Tag Archives: reading

Miscellaneous Monday…NEW stuff I gotta share

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daffcollage

Oh! I’m so excited that Spring is finally coming…(although we had a few snow flurries today)…I’m certain more and more color will arrive and be waiting for me to photograph it soon!  Yeah!!!

Well today, along with these NEW daffodils and grape hyacinths, I want to share a couple of other NEW miscellaneous/random items that have caught my attention lately:

sweetsixteen

Here’s a NEW photography tip I learned this week, called the Sunny 16 Rule.  Interesting!  Since photography is very subjective to a variety of factors of conditions and camera settings,  I was a bit surprised that this ‘Rule’ even existed.  Too bad I didn’t learn this rule in the dead of winter, when I could’ve practiced it on the white landscape of December, January and February!  Oh well, maybe next year!

Another random thing…I just have to say how much I LOVE being in a book club.  First, it pretty much forces me to read books I’m sure I wouldn’t come across and read on my own.  (And they have ALL been REALLY GOOD books)!!!  But I think my favorite thing about my book club is listening to different perspectives.  It’s kind of an added education, all its own.  This month’s book was Unraveled by Julie Daines….

unraveled_cover

…and it was so interesting to hear the other women in the group  comment how they’d really like their daughters to read this book.  Since I have only sons, these thoughts obviously didn’t enter my mind, but I can absolutely understand their perspective…when I think about it.  The book has a strong message about the importance of appreciating our inner-beauty – something I too would like my daughter to read (if I had a daughter)!  I just really love reading and sharing thoughts about the books we’ve read in our group.  If you don’t belong to a book club….FIND ONE TO JOIN!  Seriously! 🙂

Have a great Monday!  Do or Learn Something NEW!!!

Linking to:

Mosaic Monday

You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out’s Song-ography

 

a NEW book review

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12years

Hi all!  I LOVE book recommendations!…so when my good friend suggested I read Twelve Years a Slave, I got right to it.  (By the way, it’s available on Google Books.)

I liked this book simply for the historical aspect.  In the back of my mind (the very back)….I knew there were some free black men and women who were kidnapped and sold into slavery, but reading this book brought me a NEW awareness of this despicable-ness.  What an awful, awful injustice!  It was bad enough, in that day and age to have slavery – but to purposefully inflict it on legally free men and women was so, so wrong!

It is just sooooo hard to imagine people’s thought processes of the 1800’s!  It makes me wonder what laws are on our books and what we are doing today that, in a hundred years from now, will be looked on with disbelief!

There is also a movie coming out, based on the book.  I think it’s rated R, so I’ll probably pass on seeing it, but read the book!  (If you already have, let me know what you think!)  I thought the beginning and the end were excellent…the middle was a little slow though. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Have a great day!  Read or DO or learn something NEW!

a NEW Christmas Tradition

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bookchristmaswishvideochristmaswish

For a few years now, I’ve read this short little book toward the beginning of each December.  I’ve enjoyed starting off the Christmas season this way.  I like the mystery aspect of this little book, and I love how, every year, the book makes me want to be a better person….(by emulating the example of the deceased grandfather in the story).

I just ordered the DVD off Amazon.  So, from now on, for a NEW Christmas tradition I can either read the book or watch the video!  I hope the video is as good as the book…I’ll let you know! 🙂

Happy December!  Do or Learn something NEW!

a NEW book recommendation

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Happy Monday everyone!  I have a good book recommendation for you!  I read this book a few years ago, but this last week I re-read it.  I needed to refresh my memory because I am hosting a book club next month and this is the book we are going to discuss.  The first time I read it, I knew I liked it a lot, but didn’t really think why.  But this time, I think I realized WHY I enjoyed it so much.  Because I love family history research and love finding mysteries of old, I really connected with this book.  I won’t go into details because there’s some twists and turns…and if I say too much, it would ruin it for you!  But here’s the review from GoodReads:

13talereview

I’ll be getting some discussion question ideas from these sites…but WAIT until you read the book before visiting these sites!

Novel Dame and Pages Turned

Stephanie Rische’s Book of the Month Club

The Written Word

The Well-Read Ladies

If you get a chance to read this book or if you have already, be sure and let me know your thoughts!  Have a great day….DO or LEARN or READ something NEW!

two NEW book ratings

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RentCollector_cover-673x1024The-Island-at-the-Center-of-the-World-9780786268351

Oh my goodness!  When I have a book to read…NOTHING else gets done around here! 🙂  I think my family must cringe when they see me walking in from a trip to the library….thinking,  “Great!….Now how am I supposed to get Mom’s attention if I need her!?!”  HaHa!  Here are my latest reads.  I’m giving them both 4 out of 5 stars.  (Just so you know, I RARELY give out 5’s).

