Read - Watch - Listen
📚 The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho, Audio Book Nov 2024
It is an excellent read about Santiago, a Spanish shepherd, and his longing to discover how others live and experience life. The book is filled with travel, life lessons, biblical parables, multiple systems of faith, and Myth. It's an exploration of the pursuit of “Personal Legends.” The solution: one’s "Personal Legend can only be achieved with persistence; wisdom is attained through observation and attentiveness; simple things have extraordinary value and are not to be overlooked; and God is universally manifested in everything that exists."
📚 Eruption - Michael Crichton and James Patterson, Audio Book October 2024
By Michael Crichton and James Patterson, based on an unfinished manuscript by Crichton at the time of his death. It is a thriller leading up to an epic eruption of Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii. Several twists, including a US Military secret stash of dangerous chemicals and the world-ending catastrophe, should the lava flow reach its secret storage cave.
📚 Gone Bamboo - Anthony Bourdain, Audio Book Sept 2024
I'm a fan of Tony Bourdain, but I do not necessarily like his writing. I have read/listened to a few of his books but felt unimpressed. This one was different, with a bit of a different style that was refreshing and worth listening to. A thriller based in the Caribbean with CIA assassins, Mob bosses, and several other "Characters"
📚 The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson, Read January 2020
As a big fan of rum in general, how could I not look into a book with this title? When I learned that it was written by Hunter S. Thompson, my curiosity was peaked. Soon after beginning the audiobook, I was immediately sucked into the story, which follows a young writer and several loathing drunks through their loosely supervised, nostalgic lives, hanging out in the Caribbean in the early 1960s—an easy and entertaining read.
📚 The Reckoning - John Grisham, Read Nov/Dec 2019
Respected Mississippi war hero and Cotton farmer who shot the local pastor in cold-blooded murder, the story of Pete Banning unfolds as he is arrested and offers no defense of information as to why he committed the crime. Typical twists and turns revealed typical of a Grishman story doesn't reveal the truths until the very end.
🎬 Inside Bill's Brain - Netflix, Watched October 2019
It is a fascinating documentary about Bill, his accomplishments, abilities, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's current projects. You'll learn about the foundations' priorities and some amazing projects they drive. Anything they get behind (fund) must be able to become self-sufficient, sort of the teach a man to fish mantra. Learn about groundbreaking projects like improving sewage conditions in developing countries and a cleaner, safer form of nuclear power
📚 Life 3.0 - Max Tegmark, Read October 2019
I was watching the Bill Gates documentary "Inside Bill's Brain," a Fantastic show. He carries a bag of books around with him as he is an avid reader. One of the books in his bag at the time was Life 3.0. It's a story about artificial intelligence and covers some fantastic information about current AI capabilities, as well as the future of AI, including its risks and benefits. I'll admit that I didn't listen to the entire audiobook. Still, the lengthy introduction, prelude, and chapter 1 provide compelling insight and scenarios that may occur when AI is in full effect. After chapter 1 the book gets way to technically deep for me so I stopped there. It's incredible and, at the same time, a bit frightening to see AI evolve and follow some of the paths covered in this read.
🎬 Long Way Round
A British documentary series every adventure motorcyclist should see! Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman plan and ride a grueling quest to motorbike from London to New York going east through Europe, Asia and then Alaska, Canada and the US.
🎬 Long Way Down
A follow up to their London to New York adventure. This time with Ewan and Charlie on their adventure bikes from John O'Groats in Scotland to the tip of Africa.
Their time spent traveling through Africa leaves you longing to travel through the country to see the spectacular landscape, Amazing wildlife and to experience the many different cultures on the continent
🎬 The Motorcycle Diaries
Watched this after traveling to Cuba in early 2017. Based on a true life story, The Motorcycle Diaries is an inspiring and thrilling adventure that traces the youthful origins of a revolutionary spirit. The film follows two daring friends, Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Alberto Granado, who hop on the back of a beat-up motorcycle for a breathtaking and exciting road trip across Latin America.
🎬 PAPA - Hemingway in Cuba
You can get a flavor of revolutionary Cuba and what Hemingway experienced by watching the Movie PAPA-HEMINGWAY in CUBA... In 1959, young journalist Ed Myers (a character representing Petitclerc) is working for a Miami newspaper. He wants to be a writer and had long admired Ernest Hemingway, then living in Cuba. Myers writes to Hemingway and is surprised when he answers, inviting the journalist to Cuba to go fishing with him. While the Cuban Revolution comes to a boil around them, Hemingway advises Myers on his writing. Myers continues to write articles for his newspaper, reporting on the Revolution.
📚 Our Woman in Havana:
A Diplomat's Chronicle of America's Long Struggle with Castro's Cuba
Our Woman in Havana chronicles the past several decades of US-Cuba relations from the bird’s-eye view of State Department veteran and longtime Cuba hand Vicki Huddleston, the top US diplomat in Havana under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. After the US embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the two countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977, with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the US Interests Section, where Huddleston would later serve. In her compelling memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook.
📚 The 47 Best Travel Films of All Time
by CNT EDITORS May 22, 2019
Some of my favorites made the list along with a few must-see additions
It's arguable that, more than any other piece of pop-culture ephemera, movies have the power to transport—to sweep you away on a European adventure (Before Sunrise), cross an African desert (Out of Africa), even send you to the never-before-seen Paradise Falls (Up). These 47 films are especially captivating, with well-told stories that evoke the magic (or harsh reality) of travel, and beautiful scenery that overwhelms the senses. Read on for the favorite travel movies of editors past and present—and get your Netflix queue ready.
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