People Reading : 3/1/2007

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I had been posting on Mondays 10am Pacific Time, but with Covid-19, I have slowed things down. For a while I was on lockdown in San Francisco and interviewed a few people from six + feet away. Now, I am in Taiwan, where I am learning how to say, "Can I take your picture for my reading blog?" I hope to continue posting pictures. Check back from time to time for new content.

As a result of the Black Lives Matter movement, I am more aware that this blog is filled with few black and brown people reading. I am (or was) a privileged white person living in San Francisco. According to Wikipedia, San Francisco's makeup is: Whites 48.1%, Asians 33.3%, African Americans 6.1%, Native Americans 0.5%, Pacific Islanders 0.4%, other races 6.6%, two or more races 4.7%, Hispanics or Latinos of any race 15.1%. When I return to San Francisco, I hope to interview more people that look different than me.

What I'm reading

From January 2014 to most recent: lots of New Yorker fiction that I caught up on – I especially loved The Christmas Miracle, by Rebecca Curtis; Life of Pi, by Yann Martel; The Help, by Kathryn Stockett; The Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov; Haruki Murakami's 1Q84; Bel Canto and The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett; the choreographer Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit (intermittently); The Remains of the Day and The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro; State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett; The Mystic Masseur, by the British/Trinidadian author, V.S. Naipaul; Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro; Sula, by Toni Morrison; two Swedish crime novels I read (in English) while in Sweden: Nephilim, by Åsa Schwarz & Killer's Art, by Mari Jungstedt; The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson; Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell, which my sister and friend, Colleen, recommended; Run, by Ann Patchett; When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro; The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World History, by Timothy C. Hall; The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell (only half because the ebook I was reading expired- but it was a re-read); The Circle, by Dave Eggers; Our Hotel In Bali: How two young Americans made a dream come true by opening one of the first Balinese tourist hotels on Kuta Beach in the 1930s, by Louise Koke (which I got from the Cannes free library on the beach, Pages à la plage); Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, by Madhur Jaffrey (from cover to cover - I was craving a kitchen, while traveling); Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami; The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt; The Corsican Caper, by Peter Mayle (on audio book); Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (on audio book); The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. (Starting a new year, 2015) Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella; Shaking out the Dead, by K.M. Cholewa; The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery; English teaching text books and New Yorker fiction; Divergent and Insurgent, by Veronica Roth; The Wolf Gift, by Anne Rice; and My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgård. --- I've been lazy for a long time about posting the books I've read lately. I'm not going to go back in time, but today (Feb 5, 2017) I just finished listening to Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett. Right before that I was on a Kim Stanley Robinson audio book kick and listened to Aurora and Shaman.

Reading Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked. He said it didn't get good reviews, but that he's enjoying it--it's interesting and he doesn't have to look up any words! His favorite book of all time--The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. What makes it so good is how the main character takes his revenge....though he wouldn't tell me how. Other good books he's read recently--Guess How Much I Love You, by Sam McBratney; and The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.

He was waiting for his coworkers (they work in risk management for insurance) and they were all about to go for a drink. The occasion--Thursday night!

On the right is the coworker who loaned him Guess How Much I Love You. Recently she read the Malcolm Gladwell books, Blink and Tipping Point and Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

His friend in the middle is reading a Tom Clancy novel called Without Remorse and recommends the young adult novels, Tales of the Otori, by Lian Hern, which take place in an ancient, made-up Japan.

An office that reads together....drinks together. Hope you guys had a good night! (not pictured: several other Thursday night celebrators.)

1 Comment:

Anonymous said...: hello,

i'm the guy on the left, lovingly known as "g money."

i wanted to inform you of a correction. my co-worker didn't loan me "guess how much i love you." she loaned me "fall on your knees" by Ann-Marie MacDonald.

here's another co-worker tidbit. "son of a witch" was given to me by another co-worker for my birthday.

ps. love your site!
pps. we had great time celebrating thursday!!; 9:18 AM

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3/1/2007

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