Review: Rare Finds: A Guide to Book Collecting by David and Natalie Bauman

Rare Finds: A Guide to Book Collecting by David and Natalie Bauman

Release Date: June 2007

Publisher: Bauman Rare Books

Age Group: Adult Non-Fiction

Pages: 106

Source: Borrowed from Library

Summary (goodreads.com): Rare Finds is a friendly, wide-ranging introduction to the world of rare book collecting. It is intended for those with a budding interest in this exciting field rather than simply professional booksellers and librarians. The guide contains an easy-to-use Glossary as well as sections devoted to Frequently Asked Questions, Book Production, and Format. Lavishly illustrated, it includes chapters on all major collecting areas.

My Review:

I think this is a must have for book collectors and people who might not collect but still love books. I borrowed this from the library and found it so useful that I’m going to buy my own copy. It’s a good introduction to the terms used by book collectors. It offers several categories that are popular among collectors, ranging from Americana to Music and everything in between. I was most interested in the Children’s and regular Literature categories. It has photos of the most prized first editions in the world, many of which I have had the honor of seeing and in some cases holding (for more on this see here). It’s a surreal feeling reading a book about the rarest books in the world and knowing that you’ve actually held it and leafed through its pages and are one of the few in the book world who have had that privilege. 

~Laura!

Llama Extraordinaire

It all started with the simple, but strange message: 

"*insert of scary music, Llama George peaks around the corner of a wall during the night, spying on a girl with dark hair and glasses, sitting in her room, waiting for his chance to attack*"

Meet Sir Llama George, my travelling companion.

In the wee hours of a forgotten day at the end of July in 2009 my best friend Ariel and I were Instant Messaging. This was not unusual. It was summer and as such we were allowed to be night owls if we wanted to be. No, what makes that particular conversation important is the semi-imaginary llama that sprung from it. This llama, Llama George to be exact, has been an amazing inside joke between the two of us ever since. I have told others about him (my mom for one understands the Llama just as much as Ariel and I), I have named my personal tumblr after him, I have started writing the adventures of Llama George, I love llamas (and alpacas) because of him and now I shall take this little stuffed Llama George with me on all of my travels. 

The idea came to me as I was perusing my copy of The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel. It contains a chapter on "Mascot Travel" and all you need is a personal mascot, a camera, and a desire to travel. As I travel locally, nationally, and abroad I will take Llama George with me and take pictures of him in front of famous landmarks and anything else that takes our fancy. I will record my literary and historical travel experience through this extraordinary llama.

~Laura (and Llama George)!

Review: The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun

Release Date: 1966

Publisher: G. P. Putnam

Age Group: Adult

Pages: 216

Source: Borrowed from Library (will buy soon)

Series: The Cat Who… (#1)

Summary (goodreads.com): Former award winning news reporter Jim Qwilleran is assigned to the art world as his new news beat. When a murderer sticks a knife in the neck of a local gallery owner and goes berserk among the works on show, Qwilleran gets help from his Siamese cat solving the mystery.

My Review:

For as long as I can remember my mom has been reading or listening to The Cat Who… books. Braun’s death a few years ago hit my mom hard and it was like she was mourning a member of our own family, not only Braun’s death but the death of an amazing series. There won’t be any more books about Jim Qwilleran and his Siamese cats and that to my mom is still unfathomable even years later. I never really understood her sadness until I picked up The Cat Who Could Read Backwards the novel that launched an extremely successful and long running series of mysteries.

I couldn’t put this book down! The mark of a great mystery novel is, of course, that it should keep the reader guessing. Several times while reading I was convinced that I had figured out whom the murderer was and then a plot twist would happen and I was left to guess again. Qwilleran is a veteran reporter who knows how to look for something fishy and together with Koko, the cat that can read backwards they solve a mystery. It was the cat thing that made me concerned over how this book would work. I wasn’t sure I could read an adult mystery book about a strange cat. I wish I had never doubted. Koko is not a cat out of high fantasy but a normal cat that is extremely gifted. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t do things other cats can’t do, and instead he just does what most people suspect their cats could do. Together these two should become iconic figures in literary history if they aren’t already.  They are just precious together, a great sleuthing team, and they make the book stand out.  It was a short, fast read, and I can’t recommend this book enough!

~Laura!

Thoughts From Places: Washington, DC (2010)

My Trip to Washington, DC!

