Back from vacation

This is just a quick post to say I am back from vacation. I thought I would give a quick update about what I read since I asked for input earlier this month. If you have been reading me for sometime you might remember this post last June. I finally got the Lord of the Rings on audiobooks. It is about 50 hours of listening. I haven't even finished the first book, but I understand so clearly now why these books are so popular. I will listen to them for awhile and ask Fly Guy a question or two. He has read the books many times....he can read all three in a week without a problem. :-P

It turns out that the version I wanted was not avalible on itunes or at audible.com, so I went with CD and this $10 portible CD player. Ripping the CDs onto my iPod just takes up too much room, so this way is working out well. It is a bit weird going back to using CDs and a CD player after a few years of having an iPod.

The other funny thing is I can't really handle not doing something with my hands when I am listening, because when I read I hold the book with my hands, but listening I feel like I am at lose ends. So I end up working on suduko puzzles when listening. Since we were on trains for 60 hours or so on this trip I had penty of time to listen and do my puzzles. :-)

A better update later. :-)

Looking for Fluff

I am going on vacation in a week or so and I was just thinking I need to bring a book or two to read. I don't do fluff books often. I think the last major fluff book I read was "The Secret Life of Bees" and that was 2 years ago I think......hmmm....that isn't totally true. I re-read the Wizard of 4th Street series by Simon Hawke less then a year ago. For the most part the books I read are biographies or historical in some way. Currently I am reading "Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper" it is a good book, but I am finding I can't read it before bed. Since I can't seem to read it before bed it doesn't seem like it would be a good vacation book.
Fly Guy just gave me four great books....none of them vacation type books. Fly Guy has the ability to find some great books, but they are never fluffy books. He got me "The Russian Revolution & the Soviet State 1917 - 1921 Documents"(I can't find a link of this book on the Internet to link to so I can show it.), "Daily Life in Russia Under the Last Tsar", "All Stalin's Men" and "The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin From the interrogations of Hitler's closest personal aides". As you can see none of the four are fluffy vacation books. Fly Guy doesn't understand vacation books.
So what I would like people to do for me is in the comments here list some of your most favorite Fluff/Vacation book and tell me why you like it.

thanks :-)

Sentance Meme

I Am… who I am and nothing more.
I Want… peace on earth and good will toward fellow humans, but if I can’t have that solar panels for my house would be cool. :-)
I Have… a wonderful husband who supports me in everything I want to do.
I Wish… I could read faster.
I Hate… cooking.
I Fear… drowning....isn’t that a funny thing for a swimmer to be fearful of? The idea of drowning either while in water or in my own fluids with lung failure just makes my skin crawl and causes me to panic.
I Hear… Horse Girl watching TV since she is home sick from school.
I Search... for anything and everything. I love doing research. I search for random things on the Web because I want something to read or do.
I Wonder… why I have survived.
I Regret… nothing. Every choice I have made has caused me to be where I am in my life and I like where I am. That doesn’t mean I want my kids to make the same choices I have made.
I Love… my family.
I Ache… in my heart. Days that I am dealing with my chronic depression my heart physically hurts and I wish I could just reach in a pull it out.
I Always… try to view things in a positive light.
I Usually… smell like chlorine.
I Dance… with my girls in the kitchen.
I Sing… in the car at the top of my lungs with my girls.
I Never… have gone to a topless beach.
I Rarely… understand the IRS.
I Cry… rarely. People think that a person who deals with depression would cry all the time. I don’t.
I Am Not… like everyone else....to quote The Kinks.
I Lose… my mind on a regular basis.
I’m Confused… about how to spell most words.
I Need…. a new swimsuit.
I Should be… doing laundry, cleaning the house and all the other drudgery that I hate.

Book review

On Feburary 8, 2008 I talked about the book I had just finished reading along with the book I just started reading. I just finished "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Moat Famous Scientist"


Yes it took me well over a month to read it. I am a very slow reader. Which isn't a surprise because of my LDs.

It turned out to a really great book I am going to have to look deeper on some of the topics like Hoover being on friendly terms with Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler.

Einstein has always been a hero of mine since I was 11 or 12 years old. Reading more about him lately makes me view him as a greater man then I thought he was.

It seems that because of different reasons Einstein's political views have been lost to history. Only when Time Magazine named him "Person of the Century" did a lot of his political believes came out. Even that article just breezed over his political views.

Did Hoover and McCarthy win in the long run because biographers are nervous to prove that Einstein was part of a number or radical organizations that if alive Einstein would told people he was part of without a problem. Einstein felt that largest problem in the United States was racism. If biographers and media could right more about Einstein's eloquent anti-racism writing and searches without fear, would US citizens have a different view of racism since the worlds greatest scientist said these things.

Once I am done reading "Buried By the Times" (I might have to write about this book when I am done also. New York Times owned by German Jews and worked to get their family out of Germany during WWII, but didn't cover the Shoah in their paper.) I am going to have to go on to read "Einstein on Race and Racism" it looks like it could be a good book and cover some of the questions I have. There is a whole list of his writtings and speaches on racism in the back of "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Moat Famous Scientist" I am not going bother to type them up here. Anyone who is interested now knows they are there and can go look at them themselves.

I know I should do goodreads.com, I haven't been able to get into it at all. I think it has to do with the fact when you come here and read my blog, you know about my reading and writing issues, at goodreads.com when I review a book I feel that I do not do the book justice.

Being a copy cat :-)

Other friends did this quiz so I had to do it too. :-)

I am an Iris What Flower Are You?

"You are a very sensual person. You like to experience all the sights, smells, tastes and textures the world has to offer. Ordinary be damned, because you want to do it all."

Gary Gygax

Gygax Memorial Cat" style="word-spacing: 700314px; font-size: 700314px;">
see more crazy cat pics

I know Gary Gygax died over two weeks ago, but I just ran into this today. I loved Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games. I was upset by the death of Gary Gygax, but he will be remembered by geeks everywhere. ;-) I found out about D&D when I was in 8th grade...I think....it might have been Freshman in high school. It ended up putting me on the road to where I am now. I learned geeks could be fun, which caused me to hang around computer labs more which caused me to meet Fly Guy. Well that is all a simplification of the path, but more or less correct. :-)

Gifted and Talented and Learning Disabled

I have been reading a lot lately about what some people call twice-exceptional people. People with learning disablities and are gifted. Reading some of these research papers and journal articles about this subject is just freaky for me. It is like looking into some sort of mirror. I read about the typical traits for twice-exceptional people (I have trouble with term, but it could be from my self-critical part of me..which is a personally trait that is talked about a lot) and they hit my major personally traits right on. Then to read about how people who are both gifted and learning disabled and how they tend to deal with depression and be prone to suicide. I have always concidered my depression and suicidal thoughts to be a seprate issue then my learning disablity. Maybe that isn't the case. Since I have been having an emotionally down period the last couple of weeks reading these articles have caused me to think a little differently about my depression. I don't think it will cause me to change anything I do for my depression it just is making me think about it differently.