Tag: New York

2013 Challenges, Books, The Classics Club

Book 197: Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories – Truman Capote

Geoff W

Yay for another book that counts for multiple challenges (Mount TBR, Back to the Classics and The Classics Club)! (It’s a doozy, sorry for the length!)

Ever since I read In Cold Blood and Other Voices, Other Rooms, I’ve wanted to read more Capote, but I haven’t. Throw in the fact that Breakfast at Tiffany’s has such an iconic place in popular culture, I had to read it at some point. Now I just need to see the film.

I didn’t realize this when I bought this copy, but it contained the novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and three short stories: House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, and A Christmas Memory. So for my response I’ve just written a paragraph about each under a subtitle and you can see the opening/closing lines of each at the end of the post and my recommendation is for this collection as a whole.

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2013 Challenges, Books

Book 195: Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World – Sharon Waxma

Geoff W

Sorry for the long post in advance, it’s been a long time since I’ve read a book about museums and antiquities and I forgot how much I love them and how much they make me think!

This book has been on my to-be-read shelf since July of 2011 and I can’t believe I waited this long to read it! I will never forget my first Anthropology class in undergrad and the professor going off on a tangent about the looting of the museums after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It pretty much guaranteed I would be an Anthropology major. (I later switched to cultural anthropology and focused on gender in the media, but still the people were awesome!) The intrigue, the drama, the affairs and the crimes, it could be a spy novel if it were fiction and not fact! This book will count as a bonus book for my 2013 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

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Book Group, Books

Book 191: Cujo – Stephen King

Geoff W

One of my friends put it best, ‘So apparently Cujo is just a bad lifetime movie with a rabid dog’ and although he was referring to the movie, it pretty much sums up the book as well. I just was not impressed and couldn’t get into the novel. The major plus side was that it felt like a short novel.

If you haven’t figured it out yet I didn’t enjoy this book. I am glad I can now say I’ve read a Stephen King novel but overall it was lack-luster and disappointing. I didn’t choose to read this novel on my own, it was the selection for our April Books into Movies library book group. So my disparaging review is totally legit. I did have major issues with the formatting of this book. I read this book through Overdrive from my local library and somewhere during the conversion process a lot of mistakes were processed. It was really distracting and felt more like a galley than an actual published book.

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Books

Book 185: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan

Geoff W

Yes! Yes! Yes! If I were ever going to work in/own a bookstore I would want it to be like this!

This is like The Da Vinci Code or some other better written mystery/thriller for book readers and bibliophiles! I definitely need to purchase a copy to add to my permanent shelf. I’m not sure where I came across this book or why I decided to read it, but I’m glad I did and I’m glad I requested it from the library.

There’s so much to talk about I don’t really know where to begin. I want to talk about the secret society, the awesome pop culture and technology references, the hilariously quirky minor characters, the ending, and the bookstore itself among other things. Not to mention that it was a fast and entertaining read. I loved Clay, the protagonist, and all of his friends and people he interacted with made the story that much richer. Throw in the art and culture, museums and games (D&D spin off) and fantasy novels and classics and it’s like a nerd-gasm.

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Books

Book 165: Austenland – Shannon Hale

Geoff W

What better way to close out the year than with some much-needed light frivolous reading? Add in that it’s Jane Austen related and I’m in 😀 The last book of the year after this will be Hale’s Midnight in Austenland.

Every time I read one of these I get all giggly and giddy and then immediately think WTF is wrong with me; and really I just need to let go and enjoy the senselessness of it and enjoy them for what they are (which I clearly do – thus the giggly/giddiness).

I don’t want to discredit or over-credit this book. I thought the story was incredibly entertaining, and definitely humorous, but the writing felt somewhat juvenile. I’m still not 100% sure whether this novel is geared towards young adults or just the general public. I saw on Goodreads, and maybe Wikipedia too, that many people had labeled it Young Adult, but I’m still not sure. Writing says young adult, storyline says no.

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