[July-Sep 2007] Books I read

Here is where I record some of the books I read in the last 3 months.

I devoured parenting books at the moment for obvious reasons. I don't read them from cover to cover but flip through them and only read the parts that are interesting or applicable at the time. Parenting skills are not always intuitive to me so I'm glad that these books help even if I only take one useful advice from a book. One book I read recently reminded us to give Lara a drink of water with food. It made perfect sense but we never thought about it before and Lara really appreciated the drink of fluid with her meshed food.

I also like to flip through food magazines. I don't know why but they help me to relax. I'm into dessert books if you have not noticed. I'm reading cake decorating books when I can get my hands on them.

Other books I've read:

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Easy read. Simple story and it made me think about how and why things happened the way they did and how they worked out in the scheme of life. I liked 'Tuesday with Morrie' by the same author, and that book is not a fiction. This book, though fictional is sort of a "self-discovery" book in that it seems to contain life lessons and it makes you think. A friend said she thought I read a lot of self-help books. I have not thought about it like that. I think I like to read non-fictions these days. I feel sometimes that I don't have time (or can't be bothered) reading 'unreal' stories when there are so many true stories around. Of course this could also have something to do with my choices of fiction books-they are just not interesting enough.

The Orchard Thieves by Elizabeth Jolley
A small fictional book so it didn't take long to read. It took me a little time to get used to the author's writing styles, but once the initial unfamiliarity was overcome, the book read like a beautiful lyrics. This book is about family discord and how problems seem to be resolved by themselves at the end with imagination and acceptance. It depicts simple home lives and the idle thoughts that exist, and sometimes run undeservedly wild in our heads. I didn't expect much from this book, it was just something that caught my eyes on the library shelves. It was surprisingly enjoyable.

Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
A journal of a single Mum on her son's first year of life. The author is a devoted Christian and every time she had challenges in her life, she would pray for her next 'operating instructions' thus the name of the book I guess. It would be really good to get an instruction manual on parenting, that would make things so much easier.
A funny but sad book. I probably wouldn't appreciate this book had I read it before Lara was born. I have more sympathy for the author after my own parenting experiences. I enjoy reading stories of other parents and babies. It brought big smiles to my lips when I read about baby Sam in the book doing fake coughs and examined his Mom's teeth, because Lara did exactly the same things. It's funny that babies all seem to be doing similar things even though they are not taught to do so. I'm glad to find, from reading this book, that new parents tend to think their babies are the cleverest and the most beautiful thing alive, so I'm not the only one! I thoroughly enjoyed this book.