Saturday, May 25, 2013

Book Review: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

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I loved both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.  In both of these novels, emotions come charging at you and continue like a thread throughout the narrative.  Sometimes it hits you on top of the head.  Whack!  And the Mountains Echoed starts out this way. But the rest of the novel creeps into the crevices of your mind and ensnares you. Here's how it begins:   A poor Afghan farmer tells his two children, Abdullah and Pari, a story of an evil monster that forces a family to give up one of their children or the monster will kill them all.  The family decides to make it a random choice and the one selected is their favorite.  The father is beyond grief for his son believing, surely, that the monster has eaten his son.  The father makes a pilgrimage to the castle of the monster only to find the son alive and well and thriving.  He decides to leave the son rather than to bring him back to intense poverty.  As the poor Afghan farmer tells this tale to his children, he says, "A finger had to be cut to save the hand." Read more...

Thursday, May 23, 2013

There's a Fungus Amongus...

This is going to gross people out. But I'll gross you out anyway.  While trying to satisfy my curiosity, I came upon this story posted online at Newser.com.  I'm going to tell you a story to set up the article.  If you've ever been on a mass market cruise line, then you'll know that on days at sea varying types of entertainment is set up for the passengers.  One such entertainment is the Newly Wed Game.  The cruise director will usually ask a very newly wed couple to come on stage, then another couple, say, married ten years, then maybe 30 years and then ask for the longest married couple to also come on stage.   Then the cruise director begins to ask them stupid questions.  It was at one of these events where the cruise director asks, "What is the one thing that you didn't know about your spouse when you married him/her and later found out about,  that really grossed you out?"  Ready?  This "bride" said it was when she caught her husband biting his toenails...with his teeth...If he had read the article below, would he have still nipped his pinkies with his teeth?  And now for the article: Read more...

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Dan Brown's Latest: An Italian Travel Guide AKA "Inferno"

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I was so looking forward to this book.  I loved his three other books, Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.  So as soon as it was available for Kindle, I downloaded it and began to read.   Oh gentle readers, I was so disappointed.  As I lay out the structure and plot, you'll get a better idea of why I say I was disappointed but then again, you may say, horse hockey.  Sounds like a fine read to me.  In my humble opinion, this book is 1/2 art history, 1/4 travelogue and 1/4 plot.  Let's start with plot. Robert Langdon, Harvard professor extraordinaire, specialist in iconography or as he calls it, symbology.  Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence, purportedly having been shot at, and in an amnesiac state.  Read more...

Sunday, May 5, 2013

If You Are a Shopaholic, Beware This Post!

My blog has moved to www.satisfyingmycuriosity.com.  If you've enjoyed this blog, please check my new site out for other interesting comments on culture, book reviews, and music.


I, for one, have become quite the avid online shopper.  And there are plenty of others like me.  I only go to the mall as a last resort.  Most of the clothes that I buy are from stand alone stores (except for one).  But for baby gifts, housewarming gifts, dinner party thank you gifts, birthdays, skin care products etc etc, I buy online.  According to the US Commerce Dept., US ecommerce sales totalled an estimate of $194.3 billion in 2011, up 16.1% from $167.3 billion in 2010.  Now, the US government, being the US government and always looking for new ways to tax its populace, has for years been trying to tax online sales from companies that do not have brick and mortar stores.  It's once again being mulled over in congress.  I look at it this way.  If I go to a store in NY and buy something, are they going to be responsible for charging Georgia sales tax? I don't think so.  But that's not what this blog is about.  It's about the BEST online shopping sites for you to peruse but not abuse.  The Huffington Puffington Post had a list put together of sites they found "stand out from the crowd". I'll give you that list at the end.  But first...my list! Read more...