A Long Walk to Water - Linda Sue Park

2020 Reading Challenge

August 30, 2020

Book 63 - A Long Walk to Water
Linda Sue Park

I got the title of this book off of another diversity reading list and was surprised when it came from the library. It's quite a short book and actually comes from the Junior reading section at the library.

It tells the tale of two children from southern Sudan separated by about 20 years. The first story follows Salva, a 10-year old boy, who is displaced by the civil war. Chased away from his school by soldiers and fighting, Salva wanders with other refugees, eventually ending up in Ethiopia and then in Kenya. At the age of 20, he is one of the lucky ones sent to the United States to begin a new life. Once there, he receives word that his father is alive and eventually is reunited with his parents a few of his siblings who survived the destruction of his village. Salva wants to do something for his village and settles upon the idea of digging wells to supply clean drinking water.

The other story follows Nya, a young girl in South Sudan in the early 2000s. Nya walks two hours to a pond to carry muddy drinking water back to her family (four hours round trip). Once home, and after having eaten some lunch, she repeats the trip in the afternoon.

The two stories, told in parallel connect when Salva's drill rig comes to Nya's village to dig a well for the village. And... with the children no longer needing to walk eight hours a day to bring water to their families, a school is built as well so all of the children (boys and girls) can be educated.

This was a charming story, at least Nya's part. Salve's story obviously has much more darkness in it and I wonder if his story has been told elsewhere, the unsanitized version.

Out of Nazi Germany and Trying to Find my Way - Irene Matthews

 2020 Reading Challenge

August 28, 2020

Book 62 - Out of Nazi Germany and Trying to Find my Way
Irene Matthews

I bought this book off of an online bookstore after getting a recommendation from a Norwegian contact. The book is written by Irene (nee Hagen) Matthews who was born in 1927 in Berlin, Germany. It is a short book (109 pages) and tells the tale of her childhood in Berlin. Her grandfather owned a bank and was Jewish. Slowly, over the course of the book, the "normal" activities of daily life are curtailed for the Jews by Nazi regulations. Eventually Irene's parents send her out of Germany to England, to a Jewish refugee school. Her parents follow a year or two later but Irene spends her youth in boarding schools as her parents don't have space in their tiny apartment during the school breaks. It is quite a touching book and a very interesting point of view, that of a child, growing up in Nazi Germany. My own mother was born in the early 1930s in Berlin, so the stories that she told me are quite similar to Irene's... with the exception of the Jewish point of view. Similar childhoods but so very different as well.

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

2020 Reading Challenge

August 26, 2020

Book 61 - Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe

I was looking for books that would diversify my reading - books from other countries, or other races. This one kept popping up on the lists that I could find so I ordered it from the library.

It was written 60+ years ago and tells the story of a late eighteenth century village in Africa. The main character is a strongman who gets banished from his tribe for seven years after accidentally killing a fellow villager. Fast forward seven years and the strongman comes back to his village after religious missionaries have been at work.

The style of writing was quite fascinating, a circular spiral that kept reinforcing things but then adding in new bits of information. It was a great read and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to get a different perspective on the world... and on the impacts of European colonization of sub-Saharan Africa.

Atomic Habits - James Clear

2020 Reading Challenge

August 24, 2020

Book 60 - Atomic Habits
James Clear

Hah. So much for my great plans for restarting this reading challenge... interrupted first in 2017 and now, again, after a month in 2020. Ah well... Two things happened. One, the library couldn't quite keep up with my reading requirements and I've had to wait for books to arrive via their hold system. And, more importantly, two... once again, while the reading (50 pages/day) is definitely doable... reading and taking notes and then reading the notes and crafting a coherent blog about what I had read... every day... was a bit too much. I was spending 2-3 hours on this book reading/blogging challenge and that, unfortunately, is just too much. Sooo... back to the drawing board. I have been reading... just not taking notes... so these remaining 2020 book blogs are going to be more scattered and just a one blog post/book deal. Sometimes, things just have to shift.

