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looking for more carol lay, i stumbled upon this weightloss guide/memoir. i really irked me - turning weight issues (and control of them) into something like a religion. it bothered me so much, i put it aside, but somehow it creeped into my thoughts daily. there were truths in there that i didn't want to admit - that's why it made me so angry. and so this book became my own personal turning point, my own ah-ha moment. 6 weeks later, i'm ten pounds lighter, and half-way to my goal weight. only time will time if these changes are lasting.

with it's a soap opera title, i didn't expect much from this book so i was pleasantly surprised to have the plot move quickly from the imposter to her 6 year old child and to her future sister-in-law's family. the book was choppy - shifting backwards and forwards through time without much grace or warning. but i liked that at first, as if it was a new book every time and maybe i'd like this one better.
but ultimately, i felt nothing for these characters. an attempt for closure at the end of the book consisted of an unspoken understanding between the abandoned child and mother so i, the uninformed reader, am still in the dark. except, as i already stated, i don't care about any of the characters so i can't even muster outrage at the author's choice of ending.

compelling enough for me to get through it in 2 days, this book is devastating in its plausibility. the genetics manipulation for food and medical science, the financial impetus behind diseases that keeps you alive long enough to take all your money, the wariness of blanketed porn...
i think atwood nails the hidden aggression in men's relationships - there's so much going on underneath the words of jimmy and crake. so often you see the complexity of relationships between women; this was a refreshing take.
her female character is diaphenous: in many ways a true reflection of how men project their ideas of 'woman' onto women.
but i truly hated the ambiguous ending. tell me what happened. it's a cop out not to.

wonderful novel that reads more like poetry - a perfect antidote to that dragging age of confusion and angst: pre-adolescence. mina is part modern day pollyanna, part junior philosopher. there is not only unvalid thing she contemplates, even if her wondering cause huge headaches for her teacher and school. naturally, she must be homeschooled :) but the author has a balanced approach - depicting another school with deeply flawed students but equally gifted human beings there to teach them.
anyhow, this is a book that would have been perfect for my daughter when she was 11. or she could have even written it. i wish she's read it, but she doesn't take notice of my recommendations anymore.

i love this man. his humility and humanity are beautifully captured in this meandering memoir of a regular man who happened to find himself in and/or beside the spotlight of fame.
he starts the book with a summary and it's tone continues throughout the book - he's never mean, resentful or cynical. he freely admits it was a series of happy accidents that led him to his career in journalism, his launch as a movie critic (in print and on tv), and his success as a blogger. with his cancer and loss of lower jaw after 3 painful and unsuccessful attempts at reconstruction, he could easily be a miserable so-and-so. but no, he is grateful for his life and the flood of memories that this new silence has brought.

I was curious to re-read this book as an adult, or I mean precisely, an adult mother of teenage children. I remembered the stories being youth centered, meanwhile, they were not (did I only focus on the young one due to my age back then? or did I confuse it with Margaret Laurence books, like "bird in the house"?) And I remembered the mother/stepmother as hated by myself and the protagonist, but not so - rose has room in herself for much more layered emotions, including admiration and compassion. but the biggest surprise was finding, within it's pages, a story I had vividly remembered and retold many times in my life only to be NOT as I remembered. in my youth and innocence, I saw the protagonist as a victim of an action. with my matured viewpoint, I could see she had a more complicit role.

i'm still trying to wrap my head around this book - there's a sense of danger (real or imagined) throughout the story; some of it 'light' - adultery, escaping a locked house, a collision with a moose - and some very dark - suicide, rape, and murder. figures of authority abandon their code of conduct - but not always with a negative result. medical students are elbow deep in the gore of anatomy and dissection, but are also elbow deep in the vulnerability of love and poetry

this is supposedly the beginning of science fiction and - after you get used to the archaic language and his use of the main character postulating theories before the reader has a chance to formulate his own - it's actually quite a gripping story. i was on the edge of my seat at times.
i read this alongside ds as we did this novel as a literature study. there were many times that ds was supposed to create his own sci-fi situations, but his scenarios always seem to involve the rich gaining control of the army and moving to a deserted island. this may just be a reflection of how little sci-fi he's read in the past.

the third and final memoir in her series. I still loved the first one the best, but the first half of this book was quite funny in its own right. interestingly enough, if you just read this one, you'd wonder why someone deigned her life worthy of a memoir - it's not terribly exciting or pressing - but I imagine there was a clamor for her first 2 books to continue.

this topic did not deserve a full book. it could have easily been covered in a pamplet. the author gives a speil about how the conservatives came around to introducing the TFSA and how few canadians are properly taking advantage of it. but then he does his own comparision of this product vs RESPs for education savings and finds RESPs yield a higher rate. same thing when he does a comparison with saving for house using RRSPs - RRSPs are better. and RRSPs are better if you'll be in a lower tax bracket in the future, when you take out the cash. so really, didn't he just explain WHY so many people are not using TFSAs yet? they are choosing superior paths dependant upon their goal.
oh, and the author continually uses 4 or 5% as the annual growth of a TFSA - ha! more like 1-2%

yup, I'm too old for this title but I read it anyhow. or skimmed it because it was god awful. even the things that had turned out horribly for her - like getting a Brazilian - was still enthusiastically recommended. smacks of inexperienced youth that was programmed to follow any patriarchal, marketing technique. yuck. not to mention, she's a little full of herself and her youth to think these 101 things can only be done before 30 (ie: before the old, married, pregnant part). as my teen said, she made her journal entries be the goal: live my life or you'll be missing out. ppttttt.

still kicking around after 10 years of being published, this book was supposed to be a bible of sorts for meditation. too bad I'm not ready to actually start meditating yet. this book is really meant to be an aid as you start up your practice and contains lots of imagery (which I sort of hated) to help in the meditation process. I found him too goofy at times, too medical at others. and certain phrases he loves to use trigger me to think blah-blah-blah.

this author did Hatchet so it's no surprise that this was a great little book about survival that the boys just ate up. the epilogue is fascinating too - turns out much of what he's written has happened to him, and he is a modern day Henry David Thoreau

some hit, some miss. but some that hit were incredibly funny: shout-out to George Kaufman for 'annoy kaufman, inc' and Robert Benchley's 'it's fun to be fooled...it's more fun to know' and - believe it or not - woody allen's 'the kugelmass episode'

more of a memoir than i was anticipating (i heard her on the radio and was intrigued), this book went quickly from a tatooed, alcoholic, recovering fundamentalist to a typical, run-of-the-mill preacher. sure, she comes off as 'Dear Sugar' (cheryl strayed) with her prefacing radical empathy, but ultimately she uses the same turn-off vocabulary i've heard/read in the past like: ...a kingdom rules by the crucified one and populated by the unclean...
what's next: the blood of the lamb?
this was my choice for bookclub so i was disappointed. her 'radical beliefs' reputation has more to do with her unorthodox looks and her inclusion of marginalized people in her church. unfortunately, this book can only preach to the converted.