20 Cornelia Street: Montreal!

Wednesday, April 7

Montreal!

Priya, Ether and I on her uncle's porch after a HUGE Cambodian BBQ feast.

Esther, Priya, Kavita and I took a road trip up to Montreal last weekend. Despite a long wait at the border, once we arrived we had such a fun time!! The city was beautiful, and we all practiced our French. Esther's uncle hosted us and his daughters were our gracious tour guides. We ate tons of good food and laughed for three days straight. It was a great mini-Spring Break!

Kavita and I were named Sous Chef 2 and 3 (Esther was 1) to help prepare the main course. This was after three other courses over four hours!!

Esther's super cute family after a morning run. He lives in a really nice neighborhood right on the St. Lawrence River, which made for some beautiful morning runs.

Kavita, me, Esther, Priya in back, and Cousins Cynthia and Olivia, and their friend Gabrielle in front. We were at a cabernes a sucre, or a sugar shack. That's why we're dressed like lumber jacks! Over 75% of the world's maple syrup comes from Quebec, so they have all these old time farms where you can go eat tons of syrup and act like it's the old days. We didn't quite get the dress code right, but still had lots of fun.

Priya and I at a rest stop in the Adironacks. It took us 9 hours to get home because we stopped at so many beautiful lookouts.

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Book Reviews

Are you there Vodka? It's me Chelsea - This is Chelsea Handler's second book of humorous essays. I've never seen her show, but all of her books have been on the bestseller list FOREVER so I checked it out out of curiousity. SO funny! Some are kind of shocking - think Sex and the City extreme escapades, but many made me laugh out loud. I'm definitely getting the other two now. If you need a quick, fun read, and aren't too easily offended (and a woman), read this!
Let the Great World Spin - This won the National Book Award last year and it's so well deserved. The writing is just beautiful and it's a great portrait of NY in the 70's.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - If you like Pride and Prejudice, then you will love this. Somehow, this author worked in zombies and ninjas into this Austen classic. It is hilarious!
Saving Sammy - This book just came out and is the best thing I've read since Born to Run. It's about a boy who very suddenly starts to display OCD symptoms at the age of 12. It gets to the point where this previously brilliant math student, outgoing, friendly kid, stopped bathing, eating, and was so debilitated by his ticks that he couldn't leave the house or sleep. His mother perserved with doctor after doctor and finally found the cause that saved his life. It's hear-breaking, but worth it, as it does have a very happy ending.
Born to Run - I know I label almost every book on here as soooooooo good, but the truth is, I only post about the ones I really, really like. And this one tops them all. I'm not kidding, this book is incredible. It will inspire you to not only get out there and run, but to be a better person. There are so many interesting things in this book I can't begin to list them all. Let's just say I learned about a native Mexican tribe of the fastest runners on earth; ultramarathoners who run 100s of miles through mountains and deserts; and how homo sapiens overcame the neanderthals by becoming long distance runners and so much more. And it's told in a narrative story that keeps you turning the page. Read this book.
The Lost City of Z by David Grann. This is a nonfiction account of a great explorer in the early 1900s who was one of the first Europeans to map out the Amazon. It's incredibly well researched and written, and is a thrilling adventure story.
Nabeel's Song (aka The Poet of Baghdad, as it was renamed in paperback) This is the true story of the poet, Nabeel Yasin. He was born and raised in Baghdad in the '50s before such a harsh regime took over. Universitites flourished, women were encouraged to go to school, and opposition to the government wasn't punishable by death. He had to flee in the '80s when he was persecuted for his writings and continues to this day to live in Europe with his family. It's such a good book! Very well written, you would think it's a novel. What a different look at a city that we only hear about in terms of war and bombs.
Ship Ablaze. This is an incredible book! It has a bit of a morbid theme, as it focuses on a 1904 steam boat fire on the Hudson River that killed almost 1000 people, but don't let that stop you! The author describes in such fascinating detail the people aboard the ship and what it was like in turn of the century New York. I highly recommend it!
Marley and Me, by John Grogan. For anyone who's a pet lover, especially a dog lover, this book is for you. It is such a sweet story of a man and his out-of-control dog. It's funny and sad - just a great read.