I consider this trip as my high school graduation gift. For as long as I could remember my dad told me that one day we would all go on a trip together and in 2010 we finally did. This is so far the only trip I have gone on with both of my parents. This might be the only one because my dad is a hellish travel partner (don’t get me wrong I was very excited to experience history with the man who made me love history, but the man is super pushy and impatient).

The White House as seen from our tour bus!

We decided it would be fun if we took the Amtrak train from Buffalo to NYC to Washington, DC. The ride there was fun! We had to get up super early and my uncle drove us to the (pathetic) train station downtown. The train wasn’t crowded so we all got our own set of seats. I had brought a couple books with me thinking I would read on the train, but my mind kept wandering. I spent a lot of time just looking out the window, imagining that I was on the Hogwarts Express. It was a lot of fun though because my dad kept getting bored and was being silly. There was also this little boy who kept running past but the first 6 or 7 times he ran by my dad DIDN’T SEE him so I was convinced he was a ghost until my dad stuck his head in the aisle to talk to my mom and was almost decapitated by the fast moving kid. The fun kind of ended once we got to New York. The thing about train travel (at least when Penn Station is concerned) is that they didn’t list where your train was located until 15-20 minutes before it was schedule to leave so if you were on the other side of the station you were probably screwed. Luckily, we were able to catch our train, but it was unnecessarily stressful. Because we didn't want to drive the 7 hours to DC we figured if we took the train (a 12 hour trip) and then used public transportation we'd be fine. Oh how foolish we were. I should have done more research. So to get to our hotel (which was supposedly REALLY close to Union Station) we would rely on the hotel’s shuttle bus. Because of this we spent at least a third of the trip in Union Station waiting, which was actually okay with me because there was this Japanese restaurant which had the single most amazing teriyaki chicken I have ever consumed and had it as a meal at least 5 times that week.

National Archives!

 The bus system had seemed so simple and yet somehow we ended up in Chinatown on the first day and walked from there to the National Mall. This worked out though because somehow I forgot that the National Archives was a thing that needed to be on my must see list. Not gonna lie, one of my all time favorite movies (and motivation for the trip and minoring in American history in college) is National Treasure. So as we walked to the National Mall the huge building on the other side of the street looked awfully familiar and when I realized what it was I took off like a rocket into the street forgetting to follow one of the first safety rules you learn in kindergarten and crossed without looking and almost got hit by a bus (I am exaggerating only slightly it was still pretty far away so my flailing run across the street was actually okay if not advisable). I obviously don't have pictures of the great, old, historic documents I saw that day because photography isn't allowed for preservation's sake (and so Nick Cage can't steal anything) but I did buy a small replica of the Declaration of Independence to memorialize my semi-recreation of my favorite movie.

The Capitol Building and James Garfield Statue!

The main point of this trip was to see some of the Smithsonian Museums (American History, Natural History, and Air & Space Museums). I have decided to separate these thoughts from this post because I have a lot to say about them. (It should be posted on BWE on 7-2-14 and will be linked here as soon as it is available.)

After the fiasco of public transportation the day before on Day 2 we decided that we should use one of those hop-on/hop-off tour bus things. By doing this we figured it would be the best option because that way we wouldn’t have to navigate ourselves and we would still get to all the monuments and stuff that we wanted to see. One of the first things we saw was the Capitol building. We didn’t go inside or anything but just seeing it was amazing (same thing goes for the White House). We saw the Willard Hotel and the National Mint and the Jefferson Monument and Ford Theatre from the outside as well.

The HUGE statue of Lincoln!

The Korean War Monument.

