Happier Than A Billionaire

This book speaks to the adventurous traveler in me.  This is the true story about a woman and her husband (both chiropractors) who decide to give it all up in the United States and move to Costa Rica.  What follows are the, often hilarious, adventures as expats.  I really enjoyed, not only the story, but the subtle lessons within the story.  As I am currently very interested in a simplified life, this book seemed right on time for me.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  If I could pack my bags and make a go of it tomorrow, I probably would.  You don't really need a lot in this life to be happy, and this book helps us see why that's so true.

A Spy in the House of Love

This is a book I read years ago and decided to revisit this year.  It was on my bookshelf and I could not remember what it was about or whether or not I enjoyed it when I read it.  That should have been my clue to skip it because if there was anything memorable about the book I would have....um....remembered! The book is essentially about a young woman who is unhappy in her marriage and seeks happiness and fulfillment outside of the marriage.  With that being said, the book was written in the late 1950s so this was a very big deal and scandalous back then. As I read the book I found the overlying themes to be ennui, existentialism, repressed desire, and conformity.  The woman is basically bored because she never got to learn about who she was an individual and as a romantic woman.  She was married at age 18 or 19 and did not have an identity of her own.  She continuously searches for the one man who will make her feel whole, all the while fretting about how to keep these secrets from her husband.  I can see how it would be a scandal at the time the book came out, but as I was reading it in 2012 I was just feeling like "eh".  Probably because most women can do what they want to do now. So being married off at 19 doesn't really happen as the norm. Also, this is one of those books where the author employs a lot of introspection and lengthy descriptions of emotions.  So if you decide to pick it up, be prepared to read a description of fear, desire, anxiety, or any other emotion for at least a few paragraphs.

Book Challenge 2012

It's that time of year again when I sit down and think "What do I want to read this year?". When I first started my personal book challenge it was 2010 and half the year was already gone.  So I randomly said 25 books because there were about 25 weeks left in that year.  Then in 2011, I said 52 books because I really did want to try and read one book per week.  I had no rhyme or reason to what I picked up.  If it looked interesting, I started reading it.  I was in graduate school at the time, so I will readily admit that sometimes if it looked like "light/easy reading" I scooped it up too.  Not much thought went into the selections.


This year, I am finished with school and basically will be back to a relatively normal working schedule so I should have more time most evenings to read a little bit.  I wanted to actually take some time this year and pre-select the books so I could read with intention.  Well before I get too Zen on you, here is the breakdown of my 2012 reading challenge.  


6 categories: 5 books from each category....so 30 books total


Here is the list for each category:


BIOGRAPHY / MEMOIR
1. Malcolm X: A Life of Re-invention by Manning Marable
2. Open Wide the Freedom Gates by Dorothy Height
3. Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff
4. Catherine de Medici by Leonie Frieda
5. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson


CLASSICS
1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens


RECOMMENDED (by friends or websites)
1. 18 acres by Nicole Wallace
2. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
3. Game of Thrones by George Martin
4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
5. Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran


NON-FICTION
1. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
2. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
3. The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth by Alexandra Robbins
4. Happier Than a Billionaire by Nadine Hays Pisani
5. Life is a Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel by Judith Fein


RE-VISITS (I want to see if I have more insight this time around)
1. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
2. A Spy in the House of Love by Anais Nin
3. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
4. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee


ON THE SHELF (a.k.a. books that have been staring at me from my book shelf for years)
1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
2. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
3. When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
4. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
5. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry


I have no idea if I will make it through all these books, but the whole point is to have fun and learn something new.  I know I will do that!  Happy Reading!

The Map of Time

If you want a book that has adventure, romance, escapism and some turn of the century charm, this is a good selection.  It is a pretty hefty book with 600+ pages, but reads very easily (in my opinion).  The author does tend to go off on tangents frequently, but the story ties together very nicely.  The novel is divided into three sections.  The first section is about a young man named Andrew Harrington and how he lost the love of his life, but is offered a chance to go back in time to change the outcome.  The second section follows a man named Tom Blunt and his attempt to live and love in the present by pretending to be someone from the future.  The third section focuses on a fictionalized H.G. Wells (who appears in the previous sections as well) and his own experience with time travel.  The end went on a bit long, but by then you only have about 20 pages left and if you've already read the previous 580 then you may as well settle in and finish it. There are a multitude of characters and subplots woven into the tome, and one feels as though Palma is writing for a reader from that long gone era when books were a primary form of entertainment.  This is a book for people who don't want to watch television because they know the imagination provides a more fantastic escape.

Mockingjay

Well, in all honesty, I read this book because I often feel compelled to complete trilogies.  I didn't quite care for book two in the trilogy, but I pressed on so I could give an honest opinion of the entire trilogy. Now that I've read all three books, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I'm disappointed.  The protagonist is yet another weak, indecisive young woman (see Twilight series).  I'm so tired of these series portraying young women as victims.  Most of the action that takes place in this book only superficially involves the main character.  Usually she ends up having some kind of mental meltdown and someone else has to either talk her off the ledge or complete the action for her.  I get that it's a series for young readers, but why can't young women read about other young women who kick-ass and get over the mental blocks? Why can't we see a female character who is not crippled with "boy trouble"?  The first book was great, the second was repetitive and the third just dragged.  When I first began this series, I envisioned it going in a more political thriller/espionage direction, but it seems as if the author is either incapable of good plot and character development or just disinterested.  In the end it's a tepid teenage love story encased in the disguise of a (weak) political thriller.

The Phantom of the Opera

This is another book that I began prior to my trip to Paris and completed the day after my return.  It is a very easy read, but I was spending most of my time absorbing the city and reading Paris to the Moon in the evenings.  I did, prior to my arrival in Paris, read over half of the story. So on my first day in the city I made a special trip to the Garnier Opera to see the Phantom's box.  The story is told extremely well and the actual Garnier Opera is stunning in appearance.  If you read the book prior to entering the grand opera house, you will definitely get a feeling that a story such as that of Erik, Raoul, Chistine Daae, and the Persian could have taken place here.  It is a curious love story after all is said and done, but what better setting to have a curious love story than a grand, opulent opera house that seems capable of holding many mysteries and secrets.

Paris to the Moon

This book was recommended to me by a fellow RN when he found out I was going to be traveling to Paris.  I read half of the book prior to my trip and completed it while on my trip.  It was such a different experience for me to be reading a book about a city while I was actually exploring and experiencing said city.  I loved it!  It was almost uncanny how I would spend the day at the Jardin du Luxembourg only to curl up with this book later that evening in my hotel room, remove the bookmark, start reading, and realize that the next chapter was an essay about the exact same garden.  I really enjoyed the book and truly felt that it helped me experience Paris from a more observant perspective.  I recommend the book for anyone traveling to Paris or anyone who considers themselves a Francophile.  It is a book of essays, thoughts and considerations about Parisian life as lived by an expatriate.  The essays are somewhat linear, though, and the prose is easy to follow.  The descriptions are phenomenal and true to reality.  Even if you cannot make it to Paris any time soon, you can easily get lost and travel there through this work.