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Showing posts from March, 2014

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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 Sunday Salon: Time to declutter

Good morning, readers! Yikes, I haven't posted anything for a week. It's been busy as usual, which since I've been saying for a while, it's probably time to rethink my blogging priorities and figure out how to make time for it. I certainly have been reading more this week and will finally finish Frangipani by tonight or sometime tomorrow. I've also been writing a couple of blog posts that I need to finish. So I expect this week should look a lot better. Yesterday, the husband and I spent most of the time looking at the new HTC One phone and pondering upgrading to it. Our current phones have become so slow that if ever there's an emergency, forget using them to make a call. It's just super annoying! We finally caved in and purchased the phones, and cannot wait to get our hands on them this week. I joke that whenever the husband and I buy the exact same thing, that thing is a goner, so we'll see how this goes. It's a gray dreary day outside and

The Sunday Salon: A week of movies

Good morning, Saloners! It's 9.05 here and I'm 'lounging' at my desk with my tall cup of tea. We are expecting wet weather today, and after two days of beautiful sunshine, it doesn't feel good to welcome it. On the other hand, it is a good day to stay in, in my PJs, and do something fun. In another hour, I will be leaving to pick the husband up at the airport. He has been away for a week to attend a training in Dallas. Which should mean a lot of reading and knitting time for me. But it was also an insanely busy week at work, so by the time I got home, all I wanted to do was have a drink (tea is my beverage of choice) and watch some feel-good romantic comedies. I skipped all my shows as well this week, so that the husband and I can watch them together, while he  we cooked. I watched a total of 10 movies this week, which is a huge number because I really don't dig television or movies. The husband is the clicker and I follow whatever he watches while I did

The Snowman by Jo Nesbø

In order to isolate what was possible, you had to eliminate everything that was impossible. Holy crap! What took me so long to read a Nesbø book? Oh yeah, I thought the suspense was going to be the everyday run-of-the-mill type which ends up either being so far-fetched that the mystery focuses on Alan, Becky, and Charlie, and then ends saying that Zooey, the cleaner in Chapter 1 was the murderer. Or, it would be so obvious from page 1 who the bad guy was. Or, it would be the mix of both - the author would play hard at making it look like Alan was the bad guy, so hard that it would be obvious Alan was not the bad guy. So although I have been hearing plenty of praise about Jo Nesbø's books, I didn't really TBR any of them until I had to pick an audiobook for a road trip. Into my car stereo, I popped The Snowman and waited until the moment I was going to feel justified. Nada. Never happened. Nesbø had me right from the page one. It was really hard to stop the audio each t

The Sunday Salon: Spring cleaning and Spring decor

Good morning, Saloners! Not too early in the morning now, but I'm just sitting with my tall cup of tea and breakfast to start my day. The husband left early this morning to attend a training in Dallas, and he won't be back until next week Sunday. Both the dog and I are missing him already - the dog probably more because she doesn't know why her pack member left her, lol. I've sort of tasked myself to do some Spring cleaning and Spring decor this week. We finally bought bookshelves and a new desk for myself for our office room. It's been sidelined for a long time and finally I managed to get some great deals this week. I'm now penning down ideas to decorate this room and the master bedroom so I expect more shopping on the cards this week. It has been a very busy at work this week that I had to put in some overtime to get things completed. We are fast approaching our big date for releasing the product we've been working on for three years now. It's

The Story of the Human Body by Daniel E. Lieberman

We habitually value costs and benefits more highly in the near term than in the future Every once in a while, I like to read books about health, food, and the environment, mainly to remind myself that there are plenty of problems out there and plenty of things we do wrong, but also to make myself extra mindful of the food I eat and the unhealthy habits I still nourish. When Jill recommended this book early this year, I wanted to read it for pretty much those same reasons, plus the fact that Jill loved it a lot. The Story of the Human Body wasn't entirely what I expected it to be, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I guess I was expecting more a contemporary history of how we harm our bodies currently and how we pay for that. But I liked Lieberman's approach much much better - he pretty much took the entire history of the human body, from before our true ancestors' arrival on Earth, to the present. And while he was at it, he gave a good understanding

The Sunday Salon: Springing forward sleepily

Hello blog! I'm still here. I know I've neglected you for a while, but I've been busy for the past two weeks and away during the weekends, that I've only now got to sit at my desk to blog. Of course, I should also mention that my blogging mojo has been absent plus it doesn't help that I haven't been reading much so the whole point of blogging about books becomes a little difficult when there is no book to talk about. But I try to be here when I can and I hope it will be more often now than before. It's a beautiful Spring weather here today with a real feel of 64 degrees. After the long freezing winter, this warm weather is super welcoming. I cannot wait to get our patio ready for a good amount of lounging, reading, and knitting this Spring. We did a lot of work on our backyard last year towards the end of Summer so we haven't been able to reap those benefits yet. We still have our flower and vegetable garden to work on so we are looking forward to g