February and March 2021: Reading Recap
Well, go figure. The first quarter of 2021 is already behind us, never mind that I’m still having to remind myself on occasion to write “2021” instead of “2020” … (and we’re even a week into April already, but let that go). Anyway, since I never got around to doing a “February in review” post, […]
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Zadie Smith: Feel Free
I’ve had several books by Zadie Smith sitting on my TBR for a minor eternity; oddly, when the moment came to finally pick one of them, I didn’t select one of her novels but this collection of essays — which didn’t turn out to be a bad choice, however, as the essays included here did […]
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Zahra Hankir & Various Authors: Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World
One of the last books I read in the first quarter of 2021 was, at the same time, also one of my reading highlights to date — and next to the likes of Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison (as well as Agatha Christie’s multiple appearances in the area of mysteries), […]
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Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
This was a buddy read with some of my BookLikes exile friends — the inside story of the Northern Ireland conflict, the “Troubles”, from (chiefly) the 1960s up to the Good Friday Agreement and (partways) beyond, inspired and based in part on taped interviews with some of the conflict’s key players recorded in the context […]
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Patrick Leigh Fermor: The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos
The third and final part of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s narrative of his three-year trek on foot, begun more or less spontaneously at the tender age of eighteen, from the Hoek of Holland to Constantinople. Unlike the first two parts (A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water), which cover his wanderings in […]
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Shaun Bythell: Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops
Shaun Bythell: Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops This was actually a holdover from February — I had already started the book once but stopped reading after chapter 1, teetering on the verge of a DNF, before ultimately deciding “just finish it; it’s short, what the heck” one Sunday morning in early March […]
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Barack Obama: A Promised Land
Probably the most-anticipated publication of the final weeks of 2020, and for once I not only rushed to read it but am also inclined to agree with the hype (at least, for the most part). This is the voice of the President Obama that we’ve come to know while he was in office, perhaps tempered […]
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Kamala Harris: The Truths We Hold
Harris wrote this book while still serving as a U.S. Senator; still, it also conveys quite a good picture of what kind of Vice President she will be — because it leaves little doubt about the kind of person that she is, and the things that motivate and drive her. The Truths We Hold: those […]
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January 2021 Reading Wrap-Up
I only finished eleven books in January, which isn’t a lot by my standards as of the last couple of years, even taking into account that two of the books were decidedly on the long side (all the more as I balanced out the two long books by two extremely short ones). But I decided […]
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2020 in Facts and Figures
I already posted my main 2020 in Review and Looking Ahead to 2021 posts a while ago — only on my new blog (separate post to come) –, but I held back on my 2020 reading statistics until the year was well and truly over. And for all my good intentions when posting my mid-year […]
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Festivus Scale of Strength: Weighty Books
24 Festive Tasks: Door 20 – Festivus, Task 2: The Scale of Strength: Pick 3 of your weightiest tomes and place them on a scale. Tell us the total weight. I used Shakespeare’s Complete Works, my copy of the illustrated guide to Houses of the National Trust, and Eye to Eye, a collection of […]
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Bookshop Goodies
I went book gift shopping for a friend today and decided to treat myself to a few goodies, too:
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Looking Ahead to 2021
Since I posted my 2020 Year in Review post yesterday, I figured I might as well go ahead and follow up with the preview post for next year — again, taking the relevant “Festive Tasks” items as my cues. So, without further ado: 24 Festive Tasks: Door 19 – Hanukkah, Task 1: Time to […]
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2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’re still a month away from the end of the year, but my reading will probably consist mainly of Christmas books in December, and I hope and pray that life won’t come up and throw anything else at me in the final month of the year, either. So I might as well post my “Year […]
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Book Characters Turning Over a New Leaf
24 Festive Tasks: Door 4 – Japanese Culture Day, Task 2: Japanese Culture Day was first held in 1948, to commemorate the announcement of the country’s post-war constitution on November 3, 1946, which was to make a new start for Japan. Which book did you read this year where someone was searching for or starting […]
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Battle of the Books Goes Feline: Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management vs. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace
24 Festive Tasks: Door 20 – Festivus, Bonus Task #2: Battle of the Books: pick two books off your shelf (randomly or with purpose); in a fair fight, which book would come out on top? The fight can be based on the merits of the books themselves, their writing, or full-on mano a mano between […]
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The New “Pride and Prejudice” Edition, and Other Lockdown Book Haul Entries
24 Festive Tasks: Door 18 – Thanksgiving, Task 1: Be thankful for yourself and treat yourself to a new book – post a picture of it. (This can be a library book.) Although being in temporary lockdown for the second time this year doesn’t exactly prove conducive to my reading (nor did most of this […]
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Dorothy L. Sayers: The Lost Tools of Learning
24 Festive Tasks: Door 12 – World Philosophy Day, Book: Read a book about philosophy or a philosopher, or a how-to book about changing your life in a significant way or suggesting a particular lifestyle (Hygge, Marie Kobo, etc.). My pick for this holiday was Dorothy L. Sayers’s 1947 Oxford lecture The Lost Tools of […]
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W. Stanley Moss: Ill Meet by Moonlight
The book I’ve wanted to read ever since I visited Anógia village, high up in the Cretan Mount Ida (or Psiloritis) massif, several years ago: The first-hand account of the WWII abduction of German Major General Heinrich Kreipe near his home in Heraklion, after which Kreipe was marched all the way up the mountain and, […]
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Halloween Bingo 2020: The Rest of the Game and Wrap-Up
Sooo, that’s another bingo game behind us already! Many thanks to our game hosts for successfully moving the game from BookLikes to a new venue and organizing one heck of a game despite that venue’s built-in limitations. I had a great time and would only have wished I could have participated more throughout the game […]
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