Nina Lewis

I have just completed the 49th and 50th book since I started riding the UTA.  And in 2 more weeks, it will be the one year anniversary of riding the bus.  Hopefully by then I’ll have finished reading books #51 and #52 thus reading one book a week for a year.

Book #49 was Glenn Beck’s Inconvenient Book.  He has some interesting things to say.  And I must admit, I enjoyed the writing style: humorous, succinct, to the point.  Clever sidebars dot the pages.  While many of them might be satirical, truth runs through them.

I agreed with many of the things that he said.  I agreed with what he said in the chapter about education (do away with tenure, teach the students how to think and not what to think).  The College Pledge for college-aged students and their parents to sign is interesting.  But I don’t think it will be used.  (Maybe it was meant to be one of those satirical sidebars . . .)

While in one chapter he berates our society that inundates girls with media that makes them believe they have to have perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect teeth, and a perfect size 0 body, I find it interesting that most of the time when he refers to his wife it is to say how beautiful she is and how ‘hot’ she is.  Does he praise her for her intellect?  Once.  For her kindness, compassion, humanitarian service, community service, success in the business world, political activeness?  Nope. Nada. So, in a way, isn’t he aiding and abetting through his comments the belief that women should have perfect bodies, be beautiful, be sexually alluring?  Isn’t he being hypocritical?  Mmmmm . . .

And the chapter about the lies behind illegal immigration — what an eye-opener!  If what he says is true, that will be scary.  If you don’t read the book, I recommend at least reading that one chapter.  I just hope I don’t live to see it happen.  Nor my grandchildren.  Nor my great-grandchildren.  Nor my great-great grandchildren.  Nor my great-great-great . . .

As always, it’s interesting how things come together at the same time.  I finished Glenn Beck’s book and a couple of days later came across a blog with this video.  I think Glenn makes a good point here.

Book #50 was The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.  Boy howdy!  Are these two disparate books, or what??  A I read the book, I vacillated back and forth and then forth and back on whether or not I liked it.  In the end, the verdict was yes.

I ended up caring about Sidda and her mother, Vivi, and the members of the sisterhood.   I wanted Sidda to marry Connor (which I knew would happen because I read the last few pages before I started reading the beginning of the book!).

I wanted Sidda and Vivi to ‘kiss and make up’ and have a good mother-daughter relationship.   I wanted Vivi to have a good relationship with her mother.  I wanted everybody to be happy.  They weren’t and there were lots of ups and downs and loop-dee-loops because life happened (as it does to all of us).

Sidda flees to Lake Quinault near Forks, Washington, to sort through her feelings about marriage to Connor. This made me think of the book Twilight that was set in Forks, Washington. It so happens that both of these books were published in the same year. Was there something in the air that compelled these two authors to base their stories in this area? Just what are the odds of two popular books being published at the same time that take place in the same location?

Lots of raw emotion in this book!  And, good writing.

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