True Spirit - Book Review

True Spirit
By Jessica Watson
Atria Books - 2010

This is the story of Jessica Watson, the young Australian sailor, who is (as of now) the youngest person to ever circumnavigate the planet as a solo sailor and she did it UNASSISTED and in just 7 months. She was just 16 years old.

This is my review of her memoirs entitled True Spirit. However since I have already written the entire review once already and under Squidoo rules, I cannot copy it elsewhere, I am just going to link to it from here so you can read it as well.

http://www.squidoo.com/true-spirit-review

I have already mentioned Jessica previously in this blog. Today is the first anniversary of her return home to Sydney at the end of her voyage last year.

Happy Birthday to me....

My birthday today...

Just had a quiet day - nothing special happening.
Other than I am getting old. Today I turned 47.
In just 3 years I will be 50!!!!
Not looking forward to that at all.

By the end of this month, my spouse will also have had his 47th birthday and my son will have turned 9 years old.

500 year old book of World History discovered in Utah

In this photo taken April 23, 2011, a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle published in 1493 is displayed at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The Utah book dealer came across the 500-year-old German language edition while appraising items brought in by locals at a fundraiser for the town museum in Sandy, about 15 miles south of Salt Lake City. It's considered to be one of the earliest and most lavishly illustrated books produced after the invention of the printing press. (AP Photo/Brian Skoloff)

 

Source - 500 year old book of World History discovered in Utah

Greg Mortenson called a Liar

Greg Mortenson, the author of 2 books (both reviewed on this blog) was called a LIAR yesterday by the CBS current affairs program - 60 Minutes.   

Mortenson wrote two books about the charity for schools that he began after getting lost in the Karakoram mountains while on a climbing trip.  His charity - called Central Asia Institute  (CAI) - builds schools for rural children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The CBS report which aired on "60 Minutes" claimed that most of the stories Mortenson wrote about never actually happened,. And when the reporter went to visit the schools, he found them empty. There are more questions and answers from the CBS to Mortenson on the CAI website

Mortenson's books are reviewed here.

Three Cups of Tea

Stones into Schools

The Stream Runs Fast - Book Review

Just so you all know, I am still around, still reading and still making lenses on Squidoo.

The last book I finished reading was called The Stream Runs Fast by Nellie McClung. This was her autobiography. It covered her life from 1896 when she got married until 1945 when the book was published.

Nellie is a reasonably big name in Canadian History. At least she SHOULD be. She was a suffragette and a political activist. She helped Canada to bring in the vote for women and she also helped Canada to give women legal status by having them recognized as persons so that women could sit in the Canadian federal government. She was also a writer and wrote a number of books as well as numerous newspaper columns and editorials. Some of her writings can be read at Project  Gutenberg.

Nellie wrote The Stream Runs Fast towards the end of her life. It was first published in 1945 and she died in 1951. I wrote a lens about Nellie using The Stream Runs Fast to review all that she did in her life. Nellie really made a difference.

My edition of The Stream Runs Fast was published in October 2010 byThomas Allen Publishers.

Happy Birthday dear Bibliohistoria

This is just so you know what happening, or not happening as the case may be. Tomorrow (March 17th)  is of course St Paddy's day (and I am not Irish) and tomorrow is also the 4th birthday of this blog.

And obviously my interest in reading and reviewing books seems to have died down quite considerably. That is surprising to me but that's the nature of the scanner personality!!!

I am spending a lot of my time on Squidoo now - creating lenses (webpages) on all sorts of subjects. So far I have made 60 lenses. You can read them from my profile page.

I cant promise to keep my promise of reading and reviewing 2 books per month. Well actually I am still interested in reading the books. I just  seem to have lost all interest in writing reviews. So dont expect any regular updates to this blog. I will continue to post any interesting bookish news I read about.

Check out my Squidoo profile page (linked above) to keep up with what's happening to me. Since we have to keep our lenses Unique, Useful and Updated, I find that I make lenses about things that happen around me. Personal lenses do better for content and visitors than essay type lenses
Ciao for now.

Recent news about Mohammed Yunus

Bangladesh's Yunus loses appeal against sacking

Mohammed Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and then wrote 2 books about the Grameen bank and about microfinancing, has lost his appeal over the banks action of sacking him from the board of directors of the very bank he founded. This action was taken because he was considered to now be too old. The mandatory retirement age for bank officers in Bangladesh is 60. Yunus is currently 70 years old. Yunus also won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006.

I write a review of Yunus's book called - Banker to the Poor - which was posted in January 2008.