Longest:
More recently added:
What about you, anything that's been languishing in your TBR for way too long?
Monday, August 17, 2015
The books that have been on my TBR for the longest and shortest amount of time...
I guess this isn't super accurate, because I'm going by my goodreads account. But it's close!
Longest:
Longest:
Friday, August 14, 2015
Rapid Fire Mini Reviews #6
"Dust Tea, Dingoes, and Dragons: Adventures in Culture, Cuisine and Commerce from a Globe-Trekking Executive" A man who sets up power plants all around the world writes letters to his family members detailing his experiences. The cultural stuff was interesting (especially the food stuff) but there was A LOT of talk about the power plants. I found myself wanting less of those details...much less...
Outlander. So, Outlander such high expectations I heaped on you. I liked it. I thought it was fun and entertaining. But nothing about it drew me in so deep that I wanted to run out and read the other books. I'm enjoying it on the TV show, so I think I'll just stick with that for now!
The Book of Speculation. There's a lot of buzz around this book at this moment. I thought it was alright, and that the stories were interesting. And one of the characters is a librarian, which is always a plus!
Pictures of the Past. Got this from Netgalley and was a little disappointed because I think there were "pages" missing ocassionally that made me miss parts of the story. But a book about World War 2 and art is always going to peak my interest!
The Arrival. Loved this wordless graphic novel. The pictures are soft and elegant. The creatures and setting a little Edward Goreyish. I want the little critter on the front cover as a pet! The immigrant experience is recognizable and universal even without words.
Outlander. So, Outlander such high expectations I heaped on you. I liked it. I thought it was fun and entertaining. But nothing about it drew me in so deep that I wanted to run out and read the other books. I'm enjoying it on the TV show, so I think I'll just stick with that for now!
The Book of Speculation. There's a lot of buzz around this book at this moment. I thought it was alright, and that the stories were interesting. And one of the characters is a librarian, which is always a plus!
Pictures of the Past. Got this from Netgalley and was a little disappointed because I think there were "pages" missing ocassionally that made me miss parts of the story. But a book about World War 2 and art is always going to peak my interest!
The Arrival. Loved this wordless graphic novel. The pictures are soft and elegant. The creatures and setting a little Edward Goreyish. I want the little critter on the front cover as a pet! The immigrant experience is recognizable and universal even without words.
I think it's the ears, I love silly ears.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Book Review: "The Oregon Trail: An American Journey" by Rinker Buck
Ah, Oregon Trail. I'm sure many of you have memories like I do; sitting in front of a (now considered laughably huge) computer, loading up our fake wagons full of fake supplies (I don't know if I knew what an axle was) and naming our fake fellow travelers after real friends and crushes. And then being angry when you ford a river (again, what is fording exactly?) and lose a bunch of supplies and a buddy.
It's kind of funny how an incredibly dangerous voyage was made into a fun computer game. (But then again we also took pirates who were super scary and dangerous and turned them into a funny Johnny Depp led family friendly cinematic powerhouse. So, whatever, humanity is strange).
Aside from my computer gaming skills and some vague stories about the unfortunate Donner Party I couldn't really tell you much about the Oregon Trail, but now that I've read this book I feel like a near expert!
So our author Rinker, has an ambitious plan. He wants to travel in a super authentic wagon across as much of the original Oregon Trail as he can. He plans to go alone, but than his super outgoing and horeseman brother Nick decides he is going to join him. Rinker should be happy he does because he would have been in massive trouble if he actually went through this alone! The journey from Missouri to Oregon in a massive wagon pulled by 3 mules. (There is at least 6 pages on mules and how they are bred and what makes them such great workers. Never thought I'd learn that much about mules ever). They are greeted by so many friendly folks that offer them food, hay, creature comforts, or a place to park for the night. Interspersed with the tales of their journey is the tales of the pioneers and the trailblazers (literally) of the original trek.
Here's a couple of things I found interesting:
-There wasn't just one trail. Basically pioneers followed the small trails worn by Native Americans and fur trappers and made them larger. There were several ways to get out west, though several ran through the same places.
-You were far more likely to die from accidental shootings, drowning, or getting run over by a wagon; than being shot by angry Native Americans. But, Hollywood decided that that's all so much more dramatic and interesting for movies than someone getting crushed by huge wheels.
-Cholera killed between 20,000 and 30,000 people between 1849 and the Civil War.
-Almost all of the main Oregon Trail is marked. Even in the places where there is now highway and urban sprawl. There is a huge group of people who are devoted to preserving the trail and the many graves of the pioneers who died and were buried alongside the trail. It's a thankless job mostly, but they are a passionate group who understand how important this work is for history.
