Tag: Book Club

An Ode to In-Flight Magazines

If there’s one thing I like to do on the plane, it’s read a magazine. Usually it’s too bumpy or my neighbors are too irritating to dive into a lengthy classic novel, but the bite-size length of most magazine articles are just what I need to make the trip fly (yeah, I went there).

Yesterday, I had planned on playing iPhone games for the majority of my travel time, however, bubble mania one addictive game in particular apparently required that I be online to play? Wha? So I turned to the airline-provided magazine and was pleasantly surprised. Actually, whenever I fly American, I read most of their mag but I was pleased to find that United’s publication, Hemispheres, was just as good, if not better.

I read a light piece on road tripping, learned the must-dos if I ever find myself in Seattle, and more.

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The layout was especially fresh and pleasing. So, I came to a conclusion and decided to write a post about it: Airline magazines are super underrated! I mean, travel is an interest of mine, so naturally I’m drawn to most of the topics at hand. But unlike Condé Nast Traveler, for example, I can actually see myself seeing and doing the things included in these articles, not just fantasizing about it. Next time you’re flying, burn through one of these before reaching for the one you bought at the travel shop before boarding.

My all-time favorite regular mags are Sunset and Southern Living. What are yours?

August Reading

What are you reading and why?

Last night, I finished reading The Last Empress by Anchee Min. It is the sequel to Empress Orchid, which I read earlier this year. This book is a thoroughly-researched history of the Empress’s life, and is completely 180 degrees from the way she is portrayed by most historians, like this one. Wow. If you read that link, and wonder how this woman could ever be portrayed as compassionate, loving, dedicated to her sons–in short, likable, then check out the book. (Literally, check it out, it is available at the McPherson Library).

This month, I have three books in my stack. The Help, due to the movie’s recent release, The Paris Wife, due to its current popularity and my love of Paris, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, the book that is taking me One Hundred Years to finish. I expect that I’ll be able to finish The Help and The Paris Wife quickly, because books that are über-popular, let’s face it, usually aren’t terribly difficult. This does not mean they aren’t good!! They’re just easier.

Why am I reading the aforementioned? Well, I try to read for reading’s sake. It keeps a person’s brain engaged in a way that TV never can. It allows me to brush up on grammar and vocabulary, and (in a book written in an accent/dialect like The Help) my creativity. I’m sure there’s a term for “reading aloud in your head” to make the funny spellings of dialect-written books make sense, and it helps exercise that skill.

I haven’t cracked open The Paris Wife yet but I’m excited in getting to it after The Help. One Hundred Years of Solitude is on my list because I enjoyed Love in the Time of Cholera and buzzed through that book very quickly. This one is proving much more tedious and less engrossing. But it won awards, and is supposedly the author’s best work, so I must finish it.

Click on any photo to be taken to amazon.com where the book can be purchased. Except I got them all from the local library.

Reading (2)

Happy May, everyone! It’s still chilly here, not a typical Kansas May, which is in fact very irritating to me. That and the fact that my bike has disappeared, but that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve always loved reading, and when I’m not chasing around the dog these days (can’t take my eye off of him for a minute) I still try to fit in a few chapters every day. I finished those library books I wrote about last time, loved one (Empress Orchid) and thought the other was just OK (The Life and Opinions…). I’m on the waiting list  for Water for Elephants but since the movie’s out, the list is rather long, so we’ll see. Everyone (like me) wants to check it out before watching the film. I’m currently working on One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, an author I like (while in Morocco, I read Love in the Time of Cholera).

One Hundred Years of Solitude is on my (drumroll) arbitrary list of 100 books I will read someday. I know, right? Well, there’s a new tab at the top of the post which I adapted from a word document that’s been sitting around on my desktop for about a year now. I don’t remember who compiled it or where I found it, but it’s a list, and I do love crossing things off lists. I want to read many or most books on it, so it’s up there. If you want to check it out every now and then to see how I’m doing, well, that’d be fun :)

Also, don’t forget to vote for me (on the right sidebar). They’ve reset their counts and with lots of votes I could break into the first page easily!