By “consuming” I mean ‘Acting in’. I’ve been cast as Ellen Drake (I get to yell and tantrum on stage, yeah!)

First read through is on Sunday.

This book was a lot of fun to read, and a great conclusion to the Ender saga. I’d definitely recommend it.

A quick, fun read. Part space opera, part cyberpunk, part coming-of-age story.

Looking for a lighter read after the last one. Hey, if it’s written by Shatner, and the protagonist is named “Jim”, it’s gotta be amusing.

The dedication included the passage ”...in discovering the magic of reading…weaning themselves away from the hypnosis of television to take a voyage into imagination.” Again, coming from William Shatner these words mean something very different than if they come from, say, Lemony Snickett (whose books are pro-reading propaganda).

OK. First of all, I found the style a bit dry, which is a shame, because what he had to say was interesting, it just took a little work to get through the language choice… I suspect Strunk & Wagnell has conditioned me to expect a more direct treatment.

Other than that, the book, written in the 1980’s, gives a strong case for a complete overhaul of the educational system – one which is 100% counter to ‘No Child Left Behind’.

It also gives insight into organizational structure in general, and how to change it, and how not to change it, and why. There are passages I gave to my husband to read (as he is in the process of starting his own business) about what kinds of organizations are the most efficient and productive.

There is commentary on why the more effective structures are not more common (a combination of lack of public knowledge of the specific research, and how change to better structure can come about, and what is required to effect that change.)

So far, so good.

Initially it looked like a ‘miracle solution’ book. It cited a few studies which seemed to show that an educational system arranged democratically rather than autocratically would lessen the hostility in the educational system. I thought he was heading towards espousing wholesale change without taking into account all the ‘little’ problems in this massive restructuring. (Despite the fact that he’s been in the New York educational bureaucracy for years.)

However, after the first few chapters he describes some programs which have actually been tried along these lines. His complaint about them is not that the school system didn’t jump up and change everything. It’s the much more reasonable one that, although some positive results have been reported, there has been no systematic study about why they work and how much benefit they actually give. A much more logical approach.

About halfway through it. Looking forward to the rest.

I found this book while looking for a reference for my daughter to use in a research paper. I’ve been going on a ‘hard science’ binge for non-fiction reading, and thought I’d try something different.

It’s good. It’s very good. But it’s a more serious work than I’m in the mood for. If it were shorter (the first six stories were originally supposed to be a short story collection called “The Geranium and Other Stories”) I’d go for it.

Actually, I’ll finish the first six, and call that a ‘book’, because it was originally intended to be one.

This is SO not a movie quote. It’s a book quote…. nyah!

A fantastic quote, but you have to remember that it was because of this quote that shaken martinis became stylish. It was supposed to be an example of Bond being incredibly gauche in high society settings, not being suave and sophisticated…