Reading in July
Rosefolly
5 years ago
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Reading in July
Comments (2)the message that was clear all through my childhood-particularly from my grandmother, was "if you are bored it's your own fault." When I would visit her in the summer and complain about the long, "difficult for a child to understand" sermons at her summer church, she taught me to look around in church and imagine things about the other congregants-change their outfits, imagine their lives, make up stories about them-we did the same thing on long car rides. There was a big house we passed on the way to her beach house-the stories we made up about whoever lived there! I still remember some of them. I tried the same technique with my children-my DD bit, and is rarely bored-always has something going on-but DS thought it was all dumb..."but how do you KNOW that they have 4 boys in that house?" He could never wrap his head around the idea that it didn't matter-it was just a way to pass the time. He does sometimes complain of boredom, and he's not a fiction reader, either. I've concluded it is the brain wiring. As I have a backlog of mysteries and biographies on the shelf, I think July will be a combo of those....See MoreJuly: What are you reading?
Comments (104)A BURNT-OUT CASE SBS TV showed the docudrama Lamumba two nights ago, on the evening of 30 July 2010. I had never really got a handle on the events of the historical crisis associated with the legendary African leader Patrice Lamumba, events which took place when I was in my mid-teens. Lumumba is a 2000 film directed by the award-winning Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck(b. 1953). It is centred around Patrice Lumumba in the months before and after the Democratic Republic of the Congo achieved independence from Belgium in June 1960. Raoul Peck's film is a coproduction of France, Belgium, Germany, and Haiti. Lumumba dramatises the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba. In late October 1959, just days after I joined the BahaÂi Faith at the age of 15, Lumumba was arrested for allegedly inciting an anti-colonial riot in the city of Stanleyville where thirty people were killed. He was sentenced to six months in prison. His name was just a news item on the distant periphery of my life, immersed as I was in a smalltown culture in the 1950s, in Ontario Canada. The plot of this docudrama is based on the final months of the life of Patrice Lumumba in his role as the first Prime Minister of the Congo. His tenure in office lasted two months until he was driven from office in September 1960. Joseph Kasavubu was sworn in alongside Lumumba as the first president of the country, and together they attempted to prevent the Congo succumbing to secession and anarchy. The film concluded with the army chief-of-staff, Joseph Mobutu, seizing power in a CIA sponsored coup.-Ron Price with thanks to SBS TV, "Lamumba," 30 July 2010. All of this got me back into Graham Greene who went to the Belgian Congo in January 1959, just before the Congo crisis broke out, with a new novel already beginning to form in his head by way of a situation involving a stranger who turned up in a remote leper settlement for no apparent reason. While Greene was writing A Burnt-Out Case in 1959 in the months leading up to and after I became a member of the BahaÂi Faith. This novel is one of those in the running for the most depressing narratives ever written. The reader only has to endure for a short time the company of the burnt-out character whose name in the novel was Querry. Greene had to live with him and in him--in his head--for eighteen months. Greene wrote that: "Success as a novelist is often more dangerous than failure; the ripples often break over a wider coast line. The Heart of the Matter(1948) was a success in the great vulgar sense of that term. There must have been something corrupt there, for the book appealed too often to weak elements in its readers. Never had I received so many letters from strangers, perhaps the majority of them from women and priests. At a stroke I found myself regarded as a Catholic author in England, Europe and America -- the last title to which I had ever aspired. This account may seem cynical and unfeeling, but in the years......See MoreWhat are we reading in July?
Comments (90)I finished The Dry yesterday. It was a good, fast-moving page-turner. I'm not sure how I expected it to end, but I guess, with the relatively small cast of characters, it couldn't have been too surprising. Maybe because the last couple of books I've read were told in the first-person, in one instance by more than one person, I had to keep reminding myself that Aaron Falk was not telling this story. It did use the device of telling parts of the story--the truth--by switching to italics and stepping completely out of the current narrative. I guess that's one way to let the reader into things that the present-time characters aren't planning to reveal or even know about. I did find that more than a couple of paragraphs were harder to read in italics. I give it a B....See MoreWhat are we reading? July 2020 edition
Comments (119)"I also have access to 2 library systems. ( we moved, and my old library system access still works! don't tell!!!)." That may be perfectly allowable although certainly unlikely to be enforced since most cards do expire after a few years and need to be renewed. Something I've mentioned before is that in many states, residents are granted library card privileges for library systems in other cities and towns of the state they live in. California offers this, parts of NY state do too. In California, unless special accommodations have been made because of current circumstances, it may be more difficult right now because library card applications need to be made in person. (I have 10 and they can be renewed by phone when they periodically expire). Getting new cards is a bit more of a challenge since many libraries are closed. The NY Public Library, which has a very extensive Overdrive collection, allows remote card application and internet borrowing for in-state residents using its app SimplyE. Call your regional libraries to see what can be done, if interested. Another way to get access to different Overdrive collections, as an example, is to exchange library card numbers with friends who live elsewhere. I myself have three such accounts with people I know in different cities in other parts of the US. The advantage of the multiple card approach is that the popularity of books, the number of copies of any one particular title purchased and made available, and indeed which books are chosen to provide vary from library to library. More often than not, when I'm looking for a particular title, it's not unusual to find a 12 week or longer wait at one large library and immediate availability at another. Or, for books of lesser popularity, I may check 4 different libraries to find the book isn't in their Overdrive subscription and then the 5th library I check will have it....See Morevee_new
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