bookshelves: to-read
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bookshelves: foreign-lands, travel-adventure
Fado is a collection of essays about the writer's continuing fascination with Central and Eastern European countries like Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, and the like. What makes Fado different is that it is written from the perspective of Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk who looks at his neighboring countries as uniquely fascinating. If it was an American or English writer, I could see the cultures of the area getting lumped together, but his perspective shows the uniqueness in the details and his warm regard for the people and the lands. He's a beautiful writer, and I give him extra points for waxing poetically about his love for maps in a chapter titled, yes, "Map". :) ]]>
bookshelves: travel-adventure
Part travelogue, part musing about bicycling as a mode of transport and a way to clear your head, and part musings about many other things, The Bicycle Diaries is just that: a diary-style account of musician David Byrne's visits to major cities. There is surprisingly little about bicycling itself, since he tends to go on tangents about art, music, politics, city planning, etc, but he always has interesting insights. His thoughts make up for the fact that his writing style is solid, though not exceptional. He seems like he'd be a fun person to run into on his travels. ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading
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bookshelves: memoirs
I adore Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, so I picked up this book as a fast read. She admits right off that it is basically the equivalent of inspirational speeches that she gives to college graduations and such, and that is indeed how it comes across. But it is nice, positive, warm advice, which is not surprising considering the source. It is also nice to get a peek into her own background as an athlete and stories of how she got into broadcasting. ]]>
Coffeeboss
read and liked
Barbara Nourse's
review of The Book Thief:
"This one of the best books I've read in a long time. I finished it in the wee hours of the morning and could not get back to sleep.
This story, narrated by death, takes place in a poor neighborhood in a small Nazi Germany town. The main characte...more "
"This one of the best books I've read in a long time. I finished it in the wee hours of the morning and could not get back to sleep.
This story, narrated by death, takes place in a poor neighborhood in a small Nazi Germany town. The main characte...more "
bookshelves: to-read
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bookshelves: festival-of-the-gays, young-adult
John is a lonely kid with just one friend, Brian, that he doesn't always connect with. Brian is a girl-crazy nerd, but John just feels like an outcast, isn't interested in anybody (though he doesn't really thing he is gay), and has to split his time between his divorced parents, neither of whom seem to care about him. Then he discovers zines (homemade magazines written by writers who want to express themselves). He discovers a zine written by Marisol, a lesbian with a raw honesty, and decides to meet her. Marisol and John (or "Gio" as he calls himself in his zine) become very close friends, even there are some lies (some big, some small) that lie between them. But then John falls for Marisol, something she warned him against over and over. Hard Love is a sweet and raw story of crushing hard on someone you know you can never have, and is very realistic in its portrayals of teen emotional turmoil. ]]>
bookshelves: to-read
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bookshelves: to-read
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