Another goofy novel similar to The Importance of Being Earnest. Short and funny. I think in the 160 pages that Jerzy Koskinski has he does a better job telling the story of Being There than was done in The Importance of Earnest. Things are clearer but still funny.
I would think may have seen the movie but might not realize that there was a book first as that happens so often now. The book was first published in 1970 and the bubbling but lovable Peter Sellers does a great job 9 years later portraying Chauncey Gardiner. Sellers is depicted on most of the covers of the book that you can find now.
Chance or Chauncey as he is later known in the book is a gullible simple-minded man. The is the gardener of a fancy home near Wall Street. When his wealthy benefactor dies, Chance has to leave the house. He runs into a nice young lady that is completely convinced he is a rich businessman of amazing intelligence.
What follows is a comical series of events where Chance is basically set for life, even though he is still the simple-minded fool we meet at the beginning of the book.
I found the story entertaining and very telling of society and the way we only see each other, but don’t really know each other. The book also made me reminisce of when I had seen the movie many years ago as if pulling the memory from the deepest part of my mind so that I could just bearly remember seeing the movie a very long time ago. The book heaved those memories to the forefront and I was pleasantly surprised that I knew the story, but still needed to be reminded of how everything turned out for Chance.
Many of the books listed above I read because I was at least slightly interested and I was participating in the adult summer reading program at my local library. The last book on this list is the exception. I read that just because I loved the first two books. It took me a while to get to this last book because there are so many other books I also want to read. I’m happy to have finally read it and I will update you all with a review soon I hope.
Now that it is Thanksgiving break I finally have some time to sit down and do some work in my office that’s not related to my day job. I got some other things done as well. I scan all the girl’s artwork that they give me. I know we can’t keep it all, but I can scan it and store it on the Network Attached Storage (NAS) device we have. I also have all our movies and tv shows stored on it. I scan everything in using my trusty Canon scanner. Thankfully, they keep their driver page updated, even for those of us that adopted macOS High Sierra early.
I’ve also been watching some more TV recently as well. I started by diving into Star Trek DS9. It is the only series that I haven’t watched all the way through. I’m making my way through that on Netflix. In addition, I’ve also gotten addicted to Stranger Things. I’m early in the second season so no spoilers, please. When I’m not watching those I’ve been making time to learn about class b RVs on youtube and got addicted to the We Are The Russos.
I’m not a camper, so I have not idea why I’m so into the idea of these RV things. No idea where it all came from, but I’ve always been into the tiny homes stuff. I think it is amazing the way that people find a way to make it with so little. I have so much and the idea of paring down has always appealed to me. When I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I really did get rid of a lot, but it really wasn’t enough. We have a two-thousand square foot home and it is full!
Speaking of youtube. I think it would be a good idea to try that here. I’m not one to sit down and record a video, but I think it would help drive traffic to the site and I know lots of times I want to watch a video of something instead of reading a bunch of text. Sounds strange on a book blog site, doesn’t it? I think some more about that one. Lots of things to consider.
Lots of other things are also going on. Work has gotten a lot busier and I started taking my weight loss a lot more seriously. I watched Vegucated on Netflix and a few other vegetarian and vegan documentaries as well as Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2. All these films together pushed me over the edge to go vegan. I’m what you would call a lazy vegan. I find my self-making exceptions to the dairy rule. For example, I can not give up pizza so my give and take on that is ordering only vegetarian pizza. It’s not vegan, but at least it is vegetarian. I haven’t had meat in about four months.
I have been also going to the gym on average 5-6 days a week. Pretty much every day. I got a new Apple Watch and I’ve been trying to close all the rings every day. Most days I make it and with giving up meat, it has been pretty easy to lose a lot of weight. I’m down about 18 pounds from September. I use my Aria, a Fitbit scale, to track my weight every day. They have the 2nd version of it available now. I was thinking of getting it because mine doesn’t always sync right. I’ve had problems with it since the beginning.
I think that is pretty good for now. Hopefully, more coming very soon.
