Thursday, July 5, 2007

5 Books With A Little Bit Of Me In Them

It’s funny what you begin to realize when choosing books that represent how you see yourself. Several of my books involved me wanting to be the character and live in a fantasy world. Two of the books ended up being children’s books.

Island of the Blue Dolphin—Scott O’Dell. When I would play alone outside I would always pretend that I was alone on an island surviving with what skills I had. I would act out scenes from the book over and over. I also checked this book out from the library over and over.

The Talisman—Steven King& Peter Straub. I dreamed about this book several times. The idea of having parallel worlds and being able to “flip” between the two fascinated me. His journey fascinated me. I’ve never dreamed about a before or since.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters—Matt Ridley. As a biology teacher I obviously love science. This book is organized into 23 chapters just like our chromosome are organized in 23 pairs. It puts science into your life in a way a person without a science background can understand. This is something I strive to do everyday with my students.

Snow Flower & the Secret Fan—Lisa See. In 2004 I traveled to China for several weeks. My husband & I tried to spend a lot of our time off the beaten trail. Here we were able to interact with people in ways most vacationers never will. I learned to appreciate the Chinese culture with all its differences and was surprised to learn how curious they were about foreigners (especially Americans). Snow Flower gave me another glimpse into their culture.

A Wrinkle In Time—Madeline L’Engle. Who wouldn’t want to travel through time & space as child? This book sparked my curiosity at a young age. Were tesseracts real? Could this happen? A Wrinkle In Time reminds me of enjoying science at an early age. It also brings back memories like my dad waking me up to watch lunar eclipses.

Now to decide what to read from your choices…

4 comments:

1morechapter said...

Snow Flower is such a great book. I rated it 5/5 earlier this year.

EnnaVic said...

Great choices. Matt Ridley is such a readable science writer - I came close to putting one of his on my list.

Juli said...

ennavic--do you recommend any of his other books? I really enjoyed this one.

Anonymous said...

I keep starting Genome and then putting it down again. I am still putting together my reading list, but there is a good chance I will put it on mine so I can finally finish it!