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Book Review | The Grownup

I hardly remember The Grownup by Gillian Flynn. It was a very short book, 64 pages. Amazon sells it as a Kindle Single. That’s not to say that it is not a good book. Some of the best books I’ve ever read are very short. This is a very good book and I can guarantee you will be riveted to it for the duration.

The short spoiler-free synopsis is a con artist meets her match and you get to know that character and the others in just 64 pages. Some authors have a whole book and still can’t get that done. For $2.99 as a Kindle Single, you really can’t go wrong with this. It made me want to further explore this author’s longer works. I received this book for free as part of my regular Book of the Month monthly delivery.

I really need to keep up this blog better. I hope to have more time to write this holiday break. I hope you and your family are having a wonderful holiday, however, you celebrate it (or don’t).

Book Review | Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine

What can I say about this book? I picked up Wine Folly on a visit to my local library. They had it out on a random table display with other wine books. This one looked pretty good, so I grabbed it on an impulse borrow. I am glad I did. This is a kind of coffee table book or reference book at most. There is no story or narrative. There are a bunch of beautiful graphs and visualizations in this book. It goes over what the tastes for different wines are. It doesn’t compare them per se, but it does a good job getting a novice aquatinted with wines and the way they taste for all the different ones. It covers the most popular ones but doesn’t have everything. This would be best suited for those that are just starting out with wine and not something for someone who already knows a lot.

War and Peace | App Recommendation

I’ve started to use this app called serial reader to help me tackle the very large War and Peace. So far it is helping a lot. It has broken up the tome into 235 segments. Each segment is about 10 to 15 minutes in reading time. If I can stick with it, I will be done with the book in less than a year at this rate. I’m currently around 62 segments read. That means that I am about 27% complete with the tome.

This new way of attacking the book seems to be working for me and I’m looking forward to checking it off my list and moving onto the next large tome.

The Fearsome Foursome (Tales from the Haunted Mansion #1)

Tales from the Haunted Mansion Vol. 1: The Fearsome Foursome

These are definitely for kids, but having said that, it was still a fun read! Not so subtle hints and phrases that people who frequent haunted mansion will recognize within Tales from the Haunted Mansion: Vol. 1. If you or your tween is a Disney fan you will most likely enjoy these stories that follow a group of friends on a “scary” journey into the haunted mansion that you and I both know and love. I enjoyed the artwork in the book but mostly found it unnecessary as it didn’t add anything to the story.

Volume 2: Midnight at Madame Leota’s is already available. Given that the first book was really just a children’s novel and didn’t really scare or move me with its story, I don’t think I will be picking up the second volume, but if you have kids that like scary stories, I think they will enjoy this as well.

Shadows and Secrets (Star Wars: Darth Vader #2)

Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 2: Shadows and Secrets

As I catch up on my reviews, I find myself struggling to remember some books. There is one, however, stands out for the secondary character. I liked this new Aphra character. The storyline in Shadows and Secrets was really good, it wasn’t just great art, it had a very interesting storyline that kept me engaged the whole time. This Star Wars series is definitely worth your time. I believe this new character is even getting her own comic books now. I can’t wait to read more of these.

Writing this post now reminds me of how much I misreading these Star Wars comics. I wish there was one site that had all these in an order that was easy to understand and read. If anyone knows of any please let me know in the comments.

Will Read for Food

Reading programs are fun for everyone. And even though mom and dad are vegetarians we still love that the kiddos are reading on their winter break, so we are just fine with getting them some free burgers to enjoy. And even vegetarians can enjoy their french fries!

This is one more reason I love our local libraries. It is also very frustrating to see how little they are utilized. There are many, many reasons to go to the library, and yes free stuff is one of those reasons. During the summer there is a reading program that the kids get gifts. Don’t have kids? That’s fine there are adult reading programs too. I won a grill this summer doing a summer reading program. On a previous summer, I won two free bags of Trader Joe’s groceries.

We usually go to the library every weekend. Sometimes a bit less when we are really busy or the kids have gotten some books from relatives (Always a good gift). Emily who is 4 enjoys reading anything that is related to what she is watching on tv. Samantha who is 9 likes to read the Who is… and What is… non-fiction books from her school library.

I look forward to each summer because that is when I get the majority of my reading done. I look for short books that I have an interest in. There are a lot! Using this method I’m able to read a lot and get lots of entries into the sweepstakes that the libraries usually do for the adult reading programs.

Book Review: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

Follow Roosevelt on the adventure of a lifetime. At times this was slow, but it was written as a biography and a travel novel. There is a lot of detail here. You can tell the author did their homework, but at times the details did come at the expense of the readability of The River of Doubt. I did enjoy this book and for those history buffs who are into the presidents, I would recommend it.

The journey itself is interesting even if it was not a former president. It’s had to believe this was written in 2005. It felt like a much older book, but maybe that’s because the actual trip took place, just after 1912, so much before when it was written. Even with all its detail I did give it 4 out of 5 stars. This one was an audiobook and that’s probably why I read it so fast even though it had all that detail.

Book Review: Raspberry Pi Cookbook

I”m sure I read Raspberry Pi Cookbook right after or during my RetroPi build. I had a great time building that. The girls still ask to play it and I like to play it when I have time too. This was a very thorough book and covered things more professionally than the other Raspberry Pi books that I picked up from the library.

This got 4 our of 5 stars from me mostly because of again of the professionalism of the writing and how polished the book is compared to those other books that look very much slapped together. Since building that first project I’ve also created a digital frame, that tells me what time it is and the weather, etc. It’s a nice build to have above my other monitors.

I also plan on building another one with a camera in it. I hope to have that one built early next year if Santa is good to me! This is a good book to have while you are building your first Raspberry Pi project. Not sure if you need to buy it though, I think this is more of a rent, as I doubt you will need it again.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving means a nice slow start to the morning and since I went to the gym yesterday it means I can skip that today. I’m not worried about rating too much because I’ve gone vegan and I already know what I will eat. Michelle made a tofu loaf and a veggie side dish. I’ll have those two things and some of my mother-in-law’s stuffing. With that I’ll be full. I’m writing this from the in-law’s house right now. Lots of time to blog this weekend. I’m looking into using twitch too. I’d also like to use YouTube a bit more, but I want to have things planned out to say, because I don’t think I can be one of those spontaneous bloggers.

Above is my breakfast. I don’t always have coffee, but today I did, with a bit of almond milk to take away the bitterness. Michelle bought some intelligencia coffee. It’s not decaf, but its okay. The oatmeal is my go to Coaches Oats. It’s great! I have it most mornings.

More on the RV Obsession

A strange thing happened yesterday when I was updating my book list using Goodreads. All the books I had read since February were not listed. I was missing a bunch. Among them some of the key reasons I may be obsessed with RVing right now…Travels with Charley. We listened to this on a recent trip up the coast. For those of you not familiar it’s a non-fiction work where Steinbeck travels across the US in a ….wait for it….RV! He called his RV Rocinante after the horse in Don Quixote.

We also visited his museum in Salinas. On that trip, we also stopped at an Autocamp, where you can stay in an airstream overnight. That was a blast, but I didn’t care for the shower.

So again, more reviews yet to come, but I thought I would mention this little thing in a follow-up post. Happy Thanksgiving all!