Books I want to Read and a few I'm already in the middle of...

 

So, I was perusing the massive list of Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's book reccomendations just now. At the top of the history section, this title caught my eye and now I am burning to obtain a copy! It would never have occurred to me that such a work existed, I mean a history of knowledge? That's just what I've been meaning to read lately. Instead, I was more literal minded and have sought to fill the desire I had for this topic by locating these two books at my school library. Not that they are entirely off the mark either, but here they are anyway:

 

 

I've read the first three chapters of this book and learned a lot of cool facts about medieval universities, but of course didn't even make a dent in this massive book.

Well, actually, I can't remember the title of the other book since I did not actually check it out, but I planned to return for it later after polishing off this one. It is a book on the history of Oxford University. Other school-related titles I have recently been perusing include:

 

 

I first heard of this book this past summer when I discovered the book Poor Mr. Chips. It was a booklist for teachers--or as it functioned for me, a list of books for students who really love to read about school and teachers. Anyway, it turned out over the summer that I didn't have enough time to read and obtain this book--and okay, fine, maybe I even forgot about it a little, but hey here I am now, better late than never, right. It is a very good read! I love Calculus already, though the amount of the material I've forgotten by now scares me, but this book makes me want to quickly locate a Calculus text and start working out problems. I recall that during my college Calculus course, I spent most of the time in that classroom marveling at the beauty and delightfully organized view of the world which Calculus presents to us. Anyway, yes, this book makes me want to study some Calculus! If you can't tell, I haven't really read very much of this book at all. I read the first chapter--or two. But it looks and feels like a great read, so we'll see.

 

 

I received this book just yesterday via Interlibrary Loan. The only thing I can remember about it just now is this excerpt from page 27, which made me pause in my reading of it, my eyes skittered back up the page to reread the paragraph, and then my mouth fell open:

 

Tamerlane used his captive magnanimously until Bayezit's prickly hauteur proved too much for him, and he was placed in a cage, too small for standing upright, and dragged in the wake of Tamerlane's retinue. His wife Despina was made to serve naked at the victor's table. Nobody offered to ransom the prisoners, and perhaps no one was sorry when Bayezit eventually dashed out his brains on the bars of his cage.

 

 I was surprised to realize that the author of the blog, Zen Habits, wrote this book. I need to follow his central advice though. Doing less helps hone a person's focus and makes them more productive. I especially enjoyed--and related to personally--the discussion on the importance of setting limits.

 

I checked this book out to read as a bedtime story to my sister--or at least that was my excuse anyway. I never did end up reading it to her, but I read it to myself (haha!). I read a significant portion of it but got too sleepy to continue it this past Wednesday night. It's really good! Even though I found the stuff about how Miri likes Peder very annoying. And the whole all these girls have to train so that a prince can come choose one of them as a winner thing reminded me of the Bachelor--which I have no problem with since I'm not a feministy type. I know it's dumb, and yet it makes for a great story. Also, I love the name Miri. I already love Hale from having read this book in 2012:

I can't really gush about this book just now since I don't even remember the characters' names anymore, but I will say that it was such a joy to read. It's always a joy to read a retelling or reimagining of a familiar fairy tale. Hale does that perfectly. Which reminds me that I still haven't read this book:

I can't remember if it's at my school library or not. I will have to see. I really want to read this and also get my sister to read them, since she is at just the age to really enjoy this.

I turned to this book to help me write my first ever newspaper article for my school's Collegian Newspaper. Trying to puzzle out all the little details of newswriting made me hunt down these books:

 

I can't wait until I can get some free time to be able to lovingly pore over this tome and absorb it's delightfully brief distillation of grammatical tips. I first heard of this book in an episode of the show The Bedford Diaries, which my sister made me watch, and repeated the title and author several times in  my head so that I would be sure to recall it later (which thankfully I did!). It was only a three-day checkout, but I've decided I want to buy this book soon.

 

I ordered this book from my school library via Interlibrary Loan, but it turns out my school was already buying the book, so I can't wait until it arrives! I was excited to find that a copyeditor for my school paper was reading this book and of course I excitedly gushed to her that I was also planning to read the book and gosh what a coincidence!

 

This was the other book I ordered but which my school is already buying. This review of the book has made me wary of it however: http://www.vocabula.com/2010/VRJuly10Fiske.asp. I guess I will just have to see what it's like when I finally get my hands on it.

Also, I want to read this book:

 

 

I'm not a Stephen King fan, nor have I ever read an entire book of his--I don't think I've ever even attempted to read a book of his--oh, nevermind, Cell--but I still would like to read this. Oh yes, I loved the movie, Rose Red. I saw it when I was fourteen and then proceeded to write a rip off version of it in short story form called the The Mystery of Moonspell. Yup, those were the good old days, when writing fanfiction and call it original. 

 

 

 

Reading the first chapter of this book made me appreciate Kuby's Immunology. This book doesn't do a great job of orienting a beginner in the topic very well and just plunges straight into lots of highly detailed cellular details of the immune system. But I still enjoyed reading it :)

 

 

This is a fun book! Dumbing down the topic of our immune system to a simple and easy to follow narrative is the best part about this book. Also, there are a lot of helpful metaphors and such which are great. For example, when Ruebush speaks of newly created T cells being like recent college graduates--that made me grin.

These two books came to me out of my recent curiosity of what attending an Ivy League school is really like. I don't know if I've fully found an answer to that question yet, but reading about Douthat's account of being a Harvard student was immensely enjoyable. The story about Damien made me rock with laughter. As for Turrow's One L, I have yet to read more than the first sentence, so I have nothing to say on that topic. I just sort of picked this book up as an afterthought. I doubt I'll have the chance to read it before it's due back at the library. Oh well.

 

I don't have much to say about Goldsmith's book. Instead, I'd like to speak of the book Goldsmith directed me toward, which I found to be very intriguing and a surprisingly fun read as well!

 

I found this quote great food for personal reflection:

"Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things." 

 

I read this book until I could obtain a copy of my Histology class' required text by Ross and Pawlina. Kessel's book is very old, but I love the section in the middle of the textbook with all the microscope pictures of all the different kinds of tissues. Since I have my first Histology exam coming up this Tuesday, I'm glad I still have this book at home. Hopefully, it will  help me with the lab part of the test.

 

As for this book, well, I suppose I'll have a lot to say about it in about four months. Right now I'm too close to it to be able to say very much. Well, okay, there was one thing which happened just this past Thursday. I had just left class, where we had been reviewing the slides which were going to be on our exam this coming Tuesday. The last slide I had looked at was the mesothelium and endothelium. And then on my walk to the library from the Science Complex, I happened to glance at the cover of my textbook, trying to remind myself to study really hard this weekend, when Lo! and Behold!--okay, that's a bit too dramatic--well, right there on the cover was a picture of the mesothelium whole mount slide! I had never noticed it before even though I'd had the book for a few days already. That made me grin and go, "Ah, the power of learning--it truly makes you see and notice things you might not have before."

Anyway, I need to go study for my test now. I want to make sure I have overwhelmingly good things to say about this textbook come May and the end of finals. The best way to have a relaxing finals week, while everyone around you is freaking out, is to make solid hundreds on the first exams of the semester so that later you can just chill out during finals frenzy.