Tag: Travel

2012 Challenges, Books

Book 101: Two Serious Ladies – Jane Bowles

Geoff W

This is one of those rare novels that I just couldn’t like. A quote from the back synopsis states “This story of two stated women ‘going to pieces’ in their eccentric, disjointed ways has the hallucinatory power of an unavoidable dream.” What it doesn’t mention is that it’s more of an unavoidable bad dream than just a dream.

Overall, it seemed well written and it had plenty of humor, but I just couldn’t make myself like the characters or their situations. And I really wanted to like it when about half way through I found out that the author was good friends with Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams, both of whom I love and truly brought Southern Gothic to life. It also didn’t help I kept wondering when the drag queens would show up based on the front cover.

Thankfully it was a short novel (only 200 pages), but I do feel bad because my boss gave this to me way back in September to read. I’m glad I didn’t read the back cover or I probably would’ve avoided it even longer, or just not read it! However, it does count towards my 2012 Mount TBR Reading Challenge, bumping that challenge up to 8/25 so YAY for that!

Click here to continue reading.

Updates

March 2012 Update

Geoff W

Found at http://socialsistersblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/blog-update/It has been some time since I last did a monthly update and I guess that’s because I didn’t have much to share.  I’ve been reading books and working and that’s about all I’ve done over the past few months so there wasn’t much to say other than my reviews, so on to the various updates!

The Oddness of Moving Things
Last month was my most successful month ever! It’s not a lot compared to some of the sites out there, but I had over 1100 unique views in the month and I was excited.  I remember when I started and I was getting 75-100 views each month!  So THANK YOU, everyone who reads and comments and for all the other wonderful book blogs out there who inspire me to change things on here, read different books and interact with the awesome book blogging community!

Click here to continue reading.

Book Group, Books

Book 88: Lost Horizon – James Hilton

Geoff W

I read this book for our library book group, Books into Films. I just finished watching the film and as usual, the book was much better. I think you could say the film is ‘loosely’ – if even that – based on the book. There were so many additions that I was rather confused throughout.

The novel, however, was well written and interesting enough if you can get past the first somewhat rather dull ‘old boys club’ sitting around a table rehashing their youth bit. If you make it past this bit, you see experience the (after the publication of this novel) legendary Shangri-La.

As I read the novel I wondered where the legend of Shangri-La originated and according to Encyclopedia Britannica the meaning of it as a “remote, utopian land” derives from this novel. However, the novel isn’t really about Shangri-La, it’s about the search for greater truth, the search for what was lost. The four main characters are kidnapped and taken to Shangri-La, located in the valley of the Blue Moon, under mysterious circumstances, and each has their own ah-ha moment.

Click here to continue reading.

Updates

July 2011 Update

Geoff W

It has been seven days since my last post.

Since that last post I have attended a warehouse sale at Harvard Bookstore (mentioned in my last update) where I picked up six books, and picked up four additional books at the biggest Goodwill I’ve seen on our way home from Maine this past weekend!

In addition to this, I’ve read three additional books and started a fourth.  Books/Posts 19-21 will appear hopefully this week and 22 will appear early next week assuming I finish it sometime soon.  And they will be:

I don’t feel too guilty as I supported a local bookstore, a great nonprofit and picked up five books on my list (bolded below), and five I’ve either heard about or thought sounded fascinating, including a book by Paulo Coelho who I’m interested in reading more of since I read The Alchemist.  The books I picked up are:

And here is a picture.
 This is my Tom, my boyfriend.  He won’t be too happy about the picture, but I like the picture (and I asked first).  Not to mention I was trying to sneakily take the picture and failed miserably.

Most of the time when I say we, I mean Tom and I.  He’s not the biggest fan of reading, but he’s starting to realize how AWESOME books are. 😀  In the picture he’s finishing Mockingjay of the Hunger Games trilogy on my eReader (which he didn’t want to give back).

I know I drive him nuts by reading as much as I do (like not paying attention to him on long car rides or not noticing he’s at the airport to pick me up because it’s a critical moment in the novel :-D), but I’m slowly chipping away at his ‘non-reader’ status.  He will be happy to see that his orange obsession (the flip-flops) and Dexter (the leg and tail in the lower right) stayed in the picture.

And on that note – I’m signing off to start writing my backlogged posts.  I’ve almost surpassed last year’s posts and have plans to keep moving forward so that’s a definite plus.  If only I’d keep to my demand of not starting a new novel until I’ve posted the last…  Now to keep up the momentum…

Books

Book 45: The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

Geoff W

You can always tell the books I enjoyed more based on the length of the blog and my voice in the blog. I would probably skip posts of the books I don’t really like, but it would defeat the purpose of this blog, so instead you get somewhat whinny posts about a book that I don’t understand or just didn’t like, like The Prince.

Whereas when I read a book I truly enjoy you get a true feel for the book and why I’ve enjoyed reading it. Thankfully The Alchemist is of the latter category. Again this is a book I bought ages ago (recognize a pattern) that I never got around to reading. This book was so good I read it in an afternoon (it’s only 170 pages). What I enjoyed most about this novel was the spirituality without the religion. An interesting fact according to Wikipedia (with a legitimate siting) is that the book holds the record for the most translations into another language by a living author.

Click here to read the rest of the review and for a few moving quotes.