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Showing posts from November, 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

The week that was, and is

I didn't really mean to disappear for a week. It was busy, yes, and I expected it to be, but I did expect to have time to make a virtual appearance too. Didn't happen. As things are wont to be, life goes for a toss right when you are looking at a wonderful vacation. I was in NY this past weekend, and had a fairly good weekend. There was an emergency, because of which I had to extend my 'vacation' by a couple more days, but things are okay now. I am also moving this coming weekend, and I have only just begun my packing, so my next 2-3 days are going to be unenviably busy. But I've been reading too, a lot in fact. I wonder if the fact that the end of the year is near has anything to do with it or whether being busy is making me churn out non-existent time to spend on reading, but I'm glad either way. Before starting on my vacation, I read Before I go to Sleep (engrossing, but not as good as I hoped) and the sixth book in the Wimpy Kid series , Cabin Fever

The Sunday Salon: A lazy mornin' with coffee

Today is one of the days when I'm not feeling particularly bookish - things are slowly getting busy here and I'm trying to not feel that busy. I am still reading - thank goodness for that - so I haven't got into any funk, but the next two months look insanely busy to me that I could use a time blinder-of sorts that doesn't let me look so much into the future. But then, it is that season - Thanksgiving, Christmas, vacations, family time, winter, did I say busy vacations? This week, I'm going to New York to visit my brother, after 9 months. While that's not a huge timeframe by any scale, it has been a rocky phase for him managing his health and studies, that I am looking forward to it. I am writing a couple of reviews for the week, but since writing posts in advance is not my kind of thing (I'm just lazy that way), I am looking forward to staying off the internet (mostly) for the coming weekend. Thank you, Google, for 'Mark All as Read', even th

Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile

There was the one photograph of him, kept in the middle drawer of the heavy dark sideboard. When I was alone I used to take it out and hold it in front of me, staring so hard that I could vivify the image and believe that he lived and breathed for me. I felt that he understood me. I do not recall that there was ever a time when I looked upon my father's face with anything but adoration. Fifteen-year old Susanna grew up with a sister who was ready to embrace her sexuality the minute she crossed that threshold and a mother who couldn't care less about what her daughters wanted or did. Her mother didn't have a great opinion of her daughters' father either, who she claimed was a womanizer and who wasn't around much. But Susanna was fascinated with the idea of her absent father. Having grown up on tough or no love, under a mother who is only focused on her own love life with a married man and with a sister who moves from one bed to another, Susanna mostly visualiz

Yet another Monday! (Nov 14, 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 one of those good reading weeks, when I seemed to be with a book always and even managed to finish a couple. Books finished since the last update    Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn  (I loved this book!)    The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka  (And this one too!) News from over my blog Reviews up!     The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks     Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen Other posts    'Tis the season of challenges    And I started a tumblr Books on my nightstand I didn't get to any of the books I meant to read last week, so I have one of them still on my stand. Neuromancer   by  William Gibson : From the father of cyberpunk himself, I'm so far intrigued by the world he created and the techie undercurrents through the book. Cross Currents   by  John Shors : I read a few pages from this boo

The Sunday Salon: 'Tis the season of challenges

It's been an unusually good week of reading so far at my end, having thumbed through two books, being three-quarters through a third and just starting off with a fourth. And I still have been busy with stuff, so it's nice to know that I have been reading a lot too. Now that it's close to the end of the year, we all know what that means. The challenge-and-list-making season! Although, mind you, I had perfectly good intentions this time. Yeah, you did notice the "had"? Couple of mornings ago, I had typed up a post, scheduled for one of those days in December when no one's around reading blogs, and hence one can make any lofty promise and rest assured that no one's going to remind us about those posts. In that post I was making a promise not to join too many challenges for 2012, barring the one Helen has up on her blog (What? You haven't checked it out yet? You better go look it up. I'll be here, waiting till you get back), and the many readin

Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen

Early last month, there was a new graphic nonfiction book getting a lot of buzz. It's very rare that I see non-comic graphic books getting some much needed hype, so I was quite thrilled to see Green River Killer featured. But I wasn't very sure about the subject itself. I prefer reading non-graphic nonfiction about true crime, I wasn't sure how the graphic medium was going to handle that. How sensitive would it be? Words in reference to psychopaths can make me queasy, but pictures, even more so. Sometimes, it helps to be judgmental when you read - seeing the picture of a tragedy breaks open some vulnerable part in you, and can affect your perception of an incident. With pictures, there's usually only one side that's presented. Even in writing, it's hard to present two sides justly. Not that there's anything just or right about killing - but to understand why a killing happened, I find it necessary to understand the killer himself. But I needn't hav

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons that I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Emerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through. Frank Cauldhame is a sixteen year old who has killed three people and doesn't bat an eyelid before torturing an animal or insect. He has an impressive system of nomenclature for any significant landmark in the dunes behind his house on an island, such as The Snake Park, where one of his victims was killed, The Bomb Circle, where another victim died, and so on. His brother Eric, who was admitted to a psychiatric institution after setting dogs on fire, had somehow managed to escape from the institution, leaving his father and the cop worried. Frank himself does

Yet another Monday! (Nov 7, 2011)

Sheila  @  One Persons Journey through a world of Books  wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige! Books finished since the last update    Repeat it Today With Tears by Anne Peile    The Secret of Lies by Barbara Forte Abate News from over my blog Reviews up!     Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch Other posts    Blogger Recommends (October finds)    Twin month recap (September and October) Books on my nightstand I have a couple of ARCs that I plan to get to this week. I'm trying to clear off a stack of ARCs that I didn't have a chance to read earlier, and am finally excited to get to. The Gin Closet   by  Leslie Jamison : A few months ago, I had seen this book in a lot of blogs and been intrigued by it. So I'm glad to finally get the chance to pick it and read. Cross Currents   by  John Shors : I had been looking forward to reading this book with mixed expectations. On one hand, the topic of the 2004 tsunami (which I he

The Sunday Salon: Blogger Recommends (October Finds)

Every month, I bookmark some of the strongest book recommendations that I come across. Most are books I hear about for the first time, others are books I've previously not been interested in, but this particular blogger has managed to convince me otherwise. Then, I choose one title from the list and read the book. So far, I've chosen two books via Blogger Recommends  -  Kafka on the Shore  and The Wasp Factory , and it's interesting that I may not have read them (at least now), if not by doing this feature. And both books were amazing, making me look forward to my next choice. Now, I wanted to highlight some amazing titles and reviews I found last month, while I debate which one to read next. My Top Five Finds   1 .   I'm sure I have read way too many books on the Holocaust - but then many are fiction or near-fiction. Auschwitz by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli is his eyewitness account about the horrifying medical experiments conducted on Auschwitz prisoners under the

A twin month recap (September and October)

Has anyone realized yet that it is November already? Can't say that I'm excited about getting older so fast. In my last recap, I did innocently ask if anyone was excited about Fall. I don't know what happened this year, but the leaves are too eager to fall, so Fall hasn't been long enough. And if the weather outside is any indication, looks like we are going to have a long winter. Not that I'm complaining. I love the winter, and have been waiting since April for the winter. Summer though makes me meh! Anyways, I didn't recap last month, because I didn't really have that good a reading spree then, so here's a twin recap. Books of the months Other Reads Reviews posted Irma Voth  by Miriam Toews The Giver  by Lois Lowry (WOW!) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian  by Sherman Alexie Brave New World  by Aldous Huxley Goliath  ( Leviathan #3 ) by Scott Westerfeld Naked and Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris Kafka