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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

Yo! by Julia Alvarez

"It really hurts, you know, that my family can't share this with me. I mean I haven't done anything wrong. I could have been an axe murderer. I could have gotten up on some roof in a shopping mall and mowed down a bunch of people." I sure am glad that it's me she's talking to and not one of the psychologist sisters. "All I did was write a book," she wails. "Everyone's feeling a little exposed, that's all." "But it's fiction!" she starts in. Yolanda Garcia, or Yo, has just released a new book that has triggered a lot of angry reactions in her family. Even though Yo claims that it is fiction, each family member can identify themselves in some character of the book. They are frustrated, understandably, because their friends and acquaintances keep asking them which character represents them. Yo's mother is threatening to sue her while her sisters are refusing to talk to her. Yo cannot understand why her

The Sunday Salon: Geeking out over a scifi list (and one author I can't wait for you to read)

Couple of weeks ago, I came across this list in NPR books . My brother first shared it with me, then I saw it featured on the websites of a couple of bloggers I follow and then I kept running into it every once in a while. NPR Books asked its readers to vote for their favorite science-fiction or fantasy reads and drew up this list of top 100 from the votes. This is the kind of reading list that I love the best, because it is based on popular opinion and not something that a few people at a table decide from a few nominations. And when I looked through this list, I found very little to complain about. True, I haven't read most of these books, but many are titles that I have been recommended time and again by readers whose tastes I trust. Besides, I like it that the books in the list are not YA fantasy but something that caters to the adult readers as well (or mostly?). Still, I have to say that I am surprised to see The Time Traveler's Wife and the Outlander series in t

In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

I was fed up with being treated badly. I was fed up with the fundamentalists, the police who stopped you and asked you for your passport and, when you said you didn't have one, took your money and kept it for themselves. And you had to give them the money straight away, otherwise they took you to the police station and punched and kicked you. I was fed up risking my life,... Ten-year old Enaiatollah Akbari's mother decides that Afghanistan is no longer safe for him. Enaiatollah's family belongs to the ethnic Hazara group, which has been subject to attacks by the Taliban. When her family comes under the Taliban's eye, Enaiat's mother decides to take him to Pakistan and leave him there to fend for himself, hoping he was safer away from their home. While this leaves Enaiat panicking for a while, he quickly slips into self-sufficiency mode and starts looking for work. Over time, he learns the tricks of survival

Yet another Monday! (August 22, 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 had to do a double-take at the date when drafting up this post. August 22, seriously? Books finished since the last update    Ready Player One by Ernest Cline  (Check out this book, guys!)    Naked by David Sedaris    American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang News from over my blog Reviews up!    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon    Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Other posts    Abandoning a book    Where's that elusive reading mojo? Books on my nightstand Lately, my nightstand seems to be having one-night stands with books. No wonder, it's a nightstand, eh? So rather than listing what I may or may not read (because my mood dictates that most of the time), I'll share a photo of who all my nightstand is dating at the moment. (At the very bottom)  Lost and Found   by  Shaun Ta

The Sunday Salon: Where's that elusive reading mojo?

It's either the blogging mojo that goes MIA or the reading mojo. One of them is always hiccuping or tripping all over the place. With the end of August almost here, I was also thinking that another year will end soon. This is the depressing phase of any year - when you start going on those unavoidable introspective trips down memory lane, reevaluate things, start some last-minute refocusing attempts, and also start thinking about what you want the next year to be about. Or am I running too fast here? But, no, I haven't been thinking about anything much than how to get more reading/blogging time per day. Some of you may remember that I've been doing summer hours for the past two months - I've been working 10 hours Mon-Thu and then I get Fri-Sun off. I love that Friday off, there's really nothing more wonderful than sleeping in on Fridays! But then that means I get very little time to read/blog/visit blogs on the weekdays. Much as I'

