Screw Cupid: The Sassy Girl’s Guide to Picking Up Hot Guys

Title: Screw Cupid: The Sassy Girl’s Guide to Picking Up Hot Guy
Author: Samantha Scolfield
Publisher: Experiment, The (September 1, 2009)
Genre: Self-help

About the book: Screw Cupid is the guide for every woman ready to take her dating life into her own hands. Samantha Scholfield has many years of dating experience, and the techniques and strategies she reveals here were developed via extensive trial and error – and by consulting and collaborating with hundreds of women (and many men), and by refining the best of the extensive pickup advice that already circulates among men. The result: perfectly calibrated guidance on how to initiate a conversation – anytime, anywhere – and get right to a date, all without the guy knowing he’s being picked up.

I don’t usually read self-help books, but something in this book made me want to read it. I never thought I would ever rate a book on how to pick up hot guys, but here it is – 4 out of 5.

I decided to try a different approach with the review and so I asked my lovely readers to ask a few questions. I’ve answered them as best as I could and without spoiling the book too much.

Veens: Can teens [in college] really use the advice? If so, I would like to see a few examples of advices
I don’t think this book is aimed towards college going teens but then you can always customize right? The book mentions how to initiate conversations in bars or say bookstores. But there is a section at the beginning where the author mentions a mistake she did in high school. Something on the lines of ‘do not stalk the guy you like’ which I feel is the mistake so many of the girls do But as I said one can always customize and adapt.

Stacy: would be curious about what they say about where to meet someone these days. I have so many friends finding dates (sometimes souses) online.
It mentions a lot of places actually. Bars, bookstores, parties etc. In fact, there is a list of places that tell you where to meet guys. Obviously not all are feasible, but most are. The author mentions online dating too and she also gives a very good way to contact guys through dating sites which would help them notice your message among the many others they might get. I really liked that advice which in spite of falling on the “common-sense” side is overlooked by many girls.

Care: DO tell us the sug that seems the most daring idea and the one that is the most ridiculous! Any that you will/want to try and then you MUST go apply that knowledge, come back and report EVERYTHING — we want to know all the juice details!
I don’t think there was any ridiculous idea but for me approaching a group of guys that also had a girl in it would be daring. But then the author also says it’s an advance step I’m actually going to give this book to a friend of mine who is desperately looking out for a descent guy. I could ask her for a guest post to fulfill our needs of gossip and juicy details

Jackie: I’d want to know if this was funny and if you tried any of the tips – did they work?!! I love a bit of gossip!
Oh well, I’ve just read it, so you’ll have to wait for the gossip. But yes, this book was funny at times and always entertaining. Even if you are not looking to pick up hot guys, you will definitely find yourself nodding at mistakes you did once or have seen someone else do. But the author has tried every tip she has mentioned in the book and vouches that they work if tried correctly.

Trish: How does one gain the confidence to ask a guy out? Should she be straight forward or try to be friends with the guy first? (And I’m part of that camp that thinks girls and guys cannot be just friends!). Anything NOT to do?
Definitely a lot of do’s and don’ts here and also a lot of busting of myths. This book is basically intended towards picking up guys for a date. But she also tells us how to approach a guy without actually suggesting anything and gradually going ahead from there. I think the best “NOT” was to not stand with a group of girls and wink or smile at a hot guy across the room and expect him to approach you. However absurd it may sound I have seen this happening. And it almost never works. Guys will rarely approach a girls group just because you seemed interested in him.

Eva: I suppose I want to know what you thought the five best suggestions from the book were
–>Never settle for a guy. If you don’t like a comment he made, loose his number.
–>Have a lot of guys to go out on dates, so that you always have options and in turn don’t think you have to settle. But then, I’m really not sure how feasible this advice is.
–>How to approach a guy in the first place without it being too awkward for the both of you. The opening lines examples were great. Some were weird (I would never try them), but they do give you a good direction to start with.
–>A huge list of places to find guys.
–>A small but superb suggestion for online dating. I wish this part was covered more in detail though.

Ceri: What do you think would be the most important lesson you’ve learned from the book?
Number one in Eva’s answer. I think it’s very important not to “settle” thinking you’ll never find a better guy. There are a lot of guys out there. You just need to put yourself out there and approach as many guys you like and then filter. And don’t forget to have a blast in the process. The initial rejections will hurt but you learn from the process and move on.

