Counting Kisses by Karen Katz (2001)

Our new favorite bedtime book. It starts with a tired baby who is in need of a kiss. I love this book not only because it gives my son the needed quiet transition from play to bedtime but also how it teaches counting and identifying body parts - tiny toes, wriggly feet, yummy knees, pretty belly button, dimpled chin, itty bitty nose, baby hands, sweet little ears, closing eyes, and dreamy head.

And now it's time for baby's bed...

Anton Lee's top 12 board book picks!

My son recently turned one year and one month and he’s ready to have a change in his reading materials. Before we shelve these books, here’s a rundown of his favourite ones in his first year:

1. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star / Old MacDonald had a Farm / Wheels on the Bus

I’ve been reading to my son since he was in utero but I can say that these three spin-a-song board books firmly started my son’s reading adventure at 2.5 months. He would be alert and focused every time we start reading to him these books.  All three books are beautifully, brightly coloured and sceneries change by spinning the wheels on the right hand side of the books.  Happy singing!

 2.       My Little Noisy Book of Ducklings / Kittens /Puppies (2008)
These interactive board books have buttons which when pressed, make quite realistic sounds of a duck, kitten and a puppy!  By 9 months, my son knew when to make the animals quack, meow, or go woof-woof! Not only entertaining but helps babies’ motor skills too!

 

 

 

3.       Oh Baby, Go Baby! (2004)

An adaptation from Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”, this pop-up book has fluff, foil,  banners flapping, and even has a lever to set the baby off  on his adventures! We loved this so much, we decided to use the book as the theme for my son’s first birthday party.

4.       Bedtime Bugs by David A. Carter (1998)
This pop-up book started us on the path of having a “bedtime book” to signal lights off when we  close the last page.  The bugs play a bit, they have a bath, and then a little song. This pop-up book even has a lullabug within the book of the pop-up book!

5.       Goodnight, Thumper by Disney Bunnies (2007)
When my son started having fun pulling the flaps in Bedtime Bugs, we felt it was time to change his bedtime book.  Goodnight, Thumper, a board book (no flaps, Mommy!), has provided us hilarious moments before falling asleep.

 

  

6.       Otis Loves to Play by Loren Long (2012)

Otis is a tractor who loves playing with his farm friends -- the duck, the calf, and the horse.  Otis is a very active tractor who can zoom and even do handstands! This board book has shown us how we can extend reading into play.  My son loves playing now ring around the rosy (and falling down!).

 

 

 

7.       Touch and Feel Baby Animals by Nadeem Zaidi (2011)

A Baby Einstein book, this hard book has different textures to interest your baby.  There’s the chick’s fluffy down; the puppy’s soft, long ears; the kitten’s soft, orange fur; the turtle’s smooth, hard shell; and the hedgehog’s brown quills!  

8.       Peekaboo, Baby! by Susan Amerikaner (2009)
This is another Baby Einstein board book with flaps which we still love. It teaches the baby not only to play peek-a-book but also positional concepts – behind, underneath, in, and beside.

9.       Say Boo! By Lynda Graham-Barber (2002)

This board book is so fun! We do sounds of the cow, the owl, and the dove.  Around Halloween time, like Ben the Ghost, my son and I started to practice to say “Boo!” And like the bat in the book, I got amazed when I finally heard my son say “Boo!” in his Ben the Ghost costume.

 

 

 

10.   Chicka Chicka ABC by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault (2009)

All the letters of the alphabet clamber up the coconut tree! Will there be enough room? We’ll find out that all the alphabets fell off the coconut tree. Oh no (this is the part wherein my son puts his hands over his ears and shakes his head)!!! This board book vividly shows the letters of the alphabet both in upper and lower cases.

11.   The Real Mother Goose Board Book (1998)
This board book will develop reading endurance (on Mommy’s/Daddy’s part).  It has 15 popular nursery rhymes which include Humpty Dumpty, The Cat and the Fiddle, and The Mouse and the Clock. Try to imagine your baby asking you to read this book to him three times before going to bed.

12.   Baby Animals (2010)
I had doubts at first with this board book as the pictures looked cluttered on the pages. My son, however, loved this the moment we started reading it.  The animals are arranged alphabetically and the name of the baby the animal is identified on each page (example: A is for angelfish. A baby angelfish is called a fry.).  This is a book we can grow up with.  As my son’s attention span increases, we can move on to reading other information about these animals such as where we can find them.  As of now, we are doing the letters, the animals, and the name of their babies. 

We also enjoy the information we’re picking up from this book. Do you know that a baby monkey is called an infant and a baby vulture is called a chick?

Goodnight, Thumper by Disney Bunnies (2007)

Thumper’s Rule: If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all. 