We got off the bus near the Lincoln Memorial. Since both mom and dad had been to Washington, DC before as a side trip from their trip to Gettysburg when I was little they decided not to climb up all those stairs again so I went by myself. I will never get over the feeling I get when I am in a historically important place. It’s an almost overwhelming surreal feeling. I was standing there looking up at that huge statue of Lincoln and just thinking about everything he did and everything I did to make sure that I was able to see this statue.I took a picture of both the statue and the Washington Monument from the Memorial. The latter picture is particularly interesting for two reasons: 1) off in the right corner near the seventh column from the end you can see my parents and 2) DO YOU SEE HOW BLUE THAT SKY IS?! SKY THAT IS THAT BLUE SHOULD NOT OPEN UP AND POUR 15 MINUTES LATER. Before we knew about the looming storm we went to see the Korean and Vietnam memorials. The Korean one was my favorite. It’s hauntingly beautiful and meant a lot to me because it meant a lot to my maternal grandfather who was in Korea. It was a peculiar time to see it too because the rain was just about to start so a mist was rolling in and it all just seemed very aproppriate. We were walking next to the refection pool on our way from these to the WWII monument, dodging geese and the copious amount of poop they left in their wake, when that beautiful blue sky opened up and BAM instant!downpour. I have never been so wet in my life. We stopped and saw the WWII monument really quickly (which was kind of sad because that’s what dad wanted to see the most) and then dad had us RUN to the bus stop so we could catch the bus back to Union Station. Only it was raining so hard that we got on the wrong tour bus, but the driver felt bad for us so he let us ride. 

(Wax) Johnny Depp and I!

Next we went to Madame Tussauds Wax museum. This was crazy creepy and amazing. My favorite was the Johnny Depp one because he’s one of my favorite actors. Some of them were so lifelike it was eerie and then others were not even close and I couldn’t help wondering if the maker had ever even seen a picture of the celebrity. They had a lot of figures and there was someone for everyone. My dad liked the historical ones like Martin Luther King, Jr and the civil war generals. Mom liked the Morgan Freeman one. I liked the presidents and the Jonas Brothers. There was such a variety it was amazing! It was here that I mockingly won my fake best actress Oscar! 

The Bonnie and Clyde car!!

After this we went to the Crime and Punishment museum which was incredibly unique. There was a made up crime scene, a guillotine, and an electric chair, all very morbid and all extremely cool. My favorite was the Bonnie and Clyde car with all the bullet holes!

For the last two days of the trip we also went to Manassas, VA and Mount Vernon. Those blogs should be posted on 7-30-14 and 8-27-14 respectively (click here and here to read them when they’re posted).

Remember when I said at the beginning that the trains were stressful because of the strange waiting thing in NYC? Well, when we got to New York on the way home my dad said he would be right back; we assumed he had to go to the bathroom or something. No, he went and found our train’s conductor and bribed him to tell us where to go. This guy led us to this seemingly abandoned part of the station and said that the train would be leaving from there. I smelled murderous plot and said so to my dad but he assured me that we could trust this guy because “he looked like Morgan Freeman and he played God in a movie once.” This is perhaps one of the weirdest things my dad has done. He never trusts anymore and he’s not religious. I decided to just go along with it and turns out he was trust worthy. It was where our train was going to be and we got on first!

The view outside my train window for 7 hours as we were stuck
between Albany and Buffalo. At least it was pretty...

However, the last leg of our journey was a semi-disaster in that the train stopped for SEVEN HOURS because of trees on the track (personally I don't believe for a second that there were TREES on the track. It doesn't take SEVEN hours to clear trees! I think it was probably a derailed train but they didn't want to alarm us). It was also surprisingly crowded and dad had to sit next to some guy. The guy was really nice though. My dad is a smoker and the hours we were stuck we weren’t allowed of the train for safety reasons and he was going crazy without nicotine but luckily the said nice guy next to him gave him some snuff. Dad didn’t do it right or something, I don’t know but it was pretty hilarious to watch. I was able to spend the rest of the train ride home thinking about all the amazing things we saw in DC and all the things we didn’t see. Already I was planning for my next trip to the capital!

~Laura!

Review: The Smithsonian Book of Books by Michael Olmert

The Smithsonian Book of Books by Michael Olmert

Release Date: 1992

Publisher: Smithsonian

Age Group: Adult Non-Fiction

Pages: 320

Source: Borrowed from the Library

Summary (goodreads.com): Through more than 300 glorious illustrations from library collections around the globe, you'll discover a wealth of book lore in these pages and gain a new appreciation for the role of books in human society, from our earliest attempts at writing and recording information to the newest electronic books; from sumptuous illuminated and bejeweled medieval manuscripts to Gutenberg and the invention of movable type; from the diverse arts and crafts of bookmaking to the building of magnificent libraries for housing treasured volumes; from the ancient epic of Gilgamesh to the plays of Shakespeare and the tales of Beatrix Potter; and from the earliest illustrated books to revolutionary science texts.

