Cameron Recommends: The Book Thief

I usually don't get very emotional. It is rare, very rare, that I get teary eyed. I shed a tear over this book. It was beautiful.
I am usually a fantasy reader. I read this because I trust the opinions of a few people when it comes to books. I'm glad I did. This book is historical fiction. The characters, while fictional, felt more real to me than some people I know. The descriptions of people, places and emotions are poetic and, given the narrator, prefect.
The story is told from the unique perspective of Death himself.  He has a very visual voice, describing things in interesting ways.  The story revolves around a young girl named Liesel during the height of World War 2.  The story is very compelling and a perfect balance between sweet and bitter experiences.  The story is mostly about the goodness of people, which is even brighter when held against the backdrop of evil that prevailed during this time in history.  When talking about the human race, Death describes it perfectly  ". . . the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."
I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

Cameron Recommends: Goodreads.com

Ever since I read Mistborn (see Cameron Recommends: Mistborn for my review of that), I have become an avid reader.  My Kindle e-reader helped a lot, increasing my books read per year from 10 to 25ish.  The other tool that I have used to help out my reading hobby is Goodreads.

Goodreads is a social site for people who love to read, and the designers made it great.  First of there are the bookshelves.  You can look up books you have read and rate them, this adds them to a shelf labeled "read".  You can then go to books and assign them to custom bookshelves that you create and you can write your own review of the book.  This makes it super easy to organize what you have read.  Then there is the "to-read" shelf, a true wonder.  With this shelf you can list and prioritize books that you'd like to read once you finish gobbling up your current book.  Have a friend mention a book at a party that sounds intriguing? Use the website, or the handy mobile app, to save it for later.  

Then there are the book look-ups.  Heard about a book that sounds interesting? Look it up on Goodreads.  It shows you the average rating the book gets, a short description of the book and then below that it lists the ratings and reviews of any of your friends that have read that book, followed by the most popular reviews of the book.  SO NICE!

Speaking of friends, that is the penultimate point I'd like to make. You can add friends on Goodreads (I use facebook to sign in to Goodreads and used it to see what other friends also use it).  You can look at your friends favorite books (which is simply a list of their highest rated ones) and their reviews.  Then you can compare books, to see how your tastes mesh with theirs.  It is super useful.  Have a book club? You can create or join groups on Goodreads and see what others are reading.

The last point I'd like to make in Goodreads' favor is the challange.  They have a challange on there to set goals for # of books read in a year.  With that you can look at how many total pages you have read in a year that you did this challange and what books you read.  It has some other cool plotting tools.  

So all in all, I love Goodreads.com.  I highly recommend it to the avid and casual reader.

Happy reading, 

Cameron

Wow it has been a while, probably the longest I've gone without writing in this thing.  Sorry about that to the whole 5 people that might read this.

So I have made a decision about this blog.  It will now be entirely a "Cameron Recommends" or "Cameron Doesn't Recommend" style blog, with maybe an occasional insert of news on my end.

Mostly these will be books, movies, television or products that I like or dislike.  I guess that is one way that people can get to know me better.  I have often thought what the purpose of a blog like this is, where I don't do any advertising.  I think I want to use this for just getting my thoughts out of my head, as a kind of winding down exercise.  So let me know what you think.  I'm going to make an effort to do this more.

Cameron Recommends 4 and other breaking news

So here is some news and events from the last week, along with another Cameron Recommends.

I spent over 20 hours on a poster presentation for the Intermountain Graduate Research Symposium.  I was really proud of the poster, it looked great.  One week before the conference I got an email that informed me that my poster abstract was among 8 finalists for outstanding abstract.  I was ecstatic, I thought to myself "Self, you have a really good poster, maybe you could win two prizes at this thing.  That would great on a CV."

But to my disappointment, I discovered that the abstract awards were the only ones they were giving out.  So that means that out of 80+ posters presented, the only awards available were for best abstract, and only three of those people would actually get the award.

So I spent 20+ hours on a poster that didn't even get judged.  The good news is that I won the best abstract award and got a new 2GB iPod Shuffle.  Bad news, I already have one.  Anybody interested?

