3 posts tagged “review”
Thought I'd pass this along...
HomeschoolRecess.com is having a book/website review contest-- the winner gets a $25 amazon gift card.
For more information, go here.
Good luck!
I can't remember how I stumbled across this title, but a few months ago I read some rave reviews, and put Heart in the Right Place by Carolyn Jourdan on my Amazon wishlist. My brother was nice enough to give it to me for my birthday (along with a few other things-- he's a generous guy!)
This is the most heartwarming book I've read in a long time. It's the memoir of a woman who gets called home to rural Tennessee from her high-powered Capitol Hill job when her mom has a heart attack. Her father is the only doctor for miles, and her mom is receptionist/office manager/cleaner-of-bodily-fluid-spills. Because so many of their patients can't afford to pay, the clinic is run on a shoestring, and there's no money to hire a replacement for her mother. At first thinking it will only be for a few days, the author takes a leave of absence from her "real" job, and pulls up a stool in her Dad's storefront medical practice.
The book is filled with stories about the sometimes quirky patients they see, and what it's like to witness people's most poignant moments (and then have to decide what to bill them for, say, telling them they're dying). It could have been a book where the sophisticated author mocks the rednecks around her, but while she does tell some funny stories, her affection and respect for her neighbors always comes through. But it is mainly about the author coming to terms with having traded a glamorous job as an expert for the Senate for something much less prestigious, and spending her days get phone calls from drug-seeking addicts while being hacked on by a waiting room full of people who seem to be unaware of the concept of germs. And figuring out which job is actually more important.
I never had a job as impressive as the author's former position, but I have been struggling a bit lately with my choice to be a SAHM, and this book is encouraging, since it supports the idea that a life isn't necessarily best measured by how far you've risen.
This is the most heartwarming book I've read in a long time. It's the memoir of a woman who gets called home to rural Tennessee from her high-powered Capitol Hill job when her mom has a heart attack. Her father is the only doctor for miles, and her mom is receptionist/office manager/cleaner-of-bodily-fluid-spills. Because so many of their patients can't afford to pay, the clinic is run on a shoestring, and there's no money to hire a replacement for her mother. At first thinking it will only be for a few days, the author takes a leave of absence from her "real" job, and pulls up a stool in her Dad's storefront medical practice.
The book is filled with stories about the sometimes quirky patients they see, and what it's like to witness people's most poignant moments (and then have to decide what to bill them for, say, telling them they're dying). It could have been a book where the sophisticated author mocks the rednecks around her, but while she does tell some funny stories, her affection and respect for her neighbors always comes through. But it is mainly about the author coming to terms with having traded a glamorous job as an expert for the Senate for something much less prestigious, and spending her days get phone calls from drug-seeking addicts while being hacked on by a waiting room full of people who seem to be unaware of the concept of germs. And figuring out which job is actually more important.
I never had a job as impressive as the author's former position, but I have been struggling a bit lately with my choice to be a SAHM, and this book is encouraging, since it supports the idea that a life isn't necessarily best measured by how far you've risen.
Since I was a vox beta tester, I'm confident that VoxGroups are going to be pretty different 6 months from now-- I'm sure there will be more design options and more privacy options too. However, that will be then and this is now. Here's my review of voxgroups as they stand today.
- What are Voxgroups trying to be? Based on the name, you might think Voxgroups are analogous to yahoo groups or google's groups, but that isn't the case. You can't subscribe to a voxgroup and have all the messages appear in your inbox, and it doesn't have calendar functions, so it wouldn't be a good replacement for most of the yahoo groups I have joined. Vox groups would be a better substitute for MSN groups, which are essentially message boards. I wish I could get a longer list of recent posts on the group homepage, or select a specific group on my VoxWatch page. Without that feature, it would be hard to stay on top of an active voxgroup unless you're online all the time. A key difference between Voxgroups and most message boards is that any replies to a post have fewer editing options than the original post did. Voxgroups are probably most like group blogs. I've never been part of a group blog, so I have no idea if Vox has improved over blogger (beyond the many ways a Vox blog is better than blogger). I know that LJ has "communities" but I've never used LJ, so I'm not sure how vox groups compare (though I'm guessing they're fairly similar).
- How well do they work? As a group blog, I think they're just ok right now. The way that you post to a group is kind of kluge-y, but I'm pretty sure that's going to change soon. I'm more bothered by the layout of the group homepage. For some reason, the default is to show thumbnails of all recently added media at the top of the homepage, which, for my group, means we have tiny pictures taken out of context, not exactly the best headline. I would much prefer that the recent posts be highlighted, hopefully showing more than the last 5 posts. For my purposes, I would LOVE if you could write a post as a comment, so that the group could have threads that take advantage of the one of the things vox does best-- the easy addition of media to posts. It would also let us group posts, instead of having all the topics all mixed together.
My wishlist:
- Add more of the functionality of a vox blog to groups. Let me change the design of our homepage (not just the template, I want to reorganize the sidebars). Please give me the ability to set up collections and posts the whole group could edit.
- Make posting more intuitive. An option to blog a reply, which would include an excerpt of and link to the original post, would be wonderful-- even better if there was the option to create a collection of the original posts and it's replies, and if the blogged reply either appeared with the other comments (best), or was linked, with an excerpt in the comments.
- Let me include a message when I send invitations to the group.
- Give group hosts the option of easily sending PMs to group members.
- Let group posts in public groups be visible either to the public OR only to group members, whichever the author prefers. Actually, allow those privacy options for all group assets.
My Groups
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The Eclectic Book Club Updated: 3 hours ago
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Knitting Updated: Yesterday
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Recipe Exchange Updated: Yesterday
