Looking back nearly forty years ago, Jeremy Macdonogh manages to recollect his experiences during the turbulent times of the 1970s economic recession and his early life as a graduate. Macdonogh merges the events that took place between 1970 and 1974 into the intimate details of his travels and adventures around Europe.

This is a very inspiring and beautifully written book. Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from Macdonogh’s experiences, and complete our education by taking our own (literary) gap years.

For more details about the book, visit site http://www.agapyearortwo.com/

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After several years of wandering around Europe, Australian-born Scully, his wife, Jennifer, and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, decide to settle down in a ramshackle old house in rural Ireland. Jennifer and Billie return to Australia to settle their affairs, while Scully stays behind to make the house habitable. Several months later, Scully is to meet them at Shannon Airport, but only Billie emerges from the plane. Scully sets off on an obsessive chase through their old haunts in Europe in a desperate search for Jennifer, dragging his daughter with him. What follows is very strange: it's a ghost story, but the ghosts make only two brief appearances; it's a love story in which we never meet one of the lovers; it's a picuresque journey where the sights are never described.

For the first 50 pages I was sure this would become one of my favorite books of the year. I was captivated by Winton's brilliant prose and his intriguing premise: Scully's wife Jennifer flies from Australia to join him in Ireland but doesn't get off the plane. Their daughter Billie does, but won't tell what happened to her mother. I felt nicely set up for a fine tale of suspense, as Scully sets off to find Jennifer. There was some suspense but when I finished the book I was frustrated and enraged. Furthermore, why couldn't we learn what happened to Jennifer? The only clue is Billie's impression on the plane that her mother's face was turning to marble. Not very helpful. One must conclude that Winton doesn't want us to understand, he wants us to accept the mystery without the resolution. That seems to be the message of the horsemen who gathered near the ruined Irish castle, twice -- their symbolism escapes me completely.

I was also disappointed with the acts of child abuse throughout the story. A mother abandons her daughter who now cannot speak of it, a the father drags her all over Europe with very little money, meager food and living conditions, while she keeps begging to leave and go home. She is bitten horribly by a dog but Scully doesn't have enough time to have her treated properly when it becomes infected; he spends most of this time drunk, runs from suspicion of murder, and ends up in jail on Christmas Day. I loved him at the beginning of the book when he was preparing a home for his family in Ireland, but hated him by the time the book was done.

The beginning of the book gets a 5 -- the rest of the book is a 1. . .

a little predictable and wordy. i like the idea of librarians as heroes!

I expected this book to be a horror novel, like a cheesy vampire movie in text, or a Steven King. Instead, I found it interesting, complex, mostly free of tired cliches, with compelling characters. I enjoyed the format- moving between letters and the girl's experience, since it told two (or three) stories simultaneously. I liked how the book moved across time and space to slowly construct the story of the vampire Dracula and those who hunt him.
I also thought the ending of this book was amazing. I was totally surprised and thrilled for the little twist and how it leaves the reader hanging.

"The past if very useful, but only for what it can teach us about the present." -Dracula

"You must go on with your life, because you are young and it is in front of you."

This page-turner by Kostova seems an almost true-to-life history of Dracula. A teenage American girl, living in1972 Amsterdam, comes across an ancient book in the library of her widower father, a former historian and now a diplomat. The book is blank save for an illustration of a dragon and the word Drakulya, and contains a cache of faded letters all addressed to “My dear and unfortunate reader.” Thus begins a search for the truth behind the myth of Dracula, a search that crosses continents as well as generations. Told through narratives, flashbacks, and letters, the plot unfolds at a rapid pace but never gives away too many clues at once. The cast of colorful characters even includes a creepy librarian who takes on the role of crazed vampire groupie. Both literary and scary, this one is guaranteed to keep one reading into the wee hours--preferably sitting in a brightly lit room and wearing a garlic necklace.

A wonderfully different view of Dracula.

Intricately planned and meticulously detailed, this book traces the path of the vampire myth in Europe.

Personally I thought that it ended a little quickly, but I couldn't put it down.

Oh wow I absolutely loved this book. This book is based off of the history of Romania and the tale of Dracula, the real Dracula. This book was breath taking, it was very well thought out and captivating. If my required reading were this good, you would never hear me complain.

