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Showing posts from January, 2011

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Infinite Country by Patricia Engel | Thoughts

   Published : 2021   ||    Format : print   ||    Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the story of her family through the other protagonist, El

Yet another Monday! (January 31, 2011)

This is a weekly event initially hosted by  J. Kaye  at  J. Kaye's Book Blog , now by Sheila @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books , to celebrate what you are reading for the week as well as books completed the previous week. This Monday sure arrived too early. I don't think I read enough or blogged enough last week to merit a new week this soon. Even though I promised myself that I'll space my reading better and not get bogged down by adjacent review dates, I'm still scrambling to finish book after book. Doesn't help that every book I pick is at least 300 pages long. Books completed in the last week   The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life   by Jasmin Darznik : Did you read my Sunday Salon post where I raved about this book? This one was amazing - one heck of an emotionally charged, compelling read, and if you haven't added it yet, you should - it's the second book this year to make my WOW list!   Eaarth   by Bi

The Sunday Salon (In which I'm already gushing about 2011) - Jan 30, 2011

I am feeling quite exhilarated right now. Well, that's just one of the emotions I'm feeling, because I'm still thinking of a particular book I just finished five minutes back. Fingers crossed, I have a feeling that 2011 is going to be a great year in books for me. (Wait for a minute while I do the touchwood thing.) I don't know about quantity, but quality certainly. I've just finished my second WOW read of the year - The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik. This book, primarily set in Iran, is an account of the life of Jasmin's mother, Lili, and Lili's relationship with her parents, grandparents and a whole host of characters. It's captivating, poignant and very unputdownable. There's a lot more superlatives I can use here, but I hope you get the gist now. I've already mentioned my first WOW book of the year - Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I realize that I have two amazing books to review soon and I don't even know where or how to start. B

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

My head feels strange, but I can't identify the sensation at first. Then it comes to me in full Technicolor, the volume turned all the way up. My head is scorching hot. I let go of the cup of ice and touch my head. I'm stunned and horrified by the mental image drawn by what my fingers feel. Sarah Nickerson is the career-driven supermom. Every waking minute of her life is structured and planned out. She works a lot of hours each day, has a just-as-career-obsessed husband, and also has three kids, one of whom is having a lot of trouble focusing at school. As she tries to keep her whole life in balance, one slight distraction while driving sends her spiraling into an accident. If you know the subject matter Lisa Genova writes about, you probably also know that Left Neglected is focused on a brain injury and how the victim adjusts to it. But I hope you didn't go one step further and read about the actual illness covered in this book, because that revelation in my opin

Disqus installed

Just dropping by with a brief message - I just installed Disqus and imported all my comments from Blogger. So far, it looks glitch-free. The plus: No more word verifications. Isn't that great news? The minus: You'll have to login into some account or use OpenID. But if you do run into any issue commenting, please feel free to leave me an email.

Yet another Monday! (January 24, 2011)

This is a weekly event initially hosted by  J. Kaye  at  J. Kaye's Book Blog , now by Sheila @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books , to celebrate what you are reading for the week as well as books completed the previous week. Those among you coming to me directly from your RSS readers, can you please confirm that you saw my post on your reader? I'm getting paranoid wondering if the feeds are going out fine, after the domain change. :)  I almost forgot about this post, with all the drama that happened here during Bloggiesta . I didn't read during the weekend at all, so I have to catch up this week. Books completed in the last week   Left Neglected   by Lisa Genova : I have to say that I am disappointed with this book. Still Alice was one of my favorite reads last year, so it hurts to say that, but this book was dry and boring most of the time.

Bloggiesta - Final Update

So, I didn't get to do much today. I guess after spending a total of 21 hours on Bloggiesta, I got worn out. But I did get a lot done overall, and may spend some time next weekend on whatever is remaining. But first, look at my URL! :)

Bloggiesta Update #1

After two days of total 17 hours effort, I did manage to do quite a big chunk of my tasks. Well, maybe not in numbers but definitely in amount. You may notice that my blog layout has changed. I feel pretty satisfied with this one. I'd like to hear your thoughts however. I created the header and modified the layout from scratch, so it took me longer than it would have had I just chosen a ready-made template. Remind me next time not to play with the code, because clearly I can't seem to detach myself from it at any point. I decided not to change the name, because I realized I will have to make too many changes, starting with identity. Two big changes coming (that's the main reason I decided to post an update now): I'm going to move my blog to a custom domain. I don't think this will affect your feeds/subscriptions, because you should be easily redirected. But just warning, in case, things do decide to go wrong. I'll be moving my comment system to (most

Let the Bloggiesta roll

It's the weekend for me, finally! Phew, I spent all day thinking when I can start playing with my blog. After work, I stopped on my way to buy a medium-size strong coffee because I didn't want to waste one minute at home with chores. Now that I'm home, with my workstation set up, my coffee, water and snacks beside me, the geek in me is so excited to start twiddling with code. Luckily, I did spend some part of this week making my to-do list, so the most important task is done.

My other obsession

I have an obsession. Other than anything to do with books, I mean. I'm obsessed with organization. It doesn't matter what the subject is - it can be organizing my bookshelf, my goodreads catalog, my reading lists, my to-do list, my career, my home, my possessions, my wardrobes/closets, etc. When I was moving out of Blacksburg and trying to pack my belongings, I was still looking at every book I owned and making sure they are cataloged in my Goodreads library. On the last day. Uh-uh. My friend had to stop me from this major distraction, considering that I still had a long way to go, and had not much time left before I had to vacate.

