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...
I just rolled out of bed 30 minutes back! Egad! It's 10.30 already. Thank God for Sundays ... the only day of permissible guilt-free sleep-ins! I had a fun day yesterday at the International Street Fair at my university. The food was yummy and the performances and stalls set-up by the associations of different countries were quite riveting. I enjoyed this event last year as well, but hadn't been able to spend so much time at the venue since I had some TA work then. Yesterday though, I stayed out for most of the day and most distressingly, during the entire time the sun was at its strongest. Needless to say, in spite of the good amount of sunscreen lotion I used, I got too much tan (which I don't really need). Bummer!
Congrats to all of you who took part in the Dewey Read-a-thon yesterday! I missed the fun! I'm eager to go blog-hopping today to see how you all did! I thought of reading unofficially for the read-a-thon to see if I can keep up, but I got nowhere, since the book I was reading was moving too slow!
I'm trying to figure out which book to read today and might just settle on a non-fiction, Columbine by Dave Cullen. So that will be my second non-fiction book this month. Considering I read very little non-fiction, not due to lack of interest, but due to lack of trying, this seems a huge number to me for a month.
I'm not sure what it is that keeps me from reading non-fiction. I read a few last year - In Cold Blood and The Monster of Florence come to mind instantly. In Cold Blood was a very suspenseful read, where the reader already knew the killers and the victims and still couldn't help but turn the pages. But there were times during the book that I would yawn and just wish the words read for themselves. That happened more often when I was listening to The Monster of Florence. It didn't help that the crime is still unsolved. This book started very powerful and gripping that I was left gasping. I remember I was at the gym when I started listening to this audio book, and I actually got off the treadmill for a moment, and only listened. But all that interest generated tapered off during the latter part of the book, when I started getting all the names mixed up and found the book going in a totally different direction.
Last weekend, I read April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers, but this time I actually enjoyed the book a lot. Well, enjoy is not really the right word, since how can you "enjoy" reading about a tragedy? But I found I couldn't put the book down and I actually read it slow so that the details wouldn't go over my head. Then again, I was already familiar with most of the names and details listed in the book, so I'm not sure if that had an effect. Now, I'm going to start Columbine.
Funny how I've mainly read tragi-nonfiction books. I never thought of that before.
This week, I've been giving it a lot of thought. I've decided that I'll read at least one non-fiction book each month. I hope it will work out fine without becoming a "chore". I have quite a few nonfiction books sitting on my shelf. (I love buying them, even if I don't read them as often.) And, lately, I've come across a lot of nonfiction book reviews in so many blogs that many are on my must-read list. It shouldn't be hard to choose one.
Are you a nonfiction fan or nonfiction-reader wannabe? If you read a lot of nonfiction, how did you get attracted to that genre? If you don't read so many and would love to, what is your main obstacle?