-The last part of a dead antelope to decay is it's rib cage. So if you're chasing loose mules across the prairie make sure you have good shoes or else you're going to have a dead antelope injury.
I learned a ton from this book. I would love to do this trip, but only if there's snacks and running water and air conditioning. I think I could go for about a week in the style that Rinker and Nick did but than I would be done. There were 2 qualms about this book. 1 - I'm so curious about how much this whole endeavor cost. I wanted to know so badly because so much was custom made and shipped across the country and all this stuff. So curious. 2- The author went on personal random tangents about things that really didn't seem relevant to the book. It didn't happen very often but when I did it almost always made me roll my eyes. Overall I give it a high 3.5 out of 5 stars!
It's kind of funny how an incredibly dangerous voyage was made into a fun computer game. (But then again we also took pirates who were super scary and dangerous and turned them into a funny Johnny Depp led family friendly cinematic powerhouse. So, whatever, humanity is strange).
Aside from my computer gaming skills and some vague stories about the unfortunate Donner Party I couldn't really tell you much about the Oregon Trail, but now that I've read this book I feel like a near expert!
So our author Rinker, has an ambitious plan. He wants to travel in a super authentic wagon across as much of the original Oregon Trail as he can. He plans to go alone, but than his super outgoing and horeseman brother Nick decides he is going to join him. Rinker should be happy he does because he would have been in massive trouble if he actually went through this alone! The journey from Missouri to Oregon in a massive wagon pulled by 3 mules. (There is at least 6 pages on mules and how they are bred and what makes them such great workers. Never thought I'd learn that much about mules ever). They are greeted by so many friendly folks that offer them food, hay, creature comforts, or a place to park for the night. Interspersed with the tales of their journey is the tales of the pioneers and the trailblazers (literally) of the original trek.
Here's a couple of things I found interesting:
-There wasn't just one trail. Basically pioneers followed the small trails worn by Native Americans and fur trappers and made them larger. There were several ways to get out west, though several ran through the same places.
-You were far more likely to die from accidental shootings, drowning, or getting run over by a wagon; than being shot by angry Native Americans. But, Hollywood decided that that's all so much more dramatic and interesting for movies than someone getting crushed by huge wheels.
-Cholera killed between 20,000 and 30,000 people between 1849 and the Civil War.
-Almost all of the main Oregon Trail is marked. Even in the places where there is now highway and urban sprawl. There is a huge group of people who are devoted to preserving the trail and the many graves of the pioneers who died and were buried alongside the trail. It's a thankless job mostly, but they are a passionate group who understand how important this work is for history.
-The last part of a dead antelope to decay is it's rib cage. So if you're chasing loose mules across the prairie make sure you have good shoes or else you're going to have a dead antelope injury.
I learned a ton from this book. I would love to do this trip, but only if there's snacks and running water and air conditioning. I think I could go for about a week in the style that Rinker and Nick did but than I would be done. There were 2 qualms about this book. 1 - I'm so curious about how much this whole endeavor cost. I wanted to know so badly because so much was custom made and shipped across the country and all this stuff. So curious. 2- The author went on personal random tangents about things that really didn't seem relevant to the book. It didn't happen very often but when I did it almost always made me roll my eyes. Overall I give it a high 3.5 out of 5 stars!
Monday, August 10, 2015
Book Review: "Berlin: A Portrait of a City Through the Centuries" by Rory Maclean
"Lourdes equates with devotion. Paris is about romantic love. New York means energy. London is forever trendy. Berlin is all about volatility".
Even if you don't have any desire to go to Germany or Berlin I'd say that this book is still worth a read. Inside this book are people's stories that if they were told in history classes people would actually LIKE their history classes.I very much enjoyed this little microhistory of this old, complicated, ever changing city.
There are 23 stories/chapters that are each about 14 pages a piece that span from 1469 up until 2011. This book would be ideal for a "I only have 20 minutes to read and I don't want to have to remember a whole huge cast of names and people" situation. Some people in the story are famous (Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Goebbels, David Bowie) but others are just everyday people who either had their lives impacted because of a Berlinian (?) event, or are kind of a representative sample of Berliners at a certain time.
Here's a couple of examples of really interesting people who I'd never heard of, and now want to know more about:
-George Blake: British spy, betrayed his country and started feeding information to the KGB during the Cold War. Including names of other British spies that got a lot of them killed.
-Leni Riefenstahl: a German filmaker who pioneered several new movie making innovations, almost all are in use today. She really paved the way for a lot of camera angles and things we see in movies today. BUT she almost exclusively worked for Hitler making propaganda films. "Triumph of the Will"? That's her. ( I really felt the animosity that the author felt for her. He used "cowardly" a lot in that chapter!)