Melody: What do you think of the advice given? Would you recommend this book to your readers?
I thought the advice was very practical and definitely something that can be used. And the author’s voice comes off as friendly without sounding full of herself. I guess if women could customize certain things, this advice is definitely the best I’ve seen around. I recommend this book to anyone who is willing to take things in her hand instead of cribbing that there are no good guys around. May be that’s true, but at least you could say that after trying. Read this book, try out the advise and if it still doesn’t work, I guess email the author. At the end of the book, there’s an FAQ section with questions from women who have tried the things in the book but are still unsuccessful. The author explains exactly what went wrong with the approach, pointing out the small mistakes that might get overlooked otherwise. But having said that, I’m not really sure the advice could work everywhere. It seems to be targeted for big cities where you probably won’t run into the same guys over and over again.

So yes, it’s definitely worth trying out with a little caution and adapting it to the situation you are in.

Thank you Lisa for the opportunity to read and review this book.

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Friday Finds – Aug 28

This Friday I’m featuring 3 teen memoirs which sound like fun. Besides, I love the covers too. I don’t remember where I’ve seen them. So sorry cannot link it anywhere.

Emily by Emily Smucker
Emily’s the sick one . . . all of the time.
Plagued with some sort of cold or fever or bizarre aches and pains for much of her life, Emily thought the dizziness and stomachaches at the start of her senior year were just another bout of “Emily flu.” But when they didn’t go away, she knew something was seriously wrong. Eventually diagnosed with the rare and incurable West Nile virus, Emily watched her senior year and the future she had planned for go up in smoke.
“I want a normal life for a teenager. I want to ache from a long day at work. I want to be so busy that I don’t have time to post on my blog. I want to run the race of life instead of being pushed along it in a wheelchair. I want to be on the ride of my life, you know?”

Marni by Marni Bates
Marni pulls. Pulls her hair, that is.
Unable to deal with the mounting stress at home, in school, and with friends, Marni’s compulsion to pluck out her eyebrows, eyelashes . . . even the hair from the top of her head, helped her to quiet her mind and escape the pressures of the world around her.
Marni first began pulling the summer just before entering high school, and she was immediately hooked. Unfortunately, by the time she discovered that her habit was an actual disorder—trichotillomania or “trich”—it was way too late. “When I stared at the mirror and tried to recognize the girl without eyebrows, eyelashes, and bangs as myself and failed, I knew something had gone horribly wrong.”

Chelsey by Chelsey Shannon
Chelsey was dealth the unthinkable.
When Her Only Surviving Parent, her beloved father, was violently murdered days before her fourteenth birthday, Chelsey’s life was forever changed. As she was forced to come to terms with a new home life, a new school . . . a new identity as an orphan, Chelsey struggled to make sense of her personal tragedy. Yet she found a way to flourish despite all the odds.
“I thought of myself in a new light: a girl, newly fourteen, standing in her dead father’s study, all in black, a single tear streaming down her cheek. I was alone. My family told me again and again I was not, but without him, I was. I was no longer anyone’s child.”

Thats it for now. This Friday finds is driving me crazy, I just want to list every alternate book

BTT: Recent fluff

What’s the lightest, most “fluff” kind of book you’ve read recently?

Hmmm…that actually depends on what fluff means to you. I count chick-lit, romance in the fluff category, but that doesn’t mean that they are not awesome or intellectual reads.

Let me see.

I’ve read The Grand Finale and The Family Man by Jayne Ann Krentz recently and I still haven’t reviewed them here. So here’s the short of it without the plots, just a general idea of what I thought of the books.

The Grand Finale by Janet Evanovich: I had heard so much about Janet Evanovich and about how funny her books are. So I grabbed this book when I saw it in the library. I liked the book but not as much as I expected to. And although I smiled a few times I did not find it that funny. Weird considering how much my sister liked the sense of humor in this book. The good part was that it was a quick, light read. I read it in a single sitting which is very rare these days. Sadly I did not connect with any of the characters and the plot was kind of common too.

The Family Man by Jayne Ann Krentz: I picked this book when I found that nothing held my interest. I was going through what we call the reader’s block. This book helped me get out of it. The plot was normal, nothing new in it but I really liked how the heroine was portrayed in this book. She was working and she was good at what she did. She was also very ambitious and was planning to open am eating joint of her own. The romance was normal but I liked the family dynamics in it.

R.I.P. IV

Okay, I have succumbed to this challenge hosted by Carl. I had watched it from the sidelines last time. I have already committed to so many challenges that I was sure I would not sign up for any more for the rest of the year. But alas!!! Just look at that button? Isn’t it awesome?

