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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

The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair

Dev was not a tall man; in fact, he was slight of stature. But somehow when he entered the room he seemed to control, to possess, everything inside -- the furniture, the walls, the inhabitants. He came to the house for dinner that night, and when I stumbled in with Krishna and Meenu, our hands and feet dirty from playing cricket in the front yard, I instantly knew it was the man whom Krishna disliked. Rakhee Singh had it all. She'll soon be graduating from Yale's, and starting a promising job. She has a wonderful family and is engaged to the man she loves. But she has a secret - something that still bothers her, something that happened when she was eleven and on her very first trip to India with her mother. Since then, her parents had separated and the events of that summer forever hung like a shroud over her. The Girl in the Garden is the story of that summer and Rakhee's subsequent efforts to come to terms with that event.

My Orange July reading

Last year, I committed to reading more of the books that have won or been nominated for the Orange Prize . Clearly, when I commit to something, I have a harder time getting to it. Must have something to do with write-it-down-file-it-away, like the Archive button in Google emails. (Next time, I really want to do a challenge, I'll remember not to join it.) But now I have a chance for redemption, for proving that I can stick to a challenge, an awesome challenge, that too.  The Magic Lasso is hosting the Orange July project next month. Since the Orange Prize winner was just announced , and I came across several amazing posts on the nominated books, I'm extra eager to read them. I have quite a good bunch of books that I own at present or received for review, and those are most likely my first priority, before I head with my wallet to the bookstore. I know I won't get to all of them in any probability, but I like to have a list of possibilities and pick from them what I&#

Yet another Monday! (June 27, 2011)

Sheila  @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books  wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige! I really didn't get much reading done this week. Mostly, I've been trying to handle couple of personal matters and the accompanying stress, and reading  has been taking a backseat lately. I still have a few books going, but not as much as is usual for me. News from over my blog Reviews up!    Vietnamerica by GB Tran Other posts    A Reading Experiment Books on my nightstand I'm still reading  Shantaram  for the  readalong , at least on paper, but I didn't really get to it this week. I kno

The Sunday Salon: A Reading Experiment

Last Sunday, when I whined about how much trouble it was deciding what book to buy , Laurel-Rain Snow mentioned that when she goes to a bookstore, she usually tries to have a book in her bag, which she then reads in the attached cafe. That got me thinking about my reading preferences in bookstores. I do like to a read a little something during my visits to a brick and mortar bookstore, but I never really thought about what I read. I usually like to treat in-store reading as a kind of sampling. Pick a random book that I've been curious about or which someone recommended to me, walk over to the cafe, and, sometimes over coffee, read a few pages of the book. This has helped me decide about quite a few books that I wasn't sure about - Some have raced to the top of my wishlist, some never get into my TBR even. Besides, it's such a serendipitous experience - something I feel lacking in my reading every once in a while, with all the lists I've made m

Vietnamerica by GB Tran

(I've been writing this review for three nights and never quite getting it right, so I'm just going to go ahead with what I've written so far.) This year, I seem to have read a lot of books about characters (real or fictional) who try to get to know their roots better. Some go to their native country or the country their ancestors are from. Others reconnect with their families. I don't know if I'm semi-consciously levitating towards such books or if it's all chance. This is the second time that I'm reading a book on such a theme via the graphic medium (the first was Maus ). I was curious about how this would turn out. On one hand, this is a great medium for demonstrating the feelings and emotions of the characters. On the other hand, getting to know your roots mean a lot of introspection - not always well-displayed through pictures. Some amount of dialogue would be needed and the artist's talent determines how well he can convey that wit

Yet another Monday! (June 20, 2011)

Sheila  @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books  wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige! It's been a great couple of weeks of reading, maybe not in quantity, but definitely in enjoyment quotient, which is probably what I should start measuring from now on. Ever since I slackened my reading schedule last month, I'm finding my reading less driven by pressure and a whole lot funner. Of course, there are still plenty of ARC books stacked here, but I'm slowly retuning my approach to them, so that they appear as just another book to me. That truly helps when you have double or triple-committed a month.  Books completed since the last update    South of Superior   by  Ellen Airgood : A small-town story.    The Girl in the Garden   by  Kamala Nair : It's my first time reading a book set in my hometown. Ni

The Sunday Salon: The Problem with Buying Books

I distinctly remember complaining a few months ago about how much trouble it was to select a book from the library . There's always some other book calling my name. And knowing very well that most of those books go unread, I would usually prefer not to take a truck load, only to come back again and guiltily return half of those unread. Since then, I kicked that worry out of my system. Lately, I've been having so much fun taking a random array of books home, and reading a book that I was in the mood for at a specific time. True, some, probably most, of those do not get read. But there's always a next time. Plus, I love the increased set of choices I have each time I'm looking for a read. And now that I got that cured, what do you know, I'm having trouble buying a book. Uh-huh! The same scenario played out all over again. I actually headed to B&N yesterday only for some fun time browsing the aisles. It had been ages since I had been