book club meeting in Queens next Friday and I might actually make a trek up there. This book was on my radar and I was thinking of eventually reading it, so I was excited for the excuse. I borrowed it from my co-worker and read it over the first two weeks of March.
She is a really great writer. I think I was surprised but I shouldn't have been. I really like her writing style and her honesty. She doesn't seem to be holding back. I enjoyed the early parts of the book more before she gets into politics. I just like seeing her trajectory and experience from her childhood in close knit family in Chicago to Princeton to Harvard (she didn't really talk about her law school experience though) to Chicago law firm to deciding to switch careers. And of course her relationship with Barrack and her daughters. (She had both her girls at the same age as I did, so that was interesting to me to see her experience - She is a lot more social than I am though. More Mom friends and going out that I ever do). The years about politics and campaigning and dealing with fame and living in the White House held an interest too but I just like the stories of her childhood a lot.
I didn't know that much about Michele Obama, the person, despite her being in the public eye. And this book make me really like her and appreciate her and everything she tried to do for the country and community. This was a really great autobiography; I highly recommend it.
Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks, 131pp+notes
This book was my least favorite of Sacks so far and I think it is because of lack of too many first person accounts. There were a couple of examples of people who became deaf or were born deaf and their experiences but not too many or with too many details. When I got to the section about the revolt in the Gallaudet University, it was much more interesting because there were more personal stories.
It also seems a little outdated as it is trying to convince the reader that American Sign Language (ALS) is a real language and should be used as soon as possible with babies and small children for their development. He is showing how ALS has grammar and is much better for education of the deaf, especially prelingual deaf. And to me this seems a common thing - perhaps because so many things changed since this book was written almost 30 years ago. My assumption is that if you discover the kid is deaf, you learn Sign and communicate in Sign. Maybe it is because Sign interpreters are more common now. Even some of the YouTube songs my kids watch have some ASL signs in them. And New York State does an automatic hearing test while the baby is still in the hospital.
It was interesting to think about the acquisition of language and grammar and how it builds a person and what happens to someone who doesn't grow up with language as a child. How crucial exposure to language is. I also liked the neurological studies of what learning Sign Language does in the brain and how it activates the same right hemisphere as regular aural language plus the left hemisphere visual component. So while the book was not as good as his other ones, it was still educational to me and made me think about the way we human function, which is why I like reading Sacks in the first place.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, [In Russian], 77pp
Before I read this book last week, I never got past the first chapter and I tried several times. I wasn't really aware of this book as a kid or as a teenager. In my last year of college I took French for two semesters. That June, right after my graduation from college, my parents and I went to Belarus for a visit. In one of the bookstores there I saw an edition of this book in French and Russian, aimed at students who study French and want a bilingual version. Since I just took French, I bought it. This was in 2001 and the book has been sitting on my shelves. At one point I lent it to Marianna, who loved this book as a child and was taking French because that's her husband's language (he is from Mali originally). She had it for a while before I took it back. Now it is sitting on my daughters' book shelf, but she isn't interested in it yet.
I decided to finally read it this year and I read it in Russian, since that is the version I had. It was cute enough and pretty weird. My favorite part was probably when the Prince was traveling and going to these small planets and meeting various characters representing the ridiculousness of humanity.
I'm not too attached to it and at times I enjoyed his mocking of the world but overall it was just ok for me.
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells [Murderbot Diaries 3], 160pp
This series continues to be fun and I already put the last book on hold in the library (for ebook). I laughed outloud at one point and was endlessly amused as he had to turn on his TV feed for six minutes at the dramatic moment when it was human' turn to save the day - he was bored.
I caught on to one plot twist before the main character did but then again the clues were there, he is just not as adept to read human motivation at times. I did like that many characters were women where you would not expect them - like security officers. It was nice an pleasant, since the default is to assume it's men. Also Miki was pretty adorable.
I think it is easier for me to see the series as one novel split into four parts rather than separate novellas, since it does have one overarching plot. And I'm curious to where this series will end.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. The Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling, 272pp
Bear gave me this book for New Year. At the time I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. So it was just sitting on Bear's shelf and he has been unsure if he picked a good gift. He finally got the movie in the library last week so we watched it over the weekend. And since I finished my previous book on Tuesday, I figure I would just take it for my Wednesday commute with me, mostly because I didn't want to see Bear's sad face. Since it is a movie script, I was done with it this morning already.
And I really liked reading the script right after I saw the movie. I was able to understand nuances I missed when watching the movie and some emotional underpinning that the author meant to convey. And it reinforces many points. The movie stuck pretty closely to the script, although I could see some editing choices that did a great job conveying the point. I'm also glad I saw the movie so I knew what the action scenes and spells were supposed to be like. I'm not a visual person but I do remember the movie (without visualizing it) so it helps understand the scene.
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