Hmm you aren't going to believe this. I've been reading books ~ those things with paper pages and bindings and oh book covers! I've fell into some reading that's going to slow me down.

When I read C.S. Lewis, I get the impression I'm from an illiterate generation and that the generation of kids around me ... Well ... goodness! Heaven help 'em.

You will not believe what brought this on (caused this to happen). I met a person who was reading CS Lewis. He had met a couple of people who had read or who were in the process of reading various CS Lewis books. He said they said they were all up for having a CS Lewis discussion ~ at MarillaAnne's Place. What? You thought I was talking about RL? Too funny.

So, I posted an announcement to the "MarillaAnne's Place Group" and in the Second Life Events database. Various people showed up. And so, now, there seems to be one or two that hang about to listen in and one or two who show up to be a pain (class, can we say the word "ban"? SL is not a democracy.) and a few who are actually reading. And none of them are from the original group.

Up to this point, we've just discussed whatever anyone had on their mind from reading whichever CS Lewis book they were reading. We've had the discussion in text in the open chat channel (which means anyone can read it). But last week I begged them to use voice. My hands and shoulders were in pain from typing so much. We started out in open chat but it quickly became obvious that we were not going to be able to concentrate and deal with the floatsum and jetsum type av's that wander in and out. So, I moved our voice chat to a private "IM call."

It was a very intense, yet gentle, discussion between three believers and an atheist who was just there to listen in because he and I were already talking when the time for the meeting came round. Of the three believers, one is deeply questioning ... no just beginning to feel comfortable with carefully examining who she's always thought God was and who God says He is. Like me, she is a bit amazed at how God provides ways to know Him through logical and deductive reasoning.

If you think you've detected a bit of UK-sounding phrasing, you are probably right. I've been around two ladies at church, one from England and one from South Africa, and various and sundry people in SL from the UK (both in text and voice) and I've been reading CS Lewis. Tell me how I could avoid picking up a bit of it!

Well, I'll keep you posted on how this all goes. If you're in Second Life, the meeting is on Tuesdays @ 6pm SLT (Second Life Time ... which runs exactly like PCT because the makers of SL live in San Francisco).

Enjoy,
Have fun,
pam

Pam is a Texan living on the Southern fringes of Upstate New York. She also lives in Second Life on a regular basis ~ mainly @ MarillaAnne's Place, German Town, Dream Island.

Terri of Tip of the Iceberg invited me to play with this meme. I'm going to do it this way ... If you like the meme ... go for it. I'd love to know what you do with it.

Directions: "Look at the list below: Bold the books you've read; Italicize the books you want to read; and leave the formatting alone for the ones you aren't interested in."

Personally, I had fun with it ... and, of course, I put my own twist on it. Enjoy!

(oops forgot to actually publish this last night!)

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) -- Plus about five in the original series.
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) -- Read it while I had a stomach virus ... gave me bad dreams.
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) -- plus Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousin's, and Rose in Bloom.
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) -- Actually listened to book on tape.
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Hmm seems I'm not much into the books listed here. ... Let's try this ...

Dorthy Sayers

• Clouds of Witness
• Strong Poison
• Have His Carcase
• Murder Must Advertise (1933)
• The Nine Tailors (1934)
• Gaudy Night (1935)
• Busman's Honeymoon (1937)
• The Mind of the Maker (1941)

C S Lewis

• Prince Caspian (1951)
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
• The Silver Chair (1953)
• The Horse and His Boy (1954)
• The Magician's Nephew (1955)
• The Last Battle (1956)
• Till We Have Faces (1956)
• Surprised by Joy
• Mere Christianity
• A Grief Observed

Shakespeare (without scholastic demands & tortures)

• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Merchant of Venice
• As You Like It
• Taming of the Shrew
• Shakespeare's Sonnets

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• Sonnets from the Portuguese
• Aurora Leigh And Other Poems

Sir Author Conan Doyle

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
• The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1892)
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904)

Advice for parents of children

This comment got way out of hand. Yes it started out as a reply comment for Claire's Dad and his readers. ... But well ... you can see ... it would have been crowded and noisy in the comments section. So, I moved it over here.

Guys ... I had similar stuff ... they call it ADD these days. It's also called too much sugar, too much TV, too little of this and that and the other ... AGGgg! It's also called being young!

