Tag: Travel

Book Group, Books, Reading Events

Book 149: The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith

Geoff W

I have to say I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. It was an easy read and even though it felt like nothing happened, and I remember the movie being very slow because of this, the book went by quickly. I’m still not sure I fully understand the purpose or premise of the story. I guess it’s somewhere between a murder mystery/thriller, told from the murders point of view, and a comedy of errors.

I have never read anything by Patricia Highsmith, but her writing was easy to follow and her descriptions were, I felt, better than her action sequences. I do know there are three additional novels in the Ripley series, but I don’t think I will go out of my way to read them. This first one was enough for me, but if Highsmith’s writing had had more of an impact and not left me just sort of blase at the end of the book I would definitely want to check them out. Surprisingly I had more of a desire to find out more about Ripley after the end of the film, which is distinctly different unless it’s blending in parts from another book. (Anyone know?!)

Click here to continue reading.

ARC, Books, Reading Events

Book 145: Israel/Palestine and the Queer International – Sarah Schulman

Geoff W

My third book for The Literary Others reading event, and the final ARC of this month was Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. I requested this book via NetGalley and the below response is my honest opinion and I did not receive any compensation. I requested the book as I’m well aware that my knowledge on what is going on and what has happened in the region is woefully lacking and I thought this would be a great perspective for an introduction and boy was I right.

Like most readers, at least on Goodreads it seems, I expected this to be heavier on academics, what with being a publication of Duke University Press (Go Heels! – sorry couldn’t help it 😀 It’s a gut reaction…), but I found it incredibly approachable, well-reasoned and well written. This work clearly shows that Schulman is first and foremost a writer, her eloquent language, pertinent anecdotes and a great mixture of academia and activism really opened this book to a wider audience than I expected it to be able to reach. Previously, I have read two of her novels, After Delores and People in Trouble, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed and am definitely interested in reading more of her more recent work, as well as her more biographical works.

Click here to continue reading.

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.)

Click here to continue reading.

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.

Click here to continue reading.

Updates

May 2012 Recap

Geoff W

Sometimes you just have to hate WordPress. I had an entire post written and apparently the autosave didn’t work so when Firefox crashed I lost it. UGH. This will be a ‘snippy’ post because I’m now grumpy that WordPress didn’t save my stuff and Firefox crashed.

Memorial Day weekend Tom and I drove up to Maine.  We stayed with his parents and just relaxed.  I didn’t read as much as I wanted to, but I did start (and have since finished) Mansfield Park.  the photo to the right is from our last night out by the lake (yes we were making smores), which was spent having a cookout and playing horseshoes (which I’m not great at but did score a few points). It was a lovely weekend and was a much-needed breather from the city.

Book Buying Ban
So I’m going on a book buying ban. I did really well the first part of the year, but in March and April I went a little crazy and ended up with 10-15 (maybe more) new books added to my TBR shelf.  So Friday night I decided to go through my shelf to find out how many books are on there and there are 75 book waiting to be read, and this doesn’t even include all of those on my Kindle!  Now that’s not a lot of books compared to some people’s lists I’ve seen, but that’s too many for me!  I don’t really have the space to have those books just lying around and I don’t think they should just sit there.  So no new books for me for a while at least (I’m taking it a month at a time).  Hopefully I can make a dent on the shelf – but not all this year.

Challenge Progress

  • Mount TBR Reading Challenge
    • May Progress: 2 books
    • Overall Progress – 16/25 (64%)
  • Back to the Classics Challenge
    • May Progress: 1 book
    • Overall Progress – 3/9 (33%)
  • Tea and Books Reading Challenge
    • May Progress: 0 books
    • Overall Progress – 6/8 (75%)
  • The Classics Club
    • May Progress: 3 books
    • Overall Progress – 6/85 (7%) 6/100 (6%)

That’s about it for the month of May.  I started to read The Bird of Night by Susan Hill this weekend after finishing Mansfield Park (which is technically June but eh).  I also used random.org (only the 2nd time I’ve used it) to pick my next challenge read and it selected Anna Karenina which is part of all three of my 2012 Challenges and The Classics Club.