October 3

October's first read was Seriously...I'm Kidding by Ellen Degeneres. I love, and still love, Degeneres as a comedian. I have read all of her books as they are light hearted and good for a few laughs, even when discussing serious topics. That said, I really did not enjoy her newest book. It didn't flow at all and while some individual parts were funny, I didn't really get the overall point of what she was trying to convey to us as readers. She included lots of stuff along the lines of her great motto of being kind to others, which is of course good, but the thoughts/chapters were very disjointed and did not have any consistency to them. As I was reading it I got the image of a bunch of post its scattered on a desk and then thrown together in a book without really connecting them in any way. Lots of topics were covered and individual chapters weren't bad, but I didn't see a "book" anywhere in there. In any case I'll still watch Ellen's show when I have the chance and continue reading books she puts out. She just seems like a genuine celebrity who isn't totally self absorbed in her own unreality world.

Awkward Family Photos is a website I found a few years back. It's good for laughs and for some extremely funny family stories. When my boyfriend discovered it a few months ago I got back into checking the posts and laughing along with the stories. So when I saw that they had put together a book collection I of course reserved it. Awkward Family Photos as a book collection doesn't really offer more than the website. It is however, a good collection of some of the funniest photos/stories they have and therefore a good starting point for anyone who doesn't want to weed through all the past stuff on the website. A quick easy fun read.

In September boyfriend and I went to see Magic Trip which was a good documentary that then inspired us to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. This book had always been on my to read list and I of course didn't know at the time that it was also on his. It took me a bit longer to get into it but the book was pretty amazing once I did. Kerouac really makes you as a reader fall back into the world he creates. It's easy to visualize everything, even for a reader like me who wasn't even around during that time period. As the book progresses you want to be in the moment with the characters, hitch hiking back and forth across the country. Previous to reading the book I thought it was just about the journey of hitch hiking across the country and that was it. It has so much more involved though and includes many trips to and from. The book was great and definitely worth reading. The best part for me though was that I got to read it along with one of my favorite people. It was so much fun to have "book club" and to spend some time chatting about where we were in the book. He was ahead of me for most of the book but then I ended up finishing it first, it was fun to have this little "competition" going on throughout. It was also really cool afterwards to discuss it together.