Thumper is a rabbit (we found out much later that he came from the Disney film, “Bambi”).  Thumper does not want to sleep.   Everyone is preparing for bed – the mouse, the duckies, the chipmunk, and the squirrel. Then Thumper heard his mama calling and he knew he had to go home.  Papa told a bedtime story. Still, Thumper wouldn’t go to sleep!

Papa and Mama kissed him and Thumper at last went to sleep.

This was our bedtime reading until my son turned one year. We would read several books but our finale would always be “Thumper”. We used to read this lying down but when he became mobile at five months, he would either sit on my lap or move about while I read to him.  When Papa and Mama kiss Thumper, my son would know it was time for bed (but of course not before he got a good dose of tickling when Thumper’s sisters cry, “Thumper! We missed you!”)

You can be sure we never went out of town without bringing Thumper with us.

Ssssshhhhh.

Say Boo by Lynda Graham-Barber (2002)

Ben is a little ghost who still has to be able to say “Boo!” on the eve of Halloween. 

He went to a forest, a meadow, and a long stone bridge, to practice to say “Boo!”.  Ben would encounter an owl, a cow, and a dove who told Ben that ghosts do not say “whoo!”, “moo!”, or “coo!” and that the little ghost must say, “boo!”

My son and I have been reading together this book since he was about seven months old.  It’s a small hard book that’s perfect for little hands. 

There's also a nice little lesson at the end of the story: Practice makes the scariest “boo!”

The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (2009)

Allan Karlsson, a resident of the Old People’s Home, is about to celebrate his 100^th year birthday.  It is an event of some importance considering that the Mayor himself will be attending.  Karlsson, however, has other ideas.  He is going to absent himself from his own party.

Karlsson jumps out of his bedroom window in his slippers and his great adventure begins. Before long, he is running around with a luggage filled with 50 million cash and  involved in several reported murders.  Soon, the police is in hot pursuit.

It turns out that Karlsson is not a stranger to adventures.  In his Life-Before-The Old People’s Home, he was an explosives expert and has been in and out of the big events of the past 100 years. He had a hand in exploding the first nuclear bomb, he’s met with Stalin, Truman, Mao Tse-tung, and even with Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung! For somebody who does not care for politics, he has gotten himself enmeshed in the political infightings in Spain, Iran, and Indonesia.

The book has two threads running parallel – one thread with the 100 year-old Karlsson and his newfound friends being hounded by the police and the other thread with the much younger Karlsson going around the world, drinking tequila with Truman and crossing the Himalayas, among other things.

The book is witty, hilarious, and downright irreverent. The recounting of how Russia attempted to kidnap Albert Einstein shows Jonasson’s absolutely brilliant dry humour.

The book is also a beautiful lesson on how to traverse 100 years of living: Be ready to take in stride both setbacks and successes. Banished to spend time at the Gulag? No problem. Karlsson, however, one day, says to himself that he’s had enough of it (there's no vodka in this part of Russia!) and walks out. Similar to how he jumped out of his bedroom window the day he turned 100 years old.

I've ranked this book as no. 1 among the books I've read in the first half of 2013.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson (2012)

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is a (supposedly) hilarious recounting of Lawson’s unconventional childhood and conventional husband, Victor.

I give a wide berth to writers, so it is rare that I actually dislike a book. I may not like it, but that does not mean that I dislike it.

I wanted to like “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” as it has been highly recommended by friends and bagged Goodreads’ Best in Humor Category in 2012. I plodded through chapter after chapter, but the more I read, the more I was not liking it.  When I finally reached the last page, I heaved a big sigh of relief and admitted to myself that I disliked the book.

Here’s why I do not find Lawson funny:

1. Too much profanity. Why does Lawson pepper her sentences with cuss words? If we teach children at an early age not to swear, why will we find a middle-aged person who can barely finish a sentence without letting go of a profanity, remotely funny?
2. I do not find stories of alcohol and substance abuse funny. These are serious issues
3. I do not find humorous, stories of self-confessed ineptness which can result in damage to life and property.
4. I do not find funny people who ridicule other people just to elicit laughs.

The book itself is muddled and disjointed, that it makes me wonder if Lawson had an editor. I do not see any purpose in this book – I did not learn anything new, I was not entertained, and I definitely did not find it hilarious.

readings for March

Dear Clubber Recruit (Does “clubber” not sound cool? It has the intimations of a lazy lounger, potential serial killer, and a sexy jazz warbler, all rolled in two syllables),

Time has a way of dematerializing quickly these days.  One moment we were trying to organize a book club at work to meet every fortnight at lunchtime, next moment, eight months have gone and well, we are still trying to organize that book club. But no matter.  We shall only give ourselves to despair if every one of us in this potential book club has finished reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace and we still have not managed to meet up again.

