1/3

One-third Nerd was a great, super sweet read.  Very funny, very real.  Good good stuff!  I loved the 47s! I do love stories in which siblings get a long in a realistic way.  And also I loved that divorce isn't seen as a BIG EVIL.  Much too often it is.  And in reality, it is often a very good thing.  The parents in this book really act like adults.  Good stuff. 

I Never Liked Math

Until I attempted Math for Toddlers and Preschoolers at work.  Then everything changed.  I started reading about early math and the ways in which our first math experiences color the attitudes we have about math as we grow, and the success we have with it.  Good early math experiences mean good math experiences later.  I wonder if that is true for science.  Because I DO  NOT like science, but I wonder...if I had had good early science experiences would that be different.  Would I have like The Third Mushroom more?  Probably.  As Jennifer L. Holm is an author I very, very much enjoy.  This is the sequel to The Fourteenth Goldfish.  Which I really enjoyed. I just couldn't get into this one as much as the first but I still recommend it, because I know it was just me and science!

It gets a little old when,

like Joyce Carol Oats, Barbara Ehrenreich loves to remind us that she doesn't believe in God.  If you read my blog with regularity (um that would be no one!) you will know that I am not anti-atheist.  If that is someone's path, that is someone's path!  I am believe that God is totally cool with that and loves the atheist, too, just like He loves the Pope, saints, me, you, everyone.  What bugs me is that Barbara Ehrenreich just beats and beats and beats the reader over the head with her atheism.  Now I understand that is probably unfair of me.  Certainly there are authors who beat and beat and beat and beat the reader over the head with their Judaism, their Christianity, etc. 
And here's the thing, years ago I read Nickel and Dimed and it was fantastic and important.  And I agree with Ms. Ehrenreich's politics.  I mean, I would like to have dinner with this brilliant woman.  It's just that Natural Causes:  An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer was SO good in some places.  It was!  So it kinda made me sad that even though Ms. Ehrenreich is a woman of age (according her, I'm saying this- the admits that she is "old enough to die" in the book, which I think is such a cool concept) she STILL has to rant like a 24 year-old about her absolute certainty that God does not exist.  How can someone live so long and be so brilliant, as she clearly is, that she doesn't even entertain the possibility that God might exist?  Ah well.  Still I can recommend this book.  There's a lot to think about here.  It's just that wow, give it a break, lady.  You are brighter than this!

Graphic

Radium Girls:  The Dark Story of America's Shining Women was graphic and hard to read in many places.  These women, how they suffered.  But their deaths and pain were not in vain.  What a story.  So very tragic.  And greed.  The love of money truly is the root of all evil.  You can read more about them here.

Science

isn't something for which I have a passion, but I certainly appreciate those who do.  It was good to do something a little (lot) out of my element and read in the Who Was/Is series about Jane Goodall, Galileo, Ben Franklin, Neil Armstrong, Marie Curie and Steve Jobs.

I learned a lot because I basically knew nothing about Armstrong and Goodall except the very, very basics.  I gave Galileo less stars because he caved to the Inquisition and renounced what he knew to be true scientifically.  I mean, I am not sure if he did this for faith reasons, not wanting to go against the Church, or if he did it just to save his earthly life.  I need to look into that more. The other reason I gave it a 3 was the whole explanation of the pendulum thing.  I mean, I know I am not a bright bulb, especially when it comes to science, but I STILL don't get it!  And as far as the recanting goes... I don't know...after looking around it seems like he did recant just to save his own skin.  Which makes really no sense if he was as devout as he claimed to have been.  I mean, the earthly body they may kill, right?
The Marie Curie book was interesting to me in that I had always called her Madame Curie and I guess I should have realized that Madame Curie means Mrs. Curie!  People didn't even use her first name!?!  She was just Mr. Curie's wife!
The Ben Franklin one was okay.  I was biased because I have zero interest in the American Revolutionary War.  Isn't that terrible?
I knew next to nothing about Jane Goodall, so this was a great introduction. 
My knowledge of Steve Jobs was limited to the movie and the fact that I have always insisted on Apple products since I started using the Mac Plus.  I loved my Mac Performa 460!
I would tell everyone, "They cost more but they are SO worth it."  Windows 95 is Mac 84!"
But these days, I can't say that same.  I know they last forever.  At least my laptop is still going strong, I bought it in 2009.  But the thing is, lately, the way that iPhones seem to fail right when a new one comes out (though I hear that can be solved if you don't update your software because older iPhones aren't really meant for the new software).  I just don't know, though.  But that is not to rip on Jobs.  He was obviously a brilliant man and wow, he did do so much.  Not necessary fun to work with or for, but not as mean as he came across in the movie?  I don't know.  I gotta read more about him.  So this book its job! 

Subjects Matter

I probably would have given Revival one star had I not enjoyed the subject matter.  Matters of faith always appeal to me.  But the ending was just so ridiculous and it was SO drawn out and typical wordy "I am too rich to need an editor" King that had it not handled the "terrible sermon" so very well, I would have given it one star.  Lots to think about and talk about here...if there was an abridged version. 

