Revisited: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

July 26, 2017 / / No Comments
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Scholastic

It’s the 26th of the month, which means that it’s time for another installment of my Harry Potter read-a-thon! This time, I’m delving into Book 2 – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Unlike the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which featured a few angles that I didn’t really remember, there wasn’t anything “new” that caught my attention during this re-read. In fact, I didn’t take a single note!

Instead, it was only when I started watching the movie that things struck me a little differently – though this was mainly because it had been a while since I had read those parts of the book. Read More

Revisited: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

June 26, 2017 / / 2 Comments
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Scholastic

Growing up, there were certainly things that I was a fan of (Barbie and the Rockers: Out of this World is one particular example that comes to mind), but I don’t really remember joining a “fandom” until I was introduced to the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

I came to the series a few books in, but quickly got sucked into the story. I still recall waiting in line at Borders (which is really dating myself!) for the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, embarrassing my mother as I nearly ran over an elderly gentleman at Costco because I was convinced that he too was going for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and I fondly remember working the release party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Read More

GNBC: July Selection

June 19, 2017 / / No Comments
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Simon & Schuster

Happy Monday nerds!! If, like me, you were at a comic con this weekend, you are probably having a stronger case of the Mondays than usual. As such, I thought I would go with a relatively short post highlighting the next selection in our GeekyNerdy Book Club!

After “last” month’s dive into Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s time to turn to a non-fiction read again and I’ve opted to go with Carrie Fisher’s Shockaholic. This may seem a little unorthodox since Wishful Drinking is actually her first memoir, but from what I can tell, Shockaholic is a little meatier and moves on from her experiences filming Star Wars. Plus, it appears to delve more into some of the demons that (apparently) pursued Fisher in her final days.  Read More

GNBC: The Handmaid’s Tale

June 1, 2017 / / 4 Comments
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Knopf Doubleday

Unlike many of our other GeekyNerdy Book Club meetings, I’m not entirely sure how to start this one. This is likely due to the fact that I am still trying to process my own feelings on the book, which were compounded this evening by some disappointing political news. Believe me, I don’t want this blog to turn into some sort of soapbox (I think we all could use a break from the noise) – it’s just that living in the DC metro area and being a federal employee make everything feel more immediate and personal to me than to, say, someone living on the West Coast. Anyway, all of that aside, I know that our latest read, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, is going to stay with me for a while.  Read More

GNBC: “May” Selection

April 27, 2017 / / 2 Comments
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Knopf Doubleday

Hi Guys!! Long time no see… again. Much to my chagrin, the unofficial theme of this year (i.e., my posting schedule being completely shot to hell) has continued lately, and I’m sure that seemed like an indication that I had completely forgotten about our book club. But while my blog and social media posts may have suggested otherwise, I have spent much of the past month considering our next read!

In fact, I spent about a week or so thinking about the three different books that I mentioned at the end of our last meeting, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind. Then, I remembered an earlier observation I had had about men being the writers of all of our fictional selections, while women were predominantly the authors of the non-fiction ones. Read More