Reading on a Rainy Day

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Showing posts from March, 2013

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place. Bernadette Fox has a reputation. While her husband and her daughter Bee love her, there's barely anyone else who share the sentiment. Her neighbor Audrey loves to gossip mean things about her with her close friend, Soo-Lin. The other parents of kids at Bee's school look down on Bernadette because she doesn't involve herself in school affairs. Bernadette herself goes out of her way to avoid company. And then one day, Bee comes home with an excellent report card and asks for her reward - a family trip to Antarctica. The very plan throws Bernadette into a panic but she has no other option. She hires a virtual assistant, based out of India to take care of all her demands, including getting prescriptions at her local pharmacy, doing her online shopping and taking care of some of the logistics of her trip. (It is ridiculou

A History Lesson

"What I remember most about my own high school history classes are the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans," I said. "Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, the Trojan Horse, the elephants marching across the Alps, the sea battles, the gladiatorial contests, the chariot races, the spectacular murders and suicides, the eruption of Vesuvius. But on the other hand, also the beauty, the beauty of all those temples and arenas and amphitheaters, the frescoes, the baths, the mosaics. That's the kind of beauty that lasts forever. Those are the colors that make us prefer a holiday on the Mediterranean to Manchester or Bremen, even today." ~ Paul Lohman in The Dinner by Herman Koch, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett That passage sent me on a nostalgic trip through my school days. History was definitely one of my favorite subjects at school, even though I abandoned it in High School. All those wars and conquests and kings and pr

The Sunday Salon: On breaking a long-kept rule

When I pick a book to read or a movie to watch, I try not to be too selective about my choice. Of course, there are some genre (romance, westerns, etc) I'll probably never go to, but that's typically because I've never enjoyed those much. Other than that restriction, I try not to not sample a book or movie, even if the subject matter is heavy. With one exception. I absolutely cannot read a book that has a dog on its cover or watch a movie whose main character is a furry four-legged animal. I already know what comes at the end of most of these books/movies - the dog dies. Just as it would in real life but I didn't want to read/watch about it. And I would stick to that through the rest of my life. ("I hate moving! They even reduced my crate to a rubble. Let me get my scent on this comforter so that they won't move this.") That is, until two days ago when the husband finally managed to get me to watch Marley and Me . I had never even watched

Feed woes: Question for you

Like everyone else in this world, Google reader's shutdown news has been highly distressing to me. Even though Google had closed quite a few of its services in the past, I had never really worried about Reader because, hey, why would that ever be closed? Who doesn't use RSS? Apparently, not many, it seems. At least, that was the general consensus in the web. If Google doesn't have the whole world using one of its services, then they think it's a candidate for the chopping block. Really, this is ridiculous. If they're closing it because they want more people to start using Google Plus, then they are even more ridiculous. Killing off good products so that crappy ones can survive. 'Nuf said. ( Picture source ) On top of that, I've been having trouble with my feed, at least for my last two posts. I am still using Feedburner, even though many have moved out of it, thanks to strong rumors that Feedburner is also shutting down. After Google Reader, I don&#

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty... In 1990, Chris McCandless graduated from Emory University and, instead of pursuing a career, he burned all his money, changed his name and vanished to experience life in the wild. During this time, he hiked a lot, met a lot of people who made an impact in his life and also who were influenced by him, became close friends with a person who treated him as if he were his own son, went to Alaska with the full intention of living a sustainable life, without company or external influences, and eventually died when he made a fatal mistake. I picked the audio version of Into The Wild to listen to in my car, after having a memorable time with the author's Into Thin Air . Into The Wild was a little less intriguing but it was still fascinating and, for the most part, I

The Sunday Salon: Activities Galore

Before typing up this post, I checked my post history to see when my last Sunday Salon was published. My guess was probably a month ago. But in truth, I haven't posted a Sunday Salon so far this year. That actually surprised me quite a bit. I typically enjoy the Sunday postings - I generally reserve the more personal news and goings-on for Sundays. Posting about books on Sundays sounds like working during the weekend. No? Lately, it has been quite difficult to be able to post anything. Our parents had flown halfway across the world to be with us for a few months. And sometimes, we also have our brothers in town when they manage to take a week or weekend off school work. So, for the last couple of weeks, the evenings have been filled with hours of Monopoly card games. And then it could be TV or more games (Sims) afterwords. While that's a lot of fun, I do miss the constant blogging and have been trying to find out ways to squeeze that in. What - wake up earlier? NoThankY

Looking back at a slow February (and plans for March)

Did February just get over? My reading just kind of fell flat last month mainly because work got busy and I began to do other things after coming home each day. Lately, it has been a game of Monopoly cards with the husband and our fathers who are visiting us now. I don't feel too bad really - it's nice to do something other than read or blog. But of course, it makes it so much harder to get back into reading or blogging - wondering how best to slide in without anyone noticing I was gone. I read just three books this past month - one of which was the audio I was listening to in the car. Thank goodness for that. My review backlog remains at five - same as last month. Which is good because at least I did write some reviews, but bad because I still have a backlog. What I recommend: Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple Fun read of the month: We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee - this read kind of surprised me because of how much I got pulled into the story.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn't be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil. Thanks to the Great Recession, Clay Jannon is out of a job along with countless other people, and has been idling his time looking through the Classifieds and job websites. During one of his strolls through a San Francisco street, he comes across a midnight store clerk vacancy posting on the wall of the strangest looking bookstore ever. Knowing fully well that he may not be the intended applicant but feeling worried about his lack of job prospects, he takes the job, subject to certain conditions - no browsing through books in the Way Back Shelves (I forget what it was called in the book), and he had to note down details of every