Tag: Books

Books

Book 406: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1) – Jasper Fforde

Geoff W

I wanted to love this a lot more than I did, but that being said I did really enjoy it. I picked this one up back in May of last year at the bi-annual Friends of the Library book sale. I then almost immediately picked up Lost In A Good Book and even more recently (as in this past weekend), picked up the next three in the Thursday Next series: The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten and First Among Sequels! Friends have told me that the series get betters and I’m clearly hoping that happens as I’ve bought through the fifth book in the series.

I think where I struggled with getting into this one was the world building. The world of Thursday Next is a fascinating place full of mystery, technology and a love of literature I would jump into in a heartbeat, war and all.

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Books

Book 400: The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl

Geoff W

And another TBR bites the dust! This book has been hanging out on my bookshelves since December of 2012 when I picked it up at one of my favorite used bookstores, Edward McKay, back in NC. More importantly, it is the 26th book from my TBR shelves this year. How awesome is that? That’s more than 1/3 of all the books I’ve read this year and I am incredibly happy and proud of that number.

I don’t know why I put off reading The Dante Club for so long. Maybe it was in some sort of effort to actually read all of Dante’s Divine Comedy before I read it, but that obviously hasn’t happened. The other thing that has left me wondering since I finished it , and honestly since I started it, is I can’t quite put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I feel I should have.

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Updates

November Recap 2015

Geoff W

2015 11-15 Christmas BooksAnd just like that 11/12 of 2015 is gone. I am not ready for 2016 to be here and I am most definitely not ready for the holidays.

That being said I have almost completely finished shopping for presents, aka I’m broke again, but I’ll give you a guess of what at least four people on my list are getting this year 😉 I got my flights and rental car for my NC return the month before last, so now it’s just the dreaded waiting period before I actually head down for the festivities. I keep hoping things will get a little less busy, but I think I just have to adapt and move forward with all of my schemes and dreams or give them up which isn’t an option.

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Books

Book 399: People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks

Geoff W

I’m finally starting to make a “dent” in my to-be-read shelves! YAY! On the downside, due to work events and the seasonal time change affecting me more than usual this book took two weeks to read, which is sad because it was so beautifully written.

I’m going to start by saying take my review with a grain of salt because this is a book about books and writing and conservation so of course I loved it. It also coincided with our visit to the 39th Annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (a blog post about it on The New Antiquarian as the BIABF’s website appears to be down), which was great because we saw many religious texts which reminded me that I needed to finish reading this wonderful book! I’ll talk more about the fair later in a special Culture Corner post, hopefully, or at the very least in my November recap in early December.

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Updates

October Recap 2015

Geoff W

2015 10-31 Frida and the GhostFull steam ahead right? We’re entering the last two months of the year and those are never busy. That last sentence is dripping with sarcasm. Mostly I’m impressed I’m reading anything at all, let alone keeping up with blogging, podcasting and another project that’s in the works. (Not to mention work and friendships and stuff.)

Outside of work it was a busy month full of culture and reading. I’ll talk more about La Bohème and our trip to Wellfleet and Provincetown, MA in the culture corner section. To end the month we went to my friend Caitrin’s house party for Halloween where I dressed as an old fashioned ghost and Tim dressed as Frida Kahlo. Needless to say I’m ready for the cooler weather to stick and to curl up with a book and read, but I don’t know if I’ll have any time to do that this year.

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