I did it again: two random books that on the surface couldn’t be more different, read back to back, and they go together like barbecue and Copper River Salmon.<\/p>\n
As I mentioned yesterday, I was reading <\/a>A Mountain of Crumbs<\/a>.<\/em> Throughout the book, author Elena Gorokhova recalls how she came to crave a chance to make her own decisions and a bigger life outside of the claustrophobia and pretending of the Soviet Union. The realization comes slowly, over time.<\/p>\n A delivery of another book came on Saturday and I picked it up to look at the front and back covers. And then made the mistake of reading chapter one. I finished it in the wee hours of Sunday. The book is Matched<\/em><\/a> by Ally Condie, the first of three books about a girl named Cassia who discovers that a planned life, no matter how stress free, isn’t as good as a life of uncertainty that you make for yourself. The realization comes slowly, over time.<\/p>\n I did it again. A memoir of life behind the Iron Curtain. A dystopian novel for young adults. And they go together. Go figure. I have another 50 pages in the first book, and 6 months until the next book in the Matched<\/em> series comes out (unless I can snag an advance readers copy — anyone? Bueller?). Next up is The Emperor of All Maladies<\/em><\/a>, a biography of cancer. I’m thinking the chances of me chancing on another book that “goes” with that is slim. But you never know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I did it again: two random books that on the surface couldn’t be more different, read back to back, and they go together like barbecue and Copper River Salmon. As I mentioned yesterday, I was reading A Mountain of Crumbs. Throughout the book, author Elena Gorokhova recalls how she came to crave a chance to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,36],"tags":[38,42,79,85,133],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing","tag-a-mountain-of-crumbs","tag-ally-condie","tag-elena-gorokhova","tag-emperor-of-all-maladies","tag-matched"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}