Packing for a Road Trip (the Bookworm Edition)

The book-lovers dilemma of packing enough books for a road trip has become easier for me, now that I have a tablet with the Kindle app. But I do pack 'real' tangible books, too. I can't rely on just electronic devices.

I had to laugh when I looked at what I'm taking along this time:

Just read it as if it was a poem:

What is it like to be married to me?

Up close and personal.

I am potential,

Unstoppable,

Cycling home from Siberia.

No, we're not going cycling in Siberia. But reading about people struggling on their bikes in the Siberian winter does put the minor discomforts of a summer road trip life into perspective.

My Kindle app has Shauna Niequist's Cold Tangerines and Bread and Wine lined up, almost as if I was packing the cooler instead of the book bag. :)

Now the dilemma is my darling Junior Bookworm. He only reads in Finnish, which means there aren't a lot of inexpensive and suitable e-books available. (Plus we only have one device for reading e-books - mine.) So it's traditional, tangible books for him.

But how many will be enough? It'll be nearly three weeks. And he'll have plenty of time to read in the car, in the evenings before bedtime, etc.

This is the pile I have for him at the moment. I'll report back whether this was enough, too many or too few...

Because they're all in Finnish, for those who want to know:

We've got most of Enid Blyton's Adventure series (a three-in-one volume at the top, plus three individual books: two of the series are missing, because we didn't get them from the library yet, the hold queue is loooong). Then Jerry B. Jenkins's book about American schoolboys learning soccer. Winnie-the-Pooh plus The House at Pooh Corner: because he's seen the films, and I want him to read.the.original. Plus an assortment of other children's adventure books, mostly by a Christian publisher.

Goals And Desires - For This Summer

I started reading Linda Dillow's What's it like to be married to me? because I had a hunch that re-reading and really thinking through this book would be a good idea.

And already from the first chapter I picked up at least one gold nugget I had forgotten: the distinction that Dillow makes between a goal and a desire:

A goal is something I want that I can also control.

A desire is something I want that I cannot control.

One of Dillow's examples is making "an intimate, sharing relationship with my husband" a goal. A relationship takes two people, and I cannot control my husband's part of it. Maybe he's not a talkative type? Maybe talking about his intimate feelings doesn't come easy to him? I can't make it my goal to make him talk to me. The more I strive to do that, the more he'll clam up. My "goal" needs to be all about my own part, for example to be such a listener that my husband can feel it's safe to talk, whenever he's ready to do that.

The distinction of goals and desires works out also in holiday planning.

I have lots of desires for the summer holiday. I want us all to have fun. I want us to share good times. I want us to connect better as family members. I want us all to grow in our relationships with God, too. And I certainly want to experience and enjoy the places and activities on our itinerary.

What I can make my goal is the part I'm responsible for. Myself.

So, my summer goals could look like this:

• I choose a good attitude. I choose to enjoy the adventure, relax, have fun, let go, smile a lot.
• I try to find ways to encourage others and choose to serve their needs with love.
• I seek God in my life, consistently.
• I avoid complaining and griping, whatever circumstances we encounter.
• I tell others honestly about my needs, so they get a fair chance to take those into account. (My husband is a great guy, but he cannot read my mind - and shouldn't be expected to!)

I know from previous years that when we travel together, one person's mood affects all the others. We're in a small car together, stay in a tent or other small lodgings together, do activities together. As three introverts, each one of us also needs some 'alone time' to recharge, and in previous years, I have sometimes felt I didn't get enough. And when I get into a bad mood, everyone suffers.

I'm reading Dillow's book in preparation for our trip. And for the sake of the rest of our lives, too.

It's not going to be perfect, ever. I'll stumble and fall. Ask for forgiveness. Start again.

But I pray God that when the tough moments come, He'll remind me of what I have set as my goal, my responsibility. The strength to choose better comes from Him.

And I'm going to enjoy the process.

June Books (Twitterature)

In May and June, it's all about easing into summertime. I've still been reading plenty in Finnish, but I won't go into those books here.

Linking with the lovely Modern Mrs Darcy's Twitterature link-up. Go there for more, and more, and more recommendations and short reviews of books.



First a couple of books in the category of "borrowed on an impulse from the e-library"...

