The Whole-Brain Child, Daniel J. Siegel (M.D.) & Tina
Payne Bryson (Ph.D.). ISBN: 9780553807912
Read August 15, 2013
Nonfiction: parenting, CBT/mindfulness, neuroscience.
Slight (149 pages, with comic strips,
illustrations, and boxed text) and overly-optimistic volume on using
mindfulness and awareness of brain development to guide child mental
development and to simultaneously manage their behavior by
using age-appropriate and helpful interventions and tools to
build their self-awareness, self-control, empathy, and mental/emotional
vocabulary. The ideas are good and proven, but the authors do
tend to give the impression that using these techniques will instantly result
in a cooperative and pliant child through their cartoon before-and-after
comparisons and their choices in real-life examples. I'm not so optimistic,
but I'm not knocking the techniques, just the presentation. The
subtitle is: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing
Mind, and I don't know that these ideas and techniques are quite so
revolutionary as all that, but I admit that is a good title key-word to throw
out to get attention in a glutted parenting-technique bookshelf. Nifty
for a reminder on how to help use stressful situations as
"teachable moments" instead, but not worth purchasing.
A Beautiful Friendship & Fire Season, David Weber & Jane
Lindskold.
(re-read) August 11 & 12, 2013
Introducing these to my husband, who is working his way through the main Honor
storyline and needed a break before the story splits into three branches.
I figured now is the best time to start the short stories to introduce all of
the supporting cast that's been promoted to heading whole books, and he was
wanting treecats, so I gave him the short stories A Beautiful Friendship (from More
than Honor) and The Stray (from Worlds of Honor) to fill out the
background. He's on Beautiful Friendship the YA book today, and
will probably get to Fire Season later this week. I think after
that I'll go with What Price Dreams (also in Worlds of Honor)
immediately afterwards, and give him Treecat Wars when it comes out in
October (after I finish devouring it myself, of course). He reads a lot
slower than me, so while he was working through the shorts, I of course had to
re-read these two again since it had been a few months since Fire Season came
out. God I love treecats.
The Amaranth Enchantment, Julie Berry. ISBN: 1599903342
(re-read) August 8, 2013
YA (really JUV) fairy-tale-ish. Lucinda's terrible life with her
meanspirited Aunt and dishwater Uncle fractures almost instantly when the Lady
Beryl, the Amaranth Witch, walks into Uncle's goldsmith shop. Lucinda is
a cipher of a character, and all of the fairy-tale tropes are followed to a T,
including the "fairy" godmother, instant falling in love with the
handsome prince, and a thief who isn't who he seems. A strange and
unexplained goat with dog-like characteristics is a puzzle, but that's the only
odd note out of a story where every event (and person) is tied together into an
intricate net of coincidences and interrelationships and causalities.
Pleasant enough while reading, the whole mess devolves into a multitude of
thorny and irritating questions when thought about afterwards (where was the
villain's guardian this whole time?) (what is up with the goat?)
(why does the whole kingdom not know about a missing prince?) (why is everyone
in the "other world" so damn selfish that poor Beryl has to get the
shaft AGAIN?). Pretty, but rather frustrating.
