Skip to main content

Featured Post

A New Way of Living | Weekly Snapshot

Posted on
I don't know about you guys but this has been one of the longest weeks ever. With schools closed and work moved to home, this has been a new way of living. When the changes and shutdowns came just before last weekend, there was no time to really process the information. Within days, life had changed. And then on Monday, I reported to work, from my home, with kids also at home. It was when Friday finally rolled along that I felt the gravity of the situation, how we'll be rarely getting out for weeks, if not for months. How schools were likely going to be closed for months. How work still had to be done remotely or worse, there was no work to do anymore due to layoffs or a shutdown. How there was not going to be any dining in restaurants for months.


That was a very sobering thought. I didn't sleep until 1.30am that night.

How are you all doing? What are some of your tips to keep your sanity on while we get through this very difficult time? Some of you are in places that are …
Post a Comment

Library Loot - Jan 17, 2010

Posted on


Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva @ A Striped Armchair and Marg @ Reading Adventures that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

So after a month, I finally headed to the library, to pick a bunch of books for the rest of this month. Here's what I grabbed:




  1. Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi. I devoured this book within a half hour of checking it out from the library.
  2. Daddy Long-legs by Jean Webster. This book was not on my reading plan for this month or year. But Aarti @ BOOKLUST and Nymeth @ things mean a lot posted raving reviews about this book that I had to pick it up.
  3. Bitten by Kelley Armstrong. I know, I must be the last blogger to read this.
  4. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. I haven't heard many very good review of this book, and much as I am curious about reading this, I hope I won't be disappointed. It's a huge tome!
  5. The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, Version 2.0 by Christopher Moore. My first by this author.
  6. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. This is the second time I am picking this book to read. The first time I started reading it, I wasn't much impressed by the first couple of pages. I want to give this one more try to see if the sentiment persists.
What do you think of any of these books?

Check out what others looted this week here!
Tags

Comments

Christine said…
Hi Aths!
Thanks for visiting my blog and checking out my library loot. I just finished BEAUTIFUL CREATURES yesterday and I loved it! I hope you enjoy it as well when you get to it.

You're not the last blogger to read BITTEN. I haven't read that series yet... and in fact have BITTEN on my TBR pile! OOps!

I also see we're in quite a few book challenges together. Good luck! :)
January 17, 2010 at 12:56 PM
Susan said…
I read Bitten last year, and fell in love with Armstrong's "Women of the Otherworld" series. I can't wait to see what you think of it:)

As far as Her Fearful Symmetry is concerned, I'm another blogger with a bad review :( I had heard that if you enjoyed The Time Traveler's Wife (as I did,) then you would be disappointed with HFS. I was really hoping for more...
January 17, 2010 at 4:04 PM
Athira said…
Christine, thanks for stopping by! Glad to hear that you loved Beautiful Creatures! I'm happy I'm not the only one who hasn't read Bitten! That makes two of us. LOL!

Susan, I hope to fall in love with the series too! And yeah, I tremendously enjoyed The Time Traveler's Wife, so I have really put a lot of expectations on this book. :(
January 17, 2010 at 4:56 PM
Eva said…
I want to read Daddy Longlegs thanks to Ana and Aarti too! :)

I wish Embroideries had been longer-it was so interesting!
January 17, 2010 at 6:17 PM
Kristen said…
The Stupidest Angel was my first Christopher Moore and I immediately zipped out to buy everything else the man has written. He's brilliantly hilarious. TSA has characters from many of his other books in it but it does work if you haven't read them as well. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
January 18, 2010 at 9:18 AM
Anonymous said…
Daddy-Long-Legs was one of my favourite books growing up! And I haven't read it in ages. Must see if I can get a copy. Hope you love it as much as I did all those years ago!
January 18, 2010 at 11:33 AM
Athira said…
Kristen, glad that you liked "The Stupidest Angel"! That book was a hit-or-miss with many, so I sure hope to enjoy it. I haven't read any of his other books, so I hope I can still enjoy it without that previous knowledge of the characters.

olduvai, I hope you get a copy of Daddy Long-Legs!
January 18, 2010 at 9:34 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri (Short Fiction Review)

Posted on
I first read Jhumpa Lahiri years ago, when her Interpreter of Maladies was making a huge buzz. At the time, I didn't catch any of the buzz, but for some reason, when I saw the book on the shelf at the store I was browsing in, I felt it just might be a decent read. Funnily, I read the entire short story collection without complaining about it, but for some reason, I cannot read any collection anymore without agonizing over its disjoint nature.

I did enjoy Interpreter of Maladies, but I did get bothered by the thread of loneliness and infidelity and distrust that laced through the stories. For that reason, I have been reluctant to read Unaccustomed Earth. However, when I came across Hell-Heaven at the NewYorker - a free short story from her book, I decided to go ahead and read it. I can't resist the pull of stories set in India or featuring Indian characters, and it is that same aspect that hooked me throughout this story.


In Hell-Heaven, the narrator contemplates the relations…
13 comments
Read more

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Posted on
Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.
Bernadette Fox has a reputation. While her husband and her daughter Bee love her, there's barely anyone else who share the sentiment. Her neighbor Audrey loves to gossip mean things about her with her close friend, Soo-Lin. The other parents of kids at Bee's school look down on Bernadette because she doesn't involve herself in school affairs. Bernadette herself goes out of her way to avoid company.

And then one day, Bee comes home with an excellent report card and asks for her reward - a family trip to Antarctica. The very plan throws Bernadette into a panic but she has no other option. She hires a virtual assistant, based out of India to take care of all her demands, including getting prescriptions at her local pharmacy, doing her online shopping and taking care of some of the logistics of her trip. (It is ridiculous! Bern…
27 comments
Read more

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (Short Fiction review)

Posted on
With the Hunger Games hype that engulfed us last week, it was hard to avoid all the discussion of similar works that existed. Of the many titles that I came across, two stood out particularly - a short story called The Lottery and a Japanese novel (and movie) called Battle Royale (which I'm reading right now and just cannot put down). The novel will be fodder for another post, so for now, I just want to rave about the awesomeness that was The Lottery.

In contemporary America, villagers across the country are gathering on the 27th of June (and some a day earlier) for an annual event called the Lottery. Children, women, men, all come to the main square of their village or town, where the lottery master keeps a black box full of paper chips. One of these chips is marked has a special mark on it to identify the winner (the person who draws that chip). Not everyone draws however, but only the head of the family. Husbands are viewed as the head of their families/households, and if the …
19 comments
Read more