A good reminder that there is a different force at work in the workforce these days and if you are hating your cubicle, you’re not alone. Trunk gives some good ideas on how to craft the career you want and navigate resumes, job hunts and interviews. Parts of it are a bit obvious, but that may just be because I was wishing I had read this book 5 or 6 years ago.

To start with, I should say that if I had know what this book was going to be about, then I probably wouldn’t have read it. So it’s not really that surprising that I didn’t like it. First of all, I wanted to read a book about Thailand, which this book really is not at all. They are on Ko Sanh road at the beginning and the rest of the time is spent on an island utopia that really could have been anywhere. Secondly, I hate books about the darkness of humanity. Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, etc. I know it’s important to explore that side of our culture, but I am just not interested in reading about it. I’d rather watch the news.

I looked for this book everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. The library and bookstores didn’t have it, my friends didn’t own it and all told me it was bad, but I’ve loved all her other books, so I was determined to read it. Finally the library got in a copy and I made it about halfway. My friends were right. It is bad. I can deal with the characters, although none of them resonated with me, but what finally made me put the book down was the main character’s obsession with making up a personal history for the white boy. It made me crazy because it was so pointless and unlikely and also boring. Anyways, her other books are excellent.

A decent account of how to get into the freelance writing business. It’s a tad arrogant and a bit dated, but the samples of documents and letters in the appendix make it very much worth your while.

When I find a good book I tend to devour it and this one I read all in one day. I loved the midwifery details and the division in the town between traditional midwife care and the new maternity hospital. And I loved the East Coast characters and language and landscape. This book was recommended to me by several different friends and did not disappoint. At times I felt like the author was trying too hard to incorporate bits of factually correct history into the narrative and so the story wobbled a bit at times – losing the plot to account for historical data – but that’s a minor issue in such a great story. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with for her next book.

As a pushover who needs all the help she can get with negotiating, I found the layout and technique of this book quite useful. I definitely need some real-world scenarios to test it out in, but it gives you a different way of looking at the issue.

I should have stopped reading at the sentence “don’t worry Texans, it’s just a hypothetical!!!” but instead I continued on through the chirpy, Valley-girl prose, past numerous instances of “grody” “ick” and “wicked” until I felt that I was somehow learning about wine from a teenager.
Yes there is some good information in this book, and especially if you are really new to the wine world, it provides a good start, but good luck slogging through it. I certainly needed a drink afterwards.

Basically the same as Bacchus & Me, but a little less arrogant, a little less outdated, a slight fewer mentions of his Prada wardrobe, a little bit better writing and somehow a little bit more boring. I would definitely give this one a pass.

After tramping through Marco Polo’s ‘Travel’s’ and not being able to make much sense of place names and old world euphemisms, Bergreen’s book is a joy of information and adventure. He sticks closely to Marco’s journey, but also includes a lot of background information on the Polo family, the times and the places he is visiting, and seeing the big picture in context crystallizes everything. It’s still a big book and a bit of a slog to get through, but I liked how it straddled the lines between biography, history text and adventure story. There are also 3 sets of nice photos, but I could have done with some more maps. I’m a map junkie.

At first I was very skeptical of a book about time-travel. I loved “A Wrinkle in Time” when I was 6, but lately my tastes are a little different. I kept hearing good things about it, however, and after the 6th or 7th rave review, I thought I should check it out. And it was truly the best book I’ve read in a long while. It’s real, which is a funny thing to say about a book on time travel, but nevertheless… Anyways, I cleared my calendar and read it all in one day. Highly recommended.