#FitReaders Check-In #37

Published on by Rachelle
Geeky Bloggers Book Blog
  • This check-in is for September 7th – 13th.  This week was a recovery week from my trip to New Orleans.  I did a lot more walking and driving than I’m used to, and it all took a toll on my knees and back.  I was even too exhausted to make myself get up to do yoga.
  • 10-Week Mindful Diet Plan for Healthy Eating? Nope.  Instead, I finished up the various snacks that I bought during the trip, including a bottle of Swamp Pop pralines and cream soda.  Now that all the yummy stuff has been devoured, the Boyfriend and I are both trying to eat a lot healthier.
  • If you’d like to add me as a friend on FitBit, you can find me HERE.
  • Yoga Workouts: 0/5
  • Steps: 33,765/63,000
  • Miles: 13.87/21
  • Flights of stairs: 48/70
  • Active Minutes: 129/210
  • Total Money Donated: $22.26

Monday’s Minutes #36 and #37

Published on by Rachelle
  • The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan – for the read-along.
  • Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness
  • The Portable Dorothy Parker
  • Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling – for the HP re-read.
  • Armada by Ernest Cline

Joy Night PortableInterview Prisoner Armada

Finished: Uprooted by Naomi Novik, which I’ll be reviewing sometime this week, and Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti, which I won’t be reviewing.  Though it was a fairly decent book on modern Feminism, much of its information is outdated.

Uprooted Full

Challenges:

S&S Bingo2update12

Total pages read: 771

Total # of books for the year: 60.

Top Commenters: My Top Commenter for both weeks was Shaina @ Shaina Reads.

What are you reading this week?

The Vampire Tour of New Orleans

Published on by Rachelle

If you’ve been reading my posts for the past couple of weeks, you already know that the Boyfriend and I took a long-weekend trip to New Orleans to celebrate our second anniversary.  Both of us are huge fans of vampire stories, especially Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.  While vampires weren’t the sole reason we chose to go to New Orleans, If you know anything about Louis and Lestat, you know they spent a lot of their time together in the city.  The Boyfriend attempted to find a decent vampire tour, but the few offered seemed hoaky and cheap.  So, we created our own, or rather, I searched through my copy of the Vampire Companion for all the places in New Orleans mentioned in the books.

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I was not prepared for how large the French Quarter is, and the map in the Vampire Companion is deceptive.  I’ll be writing more about that in my next post about New Orleans, but to put it simply, we never made it out of the French Quarter to see the Garden District or City Park.  However, on our drive back home we stopped off at the Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, LA.

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Now, this is not the actual plantation that Louis and Lestat live at in The Interview with the Vampire.  Pointe du Lac is entirely fictional and based on the West Indies style Pitot House.  However, Oak Alley was used, both inside and out, in the film adaptation for several scenes.  It’s also one of the biggest and most popular antebellum plantations still in existence.  The photo above is of the various souvenirs and such I got from the gift shop or as part of the tour, and the one below was taken from the front balcony of the house during the tour.

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Side Note: Have you ever wished all the people would just go away so you could get the perfect shot?  That’s why we didn’t drive out to the levee to take photos of the front.

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While we were in the French Quarter, we spent a lot of time in and around Jackson Square, which is in front of St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest church in the United States.  Unfortunately, we never made it inside the Cathedral due to their Labor Day weekend hours not being listed on the website.  It was closed to the public when we had planned on visiting during our last day in New Orleans.  We also visited St. Louis Cemetery, which is just outside the French Quarter.  Due to a high rate of vandalism and grave robbery, no one is allowed into the cemetery without a tour guide and only during the day.  We took one of the cemetery tours, but for reasons I’ll get into in a later post, we didn’t take any photos.  For now I’ll just say that it was the most depressing part of our whole trip.

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The last place we visited in the French Quarter is another building that Anne Rice used as a model for one of the many fictional places in her books.  The Gallier House wasn’t built until the 19th century; however, Anne Rice’s description of the townhouse Louis, Lestat, and Claudia live in for 65 years on the 2nd floor is based on this historic building.  The townhouse is returned to again and again throughout the Vampire Chronicles, and though it is open to the public, we didn’t know that or about the website when we were planning our trip.  Side Note: for a city that relies so heavily on tourism, it’s difficult to find information about anything not having to do with hauntings or partying.

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The Café du Monde also comes up on multiple occasions throughout the Vampire Chronicles, but I’m saving that for my future posts about the French Quarter.

The Joy Luck Club Read-Along: Week 1 Recap

Published on by Rachelle

Joy

Welcome to the 1st weekly recap of The Joy Luck Club read-along!  We officially started Monday, September 7th and the last day will be Friday, the 23rd of October.  Below is the schedule.  Each Saturday I’ll post a recap (with clearly marked spoilers for those who get a little behind).  The final review of the book will be on Saturday, October 24th.