My Review:

This might be the best book in print today. It is completely fascinating. If you have even the slightest interest in the history of books this is a must read. I think this would have been a great text for my history of the printed book class. It has a chapter on everything from ancient scrolls to the medieval codex, the invention of movable type to modern typography, from bookbinding to paper making, from Shakespeare to Children’s literature, and literally everything in between. Seriously, I cannot praise this book enough! The chapters are extremely informative, but not in a way that overwhelms the reader. Almost every single page has a photo, illustration, or engraving with a background under it. There is just so much in this Book of Books that to fully appreciate it has taken me 3 months. The only reason it didn’t take me longer is that I finally had to give it back to the library or they’d have had to start fining me (I will be buying a copy of this to study as soon as I can)! 

~Laura!

Review: The King’s Hounds by Martin Jensen

The King’s Hounds by Martin Jensen 

Release Date: October 2013 

Publisher: AmazonCrossing 

Age Group: Adult 

Pages: 272 

Source: Bought for Kindle 

Series: King Cnud (#1) 

Other Titles in the Series: Oathbreaker (#2) 

Summary (goodreads.com): The first in the bestselling Danish series of historical mysteries

The newly crowned King Cnut of Denmark has conquered England and rules his new empire from Oxford. The year is 1018 and the war is finally over, but the unified kingdom is far from peaceful.

Halfdan’s mixed lineage—half Danish, half Saxon—has made him a pauper in the new kingdom. His father, his brother, and the land he should have inherited were all taken by the new king’s men. He lost everything to the war but his sense of humor. Once a proud nobleman, Halfdan now wanders the country aimlessly, powered only by his considerable charm and some petty theft. When he finds an unlikely ally in Winston, a former monk, he sees no reason not to accept his strange invitation to travel together to Oxford. Winston has been commissioned to paint a portrait of the king at the invitation of his new wife, and the protection of a clever man like Halfdan is well worth its price in wine and bread.

But when the pair’s arrival in court coincides with news of a murder, the king has a brilliant idea: Why not enlist the newly arrived womanizing half-Dane and the Saxon intellectual to defuse a politically explosive situation? The pair represents both sides of the conflict and seem to have crime-solving skills to boot. In their search for the killer, Halfdan and Winston find seduction, adventure, and scandal in the wild early days of Cnut’s rule.

My Review:

I decided to read this for many reason: I wanted to read a historical mystery, I wanted to read a book about the medieval England ruled by the Danes, and I am obsessed with illuminators right now. This was perfect fit. The only major thing I noticed about this that kind of threw me off was that the author was obviously not a stickler for the use of historically appropriate language. At times it seems like he's trying to remain historically accurate by using words that originated in the Middle Ages, but then veers off and uses words like "scram" which didn't become a word until the 20th century. This use of modern colloquial language makes the book enjoyable though.  

The characters are very vivid. It took me a while to like Halfdan because at times he is just so crude. After a while though I grew used to him and decided he was okay. My favorite part about Halfdan, though, is how he describes his encounters with Winston’s mule in an amusing way, reminiscent of Flynn Ryder vs. Maximus the Horse in Tangled. I appreciated that Halfdan was a former nobleman’s son with no land because as I was reading this I was taking a course on Medieval Europe and when my professor got to this part of English history and how this happened to some people I was able to have Halfdan’s experiences as a reference point. Even though his life was fictional, Halfdan’s situation was very real during the Middle Ages. Other than the language errors, Jensen did a fantastic job with his research which is evident in Halfdan.  I fell for Winston's character immediately because he was an illuminator and I've always been fascinated with those. I was also impressed with how fleshed out minor characters were in this as well. I was able to get a very complete picture of medieval England in my mind because of these minor characters.

This is a mystery and it doesn’t disappoint. Several times I was convinced I knew who the murderer was, just to be proved wrong by Winston’s amazing deductive skills. In that way I was a lot like Halfdan. I really enjoyed this and I am looking forward to more from Jensen. 

~Laura!

Thoughts From Places Spotlight: Liberty and Ellis Islands (2010)

My Trip to Liberty and Ellis Islands during my trip to NYC!

