Animals are Great Role Models

I'm sure it will not be of surprise to my readers (its my blog, I can pretend that I actually have a following) that I have found yet another book to add to my summer reading list. We forgot to buy a lottery ticket for last night's draw, so I continue to be confined to a summer list. The book is called The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide. It made me think of a very moving video clip that I watched during a presentation on "Psychic Prisons" in my Organizational Management class (yes, the one I'm still writing a paper on...or as my cousin so beautifully put it, "spending too much time taking those silly, yet addicting facebook quizzes instead of finishing the paper). It seems that the "thing" to do these days in the world of academic presentations is to embed engaging and inspiring Youtube clips into power point presentations. And they are effective. Done well, they are humorous, powerful and thought-provoking. However, many seem to recycle through the loop and you can recite the text as it appears to the music track --- remind anyone of "Geese"?
This weekend, the presenter used a clip I hadn't seen before, about the special relationship between two animals, to illustrate her point on cohabitation and celebrating our differences.
The second clip I'm embedding somewhat follows this theme, except it extends to the bonds of relationships that can occur between animals and humans. I found it in a "most viewed" or "what's hot in google?" RSS feed. It also has a book link, but it didn't make the summer cut.

Two Unlikely Friends!




This clip is the reunion of Christian the Lion with his human friends. Christian's parents were zoo lions and as a cub, Christian was sold to Harrod's department store where the two friends purchased him. They brought Christian to their apartment for about a year before the decision was made to return him to his home, and to freedom.

Third Robert Langdon Novel Coming Soon

It seems that Dan Brown may be close to completing the next Robert Langdon novel, The Solomon Key. My favourite remains Angels and Demons, even though The DaVinci Code received all the acclaim. Maybe that will change when the new movie comes out. I wasn't a big fan of the DaVinci Code movie, even though I generally like Ron Howard's films. They certainly create a buzz of controversy though.
Right now I'm struggling to finish The Historian, " plodding through the pages waiting to "get hooked." I usually give myself about 150 pages with a large novel, and I'm getting dangerously close. (I remember when a friend introduced me to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series about 10 years ago, she said give it about 150 pages and you won't put it down. So true, for the first four books. Beautiful series, should have stopped there.) I think I'm just not loving the world's latest literary darling, the vampire. I really tried to make it through the Twilight series, for the sake of my daughter who declared they were far superior to the Potter series (yeah, Rowling is a MASTER, not even in same league as Meyer).
I'm giving The Historian 32 more pages before I decide if I'm cutting loose.
One book that I do recommend that has absolutely nothing to do with vampires, but is a nice throw back to the old gothic style, is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It has a slow pace as well but is something different than what I've read before. Many interesting twists, some predictable, some not.