Hello! It's Diane, the nursing geek. Welcome back if you have been here
before, and welcome for the first time if
you have not. So this is going to be one
of my book-related videos. It's also
going to be the first video I've
attempted to stitch together from
different shoots. So no, I'm not running
and changing my hair and outfit in
between every piece here.  [I did it this way] particularly
since I am reviewing some books that I
took out from the library, and they
needed to go back, I shot those reviews a
little quickly earlier on and I'm just
going to finish out today. I'm going to
start then with the book I just finished
called Writing the Fire which is a book
that talks about the yoga of writing
essentially. And it includes a lot of
really great yoga flows to do before writing,
if you're taking a break while writing, 
or should do while writing and
or after writing. My one critique - and I
think its inherent in the author's
intent so they probably wouldn't take it
as a critique - is that there's no guide
at the beginning really. There is ... there
is a foreword that explains a little
where this is coming from, but there's no
"this is the best way to approach this book,"
which I think some folks would find
useful. I would have found [that] useful because
it took me a while to realize, okay it's
not just the first couple of bits
that are extremely short little chapters.
That's the format. And really, you can
read it all the way through, which is
what I did for the first time through.
I haven't actually done any of the
practices yet. (I do intend to.) But it took
me a minute to kind of adjust to that
style, and maybe that was part of the
point was to kind of throw the reader
out of their comfort zone and make them
look at things in a whole new way, and if
that's the goal, it worked.
On to the next book, and I'll
see you again at the end.
So I had originally said I was going to
be reading I Am Malala, and I did finish
this. And, oh my goodness, it was
absolutely wonderful. I understand that
she worked with Christina Lambe. Um, this
is not her first language, obviously, so
she would have a co-writer, but assuming
that Christina Lambe was really true to
mala style - and her narrative voice
within this book is very consistent with
when I've heard her speak in interviews -
so I ... I just have to say
she's an incredibly articulate young
woman and really expert at describing
places and people. Since I'm working on
my own skills around writing setting,
that I guess really jumped out at me,
because by very few pages in I felt
like I knew her whole family. So really ... and that's the sort of "structure of writing"
piece of it. Obviously what she has to
say about her own experiences growing up
in the Swat Valley and her experiences
around advocating for girls' education
and the shooting that resulted, and her
experience after that. Actually, that
doesn't even come in until probably
around ... somewhere around here. So the bulk
of it really is her life leading up to
that point, which I found fascinating
because she started right from the
beginning. Really great. I highly
recommend it. If you haven't read this,
 please do consider reading it.
Another book that I have read, 
even though it sort of looks
like I'm still in it because I have the
page holders folded in, is this book
The Desire Map, which is about identifying
your core desired feelings in order to
set goals. So I have actually read the
whole book, but it is also ... the second
half of it in particular is very much a
workbook. So as far as doing the
exercises, I have not finished doing all
the exercises although I have read
through all of them. I do think it's an
excellent, excellent book.
If you particularly are having difficulty
figuring out how to set some goals
because you're not sure what exactly you
want to prioritize, this is great for
helping you really work through that.
Because as the author Danielle LaPorte
says, when we are setting goals within our lives, 
what we're really settinga goal for is
how we want to feel when this thing is done, 
and the reason that often people will
feel let down even though they succeed
at something they've been working on is
because it was never something that was
going to support attaining that
particular feeling. So I had started
working through another book that I'll
probably mention in the future on
goal-setting that that sort of assumes
you really know
what you want goals to be and what ...
what your ... how you want to prioritize
things. I started working that book, found
myself really getting stuck on some of
the exercises, and somebody referred me
to this book, and I found it extremely
helpful. So I do recommend that as well
if, particularly, if you are trying to do
some goal-setting and you're finding
yourself sort of stumbling around
thinking you're not really sure what you
want to prioritize how, or thinking, "Well
I know what I *should* be prioritizing
officially according to what most people
say, but that doesn't feel right and I'm
not sure what does," this is ... this is a
great tool for that. And ... audiobooks!
I had to go grab my phone so that I
could show you one of my audiobooks
because I have listened to it through
Audible, which was The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood. Which was every bit
as good as I had always figured it would
be. Really chilling! But the interview
with the author at the end, or ... it's not
so much an interview, it's just some of
her only reflections and thoughts at the
end, were really very interesting to hear.
I love when audiobooks in particular
have things like that so you can
actually hear from the author.
There's always (or often) author's notes
and those are always great too, but
actually hearing the author speaking
in their own voice, I find really nice.
I do recommend this if you are thinking of
going at the Handmaid's Tale and you
would like to hear that, then I do
recommend the Audible edition of that, as well.
And in an effort not to give
Audible quite all of my money, I've been
doing a little more with library
audiobooks as well.
One of which was ... is Barbara
Kingsolver's Flight Behavior.
I've never read anything by
Barbara Kingsolver before. I've heard
great things about her from other people.
I'm actually still listening to this. I'm
about two discs away from the end ... I
actually just started to the
second-to-last ... second-to-last disc.
But that means this will be going back
to the library soon -which it needs to it
does it's due in a little more than a week
but I'll finish it long before then.
So yeah, I've really enjoyed this. Let me read
a little bit of the excerpt, which of
course is covered a little bit by the
bar code but  ... "Dellarobia Turnbow is the
protagonist and ... after a decade of
domestic disharmony on the failing farm,
she encounters a shocking sight: a silent
forested valley fills ... um, filled
with what looks like a lake of fire.
