The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
(The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #1) by Alexander McCall Smith
Read: 12/19/07-1/29/08
Librarything tags: Mystery, Africa, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review)
I'd been forgetting to check my books to see which ones Sondy had reviewed. I rectified this a bit by going back and tagging recent reviews with "Sonderbook" on librarything.
This is a very charming book. It's almost just a collection of short stories -- large and small mysteries Mma Precious Ramotswe (of Botswana) solves -- but they are connected to each other, albeit some more loosely than others. It had a sort of homey feel, as though the stories and characters reminded me of someone or something in my own life, only I couldn't quite put my finger on what or who. The closest I could come up with was MK stories I've heard, but that didn't seem quite right. Perhaps it is only similar to some long forgotten books I've read. At any rate, quite a good, satisfying, wholesome read.
"We were the Bechuanaland Protectorate then, and the British ran our country, to protect us from the Boers (or that is what they said)... ...But some of them were clever, and while the British said 'You do this,' they would say 'Yes, yes, sir, I will do that' and all the time, behind their backs, they did the other thing or they just pretended to do something. So for many years, nothing at all happened. It was a good system of government, because most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with goverments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle." -Obed Ramotswe
It's been several months since I've posted anything significant about my life, rather than a bunch of book reviews. So. Here goes.
I'm still working at the used bookstore. Our computer system sucks, but in spite of that my favorite tasks right now are on the computer. Adding our used books to the inventory, little by little. Checking and correcting inventory for some of our special locations, like the bestseller area. Checking the books that sold to see how well they sell in general and whether we need to reorder them. Occasionally taking the initiative to order a book I think is awesome, and putting it in one of my displays when it comes. It still doesn't pay well, and I'm keeping an eye out for other jobs, although I'm not putting in applications as often as I need to. I hate everything about job searching.
I've also started to keep an eye out for people who want someone to practice English with them. If I can get a few jobs like that, and it goes well, I might try to start teaching English more formally. We'll see. And, of course, I still need to order Pimsleur 3 if I'm ever going to learn Japanese well enough to be a translator. That's a more long-term goal, though. Teaching English could maybe work in the interim? And while I'm building up translation experience? I don't know... Considering how little I'm doing in the job search category, I really have had a lot of ideas. For example, I could take some Spanish classes geared to increasing fluency enough to be a court interpreter. That's a job that would be at least somewhat fun (hooray for languages!) and would pay well, too. Downside: the startup cost of taking more classes. Can't afford anything right now. On the easier-to-begin side there's substitute work -- I think you just have to take one test -- but unlike John, I don't want to be a teacher (except maybe teaching English, which would have that language element to make it fun), and I don't think I'd like that job. And while I'm working at the bookstore I could only get substitute jobs on Mondays anyway, which I want to keep as my day off. Another fun job idea: I could become a librarian. Downside: cost of classes. You see how it is. (= I guess the English teaching idea is one of the better ideas, since I can start very slowly. Meh.
Not a lot else going on. We went to see John's family over Christmas, in Wheaton, Illinois. It snowed a few days after Christmas, which was great fun. We had a snowball fight, and made a snowman (my first). Pictures to follow.
