The ‘Stans
BL-opoly, Pandemic Edition – Tenth Roll
I guess it’s a good thing that for once I finished a BL-opoly book in the afternoon, because the game gods had apparently decided that since we’ve been having so much fun with multiple hop, skip and jump rounds lately, why not just do another one? For square #4 — the first square the doubles […]
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Redeeming Renée Ahdieh’s “The Wrath and the Dawn”
24 Festive Tasks: Door 7 – International Day for Tolerance, Task 1: Find a redeeming quality in a book you read this year and didn’t like. I’ve never understood the rave reviews that this book is getting, but then, I’m not its target audience; and I suppose if you read it as a straight-up […]
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Banine: Days in the Caucasus
Well, looks like I was tempting fate after all. As it turns out, not every memoir set in the former USSR in the years before and during the Russian Revolution was really shouting out to be written. This is definitely one such — which is particularly disappointing as the writer’s father was a leading Azerbaijani […]
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BL-opoly: Dice Roll #25
I may be tempting fate (especially since I really liked the book I just finished), but I decided to roll one more time after all: … which takes me to square 35, European Vacation — and I think that means the BL-opoly gods really, really want me to use up all of my novelty cards, […]
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BL-opoly: Robot Card for Square 17 (“Why?”)
Here’s my robot card selection: 1. Cary Elwes: As You Wish 2. Sarah Bakewell: At the Existentialist Café 3. Banine: Days in the Caucasus 4. Gertrude Bell: A Woman in Arabia 5. Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom 6. Helene Cooper: The House at Sugar Beach 7. Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals 8. […]
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Renée Ahdieh: The Wrath and the Dawn
DNF @ 146 out of 432 pages …. and I’m out. This is insufferable. Granted, I’m not the target audience to begin with. But it’s not even the concept of “1001 Nights as a YA love story” that is putting me off the most, even though that does have at least something to do with […]
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BL-opoly: Dice Roll #21 & Scottie Dog: Please pick my next book!
Well, I’m not sure what I’ve just read (John Le Carré’s A Small Town in Germany certainly hasn’t aged very well, generally speaking, though in some parts it’s eerily prescient); anyway, having finished it, I’m allowed to roll again. This takes me to square 10: Beach Week — read a book that appears on any […]
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BL-opoly: Scottie Dog Selection (Square #9) — Please pick my next book!
Reblogged from: Themis-Athena’s Garden of Books Laura Restrepo: Hot Sur Laura Esquivel: Like Water for Chocolate Ann Leckie: The Raven Tower Renee Adieh: The Wrath and the Dawn UPDATED July 21: The votes are in: The Raven Tower it is. Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1922170/bl-opoly-scottie-dog-selection-square-9-please-pick-my-next-book
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BL-opoly: Scottie Dog Selection (Square #9) — Please pick my next book!
Laura Restrepo: Hot Sur Laura Esquivel: Like Water for Chocolate Ann Leckie: The Raven Tower Renee Adieh: The Wrath and the Dawn Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1921664/bl-opoly-scottie-dog-selection-square-9-please-pick-my-next-book
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M.M. Kaye: Death in Kashmir
Well, that was somewhat more of a slog than I had expected — and only in a minor part owing to M.M. Kaye herself; even though she does rely more on “dark and stormy night” scenarios than I would have liked to see, as well as on characters, including protagonists, behaving TSTL to such an […]
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BL-opoly: Dice Roll #17
It’s past midnight CEST, so having finished my very satisfying return visit with Crowley, Aziraphael and the world of Good Omens, I am allowed to roll again. This takes me to square 20: The Lake House — read a book featuring a dog, with a dog on the cover, or set in an area known […]
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BL-opoly: Independence Day Extra Rolls
Hooo boy. So, it turns out my Independence Day extra rolls are sending me right around the board. Doubles, novelty cards … Anyway, here we go: I just finished my current read, which was for square 2 (“Who?”). My first roll, starting from there, sends me to square 9: The Stay-Cation — read a book […]
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Summer Reading 2019
So, summer reading is shaping up as rather busy this year: First of all, there is Summer of Sherlock, for which my reading list is already as long as a whole year’s worth of reading would have been for me once upon a time. I’ll also be watching the two Rivals of Sherlock […]
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Chris Bohjalian: The Sandcastle Girls
Not an entirely bad book, but boy, this could have been so much more. Ostensibly, it deals with the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkey in the middle of WWI. What we really get is — at least chiefly — the love story of an American volunteer nurse trainee who has accompanied her father on a […]
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Iliya Troyanov: The Collector of Worlds
The Twelve Tasks of the Festive Season — Bonus Entry Task the Fifth: The Kwanzaa: – Read a book written by an African-American author or set in an African country. I blacked out my card on Dec. 19 using the “activity” entry for the Kwanzaa square, but since thereafter I did read a book set […]
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Question of the Month: First Books (and Series) I Fell in Love With
In this post, Olga Godim says: “Periodically, BL explodes with questionnaires. It could be 50 questions or 5 or 12, and everyone pitches in, because we all want to talk about ourselves, express our struggles and thoughts and quirks. We want to share ourselves with our friends. One of my online friends, Michael D’Agostino @ A […]
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Books With Numbers in the Title
Shout-out to URL Phantomhive for the idea! All of these are taken from my “Read” shelf. Sometimes, the numbers are in the subtitle. Books with several numbers (e.g., history books with a date range in their title) are entered for all numbers. Note: Updated as of March 2021. Zero / None Half […]
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Vladislav Tamarov: Afghanistan – A Russian Soldier’s Story
Boy soldiers in a war that turned out to be a “mistake” Growing up in Germany and learning about World War II in school and from my parents and grandparents, among the things that impressed me most – that I just couldn’t get out of my mind – were the pictures of those boys drafted […]
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