  • Sep. 7th – 12th: Chapters “The Joy Luck Club” and “Scar”
  • Sep. 13th – 19th: Chapters “The Red Candle” and “The Moon Lady”
  • Sep. 20th – 26th” Chapters “Rules of the Game”, “The Voice from the Wall”, and “Half and Half”
  • Sep. 27th – Oct. 3rd: Chapters “Two Kinds” and “Rice Husband”
  • Oct. 4th – 10th: Chapters “Four Directions”, “Without the Wood”, and “Best Quality”
  • Oct. 11th – 17th: Chapters “Magpies” and “Waiting Between the Trees”
  • Oct. 18th – 23rd: Chapters “Double Face” and “A Pair of Tickets”

Before we get into this week’s chapters, here’s a bit of trivia: the book is arranged similarly to a game of Mahjong.  It has four parts that are each divided into four chapters.  Also, there are four families in the book.  Each chapter per part is from the perspective of either a mother or daughter from each family as if they’re taking their turn during a game of Mahjong.

Not a whole lot happened, action wise, in the first two chapters, “The Joy Luck Club” and “Scar” of part one.  However, what did occur was essential to the story and emotionally devastating.  I have a feeling there isn’t going to be anything that isn’t essential, but in these chapters the author gave us some background and context, and WOW!  I had to put the book down after fourteen pages, so I could process everything I was feeling.  How does anyone survive what Suyuan goes through in China?  How does anyone grow up to be a well-adjusted adult after a childhood like An-mei’s?

[Spoilers] None of my prior knowledge of China’s history prepared me for how Amy Tan depicts what the Japanese did when they invaded.  How can anyone not be affected by Suyuan’s response to her daughter’s question about the two babies after Suyuan says she lost everything during her escape?  “Your father is not my first husband.  You are not those babies.”  I was cooking pasta while I was reading, and that line made me sit down on the kitchen floor.  I don’t know how I feel about Jing-mei finding out after her mother’s death that those babies survived.  Is it somehow worse that they grew up without their mother and possibly raised in the same way An-mei was with the belief that her mother didn’t love her enough to stay?  One aspect of the mothers that I’m having difficulty with is the use of language to manipulate their daughters’ actions rather than to communicate their emotions or wishes for their daughters’ happiness.  Is it any wonder that Jing-mei constantly felt at odds with Suyuan?  Living with women whose words must be re-interpreted to get to the heart of what is really being said must be exhausting, especially when you add on the frequent switching from one language to another. [End Spoilers]

What do you think about the story so far?  Comment away!  Just be sure to mark clearly any spoilers 🙂

If you’d like to join in, sign up through the linky below with your blog, Twitter, Goodreads, etc.  The sign up will close at the end of the 2nd week, Saturday, September 19th.

 

#ShelfLove: The Perils of Book Hoarding

Published on by Rachelle

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This month, those of us participating in the #ShelfLove No Book Buying Challenge are discussing the pros and cons of owning a significant number of books.  For myself, I’ve only seen having a large personal library as positive, with one exception: moving.  I’ve been packing and unpacking my belongings throughout my entire life, and I don’t even know the number of times I’ve moved.  I’m uncomfortably familiar with the general workings of Uhaul rentals and storage units across the country and during one move I managed to double the weight of my poor Nissan.  I’ve also hurt my back a countless number of times from overfilling boxes with my book collection.

You would think I would have learned by now and tossed the majority of my Smaug worthy hoard.  Think again.  Despite my efforts to pare down the number of books I own, my library has only expanded in size.  Thanks to ebooks, and the No Book Buying Challenge, that’s no longer happening exponentially, but it’s still happening.  I have bought with gift cards or received as gifts, more physical books than I’ve read this year.  The books I have at my apartment are double stacked on the shelves, I have several more boxes in storage, and the Boyfriend and I are planning to move next year.

The boxes of books are the ones I hope always to own.  The ones at home are mostly books I’ve never read; which has led me to think that perhaps there is another con to book hoarding.  I’m not getting any younger and tomorrow is never a guarantee.  Either I need to make peace with the idea of never reading many of those books, or I need to make a decision.  Do I cull my collection (again) or develop the discipline to choose a book I own instead of a library book or one borrowed from the Boyfriend’s shelves? I think I’ll just throw my hands up in the air in frustration when I move again, just like I’ve done every move before *sigh*

Thursday’s Things #9

Published on by Rachelle
1001 Things
                Original Image: Viktor Hertz

#FitReaders Check-In #36

Published on by Rachelle
Geeky Bloggers Book Blog
  • This check-in is for August 31st – September 6th.  What an exhausting long weekend!  In 3 days, I managed to bring my step count up to what I needed for the whole week.
  • 10-Week Mindful Diet Plan for Healthy Eating? No, I followed the three-day beignet and coffee diet plan.
  • I’ll now be working towards my new step goal of averaging 9K steps per day.
  • If you’d like to add me as a friend on FitBit, you can find me HERE.
  • Yoga Workouts: 0/5
  • Steps: 57,313/56,000 (This is going up to 63,000)
  • Miles: 23.54/21
  • Flights of stairs: 39/70
  • Active Minutes: 201/210
  • Total Money Donated: $21.11

I’m Back!