Emotionally, I'm slowly doing better these days, after a rather bad spell. Abby gave me The Pathway for Christmas, which is why I'm doing better. I've told several of you about it. The concept is that children are supposed to learn to self-nurture and limit set from their parents (if they have the skills), and that if they don't learn these things, they won't be able to keep themselves emotionally balanced, and will naturally seek external solutions, which can become addictions, whether the "hard" addictions of drugs and alcohol or the "soft" addictions of food or well, anything imaginable, pretty much. This much seems to be pretty well documented in psychological literature. So how do you gain these skills, if you don't have them? The author's method (which, unless she's lying outright, has an amazing success rate), is to have you ask yourself several questions on a regular basis. You ask how you're feeling, and, if you're not balanced at the moment, go through the major feelings -- anger, sadness, fear, and guilt. You let yourself feel everything, answering the question with many, "I'm feeling ___ because ______" statements. You don't censor yourself. Of course, feeling all those overwhelming emotions isn't a safe place to stay. Next comes the limit setting. You ask yourself if your expectations are reasonable. In general, when you're hating yourself or wishing you could just die (for example), your expectations are about as far from reasonable as you can get. You figure out what your expectations are and what a reasonable expectation would be. I already knew I expected some ridiculous things from myself, but something about going through this whole process, and repeatedly, is so very helpful. Instead of just hating myself and knowing it's because I expect myself to be perfect, but not seeming to be able to stop, I figure out exactly how ridiculous my expectation is, figure out what a realistic goal is, and I calm down, even become happy, as I think, "I just need to do ___. I can do that!" I often remind myself that it's okay that I was horribly depressed or that I numbed myself by spending hours watching TV or reading, because it's realistically going to take me a while to build these skills, and that's fine. Anyway. Then comes the question about what the essential pain is -- what pain will I realistically have to go through? And then, what is the earned reward? Sometimes the answer is something like, "I'm not perfect, but I don't have to be." Then you ask yourself what you need, and whether you need support. As you go through a "cycle", your brain pops you back into emotional balance -- a lovely feeling! Sometimes, with strong depression, you sink back down again really fast -- she says it takes around two years of building the links in the brain that favor balance before that becomes the more natural state, for most people. But that's okay. Every bit of balance is waaay better than the alternative.
P.S. I know I can be prone to trying new things all the time, going from one "solution" to another. I don't think that's what this is. Yes, I'm currently more excited about The Pathway than FlyLady, but not because The Pathway has replaced FlyLady. They use many of the same principles, The Pathway just goes a little farther and may be more helpful to those whose perfectionism is seriously entrenched. Truth is truth, and doesn't compete with itself. They're both about loving and taking care of yourself and building new habits, and I fully intend to continue on with FlyLady while I do my cycles.
Fruits Basket Volume 18 by Natsuki Takaya
Read: 12/24/07
Librarything tags: Manga, Shojo Manga, Fantasy
I like Machi, especially her and Yuki together, but this volume really got good when it went back to Rin. Even though Rin's story had that one part that was incredibly sad. And I absolutely loved the ending. ::happy Fruits Basket dance::
Twilight (Twilight #1) by Stephenie Meyer
Read: 12/21/07-12/24/07
Librarything tags: YA, Fantasy, Romance, Suspense, Vampires
10-11-11 Edit: Now that I have the page of alphabetical book reviews and it's easier to find these old reviews than it used to be, I feel the need to add caveats. Now that the series is so popular, and given some of the fans, some of the things I said in these reviews make me cringe today. I am not a complete moron. I swear. I have good friends and people I highly respect who loathe the series with an abiding passion. I do not. But I can see why you do. I am not going to defend the series here and now, but I will say that I would have been more cautious and defensive in my praise if I had posted these reviews later than I did.
Yep, I've reviewed this one before. I read it 9/14/07-9/16/07 as well. I have no idea how long it's been since I read a book a second time so soon after the first, but it's gotta have been a long time. See, we talked about the Stephenie Meyer books at work, and then I was thinking of it... and I just felt like reading it again. So good! So romantic. I love Bella. She's awesome.
I'm even tentatively excited about the movie. The book is heavy on internal emotions, etc. (it's first person point of view, after all), but hopefully it will be adapted well, and acted well enough to portray all of that. I hope Kristen Stewart looks a bit more like she apparently did in Speak and some of her other movies. The heavy eye makeup, I'm-trying-to-look-sexy look doesn't seem very Bella. At all. Bella is not just a hot chick in a horror movie. Yeah, you do want it to seem like all the guys at her new school would find her attractive (or even gorgeous), but you also need to make it believable that she doesn't find herself particularly pretty and that no one really paid attention to her at her old school. I think the younger looking, less makeup pictures work better for combining those two. After all, Kristen Stewart is an actress -- she's pretty enough to dress like an insecure introvert and still turn heads.
Robert Pattinson (Cedric in Harry Potter), on the other hand, looks perfect. No more worries about how they'll portray supernatural beauty... I guess. Only... does he plan on developing an American accent? Because Edward may have used archaic speech patterns occasionally, but he definitely wasn't British. Meh.
"They were enjoying the snowy day, just like everyone else -- only they looked more like a scene from a movie than the rest of us."
"'I've never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it's much more troublesome than I would have believed. But that's probably just because it's you. Ordinary people seem to make it through the day without so many catastrophes.'"
