Book Review: The Museum of Extraordinary Things

 

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Coney Island: Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a boardwalk freak show that amazes and stimulates the crowds. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father’s “museum,” alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man photographing moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River. The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his father’s Lower East Side Orthodox community and his job as an apprentice tailor. When Eddie captures with his camera the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the mystery behind a young woman’s disappearance.

(No Spoilers)

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#GIRLBOSS Book Review

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At seventeen, Sophia Amoruso decided to forgo continuing education to pursue a life of hitchhiking, dumpster diving, and petty thievery. Now, at twenty-nine, she is the Founder, CEO, and Creative Director of Nasty Gal, a $100+ million e-tailer that draws A-list publicity and rabid fans for its leading-edge fashion and provocative online persona. Her story is extraordinary—and only part of the appeal of #GIRLBOSS.

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Book Review: Never Let Me Go

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“As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life, and for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.” -Goodreads Bio

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Book Review: Wild

IMG_1997I waited way to long to review this, because now the hype about it has died down… but in fairness, that’s also a good thing because it means that maybe I can hype it back up a little. Because this book was amazing! I read it in big chunks, because it had a lot of natural stopping points. The story itself has some heart breaking moments in it, but they gave it depth and meaning.

It’s a story of a journey to move forward in life, and while reading it I remember thinking where is it? Where is the big epiphany? And that’s the thing, there wasn’t one. It’s a slow process that hit her a little at a time, just like it hits the reader. So for a while I was looking for something big I was wondering if the book was going to leave me unsatisfied. But I can tell you the moment I finished this book I let out that deep sigh and nodded my head to myself. It was brilliant, and that’s saying something because this isn’t the type of book I’m normally drawn too.

4 out of 5 stars.

Finished Read: Blog Inc

IMG_1465I’m not sure where this blog is going, let me be 100% honest about that. I am not blogging to create a business. But I’m intrigued with blogging as an art form, as a way to communicate with the world your own direction. I’ve followed a lot of blogs that were undeniably marketing their lifestyle, though I don’t think that’s what they attended. I think by reading a lot of blogs we can help find what might be missing in ours. Reading about someone else’s soul makes you assess your own. That’s not a lie.

So, I bought a book on blogging. A lot of the last half of it was about blogging for profit, which seems like such a foreign concept to me. But the part about blogging for community and passion really stuck with me. Hearing other people’s success stories made me feel empowered, not because I want to create an empire of this blog, but because it the blogging community is such a beautiful place where readers care the lives and successes of other men and women. It’s really eye opening to read a book on how that is so – then also learn about empire making because even if we don’t reach it, it’s nice to dream.

Mud Season and Smart Water

IMG_0136Untitled-1I’ve been diving into life a little more over the past week, which for me means less time on tumblr, more time outside or, in today’s case, inside and reading. I picked up this lovely gem the day after Christmas. It’s about the most unfit for farm life people moving to the countryside of Vermont and it’s very amusing, but it’s got an under layer to it of nice life lessons, I suppose. It’s a quick read and I’m enjoying it even though I’m only fifty pages in. You can find it on goodreads: here. And my mother got me some smart water for Christmas, which I love, though never buy because of the price. Along with a few pieces of chocolate, what could go wrong?