New chair!

Old chair I have been using for about eight years...

New chair, oh how I love thee!  Broyhill, big and tall, truly amazing comfort!  I highly recommend it!

And so it goes...

Book Review: Argo by Antonio J. Mendez (and Matt Baglio)

     I read this for the CLPL Real World Reads Book Club (non-fiction club) for May 2013.  It was a really easy read and since I did not see the movie or any trailers for it I was not sullied by it before reading.  I plan on getting the movie from the library now that I have read it to see if it is any good compared to the book.  Apparently they are very different, as the actual rescue does not happen until the last 20 pages of the book, and I was told that the rescue itself is what the entire movie focuses on, so the film must be quite different in feel from the book.
     The book's author had a really nice writer's voice, it was not tense or scary, it was informative and fun, a pretty light read actually compared to other non-fiction books I have read.  It was a quick read too, you kind of blink and you are halfway through the book.  It was interesting to find out how makeup artists helped the CIA improve their disguise tactics over the years, and little details like making sure you have the right staple on a fake passport because a certain country uses cheap ones that rust on purpose.  We also never find out the real name of the makeup artist who worked with the CIA for so many years, so I am curious if anybody has put all the little fact crumbs the author gives the reader together and has figured out who the makeup artist really was/is...
     I am still a little up in the air about how I feel about the government spending $10,000 in the late 1970s (must be an enormous amount in today's terms) to rescue only 6 people who were pretty safe in a nice mansion and hosted by the Canadian ambassador.  They spent their time tanning, enjoying a few beverages, and playing scrabble, so the amount of money spent seems a bit excessive for people not in any kind of serious and immediate danger.  I also could not believe how the rescue of the rest of the people held hostage in the U.S. embassy for 444 days went so terribly wrong and that the head honchos of the government agencies  were not smart enough to try and use the cover story again in some way.  Since I was extremely young when all this happened, it helped put the time period into context for me, and also why the U.S. tried to keep up diplomatic relations with Iran, how it overlapped with the USSR making their way into Afghanistan, and why this helped motivate many people to not re-elect Jimmy Carter.  Pretty slick timing on the part of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
     Definitely worth a read, it is interesting, informative, and a fairly light book considering it is a pretty heavy political topic and shares some working methods of the CIA.  Their ability to find people who can look like multiple ethnicities, speak multiple languages, and go unnoticed as an average Joe makes me wonder how many times we have actually seen them in airports and just do not know it...

And so it goes...

Book Review: Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

     Read for Bookies fiction book club CLPL for May 2013.  I finished the book the night before and then promptly missed going to book club because I was grading finals.  This double angered me because I did not like the book at all, and since I missed book club I basically read it for no benefit whatsoever.

     Different characters narrate each chapter, rotating between a few of them.  I do not feel like the writer captured the voices of each person very well, and much less successfully than other recent books that have done the same thing (like The Help).  It was a farm, life was hard, and people were terribly racist.  Not a big shocker for 1940s Mississippi and definitely a cliche in the book and film worlds.  I would not recommend wasting your time reading this one, I definitely want those hours of my life back.  It was boring and not thought-provoking at all.

And so it goes...

Happy Mother's Day 2013!

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” 
― Washington Irving




And so it goes...

Quick Book Review: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow

     It was good, but not as massively inspirational as I was expecting it to be with all the people in my book club telling me I should read it because I am a college instructor.  It was touching and certain ideas will definitely stick with me, such as his definition of luck and the real purposes of brick walls.  I watched the actual lecture on YouTube after I finished the book, and the lecture was also o.k., but the book gave you more insights into his reasoning.  I did like seeing more pictures than the book had and the clip he showed of the work created by his students.  The animation sequence was pretty funny!  It is also a very quick read if you are looking for a short one.  Here is the YouTube video if you are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

And so it goes...