Around the World in Eighty Days – The True Story

Title: Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World
Author: Matthew Goodman
Source: from publisher for review
Rating: ★★★★☆
Fun Fact: In 1889, 1 out of every 300 people in the world lived in New York City.
Review Summary: An exciting adventure which will immerse you in the time period and introduce you to two fascinating protagonists.

In 1889, two young women set out to accomplish an astounding and previously fictional feat – traveling around the world in under eighty days.  Both women were reporters, sponsored by their respective news papers to race around the world in opposite directions. This book chronicles their incredible adventure, with rich descriptions of the people involved and the places visited. We also get a glimpse of daily life in 1889 and the evolving place of women in American society.

Bookends About Searching For Happiness

Title: Eat, Pray, Love
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Source: library
Rating: ★★★★★
Review Summary: A humorous and relatable story with such great characters it’s hard to believe they weren’t invented just for this book.

What do you do if you have everything you “should” want and are still unhappy? In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert shares her story of leaving it all – a promising career, a comfortable home, and even her marriage – to travel the world in search of happiness. Like Cecilia Ahearn, I expected Elizabeth Gilbert to be too “girly” or emotional of an author for me and was pleasantly surprised. Of course, the book includes many emotional topics, such as the author’s agonizing divorce proceedings, but she describes everything in a relatable, humorous way. She comes across as very down-to-earth and comfortable laughing at herself and never became too angsty.

Checking In About Checking Out

I wish I could tell you this post was brought to you by the Minneapolis/St Paul airport wireless.  Unfortunately, the airport doesn’t have free wireless so this post will actually be brought to you later tonight by my refusal to pay money for wireless internet.  I’m sure I’m just horribly spoiled by being a college student for so long, but I simply believe wireless should be free.  Given that many restaurant chains are now offering free wi-fi, it really seems like a large airport should be able to afford to do the same!

Photography Friday

My first belated photography Friday.  I suppose it had to happen eventually, but surprisingly it’s not because I didn’t get out and take pictures but because I was out all day.  First, working on my third lab rotation (fighting with other people’s code and not enjoying working with protein structures) and then re-plating some e coli that died to finish up my second lab rotation and finally taking some prospective students out to play pool and drink some beer.  It was a long day!  So when I finally got home around one and finished playing with my cat to make up for being gone all day, I just didn’t have the energy left for a post!  However, today I have for you a picture of the cute snake someone keeps in the plant pathology building as well as a few touched up pictures from a sailing trip with the boy this past summer.

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