Category: For Fun (Page 3 of 5)

All the links from my West Coast vacation posts.

EPIC SUMMER VACATION!

August 22, 2018 /

My other hobby besides reading is planning vacations!! And because I did so much research to arrange for our two-week tour of the West Coast from Oregon to Los Angeles, I decided to write posts on all of our many stops.

Here are all the links below in case you missed something that interests you. I’ve covered where we stayed and what we did as well as other important details for planning your own trip.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, OR

The Redwoods

Point Arena Lighthouse

San Francisco and The Beat Museum

Laguna Beach

Disneyland

Baseball in Los Angeles

If you have any questions just leave them in the comments sections of each post. I’m happy to help!!

BASEBALL IN LOS ANGELES

August 22, 2018 /

This post will wrap up my series on my epic summer vacation.

After Disneyland we stayed in L.A. one more day to see the Cubs (one of the teams we root for) play the Dodgers. We moved hotels because 1) Disney is very far away from Dodger stadium, not necessarily by distance but by time needed to travel this distance in LA traffic, and 2) Disney is expensive.

Because I spent a lot of time researching the best hotel to stay at to attend a baseball game at Dodger Stadium, I thought I’d share our experience.

DISNEYLAND!

August 15, 2018 /

I was actually surprised when my husband suggested adding Disneyland to our epic West Coast vacation, but I wasted no time researching and planning for this experience.

Luckily I’ve had the Disney credit card for several years and had built up enough points to pay for a chunk of our stay.

‘RED SPARROW’ – THRILLING

July 21, 2018 /

I just finished Red Sparrow: A Novel (The Red Sparrow Trilogy) thanks to a recommendation from a friend, and wow was it a great read!!

This book, published in 2013, is currently a movie getting lackluster reviews. My advice would be skip the movie and read this book instead.

Dominika, a young and talented Russian intelligence officer is, against her own wishes, sent to “Sparrow School” to learn “sexpionage” and then assigned to operate against a CIA agent, Nate Nash, to find out the identity of Nash’s mole inside the Russian government. Nate and Dominika being working each other, and eventually one of them betrays their country to work for the other. What follows is truly delightful and terrifying and is apparently realistic because the author, Jason Matthews, is retired from the CIA.

‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’ & the meaning of life

May 15, 2018 /

I hate that it took Tom Wolfe’s death today for me to break out my tattered copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but so it goes.

Though this book hasn’t been out of my shelf in a few years…(In it I found a menu for ordering fresh fruit on my honeymoon – 2007 – and 2 ticket stubs to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum – from 2013 – which is a funny place to have this book LOL!!??), this book contains a passage I think of often and fondly…

This memorable and favorite passage is on finding the meaning of life, on finding this meaning when in a certain “state of mind.” I hadn’t read this passage in several years but today I did…

‘Bachelor Nation’ – yes I’m part of it

March 29, 2018 /

I have watched literally every season of The Bachelor and The Bachlorette. And Bachelor in Paradise, which is my favorite of them all!!

These shows are my Monday night pleasure, and I am not going to call it a “guilty pleasure” because I no longer – somewhat thanks to this new book, Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure, feel guilty about it!

Why do I – someone who obviously reads and watches more intellectual works – watch this show? I think it’s a curiosity about human nature. Even with the understanding of producer manipulation and editing (both which are highlighted in this book I’m going to review today) I love watching how people act and relate to each other. Thanks to DVR I can turn a 2-hour show into a manageable 1+ hours. (Or the 3 hour episodes – which my husband complains about – into a manageable and fabulously enjoyable 2 hours.)

So when I heard about the newest book about this popular TV franchise, Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure, I knew I had to read it.

‘Behind Her Eyes’ – you shouldn’t read this book, but…please do

March 23, 2018 /

I just finished a book that kept my attention for sure Behind Her Eyes: A Suspenseful Psychological Thriller– by Sarah Pinborough.

In fact, I have been hiding from my family and my responsibilities here at home to finish it, and I just finished it…

But now I’m annoyed. The ending is just too much for me to take. I did appreciate the suspense and most of the narrative techniques used, but I just hated how the ending left me feeling. Ugh.

So now I’m telling you not to read this…except I want you to read it so we can discuss this horrible ending. Ha!!!

Five reasons why book signings are better than concerts

March 20, 2018 /

The last time I left a book signing, I felt invigorated, inspired, and more excited about the artist’s work. It was like how I feel after a concert!!

This got me thinking about how book signings and concerts are similar…and in some ways, book signings are even better!

Most books signings – at least the ones I have been to — follow a simple format: The author gives a short talk, takes questions from the audience, then he or she goes to a table and waits for a line of people to come through with their books.

I went to two book events last year — Viet Thanh Nguyen and Jamie Ford – and they were both awesome.I ended up liking the authors (in person) even more than I expected. They were both funny and truly entertaining.

Here are some reasons I think book signings/events may be even better than concerts:

Goodnight Moon (spotted on This is Us)

March 8, 2018 /

This week’s “This is Us” featured the children’s book Goodnight Moon.

I, like many parents, read this book hundreds of times over several years. Seeing it on this show made me happy and sad (like everything on this show, right??) – sad because it has been years since I read Goodnight Moon but happy that I shared this experience with all the parents on this show (and real people around the world) across generations who have also read this book to their children at night. My copy of this book says 60th anniversary, and we’ve had it for about 10 years now!!

This post will take much less investigation than my previous book sighting on this show because I actually have this book in my bookcase though it hasn’t been off the shelf in years.

Notice this book actually has two authors...

This is Us & “Poem Counterpoem”

January 15, 2018 /

In the super-popular, critically acclaimed, and award-winning NBC series This is Us Randall aka “Number 3” of the triplets is named after a poet.

We learned this namesake in Season 1, Episode 3: “Kyle” when we see William give Rebecca a copy of Poem Counterpoem by Dudley Randall. William says that Kyle/Randall’s birth mother read this poetry to him while in the womb. Rebecca then takes William’s suggestion to “give him his own name” and changes Number 3’s name from Kyle to Randall. “Maybe you’ll see fit to give it to him someday,” William says, and in fact later we see this book on Randall’s shelf.

Update: In the second to last episode of the series, William reappears and recites Randall’s poem Luzon again. I loved this!

I don’t watch a lot of TV because I am usually reading, so a show has to REALLY be worth my time. Obviously, this show is. In fact, “This is Us” may be my favorite show ever…

And when I see a “literary cameo” in a show, I like to dig a little deeper to pay tribute to it – both the cameo and the show – and learn more myself.

So I decided to investigate Dudley Randall, Poem Counterpoem, and the lines of his poetry quoted in Episode 7 “Best Washing Machine in the World” when Beth (Randall’s wife) and William (Randall’s birth father) gaze up at the stars after eating pot brownies (did I mention I love this show??).

What I found out about this “literary cameo” surprised me!

Category: For Fun (Page 3 of 5)

EPIC SUMMER VACATION!

BASEBALL IN LOS ANGELES

DISNEYLAND!

‘RED SPARROW’ – THRILLING

‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’ & the meaning of life

‘Bachelor Nation’ – yes I’m part of it

‘Behind Her Eyes’ – you shouldn’t read this book, but…please do

Five reasons why book signings are better than concerts

Goodnight Moon (spotted on This is Us)

This is Us & “Poem Counterpoem”

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