I have drawn up here a list of books, with the help of fellow Clubbers, which you may want to check out. When we go back to work after the Easter holiday, perhaps we can try meeting up. ("Try" being the operative word.)

There are pre-requisites for those who want to be a Clubber. An unmitigated passion for reading (although this is as clear as the noonday sun, I am stressing this here to avoid any misunderstanding); an ability to eat fast (we only meet during lunch breaks); and the capacity to talk fast (just imagine,  50 Clubbers discussing Hundred Years of Solitude and all of them afflicted with an inordinate amount of pride and prejudice… well, do your math).    
 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2011)

It is Nick and Amy’s fifth year anniversary, the day Amy dramatically disappears.  The police starts interrogating Nick and they are almost sure that Nick is involved in Amy’s disappearance.  The police could not be faulted for closing the noose on Nick: he has a motive and he has no alibi.  

Gone Girl is a book which makes Fatal Attraction look like child’s play and brings the He said-She said technique to a dizzying new height.  Flynn opens the book from Nick’s point of view then juxtaposes it with Amy’s version of the story told from five years ago.  Flynn then brings the two narratives together to the present and moves it briskly forward to a thundering crescendo.  

         

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (2012)

 

Hazel and Augustus are star-crossed lovers. They are soon going to die.  The book starts on a mawkish note but is soon able to hold ground as a sensitive and thought-provoking take on young people with terminal diseases and their struggle to live normal lives.

The Fault in Our Stars is a combination of wit, humor, and beautiful prose which reminds one of Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Grey. 

“There will come a time when all of us are dead.  All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything.  There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you.  Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of us will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever.  There was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after.  And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.  God knows that’s what everyone does.”

Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (2012)

The pretty little town of Pagford was an idyllic place. Then Barry Fairbrother died and secret after secret started unraveling in this once peaceful locale.

Similar to the Harry Potter series, Rowling narrates the foibles of adults from children’s colored lenses. Casual Vacancy proves that Rowling is one mighty fine story-teller and that her powers are not solely limited to Hogwarts.

 

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (2005)

Leo Gursky is a migrant from Eastern Europe at the twilight of his life and who wants to establish connection with his son. Alma Singer is a young girl who is concerned about her mother’s extended mourning over her husband’s death. Alma has taken it into her head that she needs to help her mother move on and find a new partner.  A book called, “The History of Love”threads the two characters' quests.

Krauss's work is undoubtedly sublime. And yet. It is also heartbreaking, wistful, poignant and as a Clubber has pointed out, full of pregnant pauses which make the book resonate.  This is the second time I have read the History of Love and it still left me at the end protesting that Krauss should have made the book (much!) longer.
 

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier (2009)

Remarkable Creatures is set in the 1800s when opportunities for women were still limited.  The story is told from the points of view of Elizabeth Philpot, educated and with some money, and Mary Anning, a girl of few prospects. The two ladies became close friends because of their common affinity for fossil collection.

The book is a celebration of friendship and assertion of women’s independence and intelligence in a world (then) dominated by males. If you are somebody who cannot have enough of Jane Austen (and of course, Jane Austen's body of work is finite),  you will love this take by a modern writer.

 

P.S. I was kidding about the 50 Clubbers. We are more like 5. Haha. 

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (2009)

Warning: This is not the book for you if you believe that working for goals like social justice, peace, or the environment is more important than happiness.

Gretchen Rubin has not experienced a grave injustice, a major personal tragedy, nor suffered a terrible illness.  She has not lost her home, job, money, or a member of the family. 

In fact, Rubin believes herself to have so much to be happy about.  She is married to the love of her life, has two delightful daughters, is a writer living in New York, and has close relationships with her family.

She, however, “suffer bouts of melancholy, insecurity, listlessness, and free floating guilt.” She is experiencing what she calls, a “midlife malaise – a recurrent sense of discontent and almost feeling of disbelief, ‘Can this be me?’ ”.

Rubin’s “The Happiness Project” is not so much about searching for happiness but of wanting to be happier in a state of plenty. Rubin embarked on a year-long project to find answers.  She did not do this by travelling around the world like Hector in Francois Lelord’s, “Hector and the Search for Happiness”; neither did she reside abroad for a time, similar to what Jamie Cat Callan undertook in, “Bonjour Happiness” to unlock the secret to joie de vivre.