The Rent Collector is fiction based on real people.  I was hesitant to read it, thinking I wasn’t interested in a depressing story about extreme poverty, but that was not the focus at all.  It focused on learning and how the mother became literate even though she lived in a municipal city dump.  Very good book!  I recommend it!

The Island at the Center of the World is a longer read, but very interesting.  It’s a history book about the Island of Manhattan in the early 1600’s.   I don’t know about your history teachers, but mine didn’t even mention the Dutch colony….all I was taught was the English colonies….the pilgrims, the puritans etc.  I might be a bit more interested in this book than the average reader because I’ve been doing a fair amount of New York family history.  But if you like history books, this one is very good!

Again, I give them 4 out of 5 stars.  Learn or DO something NEW today!

a NEW book review – The BlackTulip

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blacktulip{photo source}

I recently posted about volunteering at the local tulip festival and I mentioned wanting to read Alexandre Dumas’ book THE BLACK TULIP.  I did read it, and a few of you were wondering how I liked it, so I thought I’d give it a quick review:

First of all….I was PLEASANTLY SURPRISED that this book was pretty short.  I was kind of expecting it to be like Dumas’ other books (Count of Monte Cristo = 1276 pages; Three Musketeers 784 pages!!!)…but it was only in the 200’s, yeah!

I liked this book!  Nice, fast and good read!  It had somewhat of the same theme as Count of Monte Cristo in that the main character was incarcerated (but innocently, of course).  I love books that have a little history and a little romance and this one did.  There wasn’t any real surprises….I always knew exactly who the good guy was and who the bad guy was and, in the end, the good guy would win. So, no suspense, but that’s ok.  I thought it was interesting that this book DID have the typical lover’s triangle, BUT one of those ‘lovers’ was an object (the black tulip) rather than another person.

I’d recommend this book!  Especially since the time commitment wasn’t huge :o)  I liked it, but didn’t LOVE it. (Those are reserved for a very few).  If you read it, let me know what you think!

Also, according to eHOW.com:

In 1850, Alexandre Dumas published a novel called “The Black Tulip.”  This publication brought attention to the idea of and the search for a truly black tulip.

No tulip, or any other flower or plant, can ever be purely black and lacking any color, according to the technical director of the International Flower Bulb Center in the Netherlands.

Have a great day everyone!  Do or learn something NeW!

NEW books on my nightstand

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blind

I’ve had a few books on my nightstand, for a while now….waiting for me to find the time to crack them.  They were:

A Blind Eye by Julie Daines,  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and Adobe Photoshop  Lightroom 2

Well, last Sunday evening I picked up the first one, A Blind Eye, right after dinner and I didn’t put it down until I had read the entire book  (roughly 160 pages)!  It kept my attention the entire read!  It’s a young adult murder mystery (NOT my typical choice), but I’m soooo glad I read it because, as you know, I LOVE newness /different-ness!  It was very good and I’d recommend it.  Hopefully I’ll get the other two books read very soon (I’ve renewed them from the library twice already).  I’ll let you know what I think about those after I get them off my nightstand.  I hope you all get to read (or do or learn) something NEW today!

I’m reading a NEW book

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book

I love to read and wish I had more time to do so.  This weekend I started a NEW book that was recommended to me.  I love, loVE, LOVE recommended books from friends and family because there’s nothing worse than spending time reading a book you don’t enjoy…right?    What a waste of time!  Recommended books, at least, have a better chance of enjoyment than just random books.  I’m all for time efficiency!  I’m also loving Shelfari.com where I can keep track of the books I’ve read and also the books I want to read.  It’s a virtual bookshelf.  I once started a book that sounded quite familiar and I wondered aloud to my husband if we’d maybe seen a movie with the same plot as I was reading.  He mentioned he thought he’d seen me read that book before.  Oops!  He was right!  I had read the book before and had simply forgotten I had.  So now I also type a short summary into Shelfari to jog my memory of what the book was about, in case I have that problem in the future.    My shelfari page is strictly for my reference.  I don’t really have time to use it for any social media purposes, but I love having it available!  Some of my friends use GoodReads, and I’m sure there are other sites out there.  If you like to read and haven’t tried a similar site….try something NEW!  You’ll like it!  OR pick up a NEW book!….and be sure to let me know of any good recommendations!