Sooo... Atomic Habits. It came out in 2018 and I heard about it then because I follow James Clear on his blog. I put my name down on the hold list at the library and... voila... two years later, I received a copy of the book. It's very good and there are lots of little tidbits I could share but... the big takeaway is that habits are not so much driven my goals as they are about identity. I want to lose 20 lbs... that's a goal. But... far better is to alter my identity... I am the person who walks every day and chosen a whole-food, plant-based diet. That's who I am and that, then, makes everything else fall into place. The weight then just comes off as a side-effect of the altered identity.

Clear also laid out the four steps in habits: Cue, Craving, Response, Reward. Something happens (the cue) and we need to do something (craving) which is followed by us doing that something (response) and then receiving the reward. So... the cue is seeing my toothbrush on the bathroom counter and remembering that I am brushing me teeth in the evenings... which means I then brush my teeth and have the reward of squeaky clean, minty fresh teeth as I go to bed. I am the sort of person who brushes their teeth morning and evening.

Clear also provides some guidance on how to form good habits and alter bad habits. The trick is this:

For Good habits:
Cue - make it obvious - toothbrush on counter - in plain view
Craving - make it attractive - nice toothpaste
Response - make it easy - toothbrush and toothpaste are right there
Reward - make it satisfying - going to bed with squeaky clean teeth

So... seems pretty easy but... it takes a bit of work to figure out what makes something attractive or easy or satisfying. There are lots of aids... like habit stacking and altering your environment, etc.

For Bad habits:
Cue - make it invisible - like not keeping chocolate in the house
Craving - make it unattractive - if I want to buy chocolate, I have to get it from the corner store where it is more expensive
Response - make it hard - I have to leave the house, walk down to the corner store and buy the chocolate there
Reward - make it unsatisfying - the whole process is unsatisfying! And maybe weighing myself before I go...

 So... those are the things that stuck with me so far... I also listened to a two hour podcast interview with James Clear which was also quite fascinating and helped reinforce some of the key messages.

Dear Current Occupant - Chelene Knight - Part 4 of 4

   2020 Reading Challenge - Day 220

August 9, 2020

Book 59 - Dear Current Occupant
Chelene Knight
Part 4 - pages 91-129

This section has more poems and a prose section for an epilogue. The poems, again, were hard to follow, the Epilogue was more cohesive. In the Endnotes, the author notes that the book's narrative is rather like a quilt. She says that there are cracks in the narrative that are open for transformation. She admits that she sees herself in double - as a black woman writer and as a writer. And wants to be more than just a diversity hashtag. She's written a previous book, Braided Skin, which also got rave reviews and I might try that one at some point. Perhaps I'm just not savvy enough to appreciate the cutting edge style used by the author in this book but... I really didn't engage with it at all.

Dear Current Occupant - Chelene Knight - Part 3 of 4

  2020 Reading Challenge - Day 219

August 8, 2020

Book 59 - Dear Current Occupant
Chelene Knight
Part 3 - pages 71-90

More snippets of her life in letters written to the current occupants of the various places she lived during her childhood. I find these easier to read. The second section was Mirror Talk, a very brief section of short paragraphs of prose, I suppose spoken by her mother while putting make-up on in the mornings. Again, I didn't really connect with any of this and found it a frustrating read.

Dear Current Occupant - Chelene Knight - Part 2 of 4

 2020 Reading Challenge - Day 218

August 7, 2020

Book 59 - Dear Current Occupant
Chelene Knight
Part 2 - pages 41-70

Two sections of the book in his particular blog: Witness Statements and Cracks in the Sidewalk.

The section, Witness Statements, was a selection of poetry and... not being much of a poet myself, I found it hard slogging. This style of poetry doesn't appeal to me and I found it difficult to engage with it. The section, Cracks in the Sidewalk, were a series of photographs of the various places that she lived in during her childhood.