Sunday, May 20, 2018

Bout of Books Day 7 Update

I've managed to read more during this Bout of Books so far than in the previous year, mostly by just trying to read for a bit more than I usually would in any given day. It certainly helped that the school year is over. I found it hard to concentrate on reading books when there were such horrible events this week, including the Israeli massacre of protesters in Gaza and the dreadful school shooting in Texas. It seems strange to be preoccupied with counting pages during such a week,and I spent a lot of time reading news articles and talking to people. Over the course of the week, I read about 700 pages, but I wasn't counting carefully.

  For my stretch goal, I'd like to read 100 more pages before the day is done, but that seems unrealistic, I'll probably just wind up listening to an audiobook while I get ready to go back to work on Monday.
  5/21 UPDATE: I met my stretch goal by reading another 100 pages in Brothers of the Gun

  This week's reading:
Books Finished:
Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
Win McCormack, Chronicles of Rajneesh. 
3 issues of the new radical comic, Calexit  - which my friendly comic-seller had recommended to me when it first started up. What a blast!  and with informative interviews with activists in the back of each issue.
  Iris Tillman,   All This Happened Long Ago -It Happens Now. - my mother's beautiful and long-awaited poetry chapbook about our family history which just came out last week.

Books Started: 
 David Neiwert's Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, (110 pp and still going)
 Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple's Brothers of the Gun.  (185 pages)

And the Rest: 
I did not read close to as many pages of Adam Tooze's book, Wages of Destruction as I had planned to. Nor did I read any bit of the Graham Greene bio I had started reading in late April.
I also listened to a  4 hours of James Comey's memoir during carpool to and from work this week, and also listened to a few hours of Nick Stone's The Verdict.


Favorite of the week is definitely Brothers of the Gun.

In its honor, here's some music by the singer Fairouz, who is mentioned in the book's first chapters:





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