winter reading

I recently read A Man Called Ove. I told Buddy the main character reminded me of him. What is it about? A grumpy old man… oh but that is not the part that reminds me of you. Ove is old school and is frustrated with the way things are now - nobody knows how to fix things or make anything anymore, no more craftsmen, they can't even drive a stick or back up a trailer.

"Ove wasn’t hopeless, in his own view. He just had a sense of there needing to be a bit of order in the greater scheme of things. He felt one should not go through life as if everything was exchangeable. As if loyalty was worthless. Nowadays people changed their stuff so often that any expertise in how to make things last was becoming superfluous.

Quality: No one cared about that anymore. Now everything had to be computerized, as if one couldn’t build a house until some consultant in a too-small shirt figured out how to open a laptop. As if that was how they built the Colosseum and the pyramids of Giza. Christ, they’d managed to build the Eiffel Tower in 1889, but nowadays one couldn’t come up with the bloody drawings for a one-story house without taking a break for someone to run off and recharge their cell phone.

This was a world where one became outdated before one’s time was up. An entire country standing up and applauding the fact that no one was capable of doing anything properly anymore. The unreserved celebration of mediocrity. "

I loved this book and looked for the movie on Netflix, ordered it. We popped it in the DVR… uh oh, it is in Swedish ! but with English subtitles… by the time you read the words the scene had changed, so it was kind of lost in translation. But it was still good. Of course the book is better.

The Magnolia Story

I love watching Chip and Joanna Gaines on Fixer Upper, so I knew I would like this book. It is a quick read, all about the early days before the fame, back when they were stretching every penny, working hard to get ahead, just like the rest of us. They have a great story, I loved: 

the one about the houseboat fight that was filmed by the tv crew

the disappearing wedding roses

the RV incident

Chip's never ending optimism

the dog at the wedding

the proposal

the parents wedding gift

OMG don't let Chip babysit!

If you like these two folks you will love this book, guaranteed to make you smile.