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I was a painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem and almost no social skills -- a side effect of spending most of my childhood inside the OASIS. Online, I didn't have a problem talking to people or making friends. But in the real world, interacting with other people -- especially kids my own age -- made me a nervous wreck. I never knew how to act or what to say, and when I did work up the courage to speak, I always seemed to say the wrong thing. The decade of the 2040s are here and life on earth is even more abysmal and depressing than ever. There are a lot of wars being fought and the energy crisis is at an all-time high. Public safety has deteriorated and people are trying to move to the cities for better living conditions. Amidst all the gloom, the one silver lining is the OASIS, the massive virtual world created by James Halliday, initially as a game and which later evolved as something very similar to real life

The Sunday Salon: Abandoning a book (and one book I can't wait for you to read!)

This weekend, I came across an interesting post that got me thinking. It was by no means a new topic or a different look at already-known things but for some reason, it motivated this post. I was reading an article by Dave Astor at Huffington Post about not finishing books, especially the well-known ones. It's an icky situation we have all found ourselves in, occasionally. There's this book that every one is raving about and the next time I see the book at a library or bookstore, I want to experience it for myself. And the book is truly good, but just a few pages in and I abandon it. Or the book is nothing like the images inspired in my mind and the whole anticipation balloon just deflates. The cover of this book perfectly describes my situation. I've done this many times. If I had to count all the books I abandoned this year, the count would already be in the double digits. And these aren't the books I hated. There are those books too - books that bored me

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are. I'm meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters, who wears a beige-colored hearing aid, or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs. This is one of those books I would never have picked up to read on my own. I think the title has something to do with that, or more specifically, the word "Dog". I don't read books about pets. Because the pets almost alw

Yet another Monday (Aug 8, 2011)

Sheila  @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books  wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige! The summer months sure are winding down fast, even if there's no sign of the heat abating yet. It's time to start looking at where the reading this year stands and if any of the lofty goals I made at the start of the year are still making sense to me. Books finished since the last update    Yo! by Julia Alvarez    In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda News from over my blog Reviews up!    Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover  (No, this isn't a middle-grade or picture book) Other posts    What a crazy July! Books on my nightstand It feels great to remove books from my nightstand when I haven't been to them in a while, else all that book-peer pressure can be quite debilitating. Of course, for every book I remove from my desk, another five jump in, so maybe that's not such a good thing.

The Sunday Salon: What a crazy July!

Have you guys also noticed an odd leaf yellowing and falling down? Because, the other day, I was greeted with a bunch of them just fluttering about. It's certainly too early for Fall, but heck am I ready for it! The heat's insanely intense I'm surprised that I haven't vaporized yet. I spent a good amount of July on the road and on a flight I'd rather not talk about. So it's surprising I got any reading done. Quite a few of my reads are Newbery medal winners and graphic novels, so that kind of explains it. On the plus side, I can finally say that I've found my ideal summer read - a graphic novel. Books of the month Other Reads Reviews posted State of Wonder  by Ann Patchett The Uncoupling  by Meg Wolitzer Hello Goodbye  by Emily Chenoweth Lucille  by Ludovic Debeurme The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives  by Lola Shoneyin Never Knowing  by Chevy Stevens Fleeting tho

Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover

This is the most eccentric book I've ever read. I actually gave up on it halfway through, because it was stretching my imagination way too far, but then I checked out some reviews that this book received, and they've all been very strong and positive. So, then I suspended my disbelief real well and got back to reading it. Besides, being a graphic novel, it was easier to decide whether to continue with it or not. Once I was done with it, I wasn't in love with it, but I could see the point of the author and why it was well-received. Twenty-six year old Annah Billips has all the normal tastes in things - she likes sushi, hates beer breath, and loves to travel. She likes to date both boys and girls and has been dating a girl, Chili, and a guy, Jerry, because she still has not decided on her sexual orientation. She believes that she has a sister. Now the eccentric part - the sister was created from a part of her brain. Weird, huh? So, there's a part