Blog Archives
It Happened. Make of It What You Will
Joanna Potepa’s It Happened. Make of It What You Will is a wonderfully observant collection of personal stories about travel, memory, human connection, and the strange little incidents that stay with us long after they’ve happened. The book follows Potepa as she leaves England to begin a new chapter in Spain, eventually setting off on a two-month road trip through Spain and Portugal in her beloved silver Mazda. Along the way, she encounters unfamiliar places, unexpected complications, memorable strangers, and plenty of situations that test her patience and ingenuity. Woven between these travel adventures are shorter recollections from her earlier life in Poland and England. These stories move across decades, touching on childhood, family, marriage, work, and the experiences that helped shape her outlook. The result is a personal and refreshingly unconventional memoir that feels like spending an afternoon with someone who has an extraordinary collection of stories and knows exactly how to tell them.
One of the book’s greatest pleasures is Potepa’s distinctive voice. She’s funny, curious, stubborn, practical, and wonderfully willing to admit when her own decisions lead to ridiculous situations. Her humor often comes from the contrast between what she expects to happen and what actually unfolds. A frustrating encounter with technology, a peculiar cultural habit, or an innocent attempt to solve a problem can become an entertaining story in her hands. She also has an impressive eye for detail, particularly when describing architecture, landscapes, machines, and everyday objects. Her fascination with geometry and patterns gives her observations a distinctive character, while her appreciation for good food and spontaneous conversations adds warmth. There’s an appealing honesty to the way she presents herself. She can be impatient, impulsive, sentimental, or determined to the point of absurdity, and she’s comfortable letting readers see all those sides of her personality.
The main journey provides a sense of movement and discovery, while the memories inserted between destinations reveal connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. A present-day experience can bring an old memory rushing back, allowing two seemingly unrelated episodes to illuminate each other. Some stories are laugh-out-loud funny, while others carry considerable emotional weight. Potepa writes about vulnerability, loss, kindness, independence, and the unpredictability of being alive with an engaging combination of directness and reflection. Her background as an artist is evident in the way she builds scenes around visual impressions and small, revealing details. The short chapters make the book easy to enjoy in individual sittings, although their brevity occasionally leaves you wishing she’d linger a little longer with an especially interesting person or experience. At times, her closing reflections explain the significance of an incident more explicitly than necessary, since the storytelling has already made its point. Even so, her personality and storytelling instincts keep the collection lively and engaging.
I’d recommend It Happened. Make of It What You Will to readers who enjoy travel memoirs, personal essays, and true stories about ordinary experiences taking unexpected turns. Anyone who has moved to another country, started over later in life, or discovered that the best travel memories often come from unplanned encounters will find plenty to relate to. It’s also an excellent choice for readers who appreciate sharp observational humor, independent-minded women, and writing that finds emotional significance in the details of daily life. Potepa’s enthusiasm for art, architecture, engineering, and the oddities of human behavior gives the book an unusually broad appeal. What makes it especially enjoyable is the feeling that you’re getting to know a real person through the things she notices, remembers, questions, and laughs about. Her stories invite readers to revisit their own seemingly insignificant experiences and consider why certain moments remain so vivid. It’s a thoughtful, frequently funny, and genuinely personable book that encourages curiosity about the world and the countless stories hidden inside an ordinary day.
Pages: 171 | ASIN : B0GX2SRNPB
While I Can: Finding Purpose and Legacy in a Distant Land
While I Can by Jo Dibblee is an inspirational travel memoir that documents the author and her husband’s decision to throw caution to the wind and leave their home in Canada to embark upon an adventure of a lifetime to Baja, Mexico.
What starts out as a plan to spend a winter there turns into something so much more as they fall in love with Baja, the community, and the people. While Michael pursues his dream to master kitesurfing in one of the best places on earth for the sport, Jo gets involved in fostering dogs and eventually helping set up Team Baja Humanity, a grassroots project that aims to uplift communities in need in Baja.
Their travels end up being a life-affirming journey of discovery that changes them and their lives in ways they never imagined when setting out on this epic adventure.
I absolutely loved this book. It’s gloriously optimistic and brimming with raw emotion. As Jo Dibblee takes the reader along for the ride, her writing vividly conjures up the experience of embracing the unknown and opening yourself up to life’s possibilities. The writing is top-notch, and I really enjoyed feeling part of the author’s emotional journey.
A key theme of the book is grasping life by the horns “while you can.” It is this moto that propels Jo and her husband onto their path of Baja after recent health scares put their own mortality into sharp focus. Overall, Jo’s book is full of hard-won life wisdom and is a pleasure to read.
“Most things in life must be experienced and learned; there’s no shortcut or free pass. It is from these moments we know and do better, or, at the very least, become wiser. It wasn’t as though we hadn’t done our research and talked to others, but there were plenty of things we did not, or could not, know.” (p 43)
Through her words, Jo portrays the transformational effect of travel and weaves a story that is full of love not only for travel but for people, relationships, communities, and the wider world. She effectively brings her experience to life with well-written, vivid descriptions and extraordinary emotional intelligence. Her words are sure to inspire a healthy dose of wanderlust in her readers! Her commitment to other people and being of service to those in need is both touching and inspirational.
Pages: 196 | ASIN : B0CC3P6S36
Tell Me About Your Scars
Struggle Bus: The Van. The Myth. The Legend is more than just a memoir; it is a source of amusement, reflection, and a testament to having faith. How did your Craigslist ad for a van manifest into this inspirational book?
I learned long ago that one of the best “ice breaker” questions to get a group of people to start talking/interacting is this: “Tell me the story of one of your scars.”
