Weekend

My plans include:

• Watching this movie:

• Finishing my stripping project and maybe painting?
• Exploring some decorative trim for interior doors.
• More Couch to 5k! 

Happy weekend!!

A book to consider

This book of palms looks lovely. TASCHEN books, as a whole, are quite well-done and their price tag reflects that. At nearly $100, it's a little steep but the frameable art possibilities, if you can bring yourself to destroy the book, are endless.

Also, do enter the giveaway at The Long and Short of It.   It's a $35 CSN giveaway!

Reading...

Candyfreak, a witty take on the candies of today and yesteryear, the people that eat them and the folks that make them. Picked it up at a yardsale a couple of week ago. A fun, light read. I'm packin' it to Topsail Island this weekend.

On that note, have a great weekend!

What I Read on Vacation

I love vacation partly because I can plow through a couple of books at a time. Plane travel + waiting = bookie bliss for me.

I started and finished both My Life in France and Best American Travel Writing. If I ever summon up 1/3rd the moxie of Julia Child, my life will have been a success.

I heart Michael Ian Black. I hope his book I picked up at the library doesn't disappoint. Also, a Google image search for the phrase "my custom van" is pretty entertaining.

Louis Theroux

Meet Louis Theroux, my fave British TV presenter. He's the son of the afore-blogged Paul Theroux and a charming guy. I first stumbled across him when I was living in the UK and soaking up BBC.

He does interesting documentaries, mostly about weird people , places and subcultures in the US.
He hosts the engaging and scary The Most Hated Family in America about the boneheads over at Westboro Baptist Church, available in 8 parts on YouTube.

There, ahem, might be a body of his work floating around on the internets for download but you didn't hear it from me.

The Happy Isles of Oceania

Just finishing up this tome by the cranky Paul Theroux about his epic journey through the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Polynesia and beyond. It's a little slow and Theroux's a bit of a curmudgeon but it's a fascinating look at the islands and cultures of the peoples spread across a giant swath of the the southern hemisphere.

I am *such* a nonfiction reader - I can plow through a book of nonfiction a week whereas I plod through most fiction with great pain (with some exceptions, of course).

Getting Stoned with Savages

image

Just finished this book earlier in the week. Discovered the author, J. Maarten Troost, randomly when I picked another book of his up at the airport bookstore. I love travel writing and Troost's style is very light and humorous. Stories about the dark side of paradise are particularly fascinating to me and his look at the daily life of inhabitants of Vanuatu and Fiji is pretty entertaining. For instance, did you know that natives on Vanuatu are called i-Vanuatu? You can thank me for that useful bit of trivia later :)