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Monday, October 14, 2013

A Real-Life Scottish Fairy Tale...

"What if I took all the imagination and creativity that I poured into my screenplays and invested it in my own life?"
 This is not a book about rockets (even though the author once worked for NASA). It's a book about asking yourself, "What if?" and following your dreams no matter how impractical they seem. It's a book about Scotland, and a very cool second-hand bookshop--reasons enough for me to read this book as I love both books and Scotland! It's part travel memoir, part adventure, and part romance. And it made me wish I could trade places with Jessica A. Fox.

"...the Holy Grail is not the treasure but the dream, like the carrot before the horse. It's the impulse that gets you off the couch and propels your journey. The problem arises when you don't allow your dream to change."

Jessica is a 26-year-old film-maker living and working in Los Angeles when she has a dream that propels her to take an impulsive trip to Wigtown, Scotland's National Book Town. There she meets Euan, the owner of The Bookshop. Wigtown feels surprisingly like home to her and Jessica soon finds herself falling in love with it...and with Euan.
"All the best parts of this adventure, after all--Euan, Eve, Deirdre, Edinburgh and all that I adored about Wigtown--had been outside the possibilities of my imagination."
I really enjoyed reading about this Scottish book town. Scotland is such an amazing place...I'd love to go back someday and make my own pilgrimage to Wigtown. If you're into travel, bookshops, and following your dreams, definitely read Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets by Jessica A. Fox.

5 comments:

  1. This sounds like so much fun! Definitely looks like a good book to put on my list for November. Thanks for the review.

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  2. sounds fun. I want to see Scotland someday too.

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  3. I read an article about the author a while ago and meant to track down a copy of this book, but it slipped my mind. Thank you for the reminder!

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  4. Until I read your review, I had never heard of this book, now I have to read it. Sounds absolutely marvelous. I'm a big fan of Edinburgh, which I've visited twice in real life, and numerous times courtesy of Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street series. The quotes were great--almost invoking a magical quality, ala Brigadoon.

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  5. I haven't come across this book before but it sounds great. I love Scotland and of course second-hand book shops. I must hunt it down!

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