Back Log

I started this blog with every intention of being as diligent in writing as I am in tracking my food. But, alas! Alack! It hasn't happened. Tonight, though, is the night I right this wrong.

So, without further adieu, over the last month I read...

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I honestly can't say enough good things about this book. No, I have not read The Tipping Point (same author) or Blink. Adam put this book down after a few chapters, claiming it was making him depressed. I could see why, but, after a few more chapters I found it hopeful. And, in an indirect way, it explained things about my parents and their parents. Things they probably never realized. In a word, fascinating.

The Red Thread and The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood

I found the first very frustrating. Her characters were not very likable and I didn't feel drawn in. This is why I put it down after 100 pages. The Knitting Circle was better, but again I didn't love the characters, though they were well-written. There was too much drama -- unrealistic drama -- in every characters life, so I had a hard time feeling connected. I finished it, but felt like maybe it had been a waste of time. Sorry, Ms. Hood.

I re-read parts of The Help by Katherine Stockett and felt as pulled in by the story and the characters as I did when I first read it last year. Really a spectacular first book. I read it for the first time in a day. One of the many, many times Adam declared himself a book widower.

I am currently in the half-way through With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge. Gripping. Gripping, I say! It's making me wonder why we never learned anything about the war (WWII) in the Pacific in school. I picked this up, along with Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie, after starting to watch the HBO mini-series The Pacific with my brother-in-law in PA. I absolutely loved Band of Brothers, draining and painful as it was, and fell immediately for the new series. Unfortunately, I was only in PA long enough to see the first 3 episodes. I was distraught enough to consider for a brief moment getting TV. When I voiced my dismay to my brother, he suggested reading the two memoirs it is based on. Military man that he is, he's read a lot of war histories and soldier memoirs and proclaimed these two of the best.