Science Doesn't Get It Wrong, but Sometimes Scientists Do

Pandora's Lab:  Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong was super good!  I listened to a podcast with the author after having listened to the book and he said that the subtitle of his book was probably not a good one, because like my blog post title says, he said that it isn't SCIENCE that gets it wrong, it's the people doing the science.  And Dr. Offit says that the only way to be sure is to test and test and gather data and data and data and make sure and do the science right and let it have its say. 
I liked this book even before I got the end and heard the brilliant things he had to say about e-cigarettes! 
The seven stories in here are all really interesting (not in the order in which they appear in the book, just how they came to my mind). 
1.  The Opioid Epidemic 
2.  Trans fats
3.  DDT
4.  The Vitamin C Cure
5.  Lobotomies (which mentions the TransAllegheny Lunatic Asylum)
6.  Eugenics
7.  Chemical Weapons
I am reading this for a book group but I bet we won't get to meet as the last time we didn't get to meet, but I am glad I read it anyway!  I can't wait to read his other stuff!

Chuck and Emmy

I really don't know much about Charles Darwin.  Reading Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith was very enlightening.  You can see that this book won lots of awards, and I can see why.
It was especially interesting that I had visited a Sunday School class last week and Rev. Dr. Steven Tuell was the guest speaker!  He teaches at my old school!  I wish he would have taught there when I went there!  But I was so young then, I wonder if I had what it took to appreciate a good professor back then.  I can see the benefits of going back to school when one is older and hopefully wiser.
Rev. Dr. Tuell started the class by naming two big names...I can't remember either of them now.  But one is a big time creationist and the other is a big time scientist who doesn't believe in God.  He said something like, "It is interesting that X doesn't believe in God or a divine plan in creation and that Y believes in creation as it is told in Genesis, but that both of them have the exact same interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis.  And that is totally bizarre because we have two totally different stories of creation in Genesis!" Then we looked at the Bible and the two very different accounts of creation that are there.   Check out his blog here.
One part that really stood out for me because I was listening to this book at the time was something that I really couldn't remember and didn't want to say it wrong!  But I emailed him and he wrote back!  It had to do with the creation story in Genesis being consonant with evolution.
Here is what he said:
I alluded to two features of the creation stories in Genesis that I believe to be consonant with biological evolution.  The first is the fact that God empowers the world to participate in its own coming into being: so, rather than saying, “Let there be plants,” God says, “Let the earth put forth vegetation” (Gen 1:11); so too God invites the water to “bring forth swarms of living creatures” (1:20), and says, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind” (1:24).  In Genesis, life emerges from the earth and the waters.
 The second was that, in Genesis 2, both humans and animals are made from the ground (2:7, 19), and both human and animal are in Hebrew called _nephesh khayah_: “living being.”  That idea too I find consonant with biological evolution.
So that was pretty, pretty neat.  If you are interested in more of this, here is how you can learn more from Dr. Tuell, as he explained:
I have blogged about these chapters extensively at www.steventuell.net: enter creation, or Genesis, in the search field, or go to the archives for September 2013 and move forward from September 8.
I don't know much about the Victorian Era, but here is a nice list of important people of that time.  As you can see, CD is on there.  
This book is really about Chuck and Emma's courtship and their life together.  It is a story of love.

Fish Story

When I was a little girl, I won a goldfish as my elementary school Fun Day. This little dude lasted a really long time! I know I still had him in eighth grade. I know that is weird. But I am sure that he wasn't replaced, like the goldfish in The Fourteenth Goldfish. My parents hated that fish! They couldn't wait for him to die! I'm not sure why, because I did take care of him. I know that my cats enjoyed looking at him, too.

But that is neither here nor there.

The title of The Fourteenth Goldfish refers to the whole goldfish drama that Ellie went through, or didn't have to go through, rather, over goldfish. When Ellie was in preschool she had a rather progressive teacher and at the end of the year she gave all of the students a goldfish. The thing was, goldfish aren't supposed to live very long and their death would teach the children about the circle of life. Ellie's goldfish didn't teach her that though, because her fish never died. Her parents kept replacing it! Very clever.

The Fourteenth Goldfish is written by Jennifer L. Holm who also wrote, Turtle in Paradise, which I absolutely loved.   This book is kind of like the Intergalatic Bed and Breakfast series in that it is science fiction, but it good, meaty, growing-up stuff within its pages as well!  TFG is a growing up story, and a funny one.  Ellie's grandfather is a scientist who has found the Fountain of Youth, in the form of a jellyfish.  Instead of being a guy in his late 70s, he is now a young teen again.  Is that good, or is it bad?  There is a lot to be learned in this book, about growing up and moving on, about being more than you thought you could be.  It's about fathers and daughters and loss and the circle of life.  It's about science and art and the in between.  But it is hilarious and not preachy and not predictable.  I really, really loved this book and will find it very easy to recommend!  I was excited to get this on netgalley and look forward to its release!