Review: Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know

Star Wars Absolutely Everything You Need to Know
Star Wars Absolutely Everything You Need to Know

This picture book or coffee table book if you like has a very long title.  The full title: Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  And as you would assume a book with a title this long requires more than one author, four actually:  Adam Bray, Cole Horton, Michael Kogge, and Kerrie Dougherty.

Star Was Everything Inside
Star Was Everything Inside

If you get the feeling that this books title and abundance of authors is trying to compensate for something, you would be right.  First and foremost, this is a book written for juniors, DK says 8-12.  It would probably be perfect for a 8 year-old boy.  But I wanted more.  I wanted the mysteries that the movie brought to use at least hinted at.  Seeing as the target demographic is 8-12 year-old boys it makes sense that the bulk of the book deals with descriptions of characters, buildings, and droids/robots.

I did learn things I didn’t know before leafing through the pages, so it is a worth while checkout from your library, but unless you have some Star Wars fans that fall in the target age group I wouldn’t purchase this one.  Keep to the books for the most part.  If you have watched the Clone Wars and are watching Rebels you will already know more that what is in this book.  There are only four pages or so in the back of the book that pertain to The Force Awakens, so don’t get this if you think it will reveal more about the movie.

Having said that the pictures are great quality like every DK book and there is a lot of information there.

The Observer Weighs in on the 100 Book Challenge

Current Books
These are just the ones that were on my desk in arms reach

Okay, another 100 book reading challenge article is this thing from the Observer going to be any good?

Does your reading list keep growing? Did you buy books that you’ve never read? It might be time to cross more books from your list this year than ever.

Yep.  They got me!  At least I’m not the only one.

Most of the books you read are not planned in advance. You don’t sit down in January and say: “The first week of June I’ll read this book.”

Actually, I do do that.  I have a pile that I get from the library and I read them in a certain order.  Usually by due date and the availability of renewals on the title. Darius Foroux, the author of this article makes a point of saying you need to have a lot of books around.  I agree, this helps, but he seems to have forgotten about libraries.  To have many books around you need to buy them which costs money.  No, again, library, it is free and you can usually check out somewhere around 20 books at a time.  Most libraries lending period is between 2 – 3 weeks and you can renew sometimes more than three times.  So, I don’t see why you have to have money to read a lot of books.

This doesn’t really apply to me, but I like to borrow books before I buy them.  If they are not something I like why should I spend money on them when I can borrow them for free.  Last year I saved over $800 by borrowing from local public libraries.

Darius, can I call you Darius, says not to overthink what book you are going to read next.  I do like to read some of the reviews on goodreads before starting a book.  I like to read the synopsis of the book too, just to see what I’m getting myself into.  Before I open any book I also read the cover, front and back to see what I can learn.  I think that is all part of reading the book.  I also do not skip introductions or forwards.  The only part I skips are the notes and acknowledgements at the end of books.

I’m beginning to think Darius’ rules are a little too strict.  Reading shouldn’t have so many rules!

I do like this though:

I live by a different motto: Always Be Reading.

I find this makes me feel guilty though.  Even as I write this blog post, I’m thinking should I be spending my time doing this or catching up on War and Peace or reading some more of Cold Comfort?  I like doing the blog post though so I need to make time for my other projects as well as reading.  Still….I do feel guilty any time I’m doing something that is not reading.

Darius is right, you must find time to read books if it is important to you do do so.  Just last night:

Next Darius covers a very important point.  Don’t read books you don’t like.  He says only read relevant books which I think is completely different, but if you don’t like something than stop reading it, good advice, but nothing we haven’t heard before.

Oh, I love this, “read multiple books at once.”  Yep.  Right now, here is the line up:

  1. On the Kindle: All Joy and No Fun by Jennifer Senior
  2. On the Overdrive:  The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  3. On iBooks: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  4. From the library: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
  5. Reading with my daughter: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but I think there are some I forgetting.  You get the point though.

Darius’ last point “retain the knowledge”.  I do highlight in my kindle and ibooks when I find something I like or something that interest me, but I could be doing a better job of this of course.  I never make notes in a library book and I find that takes notes, takes me away from the story and out of “the zone” when I’m reading.  Therefore, I stopped doing that years ago.