If it is ADD, just help them be different without being squished by the school system.

Regardless, ADD or not ... these are some things I know help:

Routines help. Teaching them to associate the next daily routine thing to do with the thing they just finished. I don't know of anyone who teaches how to build routines better than FlyLady. She's sugar coated -- beyond what I can take on a daily basis -- but she's got the best plan. Read her web site and print out her plans. (Thinking I need to get back and visit the whole thing again! Moving so much and so many lifestyle changes is looping me!)

Teach your kids to be aware of little things they are doing to distract themselves AND give them a plan to deal with it.

For example, I was working with my nephew on his reading and even though he was following the words on the page with his right hand, his left hand was quite literally waving around and distracting him. So I taught him to purposefully put his left hand down on his desk and tell it that it would get a chance to play in a little while but right now it was the right hand's turn. It worked! Then we moved on to his feet.

I started this little idea with my daughter when she was about three ... her hands would not go to sleep ... they stayed awake making up stories. So I taught her to tell her toes good night and her knees good night and each of her hands and her mouth and her eyes. Each one had to be told goodnight by her (well us together at first). It helped. So now when I can't sleep I do the same thing for myself! LOL

Also, teach them to think their way through a project before they start. "Ok, now what do you need to have before you start? Alright and then which order are you going to do it in?" This one and my 15 min timer get me through my day. Sometimes, I have to lean against a wall and think it through to keep me from wandering off half way through the thinking process.

If they have trouble with starting from the beginning with a plan, get them to start by stating what they want to end up with and then backing up from there. Technical term: Reverse Planning.

If they come up with a plan, let them work it. I was teased about things like making a list before I cleaned my room ... "clear dresser, dust it ..." and then I found out ... sometimes that's what we need. My bosses sometimes thought I was "the organizer" because eventually I'd come in and say ... "OK this is the routine I have to follow. And it was simply no more than a glorified list of tasks. I didn't even know why I had to follow it. I just knew I had to do it. And at work, in a sheltered environment I could do it ... until I got bored with the job.

Boredom is the bane of our existence (unless you're really great at slipping off into a coma ... aka sitting in front of the TV or gaming systems -- letting your brain become as addicted to it as it does to cocaine). That's when a great work ethic comes in handy ... as long as you won't get crushed by the system. In talent, Tom Peters talks about building your own brand and working on "Wow projects." I just found out that he has a book on the whole "wow project" idea. It is on my reading list for tonight. Hopefully the book store has it. ... Anyyyway ... the reason I bring this up is that I realized this is more or less something my parents did for me in teaching me "If you run out of something to do, add just some little something. Look around and see what else could be done." It helped me so often. And it made my completed projects "wow."

And my resume developed it's own brand list of wow projects. Once I was in an interview and the guy looked up and said, "How did you develop such a diverse set of skills?" I looked at him and answered, "I like challenges. I like to learn." Which moves us from "wow" to ...

GET TO THE LIBRARY. NOW. Encourage your kids to study any subject they're interested in on their own. Butterflies, Air, Trains, Plains, Automobiles, etc. Surround them with books. Tell them: "Look it up. Find out for yourself." My kids swear to me this is one of the key contributors to their success in life and school. They tell me they are astonished that their peers don't have a clue how to figure things out for themselves. And, God knows, I'm glad I got a few key things right because ... woah ... what else I've put them through.

So this is my "quick" post for the day. I still have lots of things I want to post today ... because I'm sick of talking geek and there's a lot more in my life than geek! But first I have to go find my train ticket (I have an uneasy memory of putting it down ... maybe inside a book but never putting it down where it belongs) and do some laundry and wash my hair and then take the train and then set up in a coffee shop. :-D

In the mean time, I highly suggest further reading from Dr. Daniel Amen. Especially check out #5 & #6 on his 10 Ways to Exercise Your Brain Healthy and also check out Seven Ways To Optimize Your Brain and Your Life plus Brain Dos and Brain Don'ts. Then explore the site and I highly, highly recommend his book Healing the Hardware of the Soul. As usual, I don't agree with every word ... but far too many of them I do agree with.

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Our typical type of weekend. Walks. Books. Visits. Country.

