4/8/09

4. A is for Atticus: Baby Names from Great Books by Lorilee Craker.
I bought this to read on my kindle too. The kindle is so far winning out over the several hardback and paperback books I have started but not finished yet. I love reading about baby names. Most baby names books are just lists or dictionaries, though, so this book was much more readable. I like literary names but I also like star trek names, so I may have to check for a "popular culture" or specifically "movie and tv" version to read. I was surprised Arwen, my favorite girl name, wasn't in there since she's a character in Lord of the Rings. The author included Frodo, for crying out loud. I also noticed a couple of errors - the author mentions ruby red slippers in connection with L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, but it was the movie that had those. They were silver in the book. Also, she states that "Mirian fetched baby brother Moses out of the river in his basket" which isn't what happened in "The Prince of Egypt". I'm not a bible scholar so maybe it reads differently. It's a little nitpicky, I know, but it did make me wonder if all the other stuff in the book was right. I think I would double-check the literary reference if I wasn't familiar with it (If I was relying on the book to choose a baby name).
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This was on a free kindle books download site so I got it and read it on my kindle. It's a short story, so normally I wouldn't count it unless I read a book that it was published in, but since it was by itself in this format I guess it will have to count. Anyway, I thought it was pretty depressing. I haven't seen the movie, I imagine they probably made more of a romantic story out of it, but the actual story was not very romantic at all. It was interesting enough to read quickly though.