Scars are painful in the moment but often provide a lifetime of stories—sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, sometimes both, always memorable. It dawned on me that our viral Craigslist ad was essentially a long list of our van’s scars. I thought it would be fun to tell all the fun stories (in gory detail) of our van’s many scars—as much to preserve the stories for our family as to give others something to laugh about. I think my ridiculous little book did just that.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
The stories of our kids’ medical issues were easily the hardest things to write about. Even though there’s a dose of humor in many of the stories, reliving the moments brings back sort of an echo of the extreme parental fear, panic, and dread each of those moments created. I physically winced retelling many of the stories. That said, I think it was oddly therapeutic to write about all our moments—good and bad. I’d recommend it to any parent.
What is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you were younger?
I can’t remember where I heard this quote (and I’m probably butchering it…sorry), but there’s some truth in it:
“In your twenties, you’re constantly worried about what everyone else is thinking about you.
In your forties, you stop caring what others are thinking about you.
In your sixties, you realize that no one was thinking about you the whole time.”
Basically, I wish I would have spent less time caring so deeply what other people think. Of course, young Josh Wood probably wouldn’t have listened had anyone given him the advice to stop caring so much about what other people are thinking. I will never be smarter than I was at 20-years-old. Oh, to be young and stupid.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?
First and foremost, I hope readers take away the peace, hope, joy, and genuine fun that faith in Jesus infused into the messes of my life. Additionally, I hope parents both A) embrace some new ways to engage with their kids…and engage their families as a whole with the world around them; and, B) feel some grace and solidarity for not being the perfect parent. Life is too short and too hard to hold yourself to an impossible standard. Embrace the messes of life (both self-inflicted messes and those out of your control), stumble forward, and try to laugh along the way.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Website
This one-of-a-kind literary adventure you are about to embark on is about more than a viral van. It’s about managing the wonderful chaos of a family of 11. It’s about parenting. It’s about marriage. It’s about success. It’s about failure. It’s about faith. It’s about fun. It’s about a van becoming a metaphor for life as it is given a fun-filled beatdown for the ages.
As you roll along with the Wood family, you just might feel driven to:
• connect a little more with the God who made you.
• give yourself a little more grace when you fail.
• smile and laugh a little more—both at the Wood family’s expense and your own.
Hop in, buckle up, hold your nose, laugh, and join the Wood family to explore one of life’s fundamental truths: the struggle is real.”
Struggle Bus: The Van. The Myth. The Legend.
In Struggle Bus, Josh Wood presents a captivating chronicle of his life revolving around a family bus that rose to internet fame through a viral Craigslist ad. The narrative is a rich tapestry of humorous, personal, and unforgettable tales about Wood’s large family of eleven and the myriad adventures they embark on. Some of these journeys take place aboard the iconic Struggle Bus, while others transport them beyond national borders, immersing them in diverse cultures and lifestyles.
With a lively family of nine children, the book is a treasure trove of engaging moments – from comical blunders and emergency situations to enlightening encounters with refugees and profound reflections on faith. The Struggle Bus itself is more than just a backdrop to these stories. Its physical attributes and even its flaws, such as scuff marks and a malfunctioning air conditioner, become integral narrative elements, each with a story to tell.
Yet, beneath the humor and the tangible, Wood deftly weaves profound themes of Christianity, social consciousness, travel, family, parenting, and the pursuit of happiness. He skillfully employs conversational language and inventive metaphors, crafting a narrative that is both entertaining and deeply thought-provoking.
Wood’s book provides valuable insights into parenting, both directly and indirectly, making it a valuable resource for parents managing a large family. One particularly inspiring example is Wood’s commitment, along with his wife, to regularly host refugee families for dinner. This simple act of welcoming strangers into their home and educating their children about global disparities embodies their personal contribution to shaping a better world.
Struggle Bus serves as a poignant reminder that life and parenting are not about seeking perfection but about cherishing love and togetherness and finding joy in our shared experiences. It highlights the wisdom to be gained from remaining open to life’s lessons, as Wood himself learns from his children, his bus, and even his own comedic errors.
If you’re a fan of memoirs or books that delve into the intricacies of family life, Struggle Bus: The Van. The Myth. The Legend is a must-read. You’ll find yourself laughing, learning, and reminiscing about your own cherished moments with your loved ones. Dive into Josh Wood’s entertaining and introspective world; you’ll be glad you did.
Pages: 145 | ASIN : B0859KSKF8
Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels
Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling Around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards by Katherine Kerestman is a historical recount of the author’s travels to unique places that one would not think to visit. The book is organized into chapters that are mostly titled by places the author travelled to. This makes it easy to read a chapter about a specific place and gives the reader the option to skip around in the book. This book is your tour guide to strange and unusual destinations.
The author has made interesting language choices. Apart from the introduction the language used through the book is quite informative and has a formal tone. At times the informative language is supplemented by more descriptive language – particularly when describing artifacts and architecture that the author particularly enjoyed. These descriptions are rich and draw the reader in, making it feel like we are standing in front of The Tower of London or in a beautiful opera house. Many natural landscapes are also described in detail, giving the reader a thorough description of the author’s experiences. Although the language is quite formal, the rich descriptions peppered with historical facts work together to hold the reader’s interest.
This book is born out of Kerestman’s interest in what she terms as the macabre. Readers may find some the places described in the book to be ghoulish and creepy. There is a wanderlust approach to the destination the author took. Most of the locations appear to be places that intrigued the author and not someplace of historical value. Following the paths of Kerestman’s journey readers travel to destinations that are not always on the top destinations tourist lists.
Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling Around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards is a entertaining and informative book that will delight readers who wish to experience the strange and unusual in travel.
Pages: 208 | ASIN : B08MQD99HT