#1 Found a nice cafe / coffee shop in White Plains, NY called Camille's Sidewalk Cafe. It's at 15 Bank St. -- just caddy corner to the train station. We had a very fine tomato soup and enjoyed the kicked-back atmosphere. Oh and the first very fine picante since we left Texas.

#2 Went to Barnes and Noble for hours. Skimmed over several books ... Purchased The Virtual Handshake by David Teten and Scott Allen. Dove-tails nicely with Talent by Tom Peters that I started reading last week ... which dove-tails with The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. They're very busy confirming some things I've been suspicious of. Yeah. We need to talk.

#3 My friend JoAn called. God is good all the time. He blessed her and her (grown) daughters with a specific blessing we've been requesting.

#4 JoAn has some cancer testing in about 8 days. Please remember her.

#5 Excerpt from conversation with JoAn ...
Me: "JoAn I'm going to have to set the record straight. I made a post about SEO and building blog community and now a few people think I'm a blogging/SEO expert but I'm just telling them what I discovered about two weeks ago!"

Joan:"But hon, you are an expert. You did exactly what your are expert at: Explaining things."

Me: "Uh ... well ... I guess so ... I forget that's what I'm really good at ... but yeah ... I even said that was my expertise in my FAQ About me."

(Pretty funny ... I thought ... that I have to talk to a friend to remember who I am)

#6 Talked to my brothers. Both have 18/ 19 yr old daughters dating. It's so hard on them. (Their older sister has some sympathy for them and their daughters.)

#7 Yesterday I trotted to the train station beside my husband, approx 1.4 miles, in 19 min. Today I walked 4.8 miles with dog and husband. Shelbie dog will sleep for 3 days ... I will be fine ... no hills involved.

#8 We stopped into an antique shop ... does anybody know if $300 is an appropriate price for what appears to be a hand crafted oak dining table ... approx 5ft long and 3.5 ft wide? I have searched the web and 600 images at ebay and I can't find anything like it. I'm going to go back down there and take some pics.

#9 Today we started sorting through the benefits package for 2007. With us coming in from the woods ... well so many choices is dang confusing. Tomorrow Billy and I are going to place a call and talk to some poor soul in benefits ... who doesn't even know they're a poor soul yet.

#10 Perfect ending ... me limping through this post on my poor little baby while Billy uses the good computer to play country music videos ... us humming along ... dog snoring ... LOL and I just thought of the perfect Images for OddMix's word game.

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Are you looking for a free audio book of a "classic"? A free book for your eBook reader?

What if you have to read "one of those old books" for school? Would it be easier to be able to search through it on the computer? Or better yet ... what if you could also listen to it?

And just what if you are doing research on the good old days, and you want a bit of info that everyone and their brother won't have ... then what?

And what if you still need some sort of relaxing distraction but that computer game is getting boring and you feel a little ... useless? Then what?

And how could there possibly be a connection between the last paragraph and the first? Well ... let me tell you.

Project Gutenberg is collecting and scanning literature and music of virtually all types. The item must have an expired copyright or be copyright-free. (But, no, they won't take in your latest unpublished novel or poem or short story ... etc. But! I know who will.)

Unlike other services, Project Gutenberg does not stop with the scanned pages. The accepted works are always converted into TXT formatted files and then into HTML, PDF and other formats for eBook readers. Some are being made available as audio files. The audio files are human voice or computer-generated.

If I were doing research, I would be inclined to use the PDF text because Adobe's Reader program does a very useful search display.

If I were being told to read a classic book, I would be very inclined to listen to it ... even if it's a computer-generated recording. A few months ago I started listening to Robinson Crusoe. Much to my surprise, it wasn't long until the passion of the author's words overtook the oddness of the computer voice. I still find myself musing over the story's beginning.

Now, back to my odd question ... Are your strategy-based computer games (aka solitaire and freecell) becoming dull? Or worse yet, are they making you feel useless?!

All of this work is accomplished by volunteers! I highly suggest you explore your "page a day" or "smooth reading" options at Distributed Proofreaders.

Explore Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders very carefully and thoroughly. You will find many useful (expected and unexpected) resources.

Some people act like there's a war on between audio books and eBooks and that eBooks are losing. I don't think so. I think that people just don't know how to use them together ... I think people don't know how to enjoy learning. What do you think?