But…I’m still not going to over commit. I’ve reduced the ARC’s drastically and I have decided to reduce my TBR pile too. So I have a list of about 30 books from my TBR that I’m planning to finish.

So I’ve filtered the books that I think fit in this challenge. Here they are:

• Xombies by Walter Greatshell: Spreading at an astonishing speed, the “Agent X” virus transforms everyone it touches into maniacal monsters. Lulu Pangloss, one of the few as yet uninfected, flees to the last safe place on earth–but what’s awaiting her there is as unexpected, and as frightening, as what’s followed her.
• Sweet Miss Honeywell’s revenge by Kathryn Reiss: Zibby Thorne doesn’t know what possessed her to buy an antique dollhouse–she doesn’t even like dolls. But when her friends and family start having bizarre accidents clearly connected to the dollhouse, she can’t ignore the menacing structure any longer. Zibby is sure that one particularly creepy doll in a gray dress is somehow responsible for the trouble. She discovers the doll is controlled by the spirit of “sweet” Miss Honeywell, a vengeful governess who seeks to control Zibby and her friends from beyond the grave. They must find a way to stop Miss Honeywell before her wrath becomes deadly.
• Interview with the vampire by Anne Rice: Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force—a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses.
• Un Lun Dun by China Miéville: It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of strange delights where all the lost and broken things of London end up . . . and some of its lost and broken people, too–including Brokkenbroll, boss of the broken umbrellas; Obaday Fing, a tailor whose head is an enormous pin-cushion, and an empty milk carton called Curdle. Un Lun Dun is a place where words are alive, a jungle lurks behind the door of an ordinary house, carnivorous giraffes stalk the streets, and a dark cloud dreams of burning the world. It is a city awaiting its hero, whose coming was prophesied long ago, set down for all time in the pages of a talking book.When twelve-year-old Zanna and her friend Deeba find a secret entrance leading out of London and into this strange city, it seems that the ancient prophecy is coming true at last. But then things begin to go shockingly wrong.
• The girl with the dragon tattoo by Stieg Larsson: A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, Henrik, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
• The thirteenth tale by Diane Setterfield
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Do let me know if any of the above does not fit in the Challenge. I’m a little confused about The girl with the dragon tattoo and The thirteenth tale. Even Un Lun Dun for that matter.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman and 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill is for the short stories. I’m not sure if I can join it but I’ll definitely give it a shot. I have read a couple of stories from each.

I would probably commit for 2 books now but I can modify it to 4 later right?

Anyway I’m excited. Are you joining the challenge?

Carrie by Sephen King – for the 4Rs Challenge

Title: Carrie
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Horror
Published: 1974

2 weeks before the round one of 4Rs Challenge closed, I realized that I haven’t even decided what to read for the Challenge. If you remember I had done a post on it where I had listed all the horror books that were recommended. I had asked for a few of those books in the bookstore but most were out of stock and a few were not even in their database. Stephen King’s name came up repeatedly. I had tried reading a short story collection by Stephen King once but remember not being very impressed by it. I tried reading one more ‘The Eyes of the Dragon’ which although I liked, was not enough to entice me to read more of his books.

So the point here is that I read Carrie only because of the 4Rs Challenge. I was recommended ‘The Pet Semetary-Stephen King’ by Jennifer and Sandy but out of all the books only that book was out of stock and I was in no mood to check out another bookstore. So I settled on Carrie which Shelby had recommended in the comments.

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Let me start by saying, ‘What a book’. I loved it. Thankfully I hadn’t seen the movie and did not know much of the plot either, so I enjoyed this book thoroughly.

Carrie is the story of a 16 year old girl who is constantly tortured in her school and is always the object of jokes and ridicule. Her mother is a tyrant with twisted views on religion. She’s the reason why Carrie is never really able to fit into school. There is an incident in the locker room where Carrie is again a subject of ridicule but on a higher scale of embarrassment. It triggers a series of events which leads to what is called The Scene of the Crime, the Prom night.

Carrie has Telekinesis, a scientific condition where a person can move objects when particularly distressed or in anger. What happens at the Prom night is the culmination of everything. The book is told in present tense where we learn what exactly happened, and intermingled with the story are the various study reports, interviews and articles on Carrie’s condition-telekinesis, in which the scientists are more interested.

This book was a page turner and a great thriller. Although you come to know very early in the novel about what happened on Prom night, I didn’t feel it spoiled the book one bit. As I said this was more of a first rate thriller for me than a horror book. The only thing that scared me a little was the picture of Carrie on the back cover.

