2014 Challenges, Books

Book 298: L’America – Martha McPhee

Honestly, I’m sad I didn’t like this as much as I thought I would. Seriously, I’ve given it the lowest rating of the year so far. I bought it in one of my bulk buys at the 2011 Boston Book festival and haven’t thought of it since. It came up on my list when I used random.org to select my next book.

Even though I finished it, I just could not invest in this book, and that’s never a good sign. It started off slow, and thankfully did pick up a good bit, but still finished slow. Seriously go read the paragraph long sentence that was the final sentence of the novel. Not fun.

I think where I struggled to enjoy the book and where the author struggled to write the book was in converting an excellent idea into a manageable and digestible amount. Thankfully, the book wasn’t longer, but it really struggled through the first half. Beth felt like a whiny idiot (she was a teenager) and Cesare just felt frigid and unapproachable. This definitely changed toward the end, but it didn’t change fast enough or thoroughly enough to make me want to bump up my rating.

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ARC, Books

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

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 – June 2014

2014 06-15 Finding Viviane MaierAlthough I skipped last month, this month’s culture explorations definitely make up for it. From my NYC trip which I wrote about last week and you’ll see a lot of pictures of below to my deCordova trip earlier this week and more I have planned over the next few days/weeks.

I’m not going to write much about the photo sets other than where they’re from and first impressions of the museums/experiences. I probably should’ve written this last week when it was all still fresh, but oh well. This first picture is of the postcard and ticket stub from the documentary Finding Vivian Maier. I’ve wanted to see this film for AGES and was very glad that the IFC was still showing it. It was worth every penny and made me even more excited about her as an artist. If you don’t know her story or her photographs I definitely recommend reading more about her above or at the Wikipedia page.

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Workout Wednesday

Workout Wednesday – June 2014

NYC WalkingThis is just a quick post, mostly because I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing about NYC. Don’t worry, there’s only one post left after this which will be all art all the time!

I’m finally getting back into the swing of CrossFit and have been to at least one session every week for the past three weeks. My trip to NYC affected this, but I will go on Friday! Thankfully I walked a lot, as in upwards of 30,000 steps a day, while in NYC, photo to the right from my FitBit, but I need to get back into CrossFit and start seriously training with running again.

I think I’m to the point where I can run and CrossFit at the same time, but the last time I tried it I was so tired that week I just felt horrid. The major hurdle coming up is that it’s getting hot enough in the afternoons that I will be forced to run early in the morning (more 5AM days) or later in the evening. Ugh. But I won’t slide backwards!

30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #26 – Spend a weekend in NYC w/ Tara

2014 06-13 Oh Hey Chrysler BuildingAfter a long and exhausting, but fantastically wonderful weekend in New York City with Tara I am now done with 20% of my list! I did so much that this is only going to be a basic overview of what we did with a few amazing pictures and then when I do my Culture Corner post for this month you’ll get the rest of it!

Tara and I have known each other since second year of undergrad, where she knew me as chlorine boy (I came directly from swim instructor training) and I knew her as one of the other two sophomores in an upper level random history class! She’s been in New York for almost four years and I haven’t been down to see her yet even though she’s been up to Boston twice to see me. So when I started making my 30 x 30 list I knew NYC and a Tara visit would be included, especially as she is moving to Portland, OR at the end of the summer.

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