100+ Reading Challenge 2010

In order to kind of jump-start my daunting task of reading the mass of books on my shelf that I own and have yet to complete, I have decided to join the 2010 100+ Reading Challenge from J Kaye's Book Blog. I only learned about reading challenges at all in October, so I was a little late to start on anything. The 100+ Challenge gives challengers a year to read pretty much any one hundred (or more) books, which is a pretty flexible enough set of standards for me to attempt. Feel free to go along with it by clicking the image or the hyperlinked text above.

Below I will list the books as I read them.  Hyperlinked titles go to my review of that book.  At the end of each item is the date I finished the book.

THE LIST

January

1. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (Jan 10)

2. The Ruthless Realtor Murders by David A. Kaufelt (Jan 23)

3. The Night Room by E.M. Goldman (Jan 26)
4. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (Jan 31)

February
5. The Bone Factory by Nate Kenyon (Feb 14)

March
(READING)
6. The Liberation of Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey
 (TO READ)

New America by Michael A. Smith

Walking Thru Hale by Angie PelphreyBeast by Peter Benchley

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston

A Time to Kill by John Grisham

Buzz Riff: A Novel of Crime by Sam Hill

The Absolutes by James Robison

1984 by George Orwell

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

A Surprise Christmas Gift

The first Christmas Rebecka and I had together as a married couple was only after a little over a month of being married and just over a year of dating. So, Christmas 2009 was a little more exciting than 2008 because we had all that time to get to know each other more, to be able to determine what to get each other as gifts. Both of us apparently very much enjoy surprises but are just as proficient at surprising other people. That made this Christmas all the more exciting.

Having simmered on the decision for quite some time now to some day learn to play the piano, Rebecka very sneakily got the ball rolling for me by prepurchasing a month's worth of lessons. She also bought me a Crosley record player with USB connection so I can start recording my growing collection of records to digital files.

I countered her surprises with a fish tank, something she has been debating on getting for the better part of this year and which she was not expecting at all. She was also hinting at needing an electric razor, although this hinting was a little more overt. Well...to the point of basically asking me to get her one. So, I did.

Above all, however, Rebecka ended up trumping all of the Christmas gift surprises with something the Tuesday before Christmas, December 22nd. I came home from work and did my usual after work routine while she was completing dinner preparations. As I came out in the hallway, she was holding up two sticks of the Clear Blue brand, both brazenly declaring "Pregnant" in crisp, blue, digital displays. She showed me two because she wanted to be absolutely positive. (She actually took another the next day, just to be extra-absolutely positive. This will be summarily followed up next week with a doctor's visit to provide blood-test proof of her extra-absolute positivity.)

Yes, reader(s): I am a father. Wow. That's the first time I really wrote it like that, and it is very strange to see, especially having come from my own fingers.

I do say "I am a father" here in the present-tense rather than the future tense because I have already fathered a new life. The entity currently growing within my wife's womb is a living organism, having been created through the fertilization of two haploid gametes--one from me and one from Rebecka. The embryo has a set of genes distinct from either of us, making a brand new person, though tiny and encased as he or she grows.

Ahead of us, Rebecka and I have the rather scary path of nurturing, training, and teaching our child to be an adult; to train him or her up in the way he or she should go. The person growing inside Rebecka right now is an evidence of the awesome workings of God's almighty power. He who has a hand so large that He can hold the entire universe is also small enough to deal with us in a personal, loving manner, even to the point of meticulously designing the little hands being formed in utero.

I pray that God will guide us to make the right decisions as we seek to depend more on Him while this child is in our care. We do not take this responsibility and privilege lightly. Please remember us as we strive to train our new child to become a person after God's heart.

1550 Books to Read

I am in the process of compiling a list of all the books on my bookshelf (loosely defined as anywhere my books are: on an actual shelf, in boxes, in the car, etc.). In the process I have come to the conclusion that I have not read or completely read most of them. Many of them are textbooks or reference books, so I have perused them in times past. A few of them (which I still want to include in my comprehensive list) are game books: crosswords, word searches, cryptograms, etc.

In the course of all this, I have discovered I actually own a few of those books deemed "Classics" by the people who deem such books in that manner. Further, I've discovered that I have not actually read most of those so-called Classics. In fact, when I think back on my required reading in school, we were never really instructed to read any of the Classics save condensed versions of books like Tom Sawyer or an entire part of a semester devoted to The Great Gatsby; as a result, much of my reading involved Young Adult or RL Stine books, until I grew into reading Michael Crichton books and the like.

So, I have decided to make it a firm goal to read as many of the most popular and highly recommended books as I can. I have compiled a list made from such Internet postings as this which encompasses a great deal of reading. There are roughly 1550 titles listed--a daunting mountain of reading material indeed.

