Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

Last week I finished up Erin’s pick for this year’s 2006 Family Book and CD/DVD exchange. Her selection was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. The mystery is told from the perspective of 15 year old Christopher who has Asperger syndrome. It was such an interesting read with a very unique perspective. I imagine it will even be helpful in going into teaching; understanding the thought process of someone with AS or autism is a difficult thing, Curious Incident provides a small insight.

The story is actually quite a sad one that often uses tragic irony because the reader is more aware of the situation than the narrator is. Nether his mother nor his father are exactly redeemable characters, they are failures in many ways, but continue to love their son in their own, broken way. Christopher’s logic, while often flawed (often because he doesn’t understand the content or context of the premises), is extremely interesting and usually quite consistent. While being a sad story, it is well worth the read and you are left with hope that things will get better for Christopher and his family.

Christopher enjoys math and his chapters are numbered by primes. So using the language of math, he makes this astute observation:

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

I can agree with that! In another chapter, Christopher notes a list of some of his behavioral problems:

M. Saying things that other people think are rude (Note 6)

Note 6: People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say “I don’t like you” unless that person has been horrible to you.

I find it very interesting that while he can see his own “behavioral problems,” he has reasons for each of them. It isn’t like he just does things for no reason or to cause problems, he does them because he likes things a certain way.

Check the story out!

I have been doing a horrible job of posting on this year’s family book and cd/dvd exchange. My bad. I figured I would finally post again, this time on Dan’s pick: Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. I really had no idea what to expect going into this story but now I can definitely see why Dan chose the book.

This is an extremely well written piece of fiction about faith and family. The story centers on 11 year old Ruben Land, his struggles to breathe, his outlaw brother, poetic sister, new found mother, and miraculous father. The simplicity of love and trust shines through in this heart warming narrative. I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys good fiction.

I enjoyed one of the moments where Ruben had a close personal experience with God:

It only felt powerful, like truth unhusked.

Once torched by truth, Swede [Ruben's sister] wrote years later, a little thing like faith is easy.

And later in the story, after Ruben felt that things weren’t going fairly for him, he made the astute observation that “Fair is whatever God wants to do.” And finally, the conclusion brings home a great expression of faith:

Is there a single person on whom I can press belief?
No sir.
All I can do is say, Here’s how it went. Here’s what I saw.
I’ve been there and am going back.
Make of it what you will.

Worth the read, check it out!

After I finally finished Lewis’ That Hideous Strength (which I still need to do a post on. EDIT: done), I read my aunt Jill’s selection for this year’s Family Book and CD/DVD exchange (of which I have done a VERY poor job of writing about this year): Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. While I have never been much of a writer (I didn’t have to write too much as a Physics and Astronomy major), I started to read more in college and as I had to write much more at Regent College, language and its use and function become more interesting to me. That being the case, this book was a fun (and pretty quick) read!

My only real qualm with the book is that now my friend Greg cannot tell the joke (the Panda one) nearly as often… and he told it really well (I will attempt to reproduce it at the end of this post; but will not do it the justice it deserves and that Greg provides).

While I think that some take punctuation way too seriously – “sticklers” as they are called – after reading numerous poorly written blogs, I will gladly side with the sticklers when it comes to language and the written word. (And not to appear too hypocritical, I do recognize that I am horrible at spelling and do have numerous writing flaws. Now that that is out of the way, onward!) Truss is quite excited about punctuation and is able to share that in a humorous way. Let me share a number of those places with you.

Read more…

Well I was pretty bad about doing this every month last year, hopefully this year will be better. In lieu of giving everyone birthday presents, our family (on my mom’s side) has decided to select our own choice of a book and a CD or DVD and to pass it around to other family members throughout the year. It is a nice way of reading/seeing/hearing things we might not normally hear and to see what others are interested in. (The original post is here.) If you want to see any of the posts I did last year (I kinda fell off after May…), you can see the category: Family Book and CD/DVD Exchange. I will (hopefully) be posting a monthly review from my selection.

My Selections:

This year my book selection is The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is by N.T. Wright. This is a great book on the historical Jesus by a great New Testament scholar. The book is, indeed, challenging and helps to form a healthy understanding of what the Gospel message should look like in our lives.

