I wouldn’t exactly call this book great literature (a lot of the dialogue, in particular, felt a little forced to me), but it’s perfect aeroplane reading. And given that that’s where I read most of it, I’m pretty much enamoured with it.

I bought the book in Darvill’s bookstore in Eastsound on Orcas Island on the strength of a strong BookSense review and the fact that I’m reading almost excusively work from female authors at the moment. I’m not sure that it lives up the all the hype, but there’s not a whole lot wrong with it, either.

Now that I’m back in Boston I’ve reclaimed my Netflix queue and have started watching movies again. What a relief.

I quite enjoyed this moving. I thought the acting was superb, I enjoyed the story-line, and I liked the switching of points of view and time points. My only criticsm is that the movie is adapted from a broadway play, and it feels like it is – a lot of the dialogue feels like it would work much better on the stage.

The movie is a little strange, though. It sort of leaves you hanging, not sure what to think, or how you feel about the characters, which I think it fair enough. Nothing in real life is black and white.

Yet another book by a woman that was a very pleasant surprise. I really didn’t think I wanted to read a historical novel about the civil war, but Geraldine Brooks proved me wrong.

This book is an excellent read, and reasonably quick (not least because I was unable to put it down once I had started it). I’ve never read “Little Women”, and have never really wanted to (another reason why this book was such a nice surprise), but this book is just superb. That it uses “Little Women” as a starting point is almost incidental, but it’s an interesting thing to have done.

This book is excellent – I’m sorry it took me so long to read it. I thought I didn’t want to read a WWII novel. I’ve actually been reading a lot of novels by women recently, and I’m consistently pleasantly surprised. I often find myself enjoying a book on a subject I really thought wasn’t for me (WWII, for example), and I’m always a little bit outraged that these books don’t seem to get nearly as much critical acclaim as they should. This book has certainly won awards, but I felt like it wasn’t “pushed” nearly as much as it should have been.

I bought this book mainly for its directions on hiking Gray’s peak, and the directions it provided were very accurate (in particular the part about needing a car with good clearance). I should have paid more attention to it.

The other hikes that it lists also look promising. If I find myself traveling to Boulder again (which I certainly hope will be the case), I’ll make sure to pack it. There’s a nice range of hikes – from those that you can fit in an afternoon to those that need a full day, with maps and excellent advice.

I bought this book on the strength of a recommendation at my bookstore, and I was quite disappointed by it. I’m not sure how much of this was a result of the translation (the original is written in Spanish), and how much of this was intrinsic to the original work, but my suspicion is that the problem is with the original work. I found the plot like quite confusing – very difficult to keep all the characters straight – and I found a lot of the writing quite flowery. And, I found the plot twist at the end a little unbelievable.

This was the only guide that I could find for Boulder in my bookstore, so I bought it. I didn’t use the Denver or Colorado Springs section of the guide book, but I did use the Boulder section quite extensively. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. I’m more used to the Lonely Planet guidebooks, presume a little bit more lust for adventure and sponteneity. Still, I kept myself busy in Boulder, and I didn’t lost, so the guide book didn’t do a bad job.

I bought this intending to use it when I went to Canada with Dad. However, Dad and I didn’t make it to Vancouver. We went to Orcas Island, and decided it was so pleasant that we wouldn’t bother with Vancouver. So the guide didn’t really do a very good job of convincing me that I really NEEDED to visit Vancouver, but I’m sure it would have done a good job of guiding me had I decided to go there.

I’ve seen this movie before, but watched it again with a group of girlfriends last night, after a delicious Thai meal. I really like this movie. I like it’s messages: that we’re all capable of change, that what is right for one person isn’t necessarily right for the next, that we’re all lovable. It’s not overly taking mentally, and you feel great after having watched it. I’m reliably told that the book is at least as good – so I’m going to add it to my “to read” list.

I thought this movie was very strange, indeed. First, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to get out of it; second, it wasn’t anything like it’s trailer suggested it might be (why do movie studios do this?). All in all, a little unsatisfying.