-Fritz Haber: the man who developed poison gas used on the battles fields . He also developed Zyklon B which was used for murder in concentration camps. "The chemical would claim the lives of some four million people, among them all of Haber's nephews and nieces". He is the distant murderous relative of the sisters in "A Reuinon of Ghosts".
I loved this book. It was full of interesting stories and people. Some were incredibly sad, but Berlin (and Germany) has a lot of sorrow in the pages of her history. A great book for reading little snatches at a time. When we think of Berlin we should think of more than just the Nazis; and this book helped me do that. 4 out of 5 stars!
Even if you don't have any desire to go to Germany or Berlin I'd say that this book is still worth a read. Inside this book are people's stories that if they were told in history classes people would actually LIKE their history classes.I very much enjoyed this little microhistory of this old, complicated, ever changing city.
There are 23 stories/chapters that are each about 14 pages a piece that span from 1469 up until 2011. This book would be ideal for a "I only have 20 minutes to read and I don't want to have to remember a whole huge cast of names and people" situation. Some people in the story are famous (Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Goebbels, David Bowie) but others are just everyday people who either had their lives impacted because of a Berlinian (?) event, or are kind of a representative sample of Berliners at a certain time.
Here's a couple of examples of really interesting people who I'd never heard of, and now want to know more about:
-George Blake: British spy, betrayed his country and started feeding information to the KGB during the Cold War. Including names of other British spies that got a lot of them killed.
-Leni Riefenstahl: a German filmaker who pioneered several new movie making innovations, almost all are in use today. She really paved the way for a lot of camera angles and things we see in movies today. BUT she almost exclusively worked for Hitler making propaganda films. "Triumph of the Will"? That's her. ( I really felt the animosity that the author felt for her. He used "cowardly" a lot in that chapter!)
-Fritz Haber: the man who developed poison gas used on the battles fields . He also developed Zyklon B which was used for murder in concentration camps. "The chemical would claim the lives of some four million people, among them all of Haber's nephews and nieces". He is the distant murderous relative of the sisters in "A Reuinon of Ghosts".
I loved this book. It was full of interesting stories and people. Some were incredibly sad, but Berlin (and Germany) has a lot of sorrow in the pages of her history. A great book for reading little snatches at a time. When we think of Berlin we should think of more than just the Nazis; and this book helped me do that. 4 out of 5 stars!
Friday, August 7, 2015
Book Review: "Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South" by Christopher Dickey
This is going to be a short-ish review, because I don’t
really know what to say about it.
Right before and during the civil war a man named Robert
Bunch was a British man who was serving the British government as a consul in
Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston kind of boggles his mind. He has to schmooze
with the “upper crust” people of Charleston but he soon gets really irritated
by all of their hypocrisies. What drives him really crazy is that so many of
them are slave owners and think that they are doing the slaves a favor. Their reasoning
is all kinds of insane. Like “hey, without us they wouldn’t even know how to
(insert whatever thing they are enslaved to do). We’re teaching them something!”
Like I said, madness.
Anyway, so Bunch kept writing letters to his people in
England and be like “we need to keep an eye on these Southern people. They’re
totally going to start sneaking slaves into this country again.” Apparently
there was a time that slavery was allowed in the states, but you weren’t
allowed to bring any more Africans into the country. You could already own the
people already over here, and their children. (That’s an unsettling sentence to
write.) But the reproduction rates of slaves were not keeping up with the
demand for more workers in the south and so skeevy types were trying to think
of ways and places to sneak boat loads of people into the country.
So eventually this does start happening, though not many
boats get from Africa to America and offload their human cargo successfully.
One of the most horribly shocking things that I read in this book was the fact
that one boat had a 75% fatality rate.
Sometimes Bunch’s people listen to him, sometimes they don’t.
It was too long at 400 pages. It was interesting in parts,
but I had a hard time keeping myself interested in the book. I think the
epilogue might have been the most interesting part. (There was a guy who had
always been really mean to Bunch and he ended up having a cancerous tumor on
his face. In the 1800’s you don’t want any kind of cancer, let alone face
cancer). I gave the book 2 stars. Meh.
I recieved this book in exchange for an honest review from blogging for books
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Graphic Novel Review: "Andre the Giant: Life and Legend" by Box Brown
So I realized that I can't just review Lucy Knisley graphic novels each time so this is me branching out :)
I know Andre the Giant from "The Princess Bride", because I love that movie. I knew peripherally that he was a wrestler but I never was into wrestling (though I do ocassionally tune into that WWE Divas show. Mostly because it's totally ridiculous and Josh and I can't believe what an a-hole John Cena is.) At any rate let's talk about Andre.
