* Three Books *

Hallowmere #2: By Venom's Sweet Sting by Tiffany Trent - Just like the first book in the hyped Hallowmere series, by the end it was very good, but in the meantime, this historical fiction/fantasy story seemed very long and quite a slow read. At just short of 300 pages, it should have been a fairly quick read for me. Again, I liked the ending, but maybe it was just a relief to reach the end after a rather, um, ongoing plodding plot. The point is that this series will have 10 books! I guess to be a saga or maybe epic it probably needs to just drag on. Usually I like wordiness, but I have found with the first two books that maybe something needs to be edited or condensed. I haven't figured out yet, what needs to happen.

You, Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty by Drs. Roizen and Oz. - This is a fun read, like their other books. I like the gray side-notes the most: "Yoga could very well be the ultimate de-stress technique. It lowers blood pressure and heart rate, decreases stress hormones, and increases relaxation hormones like serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins. You can get the benefits of yoga in a single pose or in a full-fledged class" (78). I think the authors put a lot of things about health into "lay language" that makes a lot of sense and makes the information in this book much more accessible to a lot of people.

Waking: A memoir of trauma and transcendence by Matthew Sanford - This memoir is written by a guy who got into yoga (yes, more yoga) years after he was paralyzed from the chest down in a horrendous car accident as a young teenager. Now he teaches it, too. However, the part of the book that was the best, the reason I picked up this book at the library, was the story of his twin sons. One of them (William), they discovered in utero, had hydrocephalus, so they were planning on how to deal with a child who would have problems, but as the pregnancy went on, this little baby passed on. However, his mother continued the pregnancy for his healthy twin. The scene near the end of the whole book was the one that struck me the most: "Later, William and Paul and Jennifer and I are physically in the same room for the only hours we ever will be. I am struck by the calm, the beauty and ease with which we are a family. Paul in Jennifer's arms, William in mine, we are happy as we drift off into the silence of sleep" (240).