Tag: Photos

Updates

October 2012 Recap – Part 1

Geoff W

I apologize in advance, this is a doozy! So much happened in October.  I planned on it being one really long post, but after my weekend book purchases, I finally decided to break it into two posts, but there are LOTS of pictures! The five parts of the two posts are: personal update, quick Boston Book Festival recap, Literary Others recap, new books purchased (entirely way too many), and last but not least my regular monthly challenge recap.The first three are in this post and the last two are in the post tomorrow.

But first check out this awesome tweet:

Yes – that is ‘the’ Michael Scott, author of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series. Someone tweeted my review to him and he apparently read it and tweeted me. You have to LOVE social media, sometimes. I’m still grinning about this.

Personal Update
As said above, it’s been a hell of a month. First with the happy news, I’m midway through my third week at my new job and I love it. Not only is it in a beautiful part of Boston/Brookline (left), but I’ve been given a lot of freedom and independence to build a student giving and young alumni program and to offer input for other things as well. I’m excited about the next few months and am really looking forward to the future!

I’ve also spent some time volunteering and supporting my local library! We went to a benefit at a local restaurant and I won a $50 LLBean gift card! (Bought a new belt and someone a present with it.) I also volunteered to help set up the book sale (schlepping lots and lots of boxes full of books) and I helped break it down as well. It was great because I got to peruse a lot of the books and I had my eye on a few, but showed some restraint 😀

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Updates

September 2012 Recap

Geoff W

Where to begin?!? Let’s start with the big news! If all of a sudden I go missing in October, don’t worry – I will be starting a NEW JOB on the 15th! I’m sad about leaving my current workplace, but excited and ready for my next adventure. I will be joining an amazing fundraising team at an amazing school and am really looking forward to it! (A lot of my posts throughout October will be scheduled at least a week, if not more, in advance so I can focus on work.)

The same week I found out for certain I got my new job, I also won a book from Robert over at 101books.net and it arrived this past week. Check it out to the right. I got to select it and I’m REALLY excited about reading it and hopefully it won’t be on my TBR shelf for too long. In addition you should check out Robert’s hilarious post on How to carry an embarrassing book in public. It was one of the first posts I read over on his site and I truly enjoyed it!

In addition to the above book, I picked up a copy of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger from the remainders tables at Harvard Book Store. It was only $3.99 (or so) and it’s on my list as it won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. But more interesting the printing at the bottom of my Harvard Book Store receipt. Now, I fully understand and support why it is there, but it made me feel guilty and I don’t like that.

It says “How much money stays in your community when you spend $100?” It then breaks it down based on a locally owned store, a chain store and Amazon. I get why they do this, drawing an emphasis to the fact that they are a locally owned independent store, but it still got to me. I think they forgot that they just happen to have one of the most successful brands of all time behind their store name (Harvard University) even though they’re not affiliated with the University, and I think they also forgot about the overwhelming number of young people and students in the Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area. I know I can rarely afford to buy a newly released book at cost from a local bookstore or even a chain bookstore. But I DO, however, go out of my way to make sure I get all of my used books from smaller independent stores and when I order from Amazon (again, used more often than not), I try to order from sellers within Massachusetts and New England to support the local economy. It’s not a lot, but it’s the bit I can do until I CAN afford to only shop at little local stores.

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Updates

Lunchbreak Interlude IX

Geoff W

This past weekend my sister and I flew down to North Carolina to surprise our mom for her birthday. And it was hilarious – my mom saw me screamed and then cried, and then realized my sister was there too, screamed and cried again. It was a good surprise and a good trip down. It was an incredibly fast trip, but it was relaxing to get out of the city for a day and see family, even if the travel was a bit stressful.

One of the advantages of going home, aside from seeing family, was that I got to raid my book boxes I have stored at my mom’s house. Unfortunately, I could not find my copy of Wuthering Heights, but that’s okay because I bought a beautiful compilation version of it, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey a few months ago. However, I did find a stack of books to bring back and was sorely tempted to bring my entire box of Harry Potter books back! (But I restrained myself to 11—and one awesome pamphlet.)

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Updates

June 2012 Recap

Geoff W

I don’t have any pictures to start this recap, but there are plenty below (at the end).  June was a slow month on the reading front, but it was incredibly rewarding.  I started (and finished) Anna Karenina and thoroughly enjoyed it (even if it took 21 days to finish).  In addition I completed my re-read of Mansfield Park and read The Bird of Night, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Phantom of Pemberley.

Challenge Progress
I made major headway on my challenges as multiple books counted for multiple challenges.  Overall for the year I am 20/31 (65%) on challenges and this past month put me over the 50% level on EVERY 2012 challenge!

  • Mount TBR Reading Challenge
    • May Progress: 2 books
    • Overall Progress – 18/25 (72%)
  • Back to the Classics Challenge
    • May Progress: 2 book
    • Overall Progress – 5/9 (56%)
  • Tea and Books Reading Challenge
    • May Progress: 1 books
    • Overall Progress – 7/8 (89%)
  • The Classics Club
    • May Progress: 3 books
    • Overall Progress – 9/100 (9%)

Random Awesomeness
It was  an interesting month for finding random stuff about books online. I’ve pulled out the three I found to be most exciting/interesting and they are below.

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Updates

Lunch Break Interlude IV

Geoff W

Lucky you, fellow bloggers, two Lunch Break Interlude posts within a two-week span!  The writing bug has clearly infested my brain, as by the time this posts I will have pre-scheduled three weeks of consecutive posts, dating all the way back to my first piece about Anne Brontë!

Mother’s Day weekend I went over to Harvard to get my haircut and once again couldn’t escape the lure of Harvard Bookstore. I stopped in afterward and got these two lovely books! Annabel by Kathleen Winter is on my long to-be-read list from when I saw it in Harvard Book Store over a year ago and The Ghost Road by Pat Barker is a Man-Booker Prize winning novel and I’m slowly working my way through all those winners as well. The only downside was that The Ghost Road is the third book in a trilogy and the other two books in the trilogy, even though they were used, were more expensive so I didn’t grab them, but that means I’ll be supporting my local library!

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