Street Performer in Battery Park

After seeing Ground Zero on the second day of my first NYC trip, we went took a ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands. My group and I were waiting in line to get onto the ferry and we came across a street performer who sang “You Are My Sunshine” and gave us wonderful advice such as “Be Responsible and get the best out of life.” He also told the girls of the group to “Enjoy living, invent something, don’t just become a dumb house wife, we have enough house wives in America already” and to the guys: “don’t marry a woman who has five babies and don’t know who the daddy is.” All in all, very sound advice coming from a man sporting bright yellow rain gear and a rainbow afro wig. As I listened to him sing and saw people stop and give him their spare change I couldn’t help but think about how he was going to forever be in my memory as the very first street performer I saw in the City. I thought about how there people like him all over NYC that are trying to make some money off their talents when they’ve hit the end of the road. About how people who live in New York probably don’t even notice him or people like him anymore because they’re all over, but that my group from Buffalo will never forget how we got to share in that unique experience of waiting for a ferry while talking to a man playing a ukulele in Battery Park. In retrospect, I wish I had asked him his name.

Standing at the base, looking up.

The ferry ride on the Miss Liberty was the one of the first times I was on a boat (it was when I discovered that I don’t get seasick). I really liked it. We had so much fun. Everyone was taking pictures of each other and the Manhattan Skyline and the Statue of Liberty as we got closer to the Island. Not just the kids in my group either because there were other travelers on the boat and as I stood there watching I was thinking about how amazing it was that all of the people on the boat were on it just to see a huge green statue. Everyone was excited to be so close to the Statue that represents America and the freedom she holds. The feeling was almost palpable. Being so close to the Statue of Liberty while on the Island was just very weird for me. I have seen the Statue almost every day on TV, in books or the mini versions on top of Buffalo’s Liberty Building but to actually stand at its base and stare up at the actual statue was just weird, I can’t really describe it in any other way. 

Other than seeing the actual Statue one of my favorite parts of being on the Island was seeing everyone else’s reactions to not only the Statue but the Manhattan Skyline as well. As a group we took photos in front of both, but as we were leaving the observatory area where they have the telescopes so you can see Manhattan closer I took a picture of strangers looking at the City.

Strangers looking at the Manhattan Skyline

The picture just makes me happy even though the weather is obviously miserable everyone is still smiling because of where they’re standing. (I regret that I did not get a photo of just me standing in front of the statue. I have a habit of making sure I document what everyone else is doing and forget to document what I was doing. Oh well, I won’t forget next time.)

The Registry Room at Ellis Island

We got back on the ferry which took us to Ellis Island. We only got to spend twenty minutes here because we had spent a little bit too much time on Liberty so I don’t remember much because we were so rushed. I took photos of everything I saw so that I could look at them closer later and I really regret that. I should have taken the time to really look at a few things instead of rushing everything because maybe I would remember it but I learned my lesson. Besides now I will have something to look forward to when I go back. I do remember standing in the Registry Room and imagining it as it was when my family went through there. It had to have had a lot more people in it and they must have been so nervous and excited. I also remember trying to the wall to see if I could find one of my family members. I documented every single thing I saw so that I could show my mom later because she has always wanted to go there to do genealogy research.

The Balloon the Clown of Battery Park made me!

And after all that rushing to make sure we kept to our schedule half of our group was forced to stay behind on Ellis Island because there wasn’t enough room on the ferry for all of us. This was perhaps my favorite part of the trip because, like the street performer we saw before getting on the ferry, this experience was unexpected and led to another unique experience. I was in the first group so we had to wait in Battery Park while we waited for the others to arrive. Luckily for us there was a clown there who made balloon animals for us while we waited (he wore a costume and a nose but no makeup, if he had worn makeup I probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere near him because clowns in makeup freak me out). He was ridiculously talented at balloon shaping. He made all the normal things like dogs and swords but he also made seriously complicated hats! He made me a heart with a small dog on it! Since meeting him I decided to learn how to make balloon animals and years later I still can’t figure out how he made that tiny dog go on that heart!

While in Battery Park we also saw living statues of Liberties, a live band, several vendors, and a wild turkey. I thought it was a bit strange to see a turkey in the middle of Manhattan but didn’t think much of it after that. It wasn’t until this past year, when looking through an entry for Battery Park in a travel book, that I realized that the turkey had a name and was in fact famous. Zelda the wild turkey has lived in Battery Park for at least 10 years and I was lucky enough to see her and not even realize that she was famous!

To read more from my trip to NYC click here! 

 ~Laura!

