Pink Boots and a Machete by Mireya Mayor

I've been on an autobiography kick lately, and actually stumbled across this title while reading a magazine on an airplane.  Mireya Mayor was previously unknown to me, but, as I learned from reading, she's a former NFL cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins turned explorer/scientist/host for the NatGeo channel.  The subtitle for the book is My Journey from NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer.


The book explains just that.  Born in Miami to a Cuban mother, Mireya grew up an only child in a female dominant household.  She pursued cheerleading after high school, made an NFL team cheer squad, then left to pursue academia and exploration.  This is where the book gets really interesting.

Mayor's explorations begin in Madagascar studying lemurs.  She ends up in Africa and South America various times studying biology; giraffes, wildebeests, gorillas, lemurs, etc.  The title of 'pink boots' comes from her notoriety for wearing pink boots in the field, although sadly none of the photos of her included in the book have her actually wearing pink boots...

An explorer she may be, but a writer she is not.  I found the book a little too chaotic, even though she has an awesome story to tell.  First she's in Africa as an undergrad, then South America almost dying, then back in Africa as a grad student, then working for National Geographic.  In a quest to include almost every place she's ever been, she left out almost all things personal, which made the story dry.  Her travels are incredibly interesting, don't mistake me, but I finished the book learning nothing about the storyteller.  She tells an anecdote about almost dying in Guyana, but doesn't elaborate much on the details.  That's interesting stuff!

Her stories about giraffes were awesome, as I'm a giraffe lover.  I thought her best travel stories were worrying about where to pee with an all male group, using tampons to light fires in the rainforest, picking off ticks, getting infections, seeing gorillas mating, and running out of food, rather than the actual  biology of it.  Discovering new species is awesome, but so is finding out you found someone to date in the rainforest.

I'm not actually sure how many years her career has spanned, although she did note she finished her PhD.  Not only does she jumps locations a lot, the sense of time is all over the place.  She'll describe a trip and then suddenly its years later.  I also thought her writing tended towards the cliched, not what I expected from someone who's written a PhD dissertation. I think she has an amazing story to tell, but just not the writing skill to tell it in the most engaging way.

I definitely enjoyed reading it though.  It reads really well.  There's no scientific jargon to putter through and she spends time talking about mundane things like lipgloss.  On her first trip, and subsequent others, she brings with her a LBD (little black dress).  I could have done without the girly complaining and the mention of using a blowdryer in the middle of a rainforest.  I know that's crass to say, since its her story to tell.  If its the truth, then so be it, but I  dislike woman who pride themselves on being independent, kick ass women, then worry while in the middle of nowhere about how they look.  It's a strange paradox.

As far as autobiographies go, I've never read one even remotely close to compare it to.  That says a lot about Mayor right there.

used bookstores

I'm still alive, I swear.  Just been a busy week!

Yesterday while having an all-day fun day with a friend, we stopped into a local used store.  There's so many I haven't hit yet!  I didn't purchase anything, but as always, I enjoyed the experience.

(From the back of the store in one of the aisles)

One of the smaller ones I've been in, but I didn't get a chance to browse for long.  Thai food was calling!

I'm working my way through Agatha Christie's autobiography.  Strangely enough, while inside the bookstore, a store employee and a patron were discussing Agatha Christie.  I first read this in high school for a 10th grade English class.  While everyone else groaned about how boring their person of choice was, I was deeply engrossed in Agatha's life.    I'm not quite halfway through yet, and remember surprisingly little of her life.  Review will come when I finish. 

I'm also reading The Hobbit rather grudgingly.  The first thirty pages or so did not grab my attention, but its a book on The List that I need to read.  I called my sister to complain about who all these hobbits are and what exactly are they doing, but she promised me the book get better.  I need a more open mind, she said. 

Thirdly, I'm still trekking through Anna Karenina which I'm still enjoying.  I knew it was going to be a long, slow read so I'm not feeling any pressure to finish.  

