Book Group, Books

Book 209: Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

I flew through this book and will need to read it again to savor more of the story. When I say I flew, I mean I read it in just over an hour. I read every bit of it and even glorified in the illustration a few times, but I’m moving on to Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return.

I’ve wanted to see the film adaptation for a long time, but I never got around to seeing it. I’ve seen previews for it on many of the other films I’ve watched but I never took the initiative to seek out the film. So when our books into movies book group started to discuss a graphic novel I put this one out there and we selected it! I’m very glad I did and I’m still super excited about seeing the film. I believe the film encompasses both volumes of the story, but I won’t know until I watch it. I’m reading both volumes as if you remember I picked them up for helping out at the local library book sale.

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Workout Wednesday

Workout Wednesday – July 2013

This is a VERY short update mostly pictures. Life’s getting complicated and well I don’t want to talk about it so you get pretty pictures and not a lot to read. I’ve described what the photos are in each photo. I’m not entering my fifth month of CrossFit and I’m still enjoying it and the challenges that it brings. Over the last week and a half I’ve almost walked a marathon distance (as in I went out specifically to walk, so not counting just walking to and from places). I’m going to try to stick with that sort of walking every week to support what I’m doing at CrossFit. In addition I finally splurged and bought the Map My Fitness App (it was on sale for $0.99) so hopefully that’ll keep me going. I’m not sure there was much benefit to it as they still have an ‘MVP feature’ you have to pay for a subscription for and I’m not doing that.

On top of the exercising I’ve been relatively good about eating healthier and have stuck with salads for at least one meal a day four days a week! Which if you know me know that’s something shocking. I still don’t think they’re the best things ever, but I’m getting used to them and I’ve spaced out my other food throughout the day so I’m not hungry all the time anymore.

Hopefully I’ll start to see different types of improvement with all this green stuff I’m eating 🙂 (Although, honestly, it’s not about the weight or inches lost. For me it’s about getting healthier and reaching my own personal goals.)

2013 Challenges, Books

Book 208: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I didn’t want this book to end and that’s really all I want to write for this review, but I’ll harp on for a good while I’m sure. I’m sad that it’s over but happy that I read it. The ending made me both smile for the cuteness of it, but also made me sad it was finished! I wanted to know so much more about the characters and the stories and everything! There was just so much left unanswered, but not really because we’re left on the precipice of the amazing post-World War future. I bought a copy of this back in April of 2012, so it counts as a bonus book for my Mount TBR challenge.

Two things stood out for me in this book and those are the multitude of unique voices for the numerous characters and their point of views and the fact this was a World War II novel without the war taking the role of protagonist or overshadowing everything else.

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Books

Book 207: Ten White Geese – Gerbrand Bakker

This was an astoundingly beautiful novel and the more I think on and reflect about it, the more I probably should bump it up to five stars on Goodreads rather than just four, but as I think those are mostly arbitrary I doubt I will do it. The ending, although, beautiful, was just a bit lackluster to me. This some how marred the overall beauty of the novel, even though the only thing it really did wrong was not give me the satisfying ending that I wanted.

For once, I’m going to say something great about a Goodreads review. Shocking, I know. When I went to mark this book off my list and to see how others rated it after I gave my rating, I happened to check out the first few reviews and the first review nailed my thoughts on this book with his first sentence:

The Detour (or Ten White Geese as it is published in the US) is an extremely difficult book to review; instead, it is one that the reader must experience directly, yielding to its ebbs and flows, its offerings and its closures.”

The rest of his short review on Goodreads was also fantastic, but it’s since been deleted (2024 update).

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2013 Challenges

2013 Challenges – Halfway Checkpoint

So rather than doing three individual halfway checkpoints for my 2013 Reading Challenges I thought I would tie them all together and then do the same thing for the remaining quarterly check in. Overall, I’m pleased with my progress. I’ve read 8 of a total of 14 books (57%) and have read an additional 10 books not listed. I’m definitely struggling with challenges this year, as I knew I would when I signed up, even with such a small number. As of now I have no intentions of abandoning any challenges, but we’ll see how the next few months go. Click here to continue reading.