This week’s Book Blogger Hop question: Do you have a book with a location that you just HAD to visit after reading the book?
Oh, definitely! Most of the trips I take end up being literary pilgrimages in one way or another. 🙂 But there are two places that I most wanted to visit (and they will probably not surprise regular readers!) Continue reading “Blog Hop: Have Book, Will Travel”
When I started reading To Hold the Sun by Chas Watkins, I have to admit I wasn’t quite sure if it was memoir, self-help, or fiction. But the copyright page tells me “this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance…” etc, so technically it’s a novel. But I found I liked it much better viewed as self-help, or perhaps philosophy.
The plot is essentially the old fable, a student goes to the master and says, “Teach me your wisdom.” This particular students is an investigative journalist who is vaguely dissatisfied with his life, sent on an assignment to the Caribbean island of Roatan, there to interview Paul, a practitioner of “the art of happiness,” as well as of handstands. Continue reading “Book Review: To Hold the Sun”
I’ve been reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo this week, so naturally I have the cathedral on the brain. I already shared some photos in a previous Saturday Snapshot, though, so I had to come up with a new angle…like the view.
The Seine and the Eiffel Tower, from one of Notre Dame’s towers. I got lots of pictures of the Eiffel Tower and walked under it–I didn’t go up in it, because I was already planning to get the view from Notre Dame.
This may look like a complete muddle of rooftops, but look for the gold statues near the center, with the blue dome behind them. That’s the Opera Garnier, and what photography doesn’t manage to capture is how gloriously those statues seem to shine, even from a distance, even on a cloudy day.
And this is not a view from the towers, but it is on a street a block away… I wonder what Victor Hugo would think?
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Today, a few more pictures from my Vancouver trip. These are from the botanical gardens, and if you’re ever going to Vancouver, I recommend it! My camera battery died halfway through the gardens, but I managed a few pretty pictures…
This hedge-maze labyrinth was amazing. So much fun–big enough to feel like a challenge, but not so big that it got frustrating. And it amuses me that there’s a “monkey puzzle tree” in the middle!
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If you’re ever in Vancouver (as I was a couple weeks ago), I highly recommend visiting Granville Island. It’s a collection of wonderful little shops, and there’s a big market as well. My favorite was The Crystal Ark, which had all sorts of crystals and jewelry for sale (at insanely good prices!)
I enjoyed the Canadian geese too… The Crystal Ark is online, but only has a small selection of their products available–which may be just as well, as I shudder to think of the shipping costs!
I was tempted by lots of things, but I ended up buying a crystal tower, because…Minas Tirith! And naturally I had to put it in an appropriate place on my bookshelf when I got home.
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