A very young...

Gymnast! Dancer! Skater!

Jill Krementz published a series of books for children in the seventies, all beginning with the title A Very Young... The idea behind them is genius; find a child excelling in a sport/hobby and photograph their life.

As a child I pored over A very young dancer constantly. This book follows Stephanie, a ten year old dancer training at The School of American Ballet.  She auditions for The Nutcracker, earning herself the role of Clara.  The book follows her from auditions to the rehearsals to the show.  I'm not sure why I loved this book so much.  Maybe the fact that I did ballet, maybe the fact that the girl was ten, maybe because of the awesome black and white photography.  Stephanie seemed so exotic and unique to me as a kid. My copy of the book is tattered, dog-eared, taped together, and still loved.  It now resides in my parent's house.

I wasn't aware of A very young gymnast or A very young skater until I was a teenager.  The gymnast chosen was Torrance York, who is now a famous photographer.  She was also referenced in Jennifer Sey's book Chalked Up, an autobiography of her life as an elite athlete.  Jennifer and Torrance competed against each other in the 1970's.  Katharine Healy is the skater.  All three girls (Katharine, Torrance, and Stephanie) resided in NYC.

I am now the proud owner of all three of these books.  There are more in the series (young gardener, young horseback rider, young chef to name a few, none of which I've read).

My copies.

Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares

Sisterhood Everlasting is the epilogue of the well-read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.  Somehow I missed the pre-release hype and the initial release of the book.  Thank goodness a friend texted me informing me of its existence.

I liked the Sisterhood series.  The series ended, I thought, favorably enough so though a fifth book was enjoyable to read, it really wasn't necessary.  While the previous four are written about teenagers for a mostly teenage crowd, this epilogue is definitely for a more mature crowd.  I usually hate lumping a series of books into one homogenous group, but I'm going to do it here and refer to the first four as simply the Sisterhood.  Go with it and hate me later.

The time gap between end of book four and the epilogue is about a decade.  A lot can happen in ten years, even to fictional people.  It's hard not to envy the Septembers, four friends born in the same month, in the same area, to mothers in the same prenatal class.  The idea seems corny, but the concept works for the story.  I think part, if not most, of the reason these books were so popular, is the unshakeable friendship of these girls.  Their trials and tribulations pale in comparison to the bond of friendship that trumps the bonds each of these girls have with their own siblings.

Until tragedy strikes.  After a decade, the inevitable happened.  All four girls went separate ways.  This was already in motion during book four.  What's more surprising is that when their worlds all get rocked, the friends, for seemingly the first time, don't seek refuge and support with each other.  In fact, they all turn outward and communication between them is almost nonexistent.  That was the single problem I had with the book.  It took so long for the friends to reunite that it lacked the breeziness and friendly dialogue that I so loved about the original books.

Bee's behavior is most predictable.  She was always my least favorite of the four.  Taking off on her flowered bike, she hopes to combat grief and deal with other personal problems by taking California head-on.  Although I'm sure she's not the first think so, California never fixes anyone's problems.

My biggest disappointment was Carmen.  I think her life went in the least expected direction, with her becoming a fake actress that crowd Hollywood's, or in her case New York's, streets.  She tries to hide her Latino heritage by passing herself off as white, losing herself in the meantime.  Her fiance couldn't be more wrong for her and I spent most of the book rooting for their breakup.

Lena has always been my favorite.  If anything, she's predictable and consistent, sometimes frustratingly slow.  But I like that the 'beautiful' friend is also the introspective, quiet, insecure one.   She's more real that way.  I thought I would have been annoyed by the endless story of Kostos, but Lena's happiness is made it worthwhile.  Good for you Lena.