My short-term goal is to increase my amount of reading. Since college, when I was inundated with required reading of textbooks and scholarly journals to prepare research reports, as well as spending a great deal of time rehearsing plays and learning lines, my reading frequency has reduced to just about nil, aside from whatever I read on the Web.

A great deal of my inspiration for my desire to read more is my sister. Sissy is the paragon of an avid reader, a quality that is mutliply aided by the fact that she works as a media assistant in an elementary school in the library. My niece Kayla (Sissy's daughter) has inherited that same quality (the reading enthusiasm, not the media assistant job--she's not of working age yet). Through conversations of what books they are reading and how much they enjoy it, coupled with Kayla's frequent re-reading of many of her books, I felt rather behind the mark. The over-achiever in me was finally revived.

My long-term goal is to have read all of these "must-read" books. I don't have a timeline for this just yet. However, my first step is to finish compiling my list of books I own. This is a three-fold purpose: 1) to see if I already own any of the books in my list; 2) to finally reorganize my books with a fully complete catalog (unrelated to my reading endeavor); and 3) to determine which of the books I own I have or have not actually read.

I have two middle-ground goals as well. Firstly, because I realize I have not read most of the books on my shelf, I want to start whittling away at them first. Most of them are not on my 1550 list, but it seems silly of me to start getting and reading new books when there are countless untouched ones in my possession. At the very least, I will find out which ones I don't like and can give them away.

My last goal is to be able to review the books I've read. This will encourage me to not just enjoy the books, but to read them analytically and objectively. In turn, I will engage myself in writing for a purpose once again, increasing my blog posts and hopefully leading to a point where I can write more freely. (Reading the books will help with that, also.)

So, with that, I'll get started on my task!

(Hopefully the reading increase will ameliorate my horribly short conclusions.)

On Anatid Gifts

Call me strange, but I'm of the persuasion that if someone were to give me a duck, I would take the duck.

On Choosing a Slogan for Your Product

Choosing a slogan for your product is so important it is often best to leave it to experts. However, paying an advertising firm to pitch your product with some creative and catchy bit of word play can be very expensive, particularly if it is your first product.

So, what can you do?

Firstly, investigate and research other jingles and slogans from products similar to yours in design or function. (Of course, it is best if your product is not too similar to already prominent products. Patent and copyright holders tend to frown on copycat products. Their lawyers, however, tend to grin behind their lawsuit.)

In your research you should notice a common theme occurring throughout the plethora of slogan types for your product. For example, if your product is something usable in the kitchen, the slogan will likely incorporate flash phrases like "slices and dices" or "low on fat, big on taste" or "less likely than the leading brand to sever the distal portions of your phalanges."

Comparably, if your product is a new kind of medicine, your research will turn up slogans like "works quickly," "makes your life happy," or something equally likely to be forgotten mere moments later (and for the following hour and a half) when the announcer tells you everything that could possibly go wrong after taking the medicine, conversely making the potential product purchaser confused whether the commercial is made by the product makers or by their competitors. The point is: don't market prescription drugs in commercials.

Next, should you continue to determine to come up with your own slogan, it is necessary to come up with something fun, catchy, and possibly humorous. Be careful, though, that your interesting slogan is not misleading. Take for example the possible rough draft of the slogan for a well-known poultry producer (who shall remain nameless unless some kind of product placement reimbursement is possible): "The Inedible, Credible Egg." Try to imagine the effectiveness of their ads with a slogan like that. Sure, it gives the consumer a product they can believe in; but will they buy an egg they can't eat? Unless, of course, the product is a type of egg-shaped digital dictionary made out of asbestos-coated lead dipped in bubonic plague.

Finally, when choosing a product slogan, it is vitally important that you let someone else read and react to it before presenting it to the general public. They can present a different perspective that can shape your slogan into something more effective and interesting. Furthermore, it can help eliminate poor planning and editing: something this informative piece would be if I took the time to look back at what I wrote and let someone read it before I posted it.

These pointers are just to help you get started in your slogan creation for your product. Assuming you have a product that someone needs or wants, a great slogan can make even those skeptical buyers look twice at your product. And, above all, avoid grinning lawyers.

On My Avoidance of Sports

I once heard a sports enthusiast say:

"There are two kinds of people that matter in this world: Athletes and Athletic Supporters."

I think that's one of the reasons I never really became a fan of any sports...along with my natural aversion to anything involving forceful physical contact whereby I might get hurt.

Update

Greetings.

I haven't gone completely away from the blogging, but my busy schedule has gotten even busier. So, I won't be able to update much for at least another week or so.

In the meantime, I bring the following improvisational group to your attention: The No Pants Players. This is West Virginia's Premier Improv Troupe. They are based in Charleston, WV, and perform monthly at South Charleston's LaBelle Theatre.


Rebecka and I went to see them Saturday night (18 July). They are simply hilarious!