Tag: Traveling

Updates

May 2012 Update

Geoff W

All sorts of exciting stuff happened this past month and so far this month.  Not really, but it’s a great way to start a blog post right?!  However, that’s an awesome photo to the left isn’t it? Last week, Tom and I took a day off in the middle of the week to see Anderson Cooper speak at Tom’s alma mater, Salem State University, but AC cancelled at the last-minute. And all I have to say to that is, DAMN YOU WORLD EVENTS!

However, when trying to decide what to do with our time I asked the best question any good bibliophile can ask, ‘Are there any good used book stores around?’ Well, after a quick search I found Derby Square Books and that’s where these AWESOME photos took place. Photo 1 (above is the view when you walk in the door) and Photo 2 is me so overwhelmed I didn’t even know where to start!

Once I had a few moments to take it all in Tom took the photo to the left.  I’m pointing at the Science Fiction/Fantasy sign even though I was looking mostly at classics.  IF you look closely you can already see I have one book in hand.  As an aside, Tom didn’t spend a lot of time reading before he met me, however, slowly but surely I’m turning him into a reader!  He is currently reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and just finished Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho and has quite a few others lined up for this summer.

Click here to continue reading.

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

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.

Quotes

Quotes from You Shall Know Our Velocity – Dave Eggers

Geoff W

“They were dressed magnificently, one in the yellow of a rose, one in a rich and ancient orange, the third in a late-evening blue–three queens sitting on folding tables…” – 50

“He wants to make sure God wants him to live. So he spends a lot of time asking. He brings himself close to the edge and he feels God’s breath on his back. If God wants to take him, all he needs to do is blow.” – 72

“They were busy devoting their attention to traveling, to watching the progress of the boat–instrumental in traveling is the witnessing of passage. And I was traveling, too, I was serious about it.” – 160

“I grew up obsessed with dragons, knew everything, knew that scientists or people posing as scientists had calculated how dragons might have flown, that to fly and breathe fire they’d have to be full of hydrogen, at levels so dangerous and in such tremulous balance that– I wondered quickly if I’d give my life so that a dragon could live. If someone offered me that deal, your life for the existence of dragons. I thought maybe yes, maybe no.” – 180

“Her English was seamless. Everyone’s was. I had sixty words of Spanish and Hand had maybe twice that in French, and that was it. How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.” – 220

“We knew nothing; the gaps in our knowledge were random and annoying. They were potholes–they could be patched but they multiplied without pattern or remorse. And even if we knew something, had read something, were almost sure of something, we wouldn’t ever know the truth, or come anywhere close to it. The truth had to be seen. Anything else was a story, entertaining, but more embroidered fib than crude, shapeless fact.” – 238

“To travel is selfish–that money could be used for hungry stomachs and you’re using it for your hungry eyes, and the needs of the former must trump the latter, right? And are there individual needs? How much disbelief, collectively, must be suspended, to allow for tourism?” -253

“There is a corner of the sea that is deep but not so deep that it’s black. It’s the blue of a blueberry, violet in its heart, though this blue allows light through its million unseeable pores. The hue is evenly painted but electric, a klieg light pushing through a gel of cyan.” – 310