Published on by Rachelle

I got back home from New Orleans last night.  Have you ever needed to recover from a vacation?

pjs

That’s how I feel right now, and that’s why there was no Monday’s Minutes post yesterday.  However, I didn’t want to leave you hanging until I get back into the swing of “normal” life again, so below is what you’ve got to look forward to throughout this month.

  • #FitReaders Check-Ins will continue as usual starting today.
  • The Joy Luck Club Read-Along – the first recap will be posted this Saturday, and the sign up is still open!
  • Uprooted review – I finished Uprooted by Naomi Novik last week before I left for New Orleans.
  • Thursday’s Things #9
  • The Vampire tour of New Orleans – As I mentioned in my Packing for New Orleans post, the Boyfriend and I came up with our own tour of New Orleans based on Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.  While we didn’t get to see every place, we saw enough for me to write a whole post about it.
  • My long weekend in the French Quarter – I’ll share the food we ate, the stuff we bought, and the non-vampire related places we visited or came across in our wanderings.  It may end up being a two-parter, and it will definitely contain tips that will save you a lot of stress and money.
  • The Never-Ending Anne Rice Reading Challenge
  • Tuesday’s Tunes, Wednesday’s Words, Friday’s Fairy Tales – I’ve got a ton of great ideas so I’ll get these features written and posted throughout the rest of the month.
  • RIP X – Vampires, Ravens, and Chthulu, oh my!  I’ll be posting my RIP X related reviews.
  • Harry Potter Discussion and Link Up – I’ll be posting the discussion post for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the 30th.  You could be featured, so be sure to get your HP related posts linked up before then!

Packing for New Orleans…

Published on by Rachelle

As promised, here are the books that the Boyfriend and I are taking with us to New Orleans to celebrate our 2nd anniversary.  I don’t know how many of these we’ll get through since we’ll be busy eating all.the.food. and seeing all.the.things, but the 1st two are audiobooks to try out on the drive there and back.

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  • A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams – This is a full-cast recording that I found at the library when I did a catalog search for books set in New Orleans.
  • A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole – This is an audiobook I found under the same search terms.
  • Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice – I know it’s cliché, but it’s been well over a decade since I read The Vampire Chronicles, and I’ve wanted to re-read them for awhile now.  The Boyfriend just finished this one, and he demanded that I not start it until we’re in New Orleans.  He’s now reading The Vampire Lestat.  Yep, we’re both big into vampires, as long as they don’t sparkle.
  • “Drabblecast”, “Hypnobobs”, and “Pseudopod” podcasts – In the spirit of RIP X, the Boyfriend and I will listen to these gothic, horror, and weird short story podcasts if the audiobooks don’t work out.  Isn’t it awesome that I’ve found someone who loves these kinds of stories as much as I do?  I’m one lucky gal.  I might write a sort of review of them at some point or give a Top Ten list of the best short stories.

We are also taking along my copy of The Vampire Companion by Katherine Ramsland, which covers The Vampire Chronicles up to Memnoch the Devil.  All of the currently offered vampire tours in New Orleans seem a bit hoaky, so the Boyfriend and I have decided to make our own.  We’ll be combining our crappy photography skills so hopefully I’ll having something to show you when we get back.

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril X

Published on by Rachelle
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               Image: Abigail Larson

Andi and Heather, of the Estella Society, are taking over as hosts for RIP X, and this is the 1st year that I’m participating!

It officially started yesterday, September 1st, but things have been so crazy busy since the Fall semester started that I feel like I’m I always running just a little bit behind and forgetting to do things.  The challenge is for two months (ending on Halloween), and this is the time of year when I love to read Horror and Gothic literature, and there is a reading “Peril” for everyone.  Perhaps it will help me feel a bit more grounded and get me into the spirit of Autumn.

I will be doing Peril the First: Read four books, any length, which fit the definition of RIP literature.

I don’t know what other books I’ll be reading, but the 1st one will be Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice.  I’ve been itching to re-read the series for years, and now I’m finally going to do it.  I also want to read some Classic Horror like Edgar Allen Poe or H.P. Lovecraft, but I’m not going to lock myself down to anything specific right now.

I may also participate in the group read of The Quick by Lauren Owen, but I haven’t decided yet since it overlaps with my read-along of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

Are you participating in RIP X?  Are you reading any Horror or Gothic titles that you think I should add to my TBR?  Let me know in the comments!