Miss Moneypennypincher | Book Traveling

This week I should have been thinking of great ways to save you money, or maybe embarked on a new Short Attention Span Challenge task, but I have been so incredibly engrossed in this book, The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, it is leaving me unable to think of anything else but getting back to the book.  This is the most recent Pulitzer prize winner (and actually part of another one of my personal challenges - reading all the novel and fiction Pulitzer Prize winners).  The story is about Pak Jun Do, a North Korean orphan turned professional kidnapper, who loyally serves the "greatest country in the world" and the "supreme leader", Kim Jong-il . The book has plunged me into the mysterious and horrifically dark world of North Korea, and as far as I know, a book is probably the only look (difficult as it is) that I will ever get. 

As it is now, North Korea is not on my list of places to visit, but the book's explicit description and the author's attention to detail makes me think about some other books that have done the same thing: taken me to another place or time.  Unless I win the lottery or achieve immortality (I wonder which is more likely?), I will not be able to visit all the places in this world that fascinate or interest me.  There are not enough resources to make that happen.  However, books can get me close.  Isn't it amazing how we can take each other places, by accurate details and description of a setting?   

So anyway, this post might seem random, I am going from Pulitzer Prize winners to North Korea to descriptive settings.  I can tie this back to economics, I know it!  Here we go...My point, readers, is that you can travel into the library and use books to take you places, free! (P.S. I also checked the book out for free---saving myself around $14. Just thought I'd throw that in there too.) 

Here are some suggestions from library staff:

Ulysses by James Joyce (June 16, 1904 Dublin, Ireland)

My Antonia by Willa Cather (late 19th Century, Nebraska)

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (The Great Depression)

Fires of London by Janet Law ("You feel like you are walking through the suffocating and confining blacked-out streets of WWII London during the 1939 Blitz. It also evocatively explores the seeding underground of London life." available through Link Plus)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Texas, late 19th century)

Into Thin Air by John Krakauer (Mount Everest)

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende (19th century Chile and San Francisco)

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (17th Century Delft)
Winter of the World by Ken Follett ("I have been in Germany as Hitler takes power, in the homes of the rich and famous in the U.S.  I have been in the Parliament of Great Britain.  And, unfortunately, the brutal chambers of the SS.  The world is changing right before my eyes and the way people and nations are impacted takes your breath away")

Redwall by Brian Jacques This is fantasy, but here's a great quote from the author.

"In our imaginations we can go anywhere. Travel with me to Redwall in Mossflower County."

Constant Curiosity | Oh look, a duck!

Hello all and welcome to my blog.  They say curiosity killed the cat, but since I'm not a cat, I'm not too worried.  I am worried (just a little) about how to boil down all the interesting things I'm interested in and make them interesting enough for others to read about them.   

O.k., enough worrying.  I like books and art and music and movies and theater, and many, many other things.   When I read a book or see a film I invariably get curious about something or someone in the book and have to look it up.  I understand that one of Amazon's newest Kindles gives viewers a way to look stuff up in IMDB (Internet Movie Database) while watching the film on your Kindle in case you wonder where you've seen that actor before.  My own Kindle Fire offers word definitions at a touch as one reads.   It's a boon to the curious, but that's where the duck comes in.  

To my easily piqued curiosity and equally distractable nature a duck signifies for me yet one more random thing that has caught my attention.  I even know a quote about ducks:  "How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks" says Lord Peter Wimsey in Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.

I'm lucky I work where I do and do what I do, but it's sort of a blessing and a curse, since one thing invariably leads to another.  I had to quit looking at old newspaper microfilm because reading all the articles other than the one I had been looking for was just too fascinating.  I found out one time that Oscar Wilde had actually visited Stockton.  The description of his outfit was quite vivid.  Something about brown velvet trousers and a big green floppy tie. 

These sorts of occasions make me long for the ability to move around in time the way characters in these books & films do: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Time and Again by Nora Roberts, films like Somewhere in Time, The Philadelphia Experiment and Time After Time, starring a young Malcolm McDowell (as H.G. Wells) and an equally young Mary Steenburgen.  David Warner played Jack the Ripper.  In case you were curious.

Well, you get the picture about what my various themes might be...oh look! A rabbit! (Harvey, 1950, starring James Stewart) but wasn't Harvey really a Pooka, a mythological being...sorry gotta go look something up.  See you next time.