Book Reviews #2

Here are some reviews of my most recent reads:

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell - After reading The Tipping Point by the same author, which is fantastic, I was excited to read this. It is amazing how fast you can read through this book. It was fascinating. It is a study on how we as humans can read and interpret data about people and situations in a blink of time. And how that is part of our subconscious, it is an uncontrolled response. It also goes into a very interesting study of race relations and our subconscious decisions. It isn't preachy, just good. I love books that teach you something and keep you thinking about them for months to come. This is one of those.

Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations by Alexander McCall Smith (author of the No.1 Ladies Detective Series) - This is basically a series of short stories based on dating/marriage/ love stories. Most of the stories are things you would hear at a - I have a story worse than you - convention. How do people come up with stories like these? Some were fun, some just weird. A quick read.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester - this is the first in 11 books in the Horatio Hornblower series. A couple of years ago Dave and I watched the BBCs miniseries based on the books which were very well done. And the actor who portrayed Horatio, Ioan Gruffudd, does a fantastic job. So when I saw the first book in the series at our base library, I picked it up. It was really good. I found myself re-living the series and picturing our fair hero from the film in all of the books scrapes. I don't know all the naval jargon, but I didn't let that slow me down. A lot of fun, I look forward to reading book 2 and re-watching the series!

Someone Bigger by Jonathan Emmett - During one of our frequent trips to the Library on base Enoch grabbed this book and ran to me yelling, SOMEONE BIGGER. Clearly this wasn't his first exposure to this book. We checked it out and read it to him before bed every night for weeks. It is the perfect story for Enoch. It is about a little boy who really wants to be noticed as a big kid and fly his own kite. I think it is great.