My CD selection is John Van Deusen and the Lonely Forest, his second EP. John is a talented young musician from Anacortes, WA who has some amazing potential. I will be posting a longer review of this CD shortly so you can know more about it [EDIT: I have posted a review of The Lonely Forest's EP]. I have posted quite a few times about John Van Deusen, so check those out for more info and some of his music.

I think there are a lot of good selections this year so be on the look out!

Please see the initial post on the family book and cd/dvd exchange so you will have an idea on what this is all about.

March – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard and First Circle by Enter the Worship Circle
April – The Red Violin and Hallelujah! the Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes by Maya Angelou.

The month of May came a bit late for me, but with it came the selection from my sister Erin. She choose to send around The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman and Remember We Forget by Late Tuesday.

I didn’t have enough time to read the book, but it did look pretty interesting. The just of it is a little girl of a refugee family from Laos is diagnosed with severe epilepsy and there are many conflicts introduced because her family only speaks Hmong which the small hospital in California was not ready for.

Lia’s parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy.

Sounds like a pretty interesting and sad saga. One interesting thing: my mom was in the hospital the other day and on the wall they had all the translation services and Hmong is now being offered as a translation service. Hopefully I will pick the book up some time and have a go at it!

The CD I actually talked about in my post on Late Tuesday. If you want to read up and hear some stuff from that CD, head over there. Also, I went to their show and have posted some pictures from Late Tuesday’s show at The Q in Seattle. Since I posted songs from Remember We Forget in the other post, I thought I would post two songs from their first, self titled, album.

just another day.
breathing out and breathing in.
put on the same old jacket.
step out the door.
and no birds are singing except the ones inside your head and they sing oo oo-oo oo-oo sha na na…

[chorus] this is no ordinary day, no ordinary life i’m living.
this is no ordinary day, no ordinary life i’m living.
for you appear to me in the ordinary…

just another day.
holding the hand of one you’ve loved for thirty years.
late tuesday or thursday afternoons blurring together like watercolor lines.
and no one is singing except the voice inside your head and it goes oo oo-oo oo-oo sha na na…

[chorus]

it’s just another day just another step in this maze we call our own.
a trip to the store same people around the routine sometimes gets old.
it’s the same old same old for msot of us.
a walk in the park [yeah, if i had time].
it’s breaking my back for one little dime that keeps bread on the table and life in my eyes.
but you love these things that most would despise.
you love these things that most would despise.
that’s not very ordinary…

[chorus]

118 (4.25MB):

i was pushed back and about to fall but the Lord helped me.
He is my strength and He is my song, He has become my salvation.
i tried my hardest to trust in myself futilely.
in my anguish i cried to the Lord.
and He answered me by setting me free…

[chorus] the Lord is with me and i will not be afraid.
what can man and all his ways do to me…

His love endures forever…

[chorus]

I hope I get my June selection soon…
Shalom

The family book and dvd/cd exchange! If you want to know what this is all about, see this post. Click here for the post on the selection for March.

The month of April brought me a book and a DVD from Jill. Her selections were The Red Violin and Hallelujah! the Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes by Maya Angelou.

First off we have The Red Violin. This is a movie that I really enjoyed and I hadn’t seen it in a long time. The music was beautiful and flows with the movie very well. The premise is that a Violin maker – Nicolo Bussotti (played by Carlo Cecchi) – loses his wife and child during the child’s birth shortly after making the “perfect” violin. The movie then follows the violin to a boy’s boarding school / orphanage, travelling gypsies, an english composer and soloist, to communist china and finally found and put up for auction. Throughout the movie there are flashbacks to the wife talking to a “fortune teller” that reads her future that the violin closley follows. There are also flash forwards to “present day” as the auction approaches and Charles Morritz (played by Samuel L. Jackson) tries to determine the “Red Violin’s” authenticty. Violin is a great movie with a well written script that is really made complete by John Corigliano’s original music and the wonderful performance by Joshua Bell on the solo violin. Bottom line, watch the movie. There are a few “awkward” scenes where the English composer needs “inspiration” to create his music. Other than that the movie is pretty clean and very watchable.

Next up is Maya Angelou’s cookbook. Now, I am not much of a cook so I didn’t actually make anything from the book (maybe sometimes I will…). What makes this cookbook different are Angelou’s stories from her life experiences that are peppered throughout. You may have noticed, but I am not a 77 year old African-American woman from the south so the stories were great to read as they were quite difference from anything I have experienced. Angelou’s variety of dishes is matched by her variety of life experiences ranging from Cold Potato Salad to Caramel Cake and being slapped by her teacher (and then seeing – along with her entire class – her Momma [actually her Grandmother] walking down to the school and slapping back) to dealing with (and standing up to) racism while visiting England.

