Reads For The Road: "Escape From Camp 14" by Blaine Harden

by Lindsay Shapka in , , ,


North Korea is a fascinating country because there is so little that we know about it. Most of the information that we have is either propaganda fed to us from the country itself or hearsay from people who have heard stories from someone who has heard a story.

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Reads For The Road: "Wilful Disregard" by Lena Andersson

by Lindsay Shapka in , , ,


This novel by Swedish writer Lena Andersson is a whirlwind of intense and all-to-real emotions. Though I am not usually a fan of novels, this book — translated from Swedish — jumped out at me (literally, it fell off the bookshelf as I walked by) when I walked into a bookstore while travelling in Sweden this past summer.

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The "Book Flood" Hits Iceland: The beautiful Icelandic tradition of giving books as gifts during the holidays

by Lindsay Shapka in , ,


I recently learned about a beautiful Icelandic gift-giving tradition that takes place every Christmas. During the holiday season, the country celebrates Jólabókaflóðið (meaning "the book flood of Christmas"), when publishers release new books. And, there are A LOT of them.

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Reads For The Road: "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafron

by Lindsay Shapka in , , ,


I started reading this book because it was recommended to me by a friend that I met while travelling. He pulled it off his bookshelf and told me that it was one of his favourite books in the world. When someone goes to the trouble to tell me about a book that matters to them and recommend that I read it, I do. I find that reading things that people that I know have loved helps me to get to know them better, and the fact that they want to share that with me is pretty darn cool.

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Reads For The Road: "The Social Life of Ink" by Ted Bishop

by Lindsay Shapka in , , ,


I don't know about you, but I am one of those people who always has at least one pen rolling around in the bottom of my bag. Even though I rarely take notes during interviews anymore (thinks voice recorder), and use the note function on my phone when needing to jot things down quickly, I still hold out hope that I'm going to have time to actually sit down, pull out a notebook, and put pen to paper.

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Reads For The Road: "The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving A F#CK" by Sarah Knight

by Lindsay Shapka in , ,


If the title of this book — The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F#ck — sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it is a hilarious parody of the bestselling The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

The concept of this book is to teach you "how to stop spending time you don't have with people you don't like doing things you don't want to do" aka STOP PEOPLE PLEASING!!

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How Important Is The First Line of A Book?

by Lindsay Shapka in , ,


One thing I hear a lot in the publishing world is how important the first line is to a story.

Whether it is a short article or a 600-page novel, everything seems to rest on hooking the reader in that first sentence, that first thought, that should (in theory) set the tone for the rest of the piece.

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