Review: The Archived by Victoria Schwab

The Archived by Victoria Schwab 

Release Date: January 2013 

Publisher: Hyperion 

Age Group: Young Adult 

Pages: 328 

Source: Preordered 

Series: TheArchived (#1) 

Other Titles in the Series: The Unbound (#2) 

Summary (goodreads.com):  Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often—violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da’s death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.

My Review:

Victoria Schwab is not only one of my favorite writers, but one of my favorite people as well. She is just such a wonderful, empathetic person, as is obvious if you were to follow her twitter. I’ve followed her career since 2011 and every time she posts that she has sold a new book my heart just soars for her! With my admiration for her in mind, I don’t understand why I waited so long to read the copy of The Archived that I preordered as soon as I had finished her first novel, The Near Witch (you can read my review of that HERE).

I was a fool to wait so long. The Archived is, quite simply put, perfection in book form. It has everything I want in a book: great storytelling, funny dialogue, well-fleshed out characters and a new world! Oh and keys! I have a fascination with keys, especially old-fashioned skeleton ones and this book just took that fascination and turned it into a full blown obsession. Keys play a huge role in this book, I won’t tell you anymore than that, but just know that I thought it was genius! What I liked most about The Archived, other than the glorious keys of course, was how Victoria described the Narrows and the Archive itself. She has a command over the English language that I couldn’t even begin to describe with my limited command over it. Hers are among the few books that I can truly visualize myself diving into. Victoria’s world building skills never cease to amaze me, the amount of detail she adds to her stories is perfect and I can see how much time and sanity she puts into every one. The language she uses is also the equal mix of contemporary (dialogue, ect.) and fantasy (the descriptions and such). This also can be applied to the settings in The Archived because they really bring to mind the phrase, “the familiar rendered strange.” Hotels, Libraries, even HALLWAYS are rendered strange in this, which adds another level of depth to the novel. I could go on and on about how everything in The Archived was amazing, but I will let you read it for yourself. Just know that I cannot wait to dive into its sequel, The Unbound.

~Laura!

Partying is Such Sweet Sorrow: Happy 450th Birthday, Shakespeare!

How do a bunch of English Majors celebrate the Bard's 450th Birthday? 

This is my favorite Shakespeare meme.
I laugh every single time I see it.

• We hung a bunch of Shakespeare memes on every available surface of our building.
• We made our invitation as Shakespearean as possible by including at least 3 puns. (Ours included: Shakespeare wearing a party hat and the lines "Partying is such sweet sorrow," and "Friends, Buffalonians, and Shakespeare Lovers, lend us your ears!")
• We handed out index cards with Shakespeare quotes on them (not all of them were real. We wanted to see if anyone notices that you've changed the words dramatically. Example: "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?/ It is the east and Juliet is banging as hell").
• We ate copious amounts of stout cupcakes.
• We watched how Sassy Gay Friend saves several Shakespearean females from tragedy.
• And preformed dramatic readings of Dirtbag Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet.

How did you celebrate Shakespeare today? 

Collection: Bookmarks- From Places

Bookmarks

From Places Collection

My FROM PLACES bookmarks!
(all pictured except the Toronto Zoo bookmark)

The bookmarks in this collection are some of my absolute favorites. Some of them are souvenirs from my travels, and the others are bookmarks that my family bought for me when they went on travels of their own! They are all unique and special and I love them all. 

My Washington, DC bookmarks!

Pictured:

• Washington silhouette bookmark was a gift from my friends Graham and Kellie
• Canvas bookmark from Mount Vernon
• Washington, DC bookmark was a gift from my cousin's trip there in 2013
• Lincoln Memorial bookmark
• Smithsonian bookmark from the National Museum of National History
• Manassas National Battlefield Park Bookmark
• Hologram Smithsonian bookmark from the National Museum of Air and Space

My Baltimore bookmarks!

Pictured:

• Ft. McHenry bookmark with charm
• 3 dolphin bookmarks from the National Aquarium
• Pratt eLibrary bookmark from the Pratt Library in Baltimore (I went there to see their Poe exhibit, but it wasn't open to the public!)

My Salem and Boston bookmarks!

Pictured:

• La Japonaise by Claude Monet bookmark bought at MFA Boston
• Old town Boston map bookmark bought at Old State House in Boston
• American Revolutionary war bookmark bought at Old State House in Boston
• Paul Revere bookmark bought at Old State House in Boston
• Friendship of Salem bookmark bought at Salem Visitor's Centre
• Salem bookmark bought at one of the witch museums

My random selection of From Places bookmarks!