Instead, Rubin gathered an armload of books and applied what she learned  to her day-to-day activities (Jamie, her husband, has been a favorite guinea pig in her experiments/resolutions).  Her monthly projects looked like this:

January – Boost energy

February – Remember love

March – Aim higher

April – Lighten up

May – Be serious about play

June – Make time for friends

July – Buy some happiness

August – Contemplate the heavens

September – Pursue a passion

October – Pay attention

November – Keep a contented heart

December – Boot camp perfect

Rubin is an engaging writer, affable, honest, self-deprecating in some parts, and defensive in other segments.   She has taken pains to explain why a Yale law school graduate like her who used to be editor of the Yale Law Review and who clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is not out there litigating or closing multi-million dollar deals, but chosen instead to write books.

Reading “The Happiness Project”, one is struck why people like Rubin, who look like they have it all, while not unhappy, are not quite happy. Rubin partly provides the explanation in asking a rhetorical question: “Now that our country has achieved a certain standard of prosperity, people set their goals on higher things. Isn’t it admirable that people want to be happy? If happiness isn’t the point, what is?”

There are neither outstanding revelations nor mind-boggling new theories in “The Happiness Project”.  It is however, replete with all sorts of entertaining statistics, studies, and quotations.

-          An extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person’s daily happiness than getting a US$60,000 raise

-          Just by exercising 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week for 6 weeks, persistently tired people boost their energy

-          Happier people make more effective leaders

-          “Where there is no wood, the fire goes out; and where there is no talebearer, strife ceases.” (Proverbs 26:20)

-          “Fundamental attribution error” is a psychological phenomenon in which we tend to view other people’s actions as reflections of their characters and to overlook the power of the situation to influence their actions, whereas with ourselves, we recognize the pressure of circumstances

-          “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” (Woody Allen)

-          “On the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell short of it, yet as I was, by endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it.” (Benjamin Franklin)
 

The book is akin to walking in a sunlit park with birds chirping and flowers all a-blooming. There are no dark demons in this book. The only hints of evil were references to gossip mongering and Jamie’s medical condition.

 Perhaps a more apt title to this book would be, “The Happier Project”.

POSTSCRIPT:  I need to say this.  Rubin did her readers a disservice when she included in her book a considerable number of comments from her blog. To paraphrase Matthew 22:21, “Render unto the blog, the observations of the bloggers and unto the book the remarks of the blurbers.”

10 personal notes

1. I think I have one very good reason for not coming up with a post the past five months. I have been trying to raise a son with whom I can share my love of reading. I may be on the right track.

2. Every year, I resolve to write a review for every book I read.  Every year, I backslide. Every year, I think that the ensuing year will be different.

3. I have succumbed to the lure of the e-book. My fantastic husband gave me my first Kindle before I gave birth. It is an amazing thing. One can load one’s entire library in it and then manage to hold that library in one hand, pick out a book, read chapter after chapter without losing one’s place, and even manage to switch to another book while breastfeeding.

4. The e-book, alas, is quite mortal. My first Kindle swiftly passed away in electronic agony after my knee accidentally hit it while I was looking for my son’s bib. It is devastating. Losing one’s library in a space of time shorter than a millisecond.

My husband, who is supportive of my endeavours in all possible ways (and who has probably a subconscious fear of our home getting buried under tons of books) surprised me with another Kindle last Christmas.  Just to let you know how fabulous this man is (and how wary he is of future accidents), the Kindle came in a red leather cover.

5. Kindle notwithstanding, I still believe that a House is not a Home and a Home cannot be one without (real) books.  

6. After making one post with ratings, I quickly realized the absurdity of that exercise.  I keep discovering one fantastic writer after another. If I adopt a five-rating scale, yesterday’s 4.5-rater maybe tomorrow’s 2-rater. I do not want to spend the remaining years of my bloggerlife going back and correcting all those ratings every time I feel I need to adjust my criteria.

7. I read much slower now not because of book-indigestion but that I am lately finding myself reading more to my son than to myself.  I also now head to the Toddler’s Section first when I enter paradise-island (a.k.a. bookstore).

8. This is one story which quite warms my heart.  My mother told me that my 7-year old nephew goes home everyday with a book he has borrowed from the library.

9. I love Haruki Murakami not only because he is one amazing writer but also because he has kept the discipline of running and has been able to successfully dodge  interviewers.

10. I am blessed to have gorgeous friends who share my passion for books.  I am keeping them close to my heart so that one day, when I write my first book, I can rely on them to get copies for themselves and for their friends, relatives, in-laws, and workmates, in sufficient number of copies to propel my opus to the bestseller’s list. I am also relying on them that in the event my book turns out to be one ridiculed (or worse loathed) by the public, they will be kind enough to rescue any sorry-looking copy marked US$1 in any booksale.