Kathi Lipp: The Get Yourself Organized Project

I like Kathi Lipp's ideas for cleaning clutter and getting organized. My favourite thought in this book was looking for the way we naturally do things and going from there: for example, if you always open your mail in the kitchen, arrange the space for sorting out the mail in the kitchen, so it's easy to put things right where they belong.

I'm probably not quite the target audience - too "naturally organized" for that - but we have our clutter points, and I sorely need to develop better ways to deal with paperwork.

Rich Roll: Finding Ultra

From an alcoholic and an overweight couch potato to a competitive vegan triathlonist. Yes, his life has been quite a journey, and I did finish the book. But felt a bit blah. I guess that for me to really like a memoir, I need to somehow connect with the people in it, and that didn't happen with this one.

And then for the books that had been on my TBR list. Looks like Asperger was one of my reading themes... 

Daniel Tammet: Born on a Blue Day. A Memoir of Asperger's and an Extraordinary Mind

Daniel has Asperger's syndrome, synesthesia, and savant syndrome. His mind is truly extraordinary, and what is even more rare and extraordinary: he can describe his thought processes eloquently and vividly. Numbers are his "friends", and like a first language to him. And yet he loves words, too, and he can learn a new language in a week or so.

This is a fascinating book, and I really enjoyed reading it.

Fun detail: I looked at his surname and thought "That's not a typical English surname, it sounds Estonian." The book said nothing about his surname, but later I looked at his homepage and the Wikipedia page about him, and it turns out he has changed his surname himself, choosing the Estonian word. (The word tammet is also Finnish and means "oaks", but the plural form is not used as a name in Finnish.)

Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Initially, I found it hard to get into the story. It was intriguing, though. Picking up the clues the narrator (a boy who is somewhere in the autism spectrum) didn't. Trying to piece together an idea of what the people in his life were like. A good read.

Thank you, Jeannie, for recommending this!

However. Reading Haddon's novel right after Tammet's memoir (and having read another memoir by a woman with Asperger's, not so long ago), made me ponder the limits of fiction. Haddon doesn't claim to be especially knowledgeable about autism/Asperger's. The novel is his impression of how a person with Asperger's (or somewhere on the autism spectrum) might think. It's a tool for telling the story and describing familiar things, like the London Underground, from a new and fresh viewpoint. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Authors need fresh viewpoints.

Perhaps Haddon's novel also helps some 'normal' people to have more empathy for someone with Asperger. How hard it is when the way you perceive things is so different from other people's. How overwhelming some situations can feel, and that's what causes the 'strange' behaviour. It's easier for many people, I suppose, to pick up Haddons novel rather than Tammet's memoir.

Yet, personally, I got more out of the real-life stories of Daniel Tammet and Paula Tilli. I guess that's just how my mind works. :)

Mind The Gap - Living And Working Between Languages

I became a translator because I love languages.

I especially love the balancing act of getting a message in one language and relaying it in another language. It's a wonderful feeling when you get it just right. When you know that these words convey exactly the meaning you want. Yes, it happens, sometimes.

And sometimes a word or a concept in one language just doesn't fit neatly into the words of the other language. There is no equivalent. You can't translate, you need to think again, think differently.

As an example, we do not have a word for please in Finnish. Yes, there are ways of asking for things nicely and politely: "May I have..." or "Could I have..." But there is no single word that translates please.

Thank you, www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk!

The result is that it's hard for a Finn learning English to remember to say please. She thinks she's asking politely when she says "May I have a drink?" because that's how it works in her own language. And the native English speaker waits for the please and gets the impression that the Finnish person is a bit abrupt, impolite, clumsy. "Didn't her mother teach her manners, like we teach our little ones to say please?"

(After 35 years of learning English as a second language, I think I've learned to remember saying please. Now I'm the one getting antsy if someone forgets to use it. I'll do my best to teach it to my son as he is learning English...)

Another example. We Finns don't say he and she. We have only one third person singular pronoun that goes for both genders: hän. So, if you have a Finnish text that speaks about the protagonist only as "hän" and nothing indicates the sex of this person, it's awfully difficult to translate it into English. If you start translating with he and after a while it turns out the text is talking about a woman, you have to go through everything again and fix all the pronouns. (And what if the text is purposefully written to be gender-neutral? How do you do it in English??)

Incidentally, this is also one more thing a Finnish learner of English finds hard. Because you suddenly need to start thinking differently. You have only one pronoun in your existing system, but now you need to remember to use a different word depending on the person you are talking about.