That said I did find the book a little unsettling. I found her mother very unsettling because I’m sure there could be women like her in this world and being even 50% like her would be an awful thing. I appreciated the writing style and Stephen king’s ability to get into the mind of a 17 year old. I’m definitely going to look for more books by Stephen King, may be I’ll see if Pet Semetary is available.

4.5 out of 5 stars. Thank you so much to everyone who recommended me books for the 4Rs Challenge, I will definitely get to them at some point.

Some interesting bits:
–It is one of the most frequently banned books in United States schools and the film version was banned in Finland.
–Carrie is the first Stephen King novel to be published.
–He wrote this book because some woman said, ‘You write all those macho things, but you can’t write about women.’ I said, ‘I’m not scared of women. I could write about them if I wanted to.’
–Finally, he says about Carrie-”In retrospect it reminds me of a cookie baked by a first grader—tasty enough, but kind of lumpy and burned on the bottom”.

In fact, go read the entire Wikipedia article if you have already seen the movie or read the book. It’s very interesting.

Screw Cupid: Question time!!!

Ask your readers to ask you questions about any of the books they want. In your comments, not in their blogs.

I was looking at the past weekly geeks topics when one topic really jumped at me. I have seen people do this of course, but I think it applies to me the most now. I’m reading a book called Screw Cupid: A Sassy Girl’s guide to picking up hot guys.

Screw Cupid is the guide for every woman ready to take her dating life into her own hands. Samantha Scholfield has many years of dating experience, and the techniques and strategies she reveals here were developed via extensive trial and error – and by consulting and collaborating with hundreds of women (and many men), and by refining the best of the extensive pickup advice that already circulates among men. The result: perfectly calibrated guidance on how to initiate a conversation – anytime, anywhere – and get right to a date, all without the guy knowing he’s being picked up.

Okay, first of all I know most of you are married but I also know that everyone might have gone through a period of time where they liked a guy a lot and probably hesitated to ask him out fearing what he might think of you?

Well, I know I did. There was this guy in my college whom I drooled over for almost a year. And he very well knew it. And no, even though he looked at me often, he never asked me out. I never asked him out either. I never even spoke to him. I just stared. I was such a dork. Then after a year, he slipped a note to my friend asking her out. I mean hello? Is there any decency left in this world?

Anyway, while reading this book I thought would I have acted differently if I had read this book before?

Okay, I’ll come straight to the question. I haven’t read much of the book yet, so I really want to know what you would expect in a book like this. Or rather what would you have loved to know when asking your favorite guy out?

Basically I’m going to review this book at the end of the month. So If you would like to ask me questions about the book, it would be really helpful.

Jasmyn by Alex Bell

Title: Jasmyn
Author: Alex Bell
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Gollancz (June 18, 2009)
Rating: 4.25 out of 5

About the book:
One day, without warning, Jasmyn’s husband died of an aneurysm. Since then, everything has been different. Wrapped up in her grief, Jasmyn is trapped in a world without colour, without flavour – without Liam. But even through the haze of misery she begins to notice strange events. Even with Liam gone, things are not as they should be, and eventually Jasmyn begins to explore the mysteries that have sprung up after her husband’s death …and follow their trail back into the events of his life. But the mysteries are deeper than Jasmyn expects, and are leading her in unexpected directions – into fairytales filled with swans, castles and bones; into a tale of a murder committed by a lake and a vicious battle between brothers; into a story of a lost past, and a stolen love. She’s entering a magical story. Jasmyn’s story.

My Review:
Jasmyn is a story built around a fairy tale that involves castles and swans and a certain secret something that makes the entire story revolve around itself. And that certain something is very unique and mystical.

The book jumps into action immediately, without wasting any time, at the end of the first chapter itself. At the end of Jasmyn’s husband’s funeral, 5 black swans fall from the sky. Everyone dismisses them as a consequence of some natural disaster or a disease (?, sorry don’t remember), but then things start to get more mysterious and confusing. Jasmyn comes to know things about her husbands past which she never knew existed. She goes on a journey with Bill, her husband’s brother, to find out the truth for herself.

Jasmyn is very different from the many fairy tale retellings I have read. But wait, Jasmyn is not a fairy tale retelling; it’s a story that revolves around a fairy tale, something so different and unique that I have to applaud the genius behind the story.

