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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

2015 in Life and Reading | The Sunday Salon


If I had to describe 2015 in three words, I would pick pregnancy, travels, and Shreya. But my reading didn't suffer either. Despite all the reasons I should have been busy in 2015, it was a pretty good year for my books.

Life, mostly...

January started with me being three months pregnant and finally out of the first trimester nausea. We had celebrated the New Year in DC (interestingly, that's where we were this January 1st as well). The next few months were a haze of work, ultrasound scans, and a feeling of impatience while waiting for the baby. We took a couple of weeks off in March to visit Toronto, Quebec City, and Niagara Falls, where we had a really amazing time. Plus, I brought home a truckload of books, so the trip was productive as well. Mid-June onwards, we started waiting for Shreya, who had her own schedule and would come out only after five weeks. By that time, all the dates that the family was betting on had come and gone.

Shreya's first month was probably my hardest. I had never spoken baby before and here was a tiny creature that I was suddenly responsible for. It was a scary yet empowering thought to realize that I was (still am) the most important person in her life. Also, her birth signaled the start of that phase in my life during which I was going to stay away from books or movies about child cruelty or tragedies.

But that difficult month passed and I returned to work seven weeks later. (Sigh, the US needs to give longer maternity leave!) Work was different and difficult as a new mom. I had to resign to work while one big part of my brain focused on Shreya ALL THE TIME.

One thing the husband and I wanted to do was to take Shreya on a few trips. We went to Williamsburg, Virginia Beach, DC, and also to India. Although we are currently recovering from the India trip, we learned so much about traveling with an infant. Most importantly, we loved it.

And now, reading...

As for my reading, it was mostly all over the place. There were weeks when I didn't read a word and weeks when I went through more than one book. I started the year reading very widely and looking for diverse books. But after Shreya was born, I stayed with books that were mostly easy reads and unfortunately, not very diverse.





The Sunday 
Salon.comThis is the first time I have crunched some numbers about the books I read, so I don't know how these numbers stack up against last year's. I don't really do anything with these numbers anyways, but it's nice to see how my reading habit changes or evolves, if at all. I know I have read more ebooks this year than ever before. And I love the idea of always having a book on my phone. I am also using my library a lot more than my own bookshelves. Still 27% of the books were my own, which is still is pretty decent number.

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