Top of the morning to you! This greeting is in honor of the London Olympics. So proud that two former Gamecocks took home medals last night! This video may not be as impressive as The Games but wanted to share it anyways. Just a little clip of my growler.
Also, the one advantage to sleeplessness is the reading. I've definitely read quite a few good books lately (in other words, I really wish I was sleeping so I guess I'll read).
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NY Times book review: "Mitchell Zuckoff’s “Lost in Shangri-La” delivers a feast of failures —
of planning, of technology, of communication — that are resolved in a
truly incredible adventure. Truly incredible? A cliché, yes, but
Zuckoff’s tale is something a drunk stitches together from forgotten B
movies and daydreams while clutching the bar. Zuckoff is no fabulist,
though, and in this brisk book he narrates the tense yet peaceful five
weeks during 1945 that three plane crash survivors spent immersed “in a
world that time didn’t forget. Time never knew it existed.” Even at the
level of exposition, the book is breathless".
Reading
Group Guides review: "Set during one of the most conflicted and
volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko,
Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power
of forgiveness and the human heart".
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The Washington Post review: "Though it deals with a dark period in history, this first novel is an
essentially sunny work. It affirms the power of books to nourish people
enduring hard times -- not so surprising, since Mary Ann Shaffer, who
died earlier this year, had a long career as a librarian, bookseller and
editor. Her niece Annie Barrows, a children's author, finished the
manuscript after Shaffer fell ill; between them, they crafted a vivid
epistolary novel whose characters spring to life in letters and
telegrams exchanged over the course of nine months shortly after the end
of World War II".
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Another NY Times review: "In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot introduces us
to the “real live woman,” the children who survived her, and the
interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important
medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science
lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells
the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace. She also confronts
the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the
spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their
mother’s continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just
about “the facts.” Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and
more wonderful".
Hope you enjoy some great books (but not instead of great sleep!!!).
