Reading in the Garden

Staying Alive woo, woo, woo, woo - staying aliiiiiive!  The Martian by Andy Weir.   An astronaut is stuck on Mars after the rest of the crew made an emergency departure, leaving Mark Watney behind, whom they assumed was dead.   Now Mark, a mechanical engineer with a Master’s in botany is alone on an unforgiving and desolate planet trying to plan how he’ll stay alive four years until the next mission is due to land. Mark has to take all the leftover objects from the mission and produce life:   water, soil, food—a daunting undertaking. It’s kind of like I feel in the mornings when I dump out my makeup bag and give myself the pep talk, “Okay, let’s make this work.”—only on a much more dire, life-or-death level.     What I really liked is that this super smart man relays his thoughts and calculations in a language a dummy like me could kind of grasp—or at least tolerate for the most part.   His laid-back style makes him approachable.   He even has a sense of humor. He’s more

Ich Liebe the Liebster Award!   In July Marianne from Let’s Read blog nominated me for the Liebster Award , an award given to smaller blogs.   I was extremely honored, especially coming from Marianne, whose book review blog I just love.   My beautiful mother passed away at the time Marianne nominated me, and although I already had posts scheduled in advanced, I wasn’t in the mood to do much, even the simple rules of the award below…until now.   Rules for the award: 1.    Thank the amazing blogger who nominated you.  (check) 2.    Answer the 11 questions the nominator provided (answer on your blog.) (check, see below) 3.    Nominate 11 other bloggers who have less than 200 followers. 4.    Post 11 different questions for your nominees to answer on their blogs. (check, see below) 5.    Contact your nominees to let them know that you've nominated them.  (check) Unfortunately, I really got hung up on #3 (Nominate 11 other bloggers who have less than 200 fol

Happily Homeless Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman is a memoir about an educated, well-to-do woman who began traveling in 1985 when her marriage was falling apart.  But the book is not about finding herself as it is about finding and connecting with people around the world.  Rita gave up everything and relies on the royalties of her children’s books to take her to places like Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Israel, Galapagos Islands, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Thailand.  These aren’t zip-lining, kayaking, hang gliding, sight-seeing vacations.  They are enriching emersions into different cultures, learning to live among the local communities for months and sometimes years.  Rita is one of those rare “You go, girl!” women who truly lives life by her rules, the main one being to travel where wind or whim blows her. I don’t know why but while I was reading her book, I imagined Kathy Bates playing her character. She is an amazing adventurous,