Guest Review: Nurture Shock

Here is a guest review from a lady lawyer friend of mine who is also busy raising three young boys. Thanks Heather!



I just finished reading a great new book that distills some emerging science regarding child development and turns some “conventional wisdom” on its head. In particular I loved the chapter on a new preschool/kindergarten program called “Tools of the Mind” which teaches kids all the usual stuff plus self-control/self-direction and decision making, which turns out to be very important to later academic success – at least as much as raw native intellect. And it can be learned in a preschool or kindy classroom by kids from all kinds of backgrounds, ability levels, and special needs. It is worth reading for anyone looking for good behavior management techniques. The basic techniques can easily be incorporated into any classroom or home environment.

Get thee a copy of: Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman. Your library should have a copy. About 1/3 of the book is end notes, so it is a shorter read than it appears to be at first glance and I’m telling you, you’ll have a hard time putting it down. You might even learn a thing or two about yourself.

Happy summer reading! Sincerely, Heather

OTHER REVIEWS

Caroline Bookbinder

(If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

Opening Sentence of the Day: Lunatic Express

"Outside of Pul-I-Khumri, the bus shuddered to a halt on the dusty roadside and couldn't be restarted."

-- Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes by Carl Hoffman.

I am reading this to review for the Internet Review of Books.  Although I had some mixed feelings from the description of it, I am tearing right through it. I roll my eyes sometimes at Hoffman's travel-induced navel gazing, and haven't quite figured out what his message is -- what his take away point is going to be. But some of the descriptions of the countries he travels through and his harrowing means of travel are riveting.


NOTE

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a Friday fun "opening sentence" event hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Post the opening sentence of the book(s) you started this week and see what other books people have going.

Review: Angler Management

Angler Management: The Day I Died While Fly Fishing and Other Essays by Jack Ohman.

Angler Management is cartoonist Jack Ohman’s first book of essays and shows that Ohman is as funny with words as he is with pictures.

In this collection, Ohman discusses the obsession that is fly fishing, writing about the compulsive collecting of gear, the frustration of trying to talk to a fly fisherman (even if you are one yourself), the secrecy of fishing spots, the aggravating hobby of tying your own flies (or even more loony, building your own rods), and other crazy-making aspects of what Tom Brokaw calls the “high church” of fishing.

Most of the essays cover general fly fishing topics. However, as Ohman is a self-described “delusional humorist with a fatal streak of nostalgia,” the best pieces are those involving his own experiences and memories, including his reminiscences on his boyhood stream, the Kinnikinnick in Wisconsin, and his story of “the day I died while fly fishing” on Kelly Creek in Idaho.  Even little asides such as this one in an essay on high-tech fishing equipment bring personality to the book:

I was raised by a PhD research scientist, and I can tell you firsthand that he viewed liberal arts majors as ethereal slacker stoners with no real understanding of how the world works, let alone how to turn on a Bunsen burner or create penicillin in a petri dish (when I was a child, my dad once gave me some penicillin that he personally created -- I can't even make a Manhattan without consulting the Internet). One way that we've figured out how to make ourselves feel, well, more scientific, is to inject science into art -- specifically, the art of fly fishing.

Anglers and non-anglers alike will get a chuckle out of Angler Management, but it is definitely aimed at fellow enthusiasts and their co-dependents. It is too late to recommend it for Father’s Day this year, but it would be worth stashing away a few copies for the fly fishermen on your Christmas list.

OTHER REVIEWS

(If you would like your review of this or any other Jack Ohman book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

Teaser Tuesday: Up in the Old Hotel

From a list of reasons why 93-year-old Mr. Flood is "irreconcilable" to death:

"Third, he is a diet theorist -- he calls himself a seafoodetarian -- and feels obliged  to reach a spectacular age in order to prove his theory.  He is convinced that the eating of meat and vegetables shortens life and he maintains that the only sensible food for man, particularly for a man who wants to hit a hundred and fifteen, is fish."

-- From "Old Mr. Flood" in Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell.

I was so pleased that my copy of Up in the Old Hotel turned up in the lost-and-found at the gym that I have set aside Small Island and gone back to Mitchell's essays and short stories about New York.

This teaser is from one of three three stories about the fictional Mr. Flood, a composite character of Mitchell's invention based on the curmudgeons who liked to hang around the Fulton Fish Market.  Like the essays in the book, the Mr. Flood stories are rich, colorful accounts of New York life in the 1930s and '40s -- mostly centered around the Fulton Market and the people involved in the fishing trade.

This is now one of my all-time favorite books. I wish I had read it years and years ago so I could be re-reading it now.



Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

It looked like I was going to have an empty mailbox this holiday weekend. But then I ran across an estate sale late yesterday afternoon -- on Independence Day! -- while I was heading out to get the fried chicken for our 4th of July picnic.  So it is another long list for Mailbox Monday.

First, a couple of fancy books:

The Prado by Santiago Alcolea Blanch (the picture doesn't do it justice, because it is a beautiful coffee table book in perfect condition -- really lovely, and the closest I'll get to the real thing in the foreseeable future)



Charles II by Antonia Fraser (another coffee table edition full of pictures)



Then, some fun stuff:

I got the first eight volumes of a nine-volume, Book Club edition of the Sherlock Holmes books. Since I've been in a vintage mystery mood lately, I thought I could start at the source. Of course, now I want to find the ninth volume.

I found several P. D. James books. I recently read her first Adam Dalgliesh mystery, Cover Her Face, and it made me want to work my way through the series. I picked up A Taste for Death, Devices & Desires, A Certain Justice,