Where have you been?

Paul and I love to travel. We had absolutely the best summer last year living in Europe and travelling as much as we could in the short three months we were there. When we got home, I was missing the adventure and fun so much that I spent tons of time surfing travel sites on the internet and planning fantasy trips.

Then on CNN I saw an interview with "the most traveled man on the planet," who has a website dedicated to people who want to travel the whole world called http://www.mosttraveledpeople.com/. Of course I went there. It is like goodreads, except it is about travel instead of books. There is an interactive map where you can list all of the places you have visited and that area of the globe is highlighted. My map is pitifully bare, but far better than it was last year. You are given a rank (I am technically still a tourist dangit) and can view other travelers from your state or country, read their reviews about different places, and get ideas of where you might want to go in the future. Another great website dedicated to travel is www.hillmanwonders.com which ranks (based on one guy's in-depth research and opinion) various wonders of the world and other places of interest.

Right now Paul and I are thinking about travelling to Puerto Rico, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Peru . . . . . . . . . So many places, so - well you know the rest.

Goodreads

Lately I have been spending ridiculous amounts of time reading books purely for pleasure even though it means neglecting my studies. Not good when facing law school finals. I have so many fantastic books that I want to recommend and was told about this website where you can share the books you are reading with your friends and post reviews of books. Go to http://www.goodreads.com/ and set up a profile and add me to your friends. Goodreads is a great way to share reading lists, especially if there are certain friends whose taste in literature is particularly in line with your own.

Another fun website for readers is http://www.dailylit.com/ where you can select a book that will be emailed to you in small sections every day. Right now I am reading Pride & Prejudice that way with one chapter mailed to me each day. I don't always sit down to read an entire book, but I have no problem taking a few minutes to read an email. Check it out.

For those of you who want to know my latest recommendation for a fantastic book, I have two. The first is an adult novel, The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It is an incredibly vivid, unique and beautiful love-story and a heart-wrenching read. I completely recommend it, but be forewarned that if you are a conservative reader and don't like exposure to questionable material, this might not be the best read for you.

The second book is The House of the Scorpion, a young adult fiction by Newberry Award winning author Nancy Farmer. The House of the Scorpion is set about 150-200 years in the future and is about a boy who is the clone of the drug-lord leader of a new country called Opium, which lies between the United States and Mexico. There are contemporary issues of cloning and technology without going too far into the sci-fi genre. I completely recommend this book for any reader.

I hope you like this blog! We'll see how often I am able to post or more likely, have something I feel like posting about!