A worthwhile read, even if the story was so unexpected.  I cried, felt the shock, and wished I could hug each of the girls in turn and tell them its okay.  These books are the only ones I've read by Ann Brashares, although I know she's got quite a few others on the market.  Her writing in the epilogue definitely beat the previous four, but whether thats from experience or she just writes better for an older crowd, I'm not sure.

I read the entire book in one sitting.  Definitely worth the evening at home.

currents buys and reads

Happy July 4th!!!!

I've finished a couple of books recently, Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares and Messenger by Jeni Stepanek.  Before sharing my opinions, I wanted to compose a list of recent books buys.  Some of these were gifts, since I just recently had a birthday!

Pink boots and a machete by Mireya Mayor
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
Agatha Christie, an autobiography
Entwined by  Heather Dixon
Winged Obsession by Jessica Speart
Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum
And only to deceive  by Tasha Alexander
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Books I'm currently reading:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

100 Books to Read in 2010 (2013)

During the Christmas season of 2009, my older sister and I organized a book list of 100 books.  We took suggestions from various "Best Book" lists, banned book lists, classics lists, as well as some sci-fi suggestions.  Below is the final draft of our 100 Books to read in 2010.  Yes, we realize its now 2011, but several moves, vacations, grad school and starting new jobs, plus reading other non-list books, have been very time consuming.  The date is now arbitrary, but the list is still awesome.  (Titles crossed out have been read). 

1. 1984 by George Orwell

2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

3. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

4. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

6. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

7. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

8. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

9. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

10. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

11. Oliver Twist or David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

12. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

13. Persuasion by Jane Austen

14. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

15. Life of Pi by Yann Martel

16. Middlemarch by George Elliot

17. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

18. Light in August by William Faulkner

19. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

20. Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

21. Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

22. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

23. Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

24. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

25. Dracula/Undead by Bram and Dacre Stoker

26. Night and Day by Virginia Woolf

27. Tess of the D’ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

28. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

29. Beloved by Toni Morrison

30. Dune by Frank Herbert

31. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

32. Watership Down by Richard Adams

33. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

34. Remembrance of Things past by Marcel Proust

35. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

35. Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

36. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

37. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

38. Brave New World by Aldophus Huxley

39. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

40. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

41. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

43. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

44. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara

45. Wings of the Dove by Henry James

46. Anna Karenina or War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

47. Ulysses by James Joyce

48. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

49. Moonheart by Charles de Lint

50. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

51. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

52. Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

53. Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

54. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

55. Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini

56. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

57. Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

58. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

59. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

60. Passage to India by E.M. Forster

61. Othello by Shakespeare

62. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

63. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

64. Castle in the forest by Norman Mailer

65. Secret Garden by Frances H. Burnett

66. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

67. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

68. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

69. The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett

70. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

71. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

72. I, Claudius by Robert Graves

73. Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne

74. Anne Frank:Diary of a young girl by Anne Frank

75. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

76. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

77. Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l’engle

78. Fanny Hill by John Cleland

79. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

80. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

81. Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth

82. I know why a caged bird sings by Maya Angelou

83. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

84. Native Son by Richard Wright

85. The Age of Reason by Thomas Payne

86. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

87. Doll’s House by Ibsen

88. Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

89. A Town like Alice by Nevil Shute

90. Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

91. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

92. Vanity Fair by William Mackerey

93. The Prince by Machiavelli

94. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

95. The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

96. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

97. A Pale View of hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

98. The Plague by Albert Camus

99. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

100. Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe

Hello!

Welcome to my book blog!

I wanted to start a blog to share books, reading, and sometimes photos with the cyber world. I was recently introduced to the world of e-readers, and now own a Kindle.  This blog is a collection of book reviews, ponderings of my favorite books and other interesting book information I come across.  I enjoy taking photos and will occasionally post some here as well.

My interests in books range all over the place; autobiographies, nonfiction, sports, romance, mainstream, classics, mysteries, sometimes religious, and very occasionally chick lit.  I also love reading young adult fiction as well.

Wish me luck!