But I'm a translator because I enjoy the challenges of navigating the no man's land between languages and learning its pitfalls. I can never be entirely sure that I know all the cultural contexts, connotations and implications of my words, especially in my acquired languages. But it's OK as long as I'm aware of this and tread carefully, minding the gap. There is always more to learn, and sometimes we learn the hard way.

And sometimes you can get a good laugh from the gap. Like when I read Oliver Lutz Radke's books: Chinglish: Found in Translation and Chinglish 2: Speaking In Tongues.

Chinglish, as Radke defines it, is English words and Chinese grammar, reflecting a Chinese way of thinking.

Sometimes, it's poetry found in translation, like the sign which is apparently in a protected natural area:

"A rock longs for permanence

And a plant yearns love care"

Sometimes, the translation ends up with entirely garbled meaning, such as "Slip carefully."

But Radke is not collecting these in order to mock the Chinese translators' mistakes. It's because he's fascinated with what happens when there is a gap between two languages and cultures, and you can sort of see the Chinese thought behind the English words. Translations such as "Slip carefully" happen because Chinese grammar is different; the Chinese characters convey the message "be careful so you don't slip", but they do not need so many words to express it and the word order may also be different.

But sometimes awful (and funny) things happen because computer translation systems, such as Google Translate, cannot bridge the gap. When there are several possible meanings for a word, depending on the context, and the computer suggests the wrong alternative for this context, and there is no one to correct it before it's in print.

Not to mention the results of simple typing errors. You can guess what happens to a restaurant menu when someone accidentally spells 'crab' with a 'p'.

It's also an unfortunate fact that some words are similar, yet far apart in meaning. Like inconvenience and incontinence.

If language humour like this is your cup of tea, there is a lot more in www.chinglish.de and www.engrish.com.

(For the latter link, at least, I guess I should warn that there is a lot of unfortunate 'language' and innuendo. Like the example with crabs above. And worse. Much worse. Let's just say that by reading engrish.com I have also increased my knowledge of American slang expressions. And I also wonder: where did someone get the text for this?

And what made someone think that stationery like this is a good idea?)

Mind the gap - and enjoy the trip between languages. You never know what you'll find there.

Summer Plans

Soon, our homeschool year will be over and it's time for summer holidays. 

As homeshoolers, we don't need to schedule our schoolwork according to the Finnish schoolyear. Yet, we do, at least approximately. We start our school year by mid-August and take a small break - like a long weekend - during the autumn term. The autumn term ends in December, with a longer break (about 3 weeks or so) around Christmas and New Year. The spring term starts at the beginning of January, and then we take a week-long break at some point along the way and another break around Easter. We aim to finish the academic year by the end of May.

This leaves us a long summer break: two and a half months. I remember this as the glorious, sunny, wonderful season of freedom from my childhood. It makes sense I want to offer something similar to my son...

What's the plan for the break?

It's not like we're going to be lazy all the time. We'll do more sports and outdoor activities, weather permitting. We'll go swimming, once the water in the lakes warms up a little. We plan field trips, studying nature in a way that's just not possible during other seasons. We might do some arts and crafts, too: the sort of projects that we don't have the energy to plan and do during the academic year. When my husband is off from work, we'll have the family holiday with a bit of travel.

And, bookworms as we are, there will be lots of reading for fun. Having completed a second round of the Famous Five series, Junior Bookworm decided to read all the other adventure series by Enid Blyton that have been translated into Finnish. At the current rate, this should keep him busy at least until mid-July - probably not through the entire summer...

And my reading list, in addition to tourist guides etc. to plan and prepare for the family trip, includes at least some fiction and a great deal of non-fiction....

On the fiction side, I'm looking forward to Up Close and Personal by Jeff Lucas (Helen Sloane's Diary continued). I've also put The Rosie Project by Grame Simsion on library hold, and hopefully will get to read it at some point during the summer. If I find myself wanting more fiction, I might get the next part of Anna Elliot's Georgiana Darcy's Diary series.

As for non-fiction, Shauna Niequist's Cold Tangerines is already in my Kindle Library, and I have been saving it for the summer. I'll probably get Bread and Wine after reading that, if my book budget allows it. Patrick Henry Hughes's I Am Potential has been on my TBR pile for a long time, and it looks like a good book to take along for the family trip.