This was a brilliant new twist on an old legend. Elizabeth Kostova uses the real history of Vlad the Impaler (more famously known as Dracula) to seamlessly create a stunning story (the bulk of which is through letter correspondence) that spans across decades. A story that leaves the reader questioning the fact and fiction along side the characters that have set out on their journey for the truth. I enjoyed everything about this book, and I will read it again in the future.

This was confusing and included really much history and stupid things. But also vampires, which is a big plus.

Before reading this book, I had an image of Julia Child as an uninteresting cooking show fro American housewives. I didn't even know that she specialized in French cooking.
I learned so much from this book- about cooking, France, food, Julia Child, and Americans. Julia knew nothing about cooking when she and her husband moved to France when she was in her 30's. When she became interested in cooking, it wasn't enough to know how, she also talked to scientists and cooks to find out the why. When she wrote her cookbooks, this revolutionized the way cooking was presented, both in France and America. She also had the first cooking show.
I was also very touched by the obvious love and respect between Julia and her husband Paul. It sounds like the kind of marriage I would want.
I really liked this book.

This book starts out as a funny re-enactment by the author of traveling cliches. He walks a pilgrim's path in Spain, follows the Michelin Guide in France, goes to the spas in Germany. Along the way, he describes the history of tourism.
I felt like the tenor of the book changed once he left Europe. He's extremely negative while traveling through India and Asia. While many of his quips about tourists are true, he himself becomes a stereotype of the having-a-more-authentic-experience-than-you traveler we all know and hate.
Starts as a black comedy and ended up with me being annoyed at the author.

This strange little book was pretty hard for me to understand. It centers around the suicide of a man born in Auschwitz, his friends, his ex-wife, and the manuscript of a novel he supposedly wrote and destroyed. His friend, a publisher, is looking for the novel.
I think this novel is about despair, the bleakness of life, etc., but it was kind of hard for me to understand.
Very strange and too abstract for me. Not my kind of book at all. At least it was short.

This book is about two extremely strange men. The author, probably the more normal of the two, is a neurotic American Jew. The subject of the book, Hans, is a wandering Jewish shepherd in Austria who sings Yiddish songs to his sheep.
The story is set against Austria's problematic history with its NAZI past. They seem to refuse to acknowledge the harm done in the name of not living in the past and moving forward. Despite the temptation to do otherwise, Apple depicts the Austrians as human, not entirely callous but not sure what to do instead.
I found it hard to get a good read on Hans. He seems so strange and so emotional, so far removed from modern life, that it seems hard to believe that he really exists. While interesting, I found it hard to sympathize with him sometimes. He also makes me want to stand up and cheer for his individuality.

Mayes and her husband spend the better part of a year traveling around Europe and the near east. They go to Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Italy, and Britain. Everywhere they go she writes about the food they eat and cook, as well as local literature.
This book was pretty similar to Under the Tuscan Sun in its themes. While enjoyable to read and extremely interesting, it mainly made me feel jealous of someone who has time and money just to travel and read.
I think that my travel style is quite different from theirs at any rate, since I tend not to shop when I travel (again, that lack of money) and I don't stay in first rate places. So my experiences would probably be quite different.

Hard to get through, difficult to understand, frustrating at times, but definitely not forgettable.

Ishiguro's newest novel (after Remains of the Day) offers a different kind of protagonist. While Remains's butler was at odds with himself (without knowing it), prominent concert pianist Ryder is at odds with his surroundings. Ryder arrives in an unidentified European city at a bit of a loss. Everyone he meets seems to assume that he knows more than he knows, that he is well acquainted with the city and its obscure cultural crisis. A young woman he kindly consents to advise seems to have been an old lover and her son quite possibly his own; he vaguely recalls past conversations. The world he has entered is a surreal, Alice-in-Wonderland place where a door in a cafe can lead back to a hotel miles away. The result is at once dreamy, disorienting, and compelling; Ishiguro's paragraphs, though Proust-like, are completely lucid and quite addictive to read. Some readers may find that the whole concept grinds too much against logic, but the pleasure here is that Ishiguro doesn't do anything so ordinary as trying to resolve events neatly, instead taking them at face value.

In The Unconsoled, as in Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, almost every turn of the plot concerns a failure of communication and a stifling of emotional responses.