Reading on a Rainy Day

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Showing posts from July, 2014

The Sunday Salon: Back to Square One

It's back-to-square-one weekend here. That's what I call weekends when I do a lot of purging, resetting, and marking all as read. I wonder if whoever first used the phrase "Back to square one" knew that it was going to be used a lot. Isn't it nice to come up with a phrase that sticks for a long time? I know I've said this story before but I like it so much I keep retelling it. When we started summer hours at work four summers ago, my colleagues and I found it pretty challenging to adjust to. At the time, we were all doing a lot of documentation, reviewing, and tech-writing, and not enough coding, so everyone was burned out well before half a workday was underway. The last half hour was the most challenging. Nobody wanted to start reading a new paper or even attempt to continue something. After a quick meeting during one of those last half hours, a colleague and good friend said she was going to "shuffle papers" and look busy while she waited for th

The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan

I heard obscenities everywhere, as though the world were populated entirely by longshoremen... Had no one told them that coarseness lacks dignity? Kate Philo and her expedition of scientists, technicians, divers, and one reporter are looking for icebergs in the Arctic that could potentially contain frozen small creatures like shrimp, plankton, krill. These scientists work in a private research lab headed by Erastus Carthage, who has managed to successfully bring back to life such frozen creatures, though they managed to live only for a few minutes. During this particular expedition, however, they find a human body in one such berg. Nobody believes they will be able to animate such a large and complicated specimen, but science prevails and our frozen man is alive again, more than a 100 years after he was presumed dead. But Carthage doesn't care much about the social or ethical aspects of bringing such a person back into this world. He wants to see if the man can be made to l

When you're on a one-track mission to finish a book

This week, I've mostly been MIA around here, despite my best intention not to stay away from the blog for too long because then it becomes so unbelievably hard to bounce back. (I can never decide what the perfect post is to return to bloglandia with, after a hiatus.) But I still chose to stay low this week until I finished a book (Stephen Kiernan's The Curiosity ). Reading hasn't really stopped me from blogging in the past. If I got so invested in a book for a few days, I end up with a desire to come back here and see what's happening. There's always something happening, there's always some fun posts to read. But when you have a review deadline, that's almost here, and then it's already here, and pretty soon, the deadline is already behind you and you still have half a book to read, you just have to stop puttering around, stay tight in your favorite reading chair, ignore all kinds of house chores, and read the damn book. Photo credit via Funpicc T

The Sunday Salon: A late afternoon post

5.30 pm now. The family is currently couched in the living room, following the Germany-Argentina World Cup final, cheering and groaning occasionally, and most definitely enjoying themselves. It's somewhat of a relief that the games are ending today. Not that the TV will enjoy any quiet - there will always be something else. But my Facebook feed can hopefully get a little quieter and all those World cup references can stop too. I just enjoyed my first long weekend of my summer hours this year and I'm beginning to feel that three days is the ideal weekend length. The four longer days at work were a lot easier this year, at least this week was, since work was busy and I managed to get enough sleep each night that I wasn't hoping for extra tea/coffee the next morning. I had a spa day on Friday, which the husband had gifted for my birthday last week. I've been telling my husband that I should do it more often - I hope he gets the hint. Saturday, we went to visit our fr

What audiobooks not to listen to (In which I try to review a book I didn't understand at all)

Audiobooks are seriously one of the coolest inventions ever, especially when you are a bookworm who always likes to have a nose inside a book. I didn't always feel like that , but I'm glad I do now, because I can listen to an audiobook even when I am in a reading rut. But once in a while (okay, not that frequently, but so far just one time), I end up listening to a book that may have been brilliant or awesome, if not for the tiny teeny problem that I didn't grasp a single plot thread from it. Normally, when I'm not getting anything out of an audiobook, I unplug my iPod, or eject the disc, or hit the pause button and move on to another audiobook, or, if I didn't have another one, then sing aloud in the car to the radio. But when you got the audiobook via Audible and you have already used up your audiobook return limit, you just have to suck it up and listen to the book, hoping that at some point, magically, everything will be clear to you, and you'll go Ah-a!

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Ove kept exactly to every speed limit, even on that 50kph road where the recently arrived idiots in suits came tanking along at 90. Among their own houses they put up speed bumps and damnable numbers of signs about 'Children. Playing', but when driving past other people's houses it was apparently less important. If you wanted to buy only one bouquet for 25 bucks but had to pay 3 bucks extra for using your credit card (because you don't have cash on you), wouldn't you just pay 28 bucks for the whole thing? If you were Ove, you would be so angered by the idea of paying the extra 3 bucks that you would buy an extra bouquet you don't want, for a total of 50 bucks, simply on principle. A Man Called Ove is the story of an angry grumpy irritable yet very lovable man. He doesn't like people or technology. He will let you know immediately if you ignore or violate a rule, and you will not hear the end of it. All he wants to do is die, that's such a simple

The Sunday Salon: Two months of long weekends starting now

I love these long weekends. If you're in the US, then you may have just had one, thanks to Independence Day. Luckily for me, July and August are the months of the long weekends, thanks to 10-hour workdays and getting Fridays off. My company has been doing these summer hours for four years and it has, by far, been their most popular decision. Still, it's no joke working 10-hours for four days. I start the summer hours with a lot of excitement and thrill, already anticipating the soon-to-arrive weekend, planning what books I'll be reading, thinking about how much I'll be sleeping in. The first week generally goes well. But after that, it's a race to get into work early enough so that I won't have to stay in late. Barring a few days here and there, I rarely make it to work at the time I want to. Halfway through the summer, I'm already waiting for the regular hours. I even promise myself never to do this again. And what do you know, next year rolls around a

Half a year in: My struggles with my Armchair Reading Project

When I said at the beginning of this year that I want to read only one book from each country, my goal was more to try reading from different countries, get a feel for all these different books, and try to infuse international reading habits into my reading. I did not anticipate that it was going to be so hard finding good books from other countries within easy reach. Being a mood reader, probably like many of you, I don't feel like reading any book at any time. Sometimes I want my book to make me laugh and sometimes I want it to make me think. Sometimes, I just want it to surprise me, stay away from conventions, and whack my head in a crazy awesome way. But when you go to the library with a set of restrictions, you're already limiting your book pile considerably. That's what happened to me most of the time. There are certain countries I am already sick of finding recommendations from. And that has nothing to do with the country, just the amount of time I invested in lo

Does my Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

"Yeah, don't you take a break?" "I don't have time for breaks." "That's the whole point of a break. When you've got no time, you need a break." Does my Head Look Big in This? was never really on my radar. I had seen this book on a few blogs and was intrigued by it but not enough to want to go get the book. But during my search through Audible for a good book to listen to, this one stood out for some reason. It sounded multicultural, the subject matter was interesting, and there were a good number of positive reviews to back it. So into my ipod it jumped. Sixteen year old Amal takes a life-changing decision a few days before school starts - she decides to do full-time. Basically what that means is she was going to wear the hijab at all times and not just as occasion demands it, as part-timers do. But this was a very big decision, as her parents constantly reminded her so many times. She had just recently switched schools - her p