She can only understand it as a cautionary
miracle, but it sparks a raft of other
explanations from scientists, religious
leaders, and the media. As the community
lines up to judge the woman and her
miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family,
her church, her town, and a larger world
in a flight toward truth that could undo
all she has ever believed. Flight
Behavior takes on one of the most
contentious subjects of our time: climate
change. With a deft and versatile empathy
Kingsolver dissects the motives that
drive denial and belief in a
precarious world. So that was what attracted
me to this. I think one of my ... one of the
YouTubers that I follow
who does book reviews had mentioned
Barbara Kingsolver, and so when I was
perusing the shelf at the library, I saw
that there was something by her, I read
that and I said, "Okay, that does sound
really interesting to me. And wow,
it has been more than I would have even
from that description imagined. For one
thing, she is a wonderful setting ... setter. [giggles]
She does a really great job with
describing setting, with describing
people, things that I'm working on in my
own writing. In fact, as I've been working
on my "settings bank," I find myself when I
am sitting somewhere writing on a setting
almost narrating it in the voice of ...
actually she also did the reading, so in
Barbara Kingsolver's voice,
 narrative and actual. Which i think
is a great help. It probably also means
that it's gonna take me awhile to stop
doing that and find my own voice with
that, but that's okay. That's how we learn
any writing or really most things, is
imitate and then develop your own style.
So there's that piece. There's also
the piece where she really does tackle
climate change. She tackles people in
sort of different camps of belief on
something not listening to each other
because they don't ... they believe
they already know what the other one's
gonna say. Dellarobia, the protagonist, is
really ... she's got layers of layers that become
more and more evident as you go. I will
say when I first heard the first bits of
the first chapter, my initial thought was,
"Oh I really I wasn't looking for a romance.
That's not what I wanted to pick
up." It's not. Or at least, you know,
there are elements of
relationship and romance and things like
that within, but that is by no
means the primary focus. It's a backdrop,
and it's something that mirrors what's
going on in her environment,
and it's sort of this reflexive effect
between what's going on around her and
what's going on within her. And it's
really, I think, masterfully done. So I
highly recommend this. I'm absolutely
going to look for other books
by Barbara Kingsolver in the future and I hope my library carries them.
Hi there. So this is probably not going
to be the beginning. In fact, it's
probably going to get stitched somewhere
in the middle,
so any of this might end up edited out,
who knows. But since I'm probably going
to end up returning this to the library
a lot sooner than I expected, I did want
to give a little bit of commentary on
Jack Kerouac Reads On the Road.
On the Road is definitely
something that's been on my "to read" list
for ages. How did I escape high school
and then an entire degree in English and
not read On the Road? And when I saw that
there was a version or there was
something called "Jack Kerouac Reads On
the Road," well of course, I'd just as soon
hear the author read it. This is
definitely something worth checking out,
but the title's misleading, which I sort
of gathered as soon as I realized there
was only one CD. I didn't think that was
a really tiny book that would actually
be able to completely read out loud in
an hour, and about an hour is usually
what you can get out of a CD. And I was
right. There's music. There's poetry.
There is a 28-minute section from On the Road that he reads. Aand it's really neat.
It definitely catches that whole flavor of
The Beat Generation and the type of
poetry. There's one point where he does
the same poem from ... in two completely
different ways. It's great. I loved it. But
it's not the whole book On the Road.
So I just ... I'm working on requesting a copy of somebody reading actually the entire
book of On the Road.
So, something to bear in mind.
I'm not dis-recommending it. I'm just saying if
this is something that you're going to
read, whether you're going to take it out
of the library,  I saw on Amazon the CD's
only ... it's less than five dollars ... it's
great. Just make sure you're getting it
for what you intend,
which would be hearing Jack Kerouac
reads a *section* of On the Roadn hearing
him sing, hearing him do poetry ..
It's, again, great, it's just not the
entire book, so ... And now we have part two
in the saga of Diane Tries to Listen to
On the Road as an Audiobook. Part one
was "This Is Not, in Fact, the Audiobook of
On the Road." Although there was an
excerpt, which was cool. It was good to
hear at least some of the book in
the author's voice. So part two in this
saga is "Got the Book! Got ... Half the Book!"
This does not say that it's part one of
two. The back says that it is 11 hours
long and has 10 compact discs. 
Inside we have one, two, three, four,
five compact discs. I did go back through
just to see if maybe there were ... there
was another side to these or there was
a second set of discs.  No. There's not.
So, apparently, this is part one of two,
which makes sense. It is quite long, so you
might want people to be able to check
out part one while somebody else is
still listening to part two. I can
totally get that. Didn't know I was
requesting part one, and I hope part two
is obtainable. Stay tuned for part three
in the saga, which hopefully is either
"Diane Obtains Part Two of This Specific Edition of 
On the Road as an Audiobook"
or "Diane Gets a Complete Set and Figures Out Where the Heck to Start."
So that's it for today. Please comment
down below if you've read any of these
books and share your thoughts on them. 
I'd love to hear. And if you are currently
reading something that you want to share
about and that I might like to read, by
all means comment that too. And if you
found this in any way useful or
informative, please give it a thumbs up,
and subscribe if you'd like to see more
of this, and I will see you next time. Bye.