Andre grew up in France. By 12 years old he was too big to fit on the school bus, and a certain super famous person gave him rides to school in the bed of his pick up. He started wrestling in France but soon got discovered and became super famous in Japan. ( Airplane travel, you ask? Yes, he took up two seats. No, he could not fit in the bathroom...which lead to some uncomfortable solutions but what can you do). When he was in Japan, he was finally diagnosed by a doctor with acromegaly ('giantism'). He was told that he would continue to grow, he would have heart problems, joint pain and probably not live to see 40. (He actually lived to see 46).
He wrestled in the United States and became a big attraction. Though sometimes they had trouble finding opponents for him because you put even a big guy up against Andre and it's still pretty obvious who had the upper hand. The doctors were right though, he did have pain and and he did have to have surgeries. But he recovered in the tranquility of his beloved farm in North Carolina.
Was Andre perfect? No. He drank a lot. Was he a jerk sometimes? Yes. Did he put up with a TON of crap from other people? Heck to the yes. The staring and the comments that people would make, and people randomly trying to start fights with him would make anyone cranky. Also I liked that they didn't shy away from the "is wrestling fake?" question in the book. They made it pretty clear that he and Hulk Hogan's big match in Detroit was orchestrated for Andre to "pass the torch" on to Hulk. That fight is on youtube by the way, and after reading the book and kind of knowing what to look for, it was entertaining. (Like Andre slamming his own head down to make Hulk look better.) I bet some of the pre-fight interviews are fun to watch. Though it's hard to think of him besides anyone other than Fezzik, the best member of the brute squad.
Here's a story from Wikipedia I thought was great:
Whenever André treated someone to a meal in a restaurant he would pay, but he would also insist on paying when he was a guest. After one meal, Arnold Schwarzenegger had quietly moved to the cashier to pay before André could, but then found himself being physically lifted, carried from his table, and deposited on top of his car by André and Wilt Chamberlain.[83]
I think this kind of graphic novel is my niche. Simple, clean line, biographies of people I know nothing about. I'll always love food and travel ones of course, but variety is good. I give this a solid 3.5 stars.
I know Andre the Giant from "The Princess Bride", because I love that movie. I knew peripherally that he was a wrestler but I never was into wrestling (though I do ocassionally tune into that WWE Divas show. Mostly because it's totally ridiculous and Josh and I can't believe what an a-hole John Cena is.) At any rate let's talk about Andre.
Andre grew up in France. By 12 years old he was too big to fit on the school bus, and a certain super famous person gave him rides to school in the bed of his pick up. He started wrestling in France but soon got discovered and became super famous in Japan. ( Airplane travel, you ask? Yes, he took up two seats. No, he could not fit in the bathroom...which lead to some uncomfortable solutions but what can you do). When he was in Japan, he was finally diagnosed by a doctor with acromegaly ('giantism'). He was told that he would continue to grow, he would have heart problems, joint pain and probably not live to see 40. (He actually lived to see 46).
He wrestled in the United States and became a big attraction. Though sometimes they had trouble finding opponents for him because you put even a big guy up against Andre and it's still pretty obvious who had the upper hand. The doctors were right though, he did have pain and and he did have to have surgeries. But he recovered in the tranquility of his beloved farm in North Carolina.
Was Andre perfect? No. He drank a lot. Was he a jerk sometimes? Yes. Did he put up with a TON of crap from other people? Heck to the yes. The staring and the comments that people would make, and people randomly trying to start fights with him would make anyone cranky. Also I liked that they didn't shy away from the "is wrestling fake?" question in the book. They made it pretty clear that he and Hulk Hogan's big match in Detroit was orchestrated for Andre to "pass the torch" on to Hulk. That fight is on youtube by the way, and after reading the book and kind of knowing what to look for, it was entertaining. (Like Andre slamming his own head down to make Hulk look better.) I bet some of the pre-fight interviews are fun to watch. Though it's hard to think of him besides anyone other than Fezzik, the best member of the brute squad.
Here's a story from Wikipedia I thought was great:
Whenever André treated someone to a meal in a restaurant he would pay, but he would also insist on paying when he was a guest. After one meal, Arnold Schwarzenegger had quietly moved to the cashier to pay before André could, but then found himself being physically lifted, carried from his table, and deposited on top of his car by André and Wilt Chamberlain.[83]
I think this kind of graphic novel is my niche. Simple, clean line, biographies of people I know nothing about. I'll always love food and travel ones of course, but variety is good. I give this a solid 3.5 stars.
Monday, August 3, 2015
5 Books I Don't Think I'll Ever Read
Of course, who knows? But I will say that these are probably not anywhere near my TBR each for a variety of reasons!
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| I'm counting this as one. My blog my rules :) |
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