Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I'd tie some string around my finger, but I won't remember what it's for...

I had a really fabulous idea for today's post.  Like, really fabulous.  I thought of it a couple of days ago, and I've been half writing it in my head for the last 72 hours. It's been getting really good, really polished.  And I was planning to actually type it up this morning to share with all of you.

Small problem:  Can't for the life of me remember WHAT my fabulous idea was!! 

I've been racking my brain for the last hour, but it remains curiously and un-like-me-ably empty. *sigh* 

So how would you like to hear about some good books I've been reading lately instead?!  I noticed a big sale in a bookstore near my house a week or so ago, and when I went inside I was pretty thrilled to discover that it was a legitimately good sale, not just a we-marked-3-books-down-by-2-dollars-hahaha-we-tricked-you-and-now-that-you're-here-you-might-as-well-buy-something-anyway sale.  (Which usually get me, unfortunately).

Anyway, I've read three of the books and am really enjoying them.  I bought them because they were $7 each and when I flipped randomly through them in the store reading a page here or there, they seemed good. And so far, I've been thrilled to find that they actually are all interesting.  So double yee-ha there: Cheap and Good.

Anway, here we go:

BOOK ONE -

...Oh dear.  I actually can't remember what the first book was.  I had it a minute ago, but I honestly can't remember what it was!

Maybe I'm sick.... I think I smell feathers... I probably have an inoperable brain tumour...


BOOK TWO -

...Okay, I can see it in my mind... something about midwives in the east end of London in the 1950s... It's a memoir and it's really good.... apparently it was a NY Times best seller... it became a miniseries on the BBC... the front cover has a picture of 1950s girls in nurses uniforms on bicycles... I learnt a ton about babies and life in the East End Slums in the 1950s...

No idea what it's called.

BOOK THREE -

Ah ha! SUCCESS!!! As luck would have it, the book is still sitting in my handbag so I know what it's called! It's called Little Princes:


And again it's an Autobiography/Memoir (they all were I think... and the first one also had something to do with London in the 40s and 50s... I think...) about a fellow who went on a three month volunteering-in-an-orphanage stint to Nepal, and has ended up opening his own Not For Profit organisation re-uniting children who'd been trafficked with their families.  It's actually a fabulous read.  Not just the story, but his voice.  He's really entertaining and has a witty and relatable sense of humour.  He's speaks with the tone of a regular guy who accidental got mixed up in this charity thing because he really only originally went so he'd look good to his friends and family who were giving him a hard time about that fact that he'd quit his job so he could travel the world for a year. 

I really love the way his tone maturing throughout the book too - at the beginning the first chapter had me laughing out loud, he jokes about everything and is terrified and just wants to go home where there's no guns, and running water and pizza.  But as he grows up and finds a purpose with this stuff, his tone settles down and his writing is calmer.    He kept a travel blog I think, and so I wonder if he's pulled from that blog which has resulted in the changing tone, or whether he consciously wrote the book that way.

Either way, I'm enjoying it.

And I love that I was finally able to remember something for today's post.

You're welcome to borrow it when I've finished it, but you'll have to write your name down in the 'book borrowing' notebook I'm planning to buy.

Because I currently have about 15 books out on loan, and I'm having troubling collecting them back because I can't remember who I actually lent them to....

xo Tammy

3 comments:

  1. I've been planning to use a 'book-borrowing' notebook for the last 30+ years but still never do! I like to hope that all of my much-loved books, (because, let it be said, it's always the books that you love the best that you happily loan out to others), are being appreciated somewhere.. I have some books that I have bought five or six copies of that I do not have in my shelves!
    Congratulations on remembering (aka having in your bag), at least one of the books :) Yes, I would like to borrow it please :)
    xoxo

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  2. LOL! oh goodness. you're fantastic.

    Oranges and Sunshine was the first one!!!
    and is this the second book?
    http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Call-Midwife-Jennifer-Worth/9780753827871

    hehehe :)

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  3. LAUREN! Seriously!! How did you KNOW that?!!!! I STILL couldn't remember what that first book was! lol! That is TOO funny!

    (she's right, by the way. And Oranges and Sunshine was REALLY good!!)

    xo Tammy

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