Rebecca Reads

In honor of Book Bloggers Appreciation Week, I’m giving away my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For more BBAW giveaways, visit here and here. Read the rest of this entry »

Sandra Boynton’s children’s books are new classics. I first discovered her delightful picture books via my sister-in-law, who had an entire shelf of Boynton’s books for my nephew. Now, with my own little boy, I’m really enjoying them. Her books all claim “serious silliness” on the back cover. I’d agree: we all enjoy the light-hearted silliness, but a child may still learn something. Read the rest of this entry »

When we found out in early 2007 that a little bundle of joy would be joining our family, we headed to the bookstore. Alexander Tsiaras’s lovely coffee table book, From Conception to Birth: A Life Unfolds, came back home with us. I loved pouring over the graphically enhanced photographs of babies in the womb, imagining how my own little one was developing. Now that he is almost a year old, I still enjoy it. Read the rest of this entry »

In Dubliners, his collection of short stories, James Joyce captures Irish life, specifically the lives of Dubliners. Each story is a magnificent sketch of the people, setting, and situations; the entire collection presents a variety of such sketches. At the end of each sketch, I felt the despair that I believe Joyce intended to impart in each normal life situation. While each story captures different characters in a various stages of life, similar despair pervades each of their lives in related settings. Read the rest of this entry »

Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 46, when his youngest daughter was just 3 months old. As a well-known computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he was a world leader in virtual reality training. But the focus of his last lecture to the university is not about programming a computer: It’s about how to live life. In Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture, Randy tells his three young children what it means to be happy, despite the odds, and what it means to truly live. His words, given with his own death date in mind, may inspire everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned, Maupassant was a best-seller in his day. What makes his stories resonate with the modern reader is the attention to our own natural wants. Read the rest of this entry »

In the best-seller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, Daniel Goleman explores emotions and the cause of emotions from the perspective of physiology, psychology, and human and child development. While Emotional Intelligence helped me reconsider my default reactions and emotions in various situations, I can’t really say I enjoyed listening to this audiobook. As I listened, I often felt annoyed and/or bored by Goleman’s projections, explanations, and descriptions. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

I’m back from New Zealand! We had a wonderful time, enjoying the scenery of Fiordlands and Queenstown. Our 10-month-old loved the baby-unsafe hotel rooms, and he has been thoroughly spoiled with extra Binkie time and overall parental indulgence.

Thursday I had a few moments, so I logged in to Google Reader: more than 500 posts awaited me. I deleted some posts, bringing it down to 350. Yesterday I logged in again, only to find 520. Again, I deleted some and went to bed. This morning, there are again more than 500. I guess I don’t get any time off! Read the rest of this entry »

The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling contain much more than the story of the adopted wolf-boy, Mowgli, who is probably the most familiar of Kipling’s characters.

Kipling’s Jungle Books are collections of stories about animals and people from around the world. Each story seems to be rooted in traditional facts about the animals and/or traditions, so they make for an interesting read. Some stories have fantastic, speaking animals; others are about people and superstition. Some stories take place in the Indian Jungle; others are in Eskimo North America or the deep seas of the Atlantic Ocean. As with his Just So Stories, Kipling has interspersed a poem or two before or after each story. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a lot about challenges in the book blogging community.  At some point, I may want to host a challenge, so I’m curious about preferences in the book blogging community when it comes to challenges. Read the rest of this entry »