Tag: Museum

30x30

30 x 30: #22 – Visit the Somerville Museum

Geoff W

2014 11-09 Somerville MuseumWell what I thought would be the twentieth didn’t happen, but I’m officially down to 10 items left. I have plans for most of them, but time is slowly getting away from me!

I walk by the Somerville Museum pretty frequently and I’ve very rarely seen it open.

Even today when they had an event the sign still read closed and I was like uh… I’m gutted I missed the event earlier this year when they had artwork from local high school students as I feel like I would really have enjoyed the opportunity to explore the building a bit more than I had today. But with that being said it was a neat old building and I’m glad I went to the talk even if I did start to nod off.

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Culture Corner

Culture Corner – September 2014

Geoff W

2014 09-08 %22Australian%22 Meat PiesThis post is short on words but has LOTS of pictures. This is because I’m still behind catching up on blogging and this month starts the busiest season for me at work.

A few weeks ago I was staying at Tex’s place and we went for a long walk (you’ll hear more about my laziness in my Workout Wednesday soon) and explored what he called “The Monument.” I had no idea what it was, but it was actually really pretty. Probably counteracting the walk we also went to Ko, an Australian pastry shop. I’m not sure what was Australian about them, they tasted pretty British to me, but they were delicious!

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ARC, Books

Book 294: The Art Restorer (Enrique Alonso #2) – Julián Sánchez

Geoff W

I’m always happy when I discover an author new to me. As I said on Monday in my response to The Antiquarian, I stumbled across Sánchez’s work on NetGalley and requested a copy of this novel. I received a copy of The Art Restorer from the publisher and received no compensation for my honest opinion.

Whereas in the first novel of this series, The Antiquarian, Sánchez completely sold me on his writing and story telling, this novel fell a little short. The story was still fascinating and excellently written, how the story was told bordered a bit too much on the Hollywood/Dan Brown scale. However, I can’t decide if this is a part of Sánchez’s writing style for the story within this story, or if it is something that happened in his own processes.

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Culture Corner

Culture Corner – July 2014

Geoff W

2014 07-12 Hodges OverviewLast weekend I had an amazing weekend. I won’t go into details, it was sickeningly adorable, but suffice to say it was a great weekend. Thanks to my roommate I had two tickets to the ICA Boston that he got through work and gave to me and I finally found time to check it out again.

If you’re at all familiar with the blog, or with me, you’ll know I’m not usually impressed with the ICA. (You can read my rant about most museums here.) The building is architecturally fascinating, but the space usage leaves much to be desired. When you add in the super hipster and uppity staff (seriously, I get they love their jobs and more power to them, but you can love your job and interests without being obnoxious) and the over-staffing of the exhibits and the overpriced everything in their gift shop (really, who charges $2+ for postcards – no other museum I’ve ever been to). I even had a membership at one point, but after a couple of bad visits I cancelled it and I’m still glad I did, but this time I had a surprisingly pleasant visit.

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Updates

June Recap 2014

Geoff W

I can’t believe we’ve already been in 2014 for six months and June is gone. It was another busy month. I crossed four things off my 30 x 30 list: spend a week in NYC with Tara, visit the de Cordova sculpture Park and Museum, spend a day at the beach and take a day hike. There was a fifth I really wanted to do, but I just couldn’t quite get to it, oh well I’m mostly on track, but will need to pick up the pace if I want to finish everything by December 21st!

Books and Bookish
2014 06-03 Quarterly Book RiotIt was a VERY bookish month. I got my very first Book Riot Quarterly (right). I was impressed with what all I got, but was a bit overwhelmed with the books. I’m not so sure the four books was necessary, but I loved the smaller book related gifts like the literary playing cards (below) and the library card pencil pouch! Mostly I was peeved that one of the books we received was the start of a series. I’m all for series, but don’t send one book in a series regardless of if the author provides it, it smacks of “buy the rest of my books,” and just irks me. If it ends up being a great book I’ll gladly eat my words. Regardless, as everyone else has previously noted I got much more than what I paid for in the box.

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