Not exactly what I want to be reading, but I promise I will be digging into, and hopefully finishing, “What-the-Dickens”, tonight!
reading
Remember That Story About The Tooth Fairy?
You know, “What-the-Dickens”? That guy. Yep. I’m still reading it. Except I haven’t picked it up in a week. Since about the time my 1st college class started for my MBA. So, I don’t know about you, but I find this completely unacceptable. So I will find a way to manage my time to include my recreational reading and blogging, and tell you how this story ends. Patience is a virtue, right?
More to come, sooner rather than later (fingers crossed)!
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Tuesday’s Thought For The Day!
True Statement!
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Puzzle Me This!
Maybe you remember my post of my “Bizzare Bookshop” puzzle earlier? Here’s a picture of it; it is now hanging on my bedroom wall.
I also had two more puzzles to complete. I love puzzles almost as much as I love books, so to be able to do puzzles of books is a-m-a-z-i-n-g for me! Ravensburger makes the best puzzles, ever. And believe you me, I have done my fair share of puzzles.
The next one is finished, and hanging on my bedroom wall. This one is “World of Words”. This took less than a week.
The one in progress is “Sanctuary of Knowledge”, which is taking me already two weeks….I did this one last year and one of my girls took it and put it in their room. Fair enough. I have just really been struggling to sit down and work on this: holidays, back to work, MBA classes started……
And the toughest, but my favorite Ravensburger puzzle? “The Last Supper”. A very close friend of mine from church bought this for me and my girls. 3000 pieces. Took us all 6 weeks to complete it but it has been hanging on my kitchen wall for over two years and I love looking at this. Every. Single. Day.
What do you think? Are you a puzzle solver?
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Friday Fun Facts!
J.D. Salinger (Jerome David)
Born: 1-1-1919
Died: 1-27-2010
Wrote: The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, as well as 3 other novels, including short stories that appeared in The New Yorker. He was drafted into the Army and served from 1942-1944. He was hospitalized after suffering a nervous breakdown after the war. Mr. Salinger lived a very private life, last published a book in 1965, and gave his last interview in 1980.
Odd Fact: Mark David Chapman, the man who assassinated John Lennon, was found with a copy of the book at the time of his arrest and later explained that the reason for the shooting could be found in the book’s pages.
Quote: “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
I have to be completely honest and say I have never read this book! I am ashamed to even say that, but I guarantee after reading the synopsis of this book, I will own it before the weekend is over.
What did you think of this story?
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Cinderella At The End!
For more information on the author, go here: http://cinderellaatemydaughter.com
Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein. If you are a Mom, Grandma, or Aunt to girls, this is an excellent book with lots of facts and some interesting stories.
The end of the book was in the time frame of when Tangled was about to be released by Disney (2010ish) so even some of the statistics I am going to share with you may have increased exponentially since the release of this story.
Shocking, almost impossible to believe, statistics:
The Global revenue Disney experienced from their Princess franchise in 2000: $300 million. In 2009? $4 billion.
The percentage of children ages 8-12 who regularly used eyeliner doubled between 2008 and 2010. Doubled. DOUBLED. What in the world is an 8 year old doing wearing eyeliner?
Nearly half of girls between 6 and 9 regularly use lipstick or lipgloss. (I do not know the number surveyed so it is kind of hard to tell you what the halfway point is, but for me I would have to say 1 out of 2 is one too many. My 9 year old uses chapstick. Plain, colorless, flavorless, chapstick).
Age of Barbie target audience when she was released in 1959: 9 to 12 years old. Age of Barbie target audience today (2010)? 3 to 7 years old.
In 2009, 12,000 Botox injections were given to children between the ages of 13 and 19. (I have absolutely nothing to say about this. I am just dumbfounded).
In 2008, 43,000 children under the age of 18 surgically altered their appearance. (HOW and WHY is this even possible? Unless if it is a life-saving, necessary surgery or a surgery to stop a child from being bullied, i.e. noticeable birthmark that gets them teased, the Doctors doing plastic surgery on children who aren’t finished growing should lose their license to practice, and the parents should just lose their parental rights.)
Between 1996 and 2006, the percentage of children under the age of 12 admitted to the hospital for eating disorders rose 119%.
Between 2000 and 2004, there was a 70% drop in the number of female college freshmen listing computer science as their major.
The age at which children express brand consciousness? 24 months.
I know everyone raises their children differently, and dependent on a person’s upbringing, it may be perfectly normal to allow your 16 year old to have plastic surgery. I have just voiced my opinion about how I feel as the mother of 4 daughters, and my intention was not to offend anyone. But I will certainly not ever apologize for the fact that I find it ridiculous and absurd that any girl under the age of 19 would be allowed to have botox injected. Exactly what is going on with your face at younger than 19 that needs to be fixed?
Good Gracious, I pray for strength, knowledge, and always being able to stay one step ahead of these girls I am still raising to be women, in the hopes of not only keeping them safe, but making them strong, intelligent women.
