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.