Then there's the TBRR i.e. To Be Re-Read stack.

Linda Dillow: What's It Like to be Married to Me?

It's been a while since I read this, and I feel I need to refresh my memory. Perhaps I'll grab Tim Kimmel's Grace-Based Parenting for a re-read, too. I've found these books very helpful for remembering what's essential about our family relationships.

David Keirsey: Please Understand Me II.

I thought it only fair to give this MBTI book another chance. Reading it in the hospital when my ankle had just broken, I kept falling asleep in the middle of a page. (All that pain, and pain medication.) I don't even remember the temperament result I got when I did the questions, except that I was as strong an Introvert as could be... I'm on the library hold queue for this one.

Richard Lederer: Anguished English and More Anguished English

Laughter therapy. Language humour is one of the things that makes me laugh the most.

I know I can make language mistakes with the best of them - malapropisms, misspellings, strange grammar, etc. I'm not laughing at the people who make the mistakes - I'm laughing at the effect these mistakes have. The contrast between the intended meaning and what the words are actually saying (or the different ways in which they can be understood). 

The only problem with these books is that my son wants to know what's so funny when I laugh with tears in my eyes. Some of these things just can't be explained in another language. 

An example, not from these books but from real life, is this photo I snapped in Taiwan, many years ago...

Does anyone want to guess what message the sign on the right is supposed to convey?

May Reading in Twitterature

Most of my reading in April and May has been in Finnish. No use to put those books into Twitterature posts, because they aren't likely to ever be translated into English.

But I do have three good books to recommend for you, and I'm happy to be able to link with Modern Mrs Darcy's Twitterature link-up of short book reviews.

Brené Brown: Daring Greatly

#foodforthought

And I already wrote lots of thoughts here.

Keri Wyatt Kent: Deeply Loved: 40 Ways in 40 Days to Experience the Heart of Jesus

If you are looking for a profound and practical devotional, this is it.

And if you want to read more about this book, please check out Tim Fall's review; that's where I found this book. Thanks, Tim!

Lisa-Jo Baker: Surprised by Motherhood

It's so good I really don't know what to say about it. I could not have given myself a better (early) Mother's Day present. 

As Lisa-Jo Baker herself wrote, it's not a how-to book but a me-too book. Her story is in many ways very different from mine, but lots of things just 'clicked' and resonated. 

Do read it for yourself.

Reading This Year, So Far So Good

One third of this year has gone by. Let's see what it looks like in numbers.

Books I have read or listened to as audio books: 46

(At least. Not sure if I've remembered to put all the books in my list.)

This includes 32 books in English, 11 in Finnish, 2 in Estonian ja 1 in Swedish.

English seems to be dominant, but right now I have mostly Finnish books either in progress on in the most immediate TBR pile (i.e. library books that need to be returned within the next couple of weeks).

Format:

- 32 'traditional books' (paperback/hardback)

- two audio books

- 12 e-books, which is a new thing for me. And I would not have read so many of them if our public library system didn't have e-books available, too.

Divided between my categories:

Christian non-fiction: 11

Other non-fiction: 27

Fiction: 8

Am I reaching my reading goals?

1) Two or more good Christian books per month: yes. Four months and 11 books: the average is more than two per month. And all of them have been pretty good, or even great.

2) Books to learn about specific topics.

I've covered a wide range in my non-fiction. I should hope I have learnt something from them, too. :)

3) Just for fun? Well, yes. Especially fun books were Helen Sloane's Diary by Jeff Lucas and Georgiana Darcy's Diary by Anna Elliot. And I listened to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, just for fun. (Thank you, Librivox.) 

4) New books for my son? Oh well. He got so keen on the Famous Five series, he now wants to re-read all of them. Fair enough. I'm hoping to find something new for the summer holidays, though. Something that'll take him a while but is portable enough for the travelling we hope to do. I don't want to end up repeating the Gran Canaria strategy too often. ("Here, play this game on my tablet so you don't run out of books, son.")

5) Read books we already own.

Oops. Did OK in the beginning of the year, but then lapsed, tempted by the library e-books plus some e-books I bought or downloaded for free. Not to mention the library holds that suddenly became available all at the same time....

6) Read the Bible every day.

I have read the Bible aloud to my son almost every day, it's a part of our routine, but as for reading on my own, yes, I admit I have missed some days. Not too many.