(Orenstein, Peggy, 2011, pgs 205-206)
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Cinderella – Again; More Interesting Facts
As I am getting further into the book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein, I am learning more and more how I have been manipulated by the big-and-small name companies who have market segments strictly leaning on girls. Don’t get me wrong. I went more than willingly along for the ride. (Another time I will tell you about my youngest daughter’s foray into Irish Dancing). Reading about the toddler beauty pageants in this book had me seeing what I myself was capable and guilty of.
So, one thing that really reached out and slapped me in the face, was on page 82. “ ’Tween’ girls now spend more than $40 million dollars a month on beauty products. No wonder Nair, the depilatory maker, in 2007 released ‘Nair Pretty’, a fruit-scented line designed to make 10-year-olds conscious of their ‘unwanted’ body hair” (2012, pg. 82). The first thing I thought was that these tween girls must all have amazing jobs to be able to spend that much money, a month!!, on make-up and lip gloss. If only, right? But apparently a lot of moms are doing pretty well for themselves to be able to invest this kind of money in their young girls beauty regimens. My kids are going to deal with whatever supposed unwanted hair they have when they are 10 years old. They are just stuck with it. Sorry. You don’t need smooth legs right now.
I understand that times have changed. Having 4 girls ranging from 21 years old down to 9, I have bought Barbies, Bratz, Moxie Girls, My Little Pony, Monster High Dolls, and every other girlie toy I can’t bring to mind at the moment. But even though times have changed, my oldest still set the precedence that the others will, and do, follow. No one is allowed a cell phone before they are 13 years old. No one will wear make-up other than chapstick before they reach 12. No one will wear clothes that show their midriff, butt-crack, or breasts falling out of a shirt. I haven’t budged on this, and I won’t. Yes, I hear all the time about the 8 and 9 year old friends who have their own cell phones, and I refuse to give one to my 12 and 9 year old. I got by without one; I’m sure they will survive it as well.
So what’s to come? More eye-opening facts of how I have been sucked in to the system. Again; willingly. I like my girls to be girlie, if they are indeed “girlie-girls”. 2 of them are, 2 of them aren’t. If one wants Barbie Dolls to play with, I am OK with that. But if they decide they want a baseball glove and bat instead, I am OK with that as well.
I am curious to see as I continue to read what possible damage I may have done to my girls’ self-esteem!
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Friday Fun Facts!
Happy Friday Everyone! It’s a balmy 1 degree here in West Michigan. I plan on doing a lot of reading under some seriously heavy blankets this weekend!
Today’s Fun Fact:
Harper Lee
Born: April 28, 1926
Wrote: To Kill A Mockingbird
Fun Facts: The only novel she ever wrote, she won awards for it, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Quill Award for Audio book. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and she enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote, who provided the basis of the character of Dill in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. This novel is the only novel that she ever completed.
Can you imagine writing one novel in your life, and having it be this fantastic? What a talent!
Harper Lee is still alive and aside from some legal troubles with the town where her story was based taking liberties on her story for profit purposes, she lives a quiet life out of the spotlight.
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Happy New Year! Perfectly Said!
May your 2014 bring to you everything you need, and may you find happiness, each and every day!
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Unsouled-Neal Shusterman-Final Review
What an ending to a wild ride of a story. Is it the end of this series? I can’t say for sure. Checking Neal’s website shows me that I missed a short-story book about Lev, called Unstrung, which was sandwiched between Unwholly and Unsouled. It details exactly what went on with Lev from the time Conner kidnapped him from his tithing, until he finally ended up at the Graveyard.
Book 3 finds Conner, Risa, Lev, and Cam all together, knowing they have to pull out all the stops to finally put an end to unwinding. The key seems to lie with Sonia, whom Conner knows more about than Sonia finds comfortable. But what she does let them know, is the final work of her husband, determined to fix the mistake he made by inadvertently allowing unwinding to come to be.
A printer, that prints real human organs, making unwinding unnecessary. The powers-that-be bought this from Janson for millions, and destroyed it, making the printers, blueprints, everything disappear. There is too much money to be made in the unwinding market.
This story, and series, is definitely well worth the read. There doesn’t necessarily need to be another book to this, and it would still seem like a complete series. There is plenty of room for another story to follow. If one does, it will definitely be on my bookshelf.
I bought, and read this series, for two reasons. Because it sounded interesting, and to make sure it was okay for my 12 year old daughter to read. In my household, this is a series I will let her read (she is currently reading the first book, Unwind. There is not much in “bloody-gore” violence, but both children and adults are killed throughout the series. The actual act of unwinding is not graphic, but as I said in an earlier review, the way it was written was very disturbing to me (my imagination got the better of me). There are a lot of weapons in this story, mostly guns and assault weapons.
As a perspective, I will not let my 12 year old watch rated R movies, but she does watch PG-13 movies. I try to not let her watch any obscene, rude shows of gross humor or blatant sexual behavior. If I said I never swore in front of her I would be lying, but I do try to monitor what she is exposed to as best as I can in this internet-driven world. We have a very open relationship where we are comfortable discussing anything with each other, without the uncomfortable awkwardness that can sometimes occur.
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