Pictured:

• Giraffe Buffalo Zoo bookmark, origin unknown
• Wooden Buffalo Zoo bookmark bought during a trip there summer 2013 with Anne and Rachel
• Gettysburg bookmark from my parents trip when I was younger
• Statue of Liberty bookmark with charm bought during my trip there in 2010
• Vidler's bookmark bought one of the million times I've gone to the historic East Aurora 5 & 10 store
• Personalized Florida bookmark that my brother brought back from his honeymoon

Kelly's trip to Europe bookmark collection!

Pictured:

• Winsor Castle (London) bookmark- this is my favorite bookmark. I use it all the time. It is made of leather and I pretend that it smells like the queen!
• Prague bookmark
• Eiffel Tower bookmark
• Double Decker Bus (London) bookmark
• Notre Dame bookmark
• Vienna bookmark

My Toronto Zoo bookmark

Pictured:

• Toronto Zoo Panda poo bookmark- my cousin Kelly and I both love Pandas so when she went to see them at the Toronto zoo in 2013 she brought me back this panda bookmark! It is made with Panda poop, I am not even joking. I love this bookmark SO MUCH even though no matter how safe the back insists it is I plan on keeping in its nice plastic case!

I hope you enjoyed this tour of my From Places bookmark collection!

If you'd like to see more of my bookmarks, check out the bookmarks label! 

~Laura!

Review: Haunted Buffalo: Ghosts of the Queen City by Dwayne Claud and Cassidy O’Connor

Haunted Buffalo: Ghosts of the Queen City by Dwayne Claud and Cassidy O’Connor

Release Date: August 2008

Publisher: History Press

Age Group: Adult (Non-fiction)

Pages: 128

Source: Borrowed from Mom who received it as a Christmas gift.

Summary (goodreads.com): Grab pen and paper, a flashlight and a camera and prepare to embark upon the haunted adventure of a lifetime using this comprehensive guide to some of Buffalo's spookiest sites. Avid ghost hunter and paranormal investigator Dwayne Claud and researcher Cassidy O'Connor entertain readers with stories of the city's most acclaimed spooks and spirits, such as Tanya, the five-year-old that can be spotted bouncing on guest beds at the Grand Island Holiday Inn. The book includes twisted tales from the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, as well as stories of roaming spirits at Frontier House- a hotel frequented by figures such as Mark Twain and President McKinley. This gripping collection of ghostly tales is sure to thrill anyone fascinated by the unknown.

My Review:

First of all, right off the bat, I need to get something off my chest: there are people called proof readers and they should be utilized. In a book that is only 128 pages there should not be a handful of typos. A couple misplaced punctuation marks are fine but when a book is published with words missing letters, names spelled wrong and one case of a name being accidentally substituted for another so it looks as if the ghost is the one hearing the haunting there is a serious problem that cannot be ignored. That being said, I enjoyed this book as much as I could.

I decided to read Haunted Buffalo because I live in Buffalo and I’ve always believed in the paranormal, ghosts especially. It starts out with a history of Buffalo which was incredibly interesting, and then moved into the ghost stories. Each “story” was a brief summary of the history of the place and then a quick explanation of the haunting and/or the investigation that found the most evidence, not exactly the “twisted” or “ghostly” tales that were promised in the summary, but overall the stories were interesting and worth reading. From a historical stand point I have to give Haunted Buffalo a lot of props for not adding the famous tales with no historical evidence backing them. Especially, the tale from Old Fort Niagara. They did not add its famous claim to fame: the headless ghost whose head is in the well (which despite having no historical background is still a great story). It was interesting to read stories about places I pass every day, like City Hall, the Central Terminal, and the Buffalo Psychiatric Center. The story about the last one in particular had me itching to explore the old Asylum seeing as its right next to my school. Too bad I would probably get arrested if I tried to set foot in there.

The book is nicely organized into chapters that divide each haunting into their location such as “Ghosts at Work,” “Historic Haunts,” and “‘Spirited’ Theatres” which makes it easy to navigate. Added at the end there is even a handy glossary of terms and a list of paranormal researchers in the WNY area. I fully plan on checking out some of the sights listed in Haunted Buffalo with my mom this summer! 

~Laura!