Meirav's posts with tag: books
Four months ago I opened a parcel that came in the post and found to my surprise and delight that a friend had sent me a book about time management.
The fact that four months later my bookmark is still on page 44 probably proves that I need to read this book :-)
The book is called Do It Tomorrow - a title which greatly appeals to my inner procrastinator. (The tendency to put things off seems to run in our family. My brother once told me he kept planning to found the International Procrastinators Society, but guess what - he hadn't got round to it yet.)
The author, Mark Forster, clearly has a rather different worldview than I have, so we had to agree to disagree quite early on (well, I disagreed, he doesn't know about it) about his theory that the inner struggle we have which causes us to sometimes not do the things we have decided to do is all to do with different parts of our brain - I'm sorry, but there is a lot more going on in me than just brain functions! I see it most of the time as a struggle between my inner adult and my inner child, but some of the time it's a struggle between my godly side and my sinful nature. But whichever way you look at it, I think it's clear to all of us that we do have an internal struggle going on, we do decide to do X and then go and do Y instead. We make new year's resolutions and break them by February; we decide to go on a diet but we eat cake; we decide to quit drinking and go to the pub for "just one drink"; we decide to quit smoking and... and so on and so forth... good intentions are not enough - we all know that much.
But having read the first couple of chapters I have picked up some useful ideas, and one that I have found particularly useful is his suggestion that we look for ways of making it easier for ourselves to do the right thing than the wrong thing. So for instance on Monday evening I prepared everything that I needed for my assignment and put it on my desk next to the computer, which meant that on Tuesday when I came to my desk, it was easy to get on with that work. This also connects with his suggestion that we say to ourselves things like, "I'm not really going to write that report now, but I'll just get the file out" - because the part of us that doesn't want to do it is not likely to feel so threatened by this, whereas when we say, "I've really got to get on with this work" that part of us rebels. It may sound simplistic but I've found this method actually helps.
The title Do It Tomorrow refers to his suggestion for gaining more control of our lives - the idea is that we decide each day what our To Do List for the next day is, and we close that list; so when works comes in today it goes on the list for tomorrow, it doesn't get done today - for today I've already got my To Do List and that list is closed, which makes it more manageable. Of course there are always things that come up and can't be put off, but the aim is to keep those down to a minimum - that's what he suggests, but I think he's talking from the point of view of certain types of occupation where you can make such choices. To take an extreme example, I can't see how a woman who is keeping house and looking after a baby can put these things into practice. And also from my point of view as someone who has given her life over to God, I have got to take into account that sometimes (often!) those unforeseen interruptions are actually important, they can be opportunities to serve God, to be of help to people - my calling is to be someone who has time for people, so I can't say, sorry, I can't listen to you right now because I have work to do. My work, my purpose in life, my reason for existing, includes responding positively to interruptions. What Mark Forster sees as "random" events which we have to resist, I see as deliberate actions on God's part which I have the duty to respond well to. My To Do List can't come just from my own limited human thinking - it has to be open to what my ultimate boss says.
Which also connects with another problem I have with some of what he says, and this is a problem I have with much that has been written or said about time management - for some people it's easy to define what is or isn't "work"; for some of us it isn't so cut and dried. I once attended a time management seminar run by a very nice guy in my church - I wonder, are there any women who are time management experts? It's just that listening to that guy I felt like he was coming from a completely different planet, he was talking from the point of view of someone who goes to an office and does his job during clearly specified working hours, and then he goes home and has leisure time - good for him, but in my current lifestyle I can't relate to that at all. And that guy's suggestion that we keep a record of how we use our time - well, try recording how many minutes it took to do the washing up or to load the washing machine, not to mention the time you took putting laundry away on your way to the bathroom, or how long you spent cleaning the washbasin whilst you were there anyway... Is there a book about time management for women, or does everyone assume that we are already such great experts at juggling a zillion different tasks that we don't need it?
Well, this is what I have to say so far, based on 43 pages out of 203. I don't expect I'll get much further whilst this course is going on, but am very grateful that I got to read those first two chapters before the course started as these tips have been extremely helpful for getting my coursework done! (Disagreeing with the author doesn't mean I can't use the good bits!)
| Category: | Books | | Genre: | Reference | | Author: | Bill Bryson |
If you've ever wondered if broccoli has a double c or a double l, what country Tanzania used to be (answer: not one country but two), or whether that word you're thinking of ends in -able or -ible, this is the book for you. (Yes, I know, this gives you a glimpse into the minutiae that I regard as interesting and exciting...)
Though it's mostly just a dictionary, you do also get a bit of the Bryson humour thrown in, e.g. under the entry "frisson", he says: "'A slight frisson went through the nation yesterday' (The Times). There is no other kind of frisson than a slight one."