I really don’t want to give away much because I know that I enjoyed discovering a new secret, a new mystery after every few pages and I don’t want anyone else’s experience to lessen even by 1%. I thought there were a few loop holes in the story for almost 3/4 of the book, but trust me it all comes together in the end. And the end is as dramatic and grand as any action packed fantasy movie.

Read it if you enjoy fast paced mysteries and fairy tales. I’m not sure if I should tell which fairy tale it is for the fear of spoiling the book for you. Because as far as I know, it’s not a very well known one, it could be called more of a myth based around real places and people. But yes, this book will make you want to finish it in one sitting.

Updates!!!

The past 10 days were a blur. My sis and my brother-in-law had come visiting for 10 days and I absolutely did not get time to blog. As there is a major swine flu scare in the city (with a few people dead), we couldn’t go out much for the first 5 days, but for the rest of the days we did visit a few places outside the city. People everywhere were wearing masks in the city. We removed ours as soon as we drove out of the city. But the moment we reached our destination (a beautiful temple situated on a hill top) we saw many people who were wearing masks. That’s enough for hysteria to set in.

It would have been really funny if it weren’t so scary.
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On another note, I feel like kicking myself. I forgot to nominate for BBAW. I know. I had actually made a list of the blogs I wanted to nominate but with my sis visiting and all I totally forgot. I remembered on 16th August which would be a 15th in the US. But the nominations were already closed

I just hope my favorite blogs have been nominated by someone else.

The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk by Palden Gyatso

Title: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk
Author: Palden Gyatso
Genre: Memoir, History(Tibet)
Translated from the Tibetan by Tsering Shakya

Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan monk, was arrested after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. He was arrested when he was 28 years old and was released in 1992, when he was almost 60. This is his story.

Palden Gyatso joined a Monastery in 1943 at the age of 10 and decided to dedicate his life to religious studies. He recited prayers, learnt the scriptures and generally went about doing what monks usually do. Things started to change around 1950 when China invaded Tibet under the leadership of Mao.

Many Tibetan’s were arrested for minor reasons or for no reason at all. Palden Gyatso was one of them. The Chinese took away land, stopped Tibetan’s from worshipping and started spreading the teachings of Mao, all under the name of reform. They wanted to introduce so called “socialism” and bring everyone to one level. Palden Gyatso suffered a lot in the prison, mainly because he was the son of a rich landlord and therefore someone who enjoyed a lot of privileges in the “old” Tibet. But as far as he could see these were just ways to control Tibet and its people.

Palden Gyatso describes the prison horrors and the atrocities committed by the Chinese. And considering he was transferred many times to various prisons, its obvious this was the state everywhere. Even the slightest mistake could lead to a death sentence. He describes the fear and the helplessness that took hold of every Tibetan during that time. This is one of the many passages that describes this very helplessness:

It was far safer for everyone to forget their loved ones. We all learned to live as though we were orphans, with no parents or brothers or sisters or even friends in the outside world. This was perhaps easier for me as a monk than it was for some other prisoners. I was used to being solitary. I have no strong ties, no memories of a wife or children tugging at my heart. There were many cases of a wives remarrying in order to prove that they had completely severed ties with their reactionary husbands. The Party liked this sort of public declaration.

When he was released, he decided not to stay in Tibet any longer because he feared that the Chinese might not hesitate to put him in prison again. He escaped to Nepal and from there to Dharamshala, India where the revered Dalai Lama had made his home after running away from Tibet. I have been to Dharamshala before and I have seen many monks there, probably some of them were the ones escaped from Tibet. I have also had the privilege of seeing the Dalai Lama but I had no idea how revered and worshipped he was by the Tibetans. I mean I knew but I am just amazed by the scale of it.

The Autobiography of a Tibetan monk was definitely an eye opener. Considering Tibet is so close to India, I should be ashamed that I knew so little about the Tibetan struggle for Independence. Any country does not have the right to rule other countries under any pretext whatsoever. Its high time China realizes that Tibet is a country of the Tibetans and they don’t want the Chinese there.

I have so much respect for Palden Gyatso and so many others like him who have suffered tremendously but still fought against their oppressors. This book is not only an Autobiography of a monk, it’s a tribute and a voice for all those who have suffered and continue to suffer.

Another passage from the book:
The human body can bear immeasurable pain and yet recover. Wounds can heal. But once your spirit is broken, everything falls apart. So we did not allow ourselves to feel dejected. We drew strength from our convictions and, above all, from our belief that we were fighting for justice and for the freedom of our country.

Note: I am assuming the book on the right hand side ‘Fire Under the Snow’ is the same book with a different name. I have googled a little on it and from the excerpts it seems it is.

