Ruby Loves Adventure

The book starts a few months after 13 Little Blue Envelopes so you have to read that book first before you move on to this one. The story still revolves around Aunt Peg's quest for Ginny - leaving them before she passed on from cancer.

It's so hard trying to think of a summary for this book without spoiling 13 Little Blue Envelopes sooo SPOILER ALERT.

Book starts when Ginny gets an unexpected message from London - her missing backpack & letters have been found!
She flies to London and it just so happens that the 13th Letter was another quest in itself. Back to London, Paris, and Amsterdam - but there's another destination - Ireland! Oh, and there's two new characters in the book!

Review: 

I like books like these - books that revolve around quests and travelling to find yourself. It's like one of the best things! While it was not as adventurous as the first one (I feel like this book was rushed and some of the quests were just reused from the first book again), it still had its fair share of new places to see and explore, and realizations about life and all it's mysteries.

If I was a teenager and was still not traveling the world, I would be very interested to travel after reading this. After all, Ginny managed to do it, why can't I? (Of course she had her inheritance, but you can do it too - just need to work and save the money to make your dreams come true)

Sad that the series has come to an end - what will I read now? (Uhm seriously, I know there's plenty more books to read out there. It never ends)

If you want to see my review of 13 Little Blue Envelopes, click here

Overall, I'll give this book a 4/5 
Book was borrowed from the Jacksonville Public Library

I picked up this book on a whim from the library. It was finance week and it was one of the featured finance books. I first looked at the book and noticed Ali Velshi - he hosted a CNN business show way back when I was living in Manila and I used to watch said business show everyday.

What can I say about this book? Not much. I read it within a week, it was quite thin at around 170+ pages. It was full of tips on how to speak money with your partners, how to prepare for university/college, how to manage your portfolio (invest, invest, invest) and prepare for retirement.

Ok, imagine you can only work for four hours a week and the rest of the time, you can do whatever you want. Would you like that type of life?

That is the main reason why I picked up this book in the first place. It was early 2013, and I was hit badly by the travel bug. I had been backpacking for 2 years and really, really wanted to find a way to escape the desk job and find a way to create other income streams so I could travel the world, which is a great passion of mine.

I first bought the book when Fully Booked in Alabang opened. I searched long and hard for it and was thrilled when it was available - it was pricey (in Pesos) but I bought it anyway.

I started reading the book... only, I had to leave a few months later for a new life in America. As the book was quite bulky, I had to leave it at home - only to reunite with it when I borrowed it from the Jacksonville library (YAY).

So, the concept of the book is simple, the New Rich, as the book calls, mostly wants you to look for ways to become more productive by eliminating, automating (or outsourcing), and batching tasks. And for employed workers, to negotiate a remote working agreement so that you can go ahead and live elsewhere while keeping a steady source of income in your pocket.

It also explains the concept of mini-retirements, where you go stay in one place for a while, 3 months, 6 months, however long it takes, before moving on to another place. Every time you move to a new place, a new series of challenges would ensue: how to adapt in the new environment, how to find new friends, and how even the most mundane tasks you do back home are so much different abroad.

Book also provided suggestions on what to do after you have let go of the 9-5 grind, and the main point was continuous learning - which I totally agree with. This is the reason why I keep reading books and travel! Nothing fills up the mind more with ideas of where to go next, and what to do in a certain place (like learn a language and soak up their culture).

The book also warns us that too many options can lead us to become unproductive - as we spend a lot of time mulling over certain decisions, this would mean our attention is somewhere else, and attention is important for us as it consumes our time. It all ties up!

I loved this book - one of the reasons why I have two copies, one of which I'll probably give away to a friend who may need this as well. I have taken a leap - although not the same one as Tim did, but I managed to move to two different countries c/o my company, enabling me to get the best of both worlds (staying employed & living in an entirely different continent from where I used to live in).

Do get a copy of the book and apply some of what's there - I suggest writing down your action points and goals so you could always take a look back at what you've written and see if you did manage to reach your goal.

Rating: 5/5
Published by: Crown
Book borrowed from Jacksonville Public Library.

There has been a lot of buzz about Rainbow Rowell's books so I decided to jump in the bandwagon and borrowed one of her books from the library. Seeing that Fangirl is the newest book out, I decided to borrow it (and partly because the waiting list for this book was shorter than Eleanor & Park).

Fangirl revolves around Cath, who grew up with her twin and has to go to Uni. But then her twin, Wren, has told her that she doesn't want her to be her roommate and pretty much have her own college experience.

Cath was devastated and keeps to herself most of the time and create her Simon Snow fanfics (Simon Snow being their equivalent of Harry Potter - a series of books and movies and they're huge) - until Levi comes along..

So that pretty much is my own version of the book summary - seeing as I can't log in to Goodreads to get a summary using this PC I'm typing the blog in at the moment.