Am reading The Kite Runner (by Khaled Hosseini) and came across a scene that says something very sad about the way we humans sometimes tend to think. (Warning: if you haven't read the book yet and don't want to know what happens then click away now...) The scene I'm talking about is the beating and rape of a young boy by a gang of kids. They're the neighbourhood bullies and they hate him because he's of the "wrong" ethnic group and because he once dared to stand up to the gang leader. They've cornered him in a secluded alley and this is their opportunity for revenge. They beat him up, and then, as they're holding him down on the ground, there is a debate amongst them about whether or not to rape him. (It's not that they're gay and are attracted to him, the purpose of the rape is not sexual gratification, just a way of thoroughly humiliating the boy and teaching him not to mess with them.) The bit that got me thinking was when one of the boys says: "My father says it's sinful." You could easily miss it, it's such a brief sentence. But if you pause for a moment and think, you will see what is so horrifying about it - and this kind of thing happens all over the world all the time, not just in Afghanistan in the 1970s. This boy expresses no problem with cruelty to a fellow human being, he has no issue with the three of them beating this kid to a pulp, he is not concerned for their victim's feelings. He is concerned about one aspect of this: that his father told him that having sex with another man is a sin, so if he does that he may get into trouble with his God. He is worrying about getting punished for contravening a certain regulation to do with sexual morality, but he is not concerned about what to most of us hopefully is clearly a sin, which is cruelty and violence towards another person. He's not thinking it's wrong to treat this kid in this way, he's just worrying about contaminating himself spiritually by doing an immoral sexual act. It would be easy to point fingers and say, well, what do they know, they're moslems. But that wouldn't be true - people of different faiths have managed to do this sort of thing, to focus on certain aspects of right and wrong whilst developing a blindness to other aspects. Didn't our Jewish prophets cry out to us centuries ago to wake up and realise that God is much more interested in how we treated the poor and marginalised than in the sacrifices we brought to the Temple? (And I can't help thinking of some of our folk today who somehow manage to think it's okay to throw stones at fellow Jews because they are seen to be violating the Sabbath. Focusing on Sabbath-keeping but not quite practising Love Your Neighbour...) And sadly Christians too have been known to fall into this trap. Those who tortured Jews during the Spanish Inquisition thought of themselves as very devout Christians! When I was learning to drive, much emphasis was placed on checking your blind spot before moving off. Lord God, help us all to keep checking our blind spots!
Today's post included a package from a friend who has thoughtfully bought me a book about time management. Now to find the time to read it.
| Category: | Books | | Genre: | Literature & Fiction | | Author: | Anne Atkins |
It's not often I finish reading a novel and feel like starting it all over again straight away. This is so very well-written! Very gently, Anne Atkins offers us an opportunity to look at life through the eyes of a child - a challenge to rethink some of the deeply held assumptions of today's Western society. Profound and very moving. I loved the way the child vowed to remain sensible even when she grows up, not to lose that clear childlike view of the truth - wonderful and precious! Get it, read it, pass it on!
| Category: | Books | | Genre: | Nonfiction | | Author: | אברהם שטאל |
ספר מרתק שדן במוצאן וגילגוליהן של מילים בהן אנו משתמשים בשפה העברית - מאין לקחנו אותן? מה היתה המשמעות המקורית? הספר ערוך לפי נושאים, ואני בינתיים רק טעמתי מהפרק בנושא אוכל. כך גיליתי למשל את התשובה לשאלה שמזמן הטרידה אותי: למה געפילטע פיש נקרא כך, בביטוי שפירושו המילולי דג ממולא, כשבעצם מדובר בקציצות דג? אז מסתבר שבמקור כן נהגו למלא את הדג - היו מוציאים את הבפנוכו, מערבבים עם כל מיני דברים ומכניסים את התערובת לתוך עור הדג. עד שעקרת בית לא ידועה החליטה שבעצם את אף אחד לא מעניין עור הדג, אז בשביל מה להתאמץ. ומה שאנחנו אוכלים עכשיו זה מה שהיה במקור המילוי. (לאנגלים יש מינהג דומה בעניין מה שהיו ממלאים בו את העוף - כיום מגישים את המילוי בתור תוספת טעימה.)
I was very excited to discover that the book "Christianity is Jewish" by Edith Schaeffer is once again available - last time I tried to get a copy it was out of print, but it is now available from Wesley Owen so at long last I've been reunited with a book that drastically changed my outlook and opened my eyes to see what the Bible really is about. It is a book that challenged my then rather woolly thinking and got me to realise that there are intelligent people who take the Bible seriously as truth!
Have just finished reading a really nice novel (The Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes) and I find myself thinking: When did this happen?  At what point in the history of modern fiction did leaving your husband for someone else become a nice happy ending for a novel? I feel like going in search of the main character, Suzannah, and saying: Excuse me, but what exactly did you think when you said all that stuff about "till death do us part"? Did you have your fingers crossed behind your back as you stood there in your beautiful wedding dress, thinking, "Yes well... of course what I really mean is until I have some sort of midlife identity crisis and ditch you for someone with more fire in his blood"? How annoying that not one of the characters voices the view - is it really considered so outdated - that following your emotions is not necessarily the best course of action, that marriage is something to work at! Sorry, no, I now realise that there was one person who voiced that opinion - her poor husband when she told him she was leaving him. I wouldn't be so annoyed if he had been an awful husband, but his only fault seems to be his ability to remain content in the face of all the turbulence that life and his wife were dishing out to him. So he puts up with his wife binge-shopping them into debt, he puts up with his wife being moody and impossible when she's setting up in business, he puts up with her changing her mind about having children with him, he puts up with her general spoilt brat mentality throughout, all because presumably he actually took seriously those vows they made when they got married, but then his wife just suddenly says she's leaving, and that's that. End of marriage. Okay, I've got that off my chest now.  
| Category: | Books | | Genre: | Religion & Spirituality | | Author: | Jennifer Rees Larcombe |
The book describes itself as "parables to express how God feels about you". It's a collection of fairy-tale-style stories about Good King Paxalom, and it's fantastic for when life is getting to you - just sit down in your favourite chair with a mug of hot chocolate and let God use this book to give you a big warm hug. Should be free on the NHS.
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