• Art History's History - Vernon Hyde Minor

It's a nice background to the changes in the study of art over the years. There's a lot of good excerpts or articles to give to students. Plus, quite a few future essay questions were inspired by the text. My future students will whimper. =)

• Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns - Cheryl L. Reed

This one was rather fun and a bit of an eye opener. It really takes away a lot of the stereotypes that we have of nuns. Reed travels all over the United States visiting a variety of different orders - from the extremely cloistered to those who live in apartments and have jobs in the community. She teaches her readers that nuns are not always spiritual saints. Many nuns struggle with their spirituality; and some have even looked to Buddhism and other spiritual religions/philosophies to help them define their own relationships with God. For instance, one lady says her daily prayers, but spends more time meditating in order to discover her own self and her believes believing that end the end that added knowledge of self will enable her to have a better relationship with God. Some of the women question the infallibility of the pope, the fact that women cannot be priests, and the celibacy issue (not that they want to break the vow, but the fact that it leads to the even bigger issues that the church is currently having to deal with). They're not all perfect cookie cutter Catholics and it's nice to know that you're not any less of a person because you question God at points throughout your life. Many of the women believe that through this questioning you build a better, stronger relationship with God.
While she describes the daily lives of those who spend the majority of their day in prayer and have taken vows of silence, it is her descriptions of the more modern sisters that almost make you want to seek out a nunnery just to see these women in actions. When I say "seek out" I'm not referring to feeling like you should go join one, but that you really should observe some of these women living their lives in order to learn how to better your own. (Although, if I were Catholic I think I would have wanted to join their ranks). There are activist nuns who have been arrested frequently for protesting the making of bombs, etc. There are women who run clinics for women - some very pro-life, anti-contraceptives, while others are willing to provide women with all the options available to them and realize that family planning isn't incredibly accurate. Others teach, work as social workers, and practice midwifery in some of the poorest areas in the United States. As an educator the chapter on nuns who teach on Indian reservations just amazed me. They put more effort into their students than seems physically impossible. Some of these women spend so much time focusing on others that they find little time to even say their daily prayers.


"I decided to get a job where I could badger the boss. I decided to become a lobbyist of the highest lever." - 294

• The Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant

Okay, so I finished reading this on the 8th, but forgot to post it for some reason. I've been busy and my laptop isn't working properly so I guess I've just been a little side tracked. Anyway...
This was actually a very enjoyable book. I've put off reading it for so long because I thought it was just going to be some cheesy romance novel that tries to pretend to be historical fiction. While you can tell that the writing is somewhat for an audience of women, it's not solely. The book really describes the mental, physical, and spiritual struggle that overwhelmed so many Florentines during the days of Savonarola. It also shows the struggle of a woman to achieve intellectual freedom in a city that thrived on the intellectual male, but feared the same qualities in a female. This is a plane book. Something to read and relax without being incredibly complicated, but still based on something worth learning about. It has a Girl With a Pearl Earing vibe to it for those of you who have read the story or seen the movie.

• Night Over Water - Ken Follett

I was nervous about starting this book since it has to do with an incident on a plane. I rather expected it to be some form of airborne hijacking and I hate thinking about that stuff since I fly on occasion. Also, it just seems inappropriate to read something like that for entertainment purposes. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the text. Yes, things go awry; but the story is based during WWII and, while the terror is real, the era has passed which seems to assuage ones fears. There's a little bit of romance and a bit of adventure - the typical outline for an ordinary book, but Follett seems to continually write books that retain my focus and make me excited to move on to his next. I believe there's only 2 more for me to read (although one of them he openly admits to being before he truly refined his skills as a writer - a mere work in progress). Come early October he will have his sequel to The Pillars of the Earth in stores so I have something to look forward to. Now, if only Ross King and Leonard Shlain would publish something new for me to read... =)

• The Third Twin - Ken Follett

There was something about this book that I loved. For some reason I expected I'd enjoy it, but I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. I guess I judged it by its cover. Once again I found myself completely behind the main female character. She's strong willed and determined, but she's not invulnerable.

The plot is a little odd for Follett - no spies involved. Well, okay, a stakeout, but no professional spies. (Not all of his books are spy novels, but about half of them are.) It's about a determined girl who is doing nature verses nurture experiments on twins who have been separated at birth and raised in different settings. She comes across identical twins with different biological mothers before the days of cloning embryos. She finds herself in the middle of a huge scandal and must fight to keep her job and to get to the bottom of the scandal.

• The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco

This was a wonderful suprise. This was a book different than any I've ever read before. It's a little out there... kind of like The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, but it becomes clear that you're not going to get a clear story at the end of this one somewhere in the middle of the story (unlike being disappointed at the end after expecting it in TMFQL). It's a tale about a man you is shipwrecked and manages to land himself on a deserted ship instead of a deserted island. There are a lot of debated on religion, philosophy, science, etc.

Expect to spend a little time reading this book. It spends a lot of time philosophizing, Plus, this text will teach you more vocabulary than any English class ever could. Make sure you actually look the words up rather than pass over them if you're not sure. I think it's the first text I've ever actually seen the word punctilio used in. It's sad that that made me excited. =)

"Not everyone must be granted access to your heart. A prudent, cautious silence is the cabinet of wisdom." - 111