So now for the Recommends section.  With it being Easter this week, Cameron recommends: Cadbury Eggs. Simply put they are the best Easter candy ever, period.  So good.  I love them.  That's it for me today guys, thanks for reading and leave a comment (especially if you want the shuffle).

Back again, I know, I know

I was doing well there for a moment, but it didn't last.  Oh well, Here I am again.  Trying to get back into journaling again, therefore, sharing most of it with you guys.  I have also decided to use http://www.goodreads.com/ For those who don't know, this is a website dedicated to the reading of books.  I have gotten back into reading, and it's great.  I really do love a good book.  Thanks to some friends I now have quite a large list of books that I have listed as to-read.  Anyways, I hope to see you all soon.  I will try harder this time to write in this.

More news:  So next week I will be presenting a poster on my current research.  It is already getting attention as I am a finalist for 'Best Poster Abstract'. I assume the award is cash, which I would love. (Who wouldn't right?)

I have recently (alright about a month and a half ago) acquired all of the cosmere novels by Brandon Sanderson in hardback.  They are all signed and five of them are first editions, including the entire Mistborn trilogy :) Here is a pic

My research was talked about in a recent BBC special.  The program is called 'Horizon' and the episode was entitled 'Playing God'.  It is pretty awesome.  If you want to watch the program in it's entirety you can search for it on Youtube.  If you'd prefer to see an edited, shortened version you can check out my Facebook page, I posted the video here.  The hands that they zoom in on are mine

Last but not least here is a funny pic I rediscovered earlier.

I found this a while ago but saw it again, it makes me chuckle. 

Cameron recommends: Demolition Derby

As you may have noticed I seem to have done a few very hick things as of late.  Well this is my latest one: The Preston Demolition Derby.

Surprisingly, I had a lot of fun there.  The derby was fun and it was interesting to me to see how people had decided to fix up their cars.  Some of them looked so bad going into it and then ended up doing really well whereas some of the more pristine looking cars (if you could even call them that), were out of the running first.  The real fun was that all six of us (Dave, Susan, Erin, Chelsea and I) would pick a car before they started and root for that car to win.  I picked a winner 3 times out of 5, including a high school student girl that made her derby car as a senior project.  

All of us at the Derby

The other great part about the derby was the people watching.  Oh man, some of these people must only come out at night.  Girls that wore more make up than a geisha, guys that had more hair on their face then on the top of their head, and more hick stereotypes than I even thought existed.  One guy sitting in fron of us had a big belt buckle, goatee, sideburns as wide as they were long, a feathered cowboy hat, and a toothpick in his mouth the whole time.  Another man had big overalls, a blue wife-beater, mullet, and gigantic beard.  He looked like santa's hick half-cousin that nobody mentions. All in all it was a good time.  I'd recommend going to one.  Oh and below is a sweet video of the heat with the high school student girl.  

Completing sets

So I have a problem: I like having things in sets.  Yeah, I know, it's bad.  I waited to get the Spider-man movies until they came in a set along with sets for Rocky, Star Wars and the Bourne movies.  It's truly bad when I spend money on things I already own.  For example:

The Chronicles of Narnia Collection to check it and other collections out go here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/leatherbound-classics?store=book&keyword=leatherbound+classics 

Yeah, I already own a paperback scholastic set of the Chronicles of Narnia books.  All the books are separate and have redone art for the covers.  They are nice, but this collection is awesome.  It is hardbound, embossed leather with gilded pages and a ribbon bookmark.  Oh man, it's so pretty.  So I got it.

Another problem with liking sets is if I start with one form, I have to finish it.  For example, the Inheritance series.  I used to own all the books, but my little brothers lost the first one.  Since I already owned the other two in hardback, I had to go to lengths to find the first one in hardback. I just couldn't bring myself to get the paperback version.  

And the last problem with sets is that they get me with the little box they come in.  Just the other day, I saw a box set of the Hunger Games trilogy.  Now, I already own all three books in hardback, but this box set had a cool little box they all sat in.  I wanted it, just for a second, until I realized that all I'd be getting was some cardboard with a piece of paper glued to it.