This book has been.... disappointing. At first I was really intrigued because of all the praise for Rainbow Rowell's books, but then I started reading and realized what a loser Cath was... and I was really turned off by her personality (ie she has none) in the first 100+ pages of the book until Raegan and Levi came along to at least help develop her.
Given her twin sister's limited appearance in the book, I find myself rooting for Wren sometimes as Cath is just too bland for my liking - I mean how can you like someone who just wants to stay in their own room and who doesn't even want to make friends? Give me a break! (I know, I know - to each their own, I'm just saying I can't relate with the main character. It took me ages to convince myself to pick the book up and give it another chance, read it until the end!)

In page 180+, the book FINALLY picks up with Levi and Cath's cute scene in Cath's dorm (FINALLY, Cath seems to have more of a personality now!)

And then it went downhill again. After finishing the book, I was still highly disappointed - I was thinking - "This was one of the greatest books for 2013? Bummer" To each their own, I guess.

For me:
1) Cath didn't really grow as a person in the book - sure, she had Levi but her resolutions about not going much out of the house/dorm and not being friendly enough to other people, and getting over Simon Snow and the obsession about the fandom wasn't really addressed at the end of the book
2) What about the other characters? What about Wren, Raegan, Levi, her dad? What happened next to them? For me they were just cameo appearances to the book but they were quite essential to Cath as a person as a whole.
3) Simon Snow - it was confusing trying to follow the mini stories within the book. I know it's fictional, and I know that it is sort of based on the Harry Potter series but how does it end? Any closures in the story?
4)  400+ pages of a story that went nowhere for me. Gaah..

Good thing I just borrowed this book from the Jacksonville Public Library - at least I did not pay any money to buy this book.

Overall Rating: 2/5.

So, this book was in my to-read list for the longest time - as a big follower of nomadicmatt.com, I figured this would be a good way to get more travel-related information and how to save while traveling long term.

I was gravely disappointed.

I thought it was going to be full of new information that you wouldn't have read before from his (or other) travel blogs, but some of these tips are common sense, or would be known for people who have backpacked - even for some time.

Case and point - I think every chapter says - "ask your hotel/hostel for recommendations". I was thinking "Uhm I read this book to get your opinion on tips and recommendations, I don't really need you to tell me to ask the hotel/hostel people."

Also, I find that to really only travel the world on $50, it would entail a lot of eating in & cooking. While I do that sometimes when I travel, it is also fun to just walk around and eat in local food places and try new stuff.
The $50 budget would also mean trying to cut back on a lot of activities. Now why would I want to travel the world without checking out the sites or doing something new for the first time? Just not feasible for me.

This book would be perfect for a first time traveler who is not quite sure how much to save up for their first trip abroad, however for people who have managed to backpack around and survive, you'll probably just get bored reading this book.

Book was borrowed from Jacksonville Public Library.

On another note - I am wearing the shawl I bought from Cambodia and I swear to god, it still smells like Cambodia!! I miss Cambodia and backpacking now!!!

Summary from Goodreads:


Inside little blue envelope 1 are $1,000 and instructions to buy a plane ticket.
In envelope 2 are directions to a specific London flat.
The note in envelope 3 tells Ginny: Find a starving artist.
Because of envelope 4, Ginny and a playwright/thief/ bloke–about–town called Keith go to Scotland together, with somewhat disastrous–though utterly romantic–results. But will she ever see him again?
Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it's all because of the 13 little blue envelopes.

This is a cute, cute book. I never expected to pick it up when I was back home - well, because I have a rule back home that if it isn't available at a second hand book shop, I won't buy it. Since I've moved to America and knowing that the nearest district library is just two blocks away, and my boyfriend's apartment building is beside the main library, I decided to track down a copy and borrow it.

This was originally recommended by a good friend of mine, who has read it a few years back and said it was a good read - she was correct. From the summary, Ginny receives a package from her dead aunt, who tells her to travel to different places and do several tasks - all expenses paid, of course. Now who wouldn't want to do that, right? I sure would love that. Travel for free? Hey, I'm in!

Ginny goes to London, Edinburgh, Paris, Greece, and Denmark (did I miss any countries) while following the letters - although she did not stay long in many of the places, which bummed me a bit. I mean, why spend all that money just going from one place to another, right? But oh well, every person's travel itinerary is different, and that's hers.

So, what do I think about the book? It's wonderfully written, and I also love anything that involves travel (not sure I mentioned that above too). I also love how realistic it is about the hostel senarios and meeting other people on the road. Oh, and also losing your stuff - did I mention that I lost my camera when I was backpacking? Oh well. I did also get my fair share of horrible hostels that I stayed in, ahh those were the days.

So, overall, I would say - PICK UP THIS BOOK!

Book was borrowed from my local library (Jacksonville, FL - Main branch).