The Kabul Beauty School, by Deborah Rodriguez is the best book!! It's such an incredible true story about an eccentric hairdresser from Michigan who picks up and moves to Afghanistan to open a beauty school. The point is to help the women there gain some independence from their husbands and earn money for themselves. It's a crazy story, I can't believe it's true, but such a good read.
The Geography of Love, by Glenda Burgess. This is a nonfiction WONDERFUL love story. It's so beautifully written and is so touching. It's basically about a woman finding love late in life and then how she deals with her love's cancer diagnosis. Read it (with a tissue)!
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician, by Daniel Wallace. Wallace is the author of Big Fish, you may have seen the movie. I wasn't a fan of it, but this title intrigued me and I really enjoyed it. It takes place in the 1950s South and follows Henry, a magician, through the tales of his circus coworkers. It's very moving/entertaining fiction. It's a quick read that is tough to put down. I finished it with a better understanding of that time period and our perception of truth. I recommend it.
The Appeal, by John Grisham. At first, I really hated this book. It's rather slow, and there's not too much action like A TIME TO KILL or some of his other classics. It's more of a, "I'm John Grisham, and I've written so many bestsellers I don't need to worry about that anymore, instead, I'm going to teach you a lesson about the law." Well, I wanted a commercial, mindless, action/thriller, not a law lesson. So I ened the book in frustration. Then I thought about it a bit and realized, learning isn't so bad. Still, I wouldn't recommend it.
The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost. Okay, get over the title, and this book is a really fun read. Maarten and his girlfriend move to Tarawa, a remote island in the South Pacific and spend two years trying to make sense of a conflicted culture torn between tradition and modern day. The setting is at once an island paradise, and an imploding infrastructure. Maarten writes with humor and candidness, teaching the reader about this distant land and making you laugh out loud while you do so. (Plus I'm helping to edit his next two books, so I'm a little biased).
Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri. I've been hearing people rave about this author for a long time, but shied away from her stuff because so much of it is fiction. However, that was a HUGE mistake! She is amazing. And even though she writes mainly about Indian culture and the clash of older, Indian generations, with younger, Americanized ones, underneath the surface her themes are universal. Everyone should read this collection of stories!
The Unlikely Lavendar Queen, by Jeannie Ralston. This was a great book! She's a successful journalist who meets a National Geographic photographer and they fall in love. She loves Manhattan, and he needs the country. Somehow he convices her to move to Texas in the middle of nowhere and then manages to get her to try planting lavender fields. She's a great writer who puts a comic spin on life's ups and downs. She's a bit whiny at times, but this is a great memoir of a life turned upside down.
The Lace Reader. This book was all the rage at BookExpo America as the big summer book, but I thought it stank. Well, maybe the hype was just too much so my expectations were too high, but the storyline of a family who can see the future by reading lace, just didn't do it for me. I recommend you skip this and read something with a more cohesive plot!
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold. This book would be really hard to read if you have a daughter. However, if you can get past the gruesome act in the beginning, it is a beautiful story told from the point of view of a young girl. It's also a very interesting look at the after life and what happens to us when we pass. Some parts were hard to hear, but overall, it is an amazing read.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Xiaolu Guo. A fictional account of a Chinese girl studying English in London. This is her perspective on Western culture and its sharp contrast to the Chinese way of life. It drags a bit in the middle, but is definitely worth the read for a new perspective and a good laugh.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Jamie mocked this guy, but I think it's pretty incredible he wrote the entire book while paralyzed, by blinking his left eye. Insane. Aside from that, it's a beautiful, while heart breaking, look at life and freedom. I was so impressed by it.
sTORI TELLING, Tori Spelling's autobigraphy. I'm not ashamed to say I read this...and LOVED it. For any 90210 fans, it's a guilty pleasure/must read.
Devil in the White City, Erik Larson - Highly Recommend!