In 1903, Momma had been married five years and had two sons. One bright morning, her husband told her that he was elacing. He explained thathe had recieved a call – the Call – to preach. To study and prepare for that awesome responsibility, he had to travel to Ada, Oklahoma, where an elderly preacher he had met at a conference woudl school him. Years later Annie Henderson found that the old Oklahoma preacher had had a beautiful and marriagable daugher and that my grandfather quickly began to court her. When it was legally possible, he married the daugher and never returned to Arkansas.

My grandmother was left with a two-room shack, a lively four-year-old who would later become my father, and a two-year-old boy who was crippled.

…[To make money while also trying to be with her children Momma slowly builds a small meat pie business that ends up serving many of the hungry workers in their town. Maya grew up in the building where the business was run for over 60 years!]…

Momma told me, “Sister, the world might try to put you on a road that you don’t like. First stop and look behind you. If nothing back theremakes you want to return, then look ahead. If nothing ahead beckons you enough to keep you going, the you have to step off that road and cut yourself a brand-new path.”

I would recommend this book both to read interesting stories about a time and culture that you have no experience with and also because the recipies look quote delicious!

Shalom and Happy Mothers’ Day!

The family book and dvd/cd exchange! If you want to know what this is all about, see this post.

The month of March brought me a book and a CD from Katie. Her selections were Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard and First Circle by Enter the Worship Circle

I really enjoyed both selections. First Circleis an excellent worship album put out as a joint effort between “100 Portraits” and “Waterdeep”. I have heard some of their stuff before and this CD makes me want to hear some of their other stuff.

I think that most Christians who have enjoyed contemporary Christian bands playing worship music will enjoy this cd. Although, thankfully, they aren’t like the majority of Christian contemporary / pop bands. They bring some great musicality to some very inspiring songs that aren’t just about getting that warm fuzzy feeling. The lyrics are basic but meaningful.

Praise the Lord, Oh my soul
And all my deepest parts
Give praise to the One
Who pulled you out of darkness

Tender mercy, You forgive me
Slow to anger, Quick to love

As high as the mountains try
Your love falls all around me
As wide as the east to west
My sins are taken from me

And I feel that our hearts should be crying out to God:

You are my strong melody
You are my dancing rhythm
You are my perfect rhyme
And I want to sing forever

If you would like to download and listen to a few of my picks, just right click and select “save as”:
You Are So Good To Me (4.22MB)
Tender Mercy (2.72MB)
Land of the Living (3.33MB)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was a new experience for me as I don’t tend to read many books like this one. I am sad to say that I didn’t finish in the month with all the other reading I have had to do for classes. But what I did read was very good and I would like to get the book and finish it when I can.

Dillard has a wonderful sense of nature and how to live in and experience it. She was able to take every day expereinces that we would often pass over and refresh them and give them new meaning. I left my notes in the book so when I get them back I might add a little more and will definitely add more when I finish the book! If you haven’t read many books (or even if you have) on nature and out life in it, I would definitely recommend checking out Dillard’s book!

Well done Katie!

I look forward to this month’s selection!
Shalom

My mom’s side of the family is doing something different this year for birthdays. In stead of buying something for everyone else, we pick a book and a cd or dvd that we particularily like and we send that around to all the different family members. So each month we get a new book to read and a dvd to watch or cd to listen to. Through this we will gain some more insight into the person who picked it as well as have an introduction to stuff we may not have had much experience with before.

Here are the picks that I will be sending around:
Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” – A fun adventure that hopes to give a more realistic approach to views on global warming. Crichton’s biases are definately against global warming, but his point of the book is more along the lines of listening to scientific information and not emotion. Public policy and our understanding of the environment should be informed by science and not opinion. Basically a proper balance of “enviornmentalism” and reality should be held. This description doesn’t really make much sense, so just go read the book, it is a quick read that is interesting and fun.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – I found this to be a very interesting movie about relationships and memories. It was well made and well acted, was nice to see Jim Carry in a more serious role. Check it out.

I will (hopefully) write a brief review every month on the book and cd / dvd that I received. Should be a pretty interesting experiement!

Shalom