People Reading : July 24, Friday afternoon -- Reading Hugh Trevor-Roper

Thanks for visiting

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.

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July 24, Friday afternoon -- Reading Hugh Trevor-Roper

In the Financial District
Reading The Last Days of Hitler, by Hugh Trevor-Roper, specifically, a part about the corruption of Hitler's doctors. What about the doctors, I'm not sure. He stopped mid-sentence when someone walked by and tried to steal my lunch, which I'd abandoned on the neighboring table. (Half of a three-salad combo meal, which included these amazing lentils soaked in balsamic with baby spinach. thanks, by the way, if you see this.)

A book he recommends -- Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor, whose name he kept confusing with Sonia Sotomayor (same meter to the names). The book is a Mexican family saga that he began to describe with detail and enthusiasm, but again, he was cut short. I wish I could record his words right here, but, I can't. I needed stuff my half finished lunch in my bag and run back to work.