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
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 something I decided several months ago. This past quarter, my plan was to read one short story a week. I started this in the fourth week of January, and since then have managed to stick to the goal more or less. These are the short stories I read:
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Loved)
Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Moment of Wrong Thinking by Lawrence Block
The Shawl by Louise Erdrich (Loved)
Bohemia by V.S. Naipaul
In the South by Salman Rushdie
A Village after Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro (Loved)
In the Bed Department by Anne Enright
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (Loved)
My Reading in Numbers
Male authors (short stories included): 9
Female authors (short stories included): 12
New-to-me authors (short stories included): 18 / 21 (really?)
Number of pages: 3648
eBooks: 5 / 12
Review copies: 8 / 12
Personal Collection: 2 /12
Library: 2 / 12
Plans for the next quarter
- I plan to keep reading more short stories in the next quarter (I'm really enjoying standalone stories), but I won't be reviewing them as frequently, unless the story moved me so much that I want to discuss it. Or I may just do a single post with mini-reviews.
- I've been craving some science fiction / speculative fiction / dystopia lately. I have several books from these categories wishlisted and rather than shelve them for eternity, I'd love to spend the next few months exploring them.
- I hope to read at least one book from my PIE list, which I've neglected so far this year.
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Comments
I read a couple of Anne Enright's books earlier this year and I can't say that I enjoyed her characters, a little too shallow for my liking.
I loved "The Yellow Wallpaper" so much that I bought a book of short stories by the same author. It's called "The Yellow paper and selected writings" and apart from that famous story, there are excerpts from her biography which I found intriguing. I've reviewed it a while back - if you come across it, give it a try.
:)