Tag: Reading

Books

Book 407: Lost In A Good Book (Thursday Next #2) – Jasper Fforde

Geoff W

This one, like The Eyre Affair, has been on my shelf for quite some time. I picked it up in July of last year, but I have no recollection of where, but that’s neither here, nor there. What really matters is that the series has DEFINITELY picked up and the only reason it took me a week to read it is because I flew 1,200+ miles (MA to NC to MA) and drove 900+ (All over NC).

I’m not sure if this will be my last read for 2015, but if it is I’m okay with that. I’m already planning to dive right into The Well of Lost Plots, but I’m not sure if I’ll want to go right into Something Rotten or if I should go ahead and read an advance copy of a book I have for January. I also really want to read a set of books I got for Christmas. I guess it’s a good thing I have too many choices right?

Continue reading “Book 407: Lost In A Good Book (Thursday Next #2) – Jasper Fforde” →

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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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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Random

WordPress Book Bloggers – Help Out!

Geoff W

Hey Everyone,

Are you a book blogger? Do you blog about other things but still read books?

I know a lot of you use different blogging platforms, but if you use WordPress I would appreciate your help.  Please add your voice to my “idea” in the WordPress Ideas forum: “Customizable Goodreads Widget.”

If you’ve ever tried to add a Goodreads widget to your wordpress.com site you know you can’t do it. They (rightfully so) don’t allow iframe or javascript, and they did finally build a widget, however it’s slap-dash and has no customization. I mean look to the right – I can’t be the only one who thinks it looks odd. The coding is similar to that provided by Goodreads so it wouldn’t take much editing for WordPress to make this possible.

I’m not sure if anything will come of it, but it’s worth a shot. So click here and add your thoughts, please!!!!

Thanks!
Geoff

Books

Book 329: A Jane Austen Education – William Deresiewicz

Geoff W

Warning: Goodreads rant – skip to second paragraph. I’m not sure what jumped up everyone’s butts on Goodreads (I shouldn’t really be surprised), but this book doesn’t deserve as much vitriol as it has received on the site. So many people trashed it without even finishing the book, many obviously had read the synopsis and yet were shocked at what they read.

The book definitely deserves a lot of the criticism, but it doesn’t deserve the pure vitriol that Goodreads reviewers thew at it. Sure, I wanted to smack Deresiewicz for being an insufferable grad student, but it’s very clear in the synopsis that the book was going to be full of naval gazing. He made a couple of questionable sexist and classist comments and he may have reduced a lot of Austen’s genius down to basics, but it would definitely work for people who are not familiar with Austen. Seriously, if you can’t find the good in a book, why bother finishing and trashing it? Just move on to the next book.

Click here to continue reading.