4.25 out of 5 stars.

Other Informative links on the Tibetan cause:
Final Document of the 2009 Sino-Tibetan Conference ‘Finding Common Ground’
A news article on Palden Gyatso after his release
Free Tibet site

I’m adding this book to the World Citizen Challenge (Memoirs, World Issues, History) and The Orbis Terrarum Challenge (Author: Tibet)

Friday Finds: 14th Aug 2009

First of all, Happy janmashtami to those who celebrate it.

As regular readers of my tiny blog know that I LOVE memoirs. For today’s Friday Finds I want to highlight only memoirs.

The first 2 were found on Sherry’s blog and the next 2 on Alyce’s blog. They sound absolutely fantastic to me. The Vietnam books looks more like a Travelogue but now a days I feel Travelogue’s are part memoirs too.

Hitchhiking Vietnam by Karin Muller

From GoodReads: For seven months Karin Muller traversed Vietnam–sometimes by motorbike, often by foot–covering 6,400 miles from the Mekong Delta to the Chinese border. Along the way she survives 52 motorbike breakdowns, 14 arrests, and one awful bout with scurvy. She plants rice with farmers, saves a few leopard cubs from the black market, learns to drive a passenger train, and gets to know a lot of people on her Ho Chi Minh Trail trek. Told honestly and humorously, the culture, pace, land, scents, problems, and beauties of Vietnam are evoked as Muller and Vietnam interact. Snippets of letters home (like “I traded some of my antihistamines for Tampax yesterday. What a relief” and “Am I really blood type A? It’s important”) highlight the details, while the strong narrative holds them together. Her pictures are excellent, the story riveting, and the writing a pleasure–good reading for a flight to Asia or a day at the beach.

When Broken Glass Floats by Chanrithi Him

Publisher’s weekly Review: Born in Cambodia in 1965, Him lived from the age of three with the fear of war overflowing from neighboring Vietnam and suffered through the U.S.’s bombing of her native land. However, thanks to her loving and open-minded family, her outlook remained positive–until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge seized control and turned her world upside down. (According to a Cambodian proverb, “broken glass floats” when the world is unbalanced.) Armed with a nearly photographic memory, Him forcefully expresses the utter horror of life under the revolutionary regime. Evacuated from Phnom Penh and and shunted from villages to labor camps, her close-knit family of 12 was decimated: both parents were murdered, and five of her siblings starved or died from treatable illnesses. Meanwhile, the culture of local communities was destroyed and replaced with the simple desire to survive famine. Yet for all their suffering throughout these years, the surviving Hims remained loyal to one another, saving any extra food they collected and making dangerous trips to other camps to share it with weaker family members. Friendships were also formed at great risk, and small favors were exchanged. But by the end of the book, Him finds herself surprised when she encounters remnants of humanity in people, for she has learned to live by mistrusting, by relying on her own wits and strength. When the Khmer Rouge were overthrown, Him moved to a refugee camp in Thailand. Today she works with the Khmer Adolescent Project in Oregon. This beautifully told story is an important addition to the literature of this period.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi

From GoodReads:

In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her astonishing life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her intellectual awakening and activism in the Netherlands, and her current life under armed guard in the West.

One of today’s most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an Islamist’s murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the movie Submission.

Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali’s story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Run by Peter Allison

From Amazon: Whatever You Do, Don’t Run is a hilarious collection of true tales from top ¬safari guide Peter Allison. In a place where the wrong behavior could get you eaten, Allison has survived face-to-face encounters with big cats, angry ¬elephants, and the world’s most unpredictable animals—herds of untamed tourists and foolhardy guides whose outrageous antics sometimes make them even more dangerous than a pride of hungry lions!

Join Allison as he faces down charging lions—twice; searches for a drunk, half-naked tourist who happens to be a member of the British royal family; drives a Land Rover full of tourists into a lagoon full of hippos; and adopts the most ¬vicious animal in Africa as his “pet.” Full of lively humor and a genuine love and respect for Botswana and its rich wildlife, Whatever You Do, Don’t Run takes you to where the wild things are and introduces you to a place where every day is a new adventure!

In 1994 Peter Allison set off for a year-long stay in Africa. More than a dozen years and hundreds of adventures later, he’s still leading safaris and collecting stories. Allison’s safaris have been ¬featured in National Geographic, Condé Nast Traveler, and on television programs such as Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures.

Do you have any memoirs/ Travelogue’s suggestions? I would love to hear them.