A friend of mine - well, an online acquaintance of mine but a lovely person and a friend of Sam's from school - has posted a film to teach others more about ME, which is more commonly referred to in the states as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Sam and I have a lovely aunt who suffers from this and I have three friends who do as well, so I wanted to pass this along. It only takes a few minutes to watch, and it ends with some good reminders of what you can do if you have a friend with CFS. Please pass it on to others.



Alternately, you can see the film by visiting the Sleepy Dust website.

By the way, I'm using GoodReads to manage my reading list. I've imported most of our library to my GoodReads account and am slowly sorting through to eliminate the books I really never want to read (such as some of Sam's heavier philosophy stuff, old text books of mine, various guide books, language dictionaries, etc.), but will be updating over there.

I rather like the feature where I'm e-mailed once a day when someone on my list has finished a book they were reading and/or started a new book. So, if you have a GoodReads account or set one up, please feel free to add me. I'm interested in what you're reading, too.

Just finished Matilda a few evenings ago, and I think that I'm going to try to get in the habit of writing down my thoughts on books as I (or sometimes "we") finish them, even the short, less-intellectual ones, so here goes...

Sam read this one to me. He and I read books to each other, generally kid lit, because it lends itself most to being read out loud. This was, I believe, a favorite of his (he is in general a huge Roald Dahl fan), and I can see why it's a favorite and, perhaps more to the point, I can see why he was eager to read this Dahl book in particular to me.

I was a bit of a Matilda. Certainly not to the extraordinarily intelligent degree seen in the book, but I was a precocious lass, and in general shared many similar attitudes and behaviors seen in Matilda. I was a good girl who liked the teacher when the teacher was nice and merited being liked, and wasn't afraid to show it even if other students would think I was a kiss-up. I really related to Matilda in this way. Of course, I didn't grow up in such horrendous circumstances or have so few friends, thankfully.

At any rate, overall I'm mixed. I loved the character of Matilda - five stars up there. But the antagonist in the book was a little *too* effective. To the point of making me dread the sections of the book where the antagonist appears. And while I was sparse on details, I found the ending rather easy to predict, which is never entirely satisfying, not even in the 'I *thought* so' sort of way.

But overall I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others. It was fun and sweet in many sections, even if overall it did not lend itself well to my attempts at a stress-free lifestyle.

I read this all the way through in one sitting. I realize that it's only about 165 pages or so, but that's still not something I do quite often, as I read at a conversational (i.e. slow) pace. To be fair, I was also home from work with a wretched sore throat and had nothing else to do but be in bed reading.

But this was a great way to pass that miserable time.

As a woman who's spent quite a bit of time outside and isn't afraid of the outdoors, I found this to be a very interesting read. It's about a boy who runs away from home to live in the wilderness - and he succeeds. I have friends who 'live off the land,' without running water, without electricity, without plumbing, but this beats all that in a way that I've never actually seen in real life. Still, it seems plausible enough, and has some interesting historical touches here and there (the book was written in the fifties, so, for example, when the boy does run into other human beings and receives news of the world, they tell him about the latest atom bomb tests that have occurred and things of that nature).

I loved this book right up until about the last five or so pages, and was dismayed by the ending, but everything leading up to that still made it more than worthwhile. This is a book worth seeking out.
 
 
 
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