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Showing posts from April, 2012

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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

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

And this is how it started. Just with coffee and the exchange of their long stories. Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start a life just as it can start a day. This was the meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born, from before they made choices that would complicate their lives. This love just rolled toward my mother as though she were standing at the bottom of a steep hill. Mother had no hand in this, only heart. Dana Yarboro always knew she was the other daughter and her mother the other woman. Her father, James Witherspoon already had a wife when he started an affair with Gwen and had Dana with her. Soon after though, his wife also gets pregnant with Chaurisse. Dana and her mother knew about James' real family. But Chaurisse and her mother were entirely in the dark. The knowledge of where they stand in the familial tree however is not without its repercussions. Dana is barred by her father from going to the same place

Making random conversation

It's been about a week since I blogged, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'm feeling inspired enough to post yet. It's one of those slow phases, you know, when neither reading nor blogging seems to rejuvenate me. Like softdrink , I figured it might just be better to make a stab at a return and then things should probably just look up . There's just been some crazy stuff going on, as always, and on top of that, work isn't slowing down either. I always knew things were going to heat up at the money-churning place this year, but that doesn't make me feel any better. This year, I slowed down on the review copies I accepted (I haven't had an ARC turn up at my door in at least a month) and it feels really good. I guess part of the reason is because of how much more impulsive my reading has become that it feels nicer not to look at the calendar and mourn about all the books I haven't read. That said, I still have quite a few books I accepted earlier, whi

The return of the Blogger Recommends (March list)

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 to read that month. My Top Five Finds   1 .   Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is not a new-to-me title. When I first heard of it years ago, I was staying in India, where there are plenty of fast food chains, but I rarely ever went to one (there were always other better options pulling me). Fast forward many years, and I'm now staying in the US. Although I still don't haunt fast food places, and am very careful about what I order if I do end up at one (no chips or drinks for me please!), I know that I've been visiting these chains with far less abandon than before. So there - my motivation for being pulled into Marie's review of this book was because 1) her review

The Sunday Salon: Thoughts on the first quarter (and plans for the next)

Considering how busy January was, and how much of February I spent on finding a balance between work, reading and blogging, I didn't really have a good first quarter - I just managed to read a month's worth in three months. The silver lining is that I did have a much better March but I'm hoping that there will be more books in the next few months. Here are the highlights: Best Books of the Quarter Other Reads The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney Cross Currents by John Shors I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella Divergent by Veronica Roth My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde On Reading Goals Rather than plan challenges or reading projects for a whole year, this year, I decided to do something different - I decided to plan for a quarter. This helped because my interests change so quickly that I hate to be tied to

Dance Lessons by Áine Greaney

Dutifully, the Boisverts traveled south to Boston for a wedding and a funeral service. But during or after either event, Donna has made no comment, no commiseration to her widowed daughter. In Donna's mind, the drive south to a city said what it needed to say. The wife of a laid-off paper mill worker, Donna Boisvert believes that keeping busy is the best approach to life's surprises or heartaches. Ellen's husband, Fintan, had just recently passed away, when she meets an old acquaintance from the past - someone who knew both Ellen and Fintan. In that one meeting, Ellen learns some new facts about her husband - such as the news that his mother is actually alive and kicking, and that Fintan was not an orphan as he had let her to believe. This discovery bothers Ellen enough to make her visit Gowna in Ireland and find out what caused Fintan to lie about his mother. I have to say - when I first came across Dance Lessons (through the many nominations it received for th

Yet another Monday! (Apr 2, 2012)

Sheila  @  Book Journey  wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige! What, it's April already? Last Friday, I went to the Barnes and Noble store in town to do some lazy browsing and pick a book to "sample" while sipping yummylicious coffee at the adjoining Starbucks. Deep within the Science Fiction section, which I don't always visit, I found a single copy of Battle Royale hiding. Having heard more than enough about this book, and curious to see if it will intrigue me, I picked it up, intending to put it back after a couple of chapters. Well, let's just say that after a few chapters, I started scouring my email inbox to see if I had any Barnes and Noble coupon, because, there was no way I would be able to sleep that night while this book stayed in the bookstore. A quarter of my way in through this 600-page tome, and I'm still very intrigued to see how it will play out. Which pages were turned...   I put Arcadia d