Book n Movie Review: Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane/Martin Scorsese

She smiled darkly and shook her head. "I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying?" My very first introduction to Dennis Lehane was through the movie, Mystic River . At that point, I didn't know the movie was based on a book, but when I did come across the book many years later, I knew I had to read it. Now I have a huge tome of Mystic River staring at me every time I look at my shelf. It's not that I'm not keen on reading it, I'm terrified. One, because it's huge. Second, because I never really understood the movie, Mystic River , and had to read reviews and spoilers to actually know what it was about. I assume the book is the same. So instead, when I saw Shutter Island at an airport bookstore, after brow

Yet another Monday! (January 17, 2011)

This is a weekly event initially hosted by  J. Kaye  at  J. Kaye's Book Blog , now by Sheila @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books , to celebrate what you are reading for the week as well as books completed the previous week. This week, I mostly struggled with my reading. Weekdays are not a great time for me to read, so if I start a book on Sunday/Monday, I'll still be reading it all through the following Friday/Saturday. The big downside to this is the book starts losing its appeal after a couple of days. I'm usually careful about what I read on weekdays, but with all the review copies and library books piling up, it's not easy. Pressure-free reading seems to be disappearing! That said, I did get a few reads out of the way, and plan to spend more time this week reading, since Bloggiesta is this weekend, and I'll have to pamper my blog a bit. Books completed in the last week   Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix   by J.K. Rowling : It f

The Sunday Salon (Wow, my first TSS of the year) -- January 16, 2011

I was looking for the Sunday Salon post template when I noticed that my last TSS post went up a month ago. That got me thinking about what I was doing the last four Sundays! Two of them disappeared in my lovely vacation, the other two must have got obscured in sheer laziness. My resolution this year was is to be less procrastinating. Obviously, I'm still having trouble with it. Or maybe not. It's definitely easy to be less procrastinating, so long as I don't say how less . Maybe I will actually be successful at a resolution this year! It's been two weeks since I got back from my vacation, but I had a really wonderful time. It's great to be back to routine also - for the first time in months, I'm having some semblance of a schedule.

Books in the Bag (Jan 14, 2011)

Books in the Bag is a feature where Mailbox Monday meets Library Loot . I had two books come in this week. Both of which I'm really looking forward to reading! Both of which are based in India. Lately, I had been ruing the fact that only a very small portion of my reads are based in India, despite the many wonderful Indian authors. It actually has to do with a fear that the books won't live up to my expectations (and I do set different expectations for books from my native country, quite subconsciously). I went to the independent bookstore, Little Dickens and Givens books, near my apartment yesterday, and came across Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts on one of the used books shelves. Just look at that cover! I'm glad that it is this particular cover that I own and not this more ubiquitous blue and green cover . This mostly-autobiographical novel about a man who escapes from an Australian prison only to arrive in India, with illegal papers. He goes on to help sl

Why I never random-pick a book in the library

Really, how hard is it to pick a book from the library? This is what happened when I went to the library on Saturday. I had two holds to pick up that I was really excited about - both were Diary of the Wimpy Kid books, which I knew I would finish within a few hours. Although I had my next two weeks of reading planned out, and had no space to squeeze in an extra book, I still couldn't imagine leaving the library with just holds and nothing randomly picked. So, I decided to pick one more book that 1. wasn't new (because new books have a 14-day checkout period, as opposed to 21 for the rest), and 2. was literary fiction (and not one of my guilt pleasure reads, like thrillers or chick-lit).

Room by Emma Donoghue

I hold on to her hand. She wants me to believe so I'm trying to but it hurts my head. "You actually lived in TV one time?" "I told you, it's not TV. It's the real world, you wouldn't believe how big it is." Her arms shoot out, she's pointing at all the walls. "Room's only a tiny stinky piece of it." "Room's not stinky." I'm nearly growling. By now, there will be very few of you who have not heard of this book. It has featured in almost every award nomination, and has been on so many reading lists, that my thoughts on it will only add to an already swollen review database. Room by Emma Donoghue explores the possible consequences of an abduction and a child born in "captivity". Emma sets out to create a tightly isolated environment in which the child grows up - never seeing the world outside or another human being, with the exception of his own mother and her abductor. And then, she proceeds t

Yet another Monday! (January 10, 2011)

This is a weekly event initially hosted by  J. Kaye  at  J. Kaye's Book Blog , now by Sheila @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books , to celebrate what you are reading for the week as well as books completed the previous week. Yikes! It IS Monday! Not really my favorite day of the week, except for the prospect of checking out all the weekly round-up posts. At least, I can finally say that I'm out of my extended reading and blogging rut, due to a heavy interference by life ! I haven't had a great week in reading, but I have my neck deep in three books right now. Books completed in the last week Don't laugh ( no, really! ), when you see the first book I finished this year!   Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2: Rodrick Rules   by Jeff Kinney : I somehow cannot get enough of this series. It's so wonderful to laugh crazily at a book - laugh genuinely at innocent jokes! This is my fourth book of this series so far, leaving me just one more. I started reading

2011: The Year That Is

Happy New Year, everyone! Yeah, I know I'm really late - that's five days late. But the nasty virus that I caught five days back only just started letting me relax. After a really wonderful vacation, the fever was a setback. So here I am - finally writing my first post of the year. One thing I had a lot of fun reading was everyone's reading/blogging resolutions. I rarely stick to resolutions, but I'm a planner, so I make a lot of plans all the time. After blogging for more than a year now (Oh yeah, my blogaversary slipped by unnoticed - even by me), there are a few things I decided - both about my blog and about my reading habits.