Good job Darius, you hit some good points and I got a good reminder to be more studious and retain something from all these books I’m reading.  Because if you don’t gain anything from reading 100 books in a year, what was the point?

Reading War and Peace: January Update

War and Peace is "Heavy Reading"
War and Peace is “Heavy Reading” by Jill Clardy

Last check-in I had read 2.5% of War and Peace.  So, where am I in the book? I am 6.3% into the book.  This is bad, this is very bad.  I needed to hit 8.2% by the 31st of January.  I’m 2 points or 129 pages behind on my reading.  That may not sound like much, but combined with the February goal of another 8.2% of the book or 560 pages, that is going to be a tall building to scale.

I’m reading this on my mobile phone so the pages are very small, which means there are more of them 6,822 pages at the font size I have chosen.  Do you think ‘ol Tolstoy would have every thought someone would be reading his work on a small glowing screen which made phone calls and ordered coffee in advance of their arrival at a cafe that charged over $3 for a cup of coffee?

I thought I might be able to find a group reading the book right now especially since the show is out now from BBC.  I haven’t watched any of the episodes, but I would like to.  We will see, maybe watching an episode or two would help me get more into the book.

Review: Someday, Someday, Maybe

Someday, Someday, Maybe
Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham

I’m so excited.  I heard via Kindles and Wine, that Lauren Graham wrote a book!  Awesome for fans of the Gilmore Girls, then I read more and see that she voices her own audiobook!  I know I’m going to get this right away.  I’ve always been a fan of the Gilmore Girls, I think my sister-in-law Lisa introduced me to the show, I’m not sure.  Anyway, I’m writing this a little early since I haven’t finished listening to the book yet, I found it on Overdrive, but I had to write down how I felt about the series coming back.  Thats right, It has been confirmed by the New York Times that the show is coming back to Netflix!  No solid dates, but how awesome.  They are recording now!

So, if you will excuse me I have to go back to listening to this audiobook!

Okay, all done.  When I was down to the last 20 minutes it was hard to move forward, because I knew the book would end soon and the story and worse of all the sound of Lauren Graham’s voice.

I liked the story.  It was a good love triangle and Ms. Graham’s wit is quick which made the whole story that much more enjoyable.  The book moved fast but had a wonderful writing style that was very easy on the eyes/ears.  I was rooting for one of the guys as soon as he was introduced and that was a fun way to listen to the book.  This audiobook earned 4 out of 5 stars with me.

Review: Star Wars: Before the Awakening

Star Wars- Before the Awakening
Star Wars- Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka

Star Wars: Before the Awakening is really three stories one for each of the characters on its cover: Finn, Rey and Poe.  This is a junior novel.  Really written for 12 year-old crowd, but it is a Star Wars book the tells the story of these characters before the movie and my local library had a copy, so my decision was made for me.  I grabbed this as soon as it came in.  And it already has another person waiting for it.  They will get their chance now as I have finished it.  I loved this book and gave it four stars.  It loses one star for being a little easy, written for children as it is.  Maybe I shouldn’t mark it off for that since it is a junior novel, but thats just the way I am.  5 stars is perfection after all.

In this novel we find go along with Finn through some of this training and on his first real mission.  I had thought the one we saw in the movie was his first, but not so.  Rey’s story I don’t want to tell you about.  It concerns her scavenger life before the movie.  Her story is so excellent, its actually the reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5.  I loved her story so much, I thought there was more the author could have done with it.  Poe’s story is also good.  The second best story in the book after Rey’s of course.  In it Poe meets general Leia Organa Solo for the first time and goes on a very thrilling mission.  If you are a Star Wars fan, young or old, you will enjoy this book!

Most Taught Texts from the Top US Universities

Adams House (Harvard): Library of
Adams House (Harvard): Library of by Paul Lowry

The Open Syllabus Project, is an effort to make the intellectual judgment embedded in syllabi relevant to broader explorations of teaching, publishing, and intellectual history.  It released the top texts taught from the top US universities over the last 15 years and Quartz released an article listing them.  This is exactly the kind of thing that I love.  I love to keep learning and the way that works best for me is reading because I also love that.  So, they only hard part is choosing the right books.  These are definitely some of them.  See the list they released below:

Rank Text Author
1 Republic Plato
2 Leviathan Hobbes, Thomas
3 The Prince Machiavelli, Niccolò
4 The Clash of Civilizations Huntington, Samuel
5 The Elements of Style Strunk, William
6 Ethics Aristotle
7 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn, Thomas
8 Democracy in America Tocqueville, Alexis De
9 The Communist Manifesto Marx, Karl
10 The Politics Aristotle

I would so love all of these books.  I’ve read only a few.  Most if not all of them are available as a penguin classic.  In their little black perfect paperback versions.  I love these.  If only you could buy all of them in one go, with of course an accompanying bookshelf!  Someday, Someday, Maybe.

Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Incredible Cross-Sections

Star Wars The Force Awakens Incredible Cross Sections
Star Wars The Force Awakens Incredible Cross Sections by Jason Fry

Incredible cross-sections is a beautiful book!  Not only are all the images “incredible”, but there are short articles on every page.  The articles tell you a little about each vehicle.  For example, did you know that Rey built that speeder herself?  Even Han’s new freighter is in this book and so are the Rathtars.

Millennium Falcon Cross Section
Millennium Falcon Cross Section

I am very glad that my library had this book.  But honestly, if my kids were a little more into Star Wars I would not hesitate to buy this for $20.  As it is, I don’t have the room for this and I’d be the only one looking at it.  Click on the image above to see a larger version.  Can you find Finn?

Reading Log

Stockholm Public Library
Stockholm Public Library by Samantha Marx

I ran across a link to May McLay Patterson’s enormously long titled I Read 164 Books in 2015 and Tracked them all in a Spreadsheet.  Here is what I learned. article.  It starts of a little too wordy for me and then the first tip is not to finish every book you start.  So far, this sounds like the same advice I’ve heard from a million other people, most notably Nancy Pearl.

I track what I’ve read and what I want to read on goodreads, but I also have a spreadsheet.  Just something simple on google sheets.  In 2015 I was interested if I read more male authors work or female.  So I started tracking it (67% male).  Patterson mentions that Amanda Nelson of Book Riot not only records their gender but also their nationality, and whether or not they identify as a person of color.  I thought this is great finally a way to better my existing system.

I loved that Patterson liked Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692 because that book is on my short list of to TBR.  It drives me crazy that I haven’t read it yet.

Last year, the BBC reported that translations comprise just 2 to 3 percent of English publishing, compared with 27 percent in France and up to 70 percent in Slovenia.

Wow!  I’ve read two books this year that are translations The Stranger and Missing Person.  Both, oddly enough French translations.  Go figure!  Make that three, I didn’t realize that Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist was a translation.

I’m reading the article as I write this.  Patterson is a librarian and the more I read of this article the more my desire to be a librarian increases.  I’ve known for several years that I would like to do that kind of work, but I haven’t acted on it yet.  To many responsibilities to try to make this happen right now.  Maybe much later?

At the end of every book I loved, I felt transformed. I wanted to tell everyone about it…

I find this frustrating as none of my friends read as much as I do.  The ones that come close are not people I talk to as often as I would like.  I work with them and I’m too busy at work to have a long book conversation most days.  This is frustrating, I assume if you are a librarian you get to talk books a lot more.  Again, jealous!

I’m done now, and I feel that you would do well to read this article if you are a reader of books.  I enjoyed it.  Have fun and keep reading!

Review: The Alchemist

The Alchemist
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

34% of goodreads users gave The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 5 stars.  I’m not sure I listened to the same book as these people read.  Maybe there is some deep philosophical meaning that this book contained and my tiny mind just didn’t gasp it.  I have no idea.  To mean this book “read” like a children’s book.  It was not written poorly.  The story just didn’t appeal to me.  There was nothing that grabbed me.  There was no foreshadowing that I wanted to hang out for and see how it went.  Therefore, I fall solidly in the only 9% of goodreads users that gave this book a measly 2 stars.

Review: The Stranger

The Stranger
The Stranger by Albert Camus

This was a strange book.  The Stranger (aka The Outsider) by Albert Camus is an odd book.  The main character seems completely apathetic.  I gave this book 3 stars.  It was well written and the story was interesting, but that was the extent of it.  I’m not sure what the author wanted us to take away on this novel.  In trying to review this book I ran across this video review.  You have to watch it.