Another July, another 24-in-48 readathon. The more you do it, the easier it gets. This year I read about 860 pages and listened to 5 hours of an audiobook. I had thought I wasn't going to make it because on Saturday, we had friends over to play a game and eat dinner and wound up hanging out for about 5 hours. By the time I was ready for bed, I'd only read for 9 and 1/2 hours, so it wasn't looking good for me. However, I then woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep for a really long time. Usually I don't treat insomnia as a benefit, but this time, I got a lot of reading done.
Books finished
Sue Burke, Semiosis - which we'll be discussing in my local book club tonight. I really enjoyed this book, and found it similar to work by Ursula LeGuin and Octavia Butler, because it challenged basic ideas about human superiority. Very thought-provoking.
Yassin El-Haj Saleh, The Impossible Revolution. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in contemporary politics in the Middle-East. Saleh gives an analysis of various parties in the Syrian opposition, as well as closing with a detailed analysis of the Assad regime as a neo-Sultanic state. It's beautifully written and would work well for a general audience without much knowledge of Syria.
Books started, but not finished:
Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers . (read about 220 pages of this book) The story of two families: the Jongas and the Edwards. Jende Jonga and his wife work for the wealthy couple, Cindy and Clark Edwards, while Edwards works at Lehman Brothers on the eve of the 2008 financial crash. It may be a bit heavy-handed, but it's fast paced and the characters are believable. I hit the 24 hour mark before i was finished and I still read more before I finally fell asleep.
Michael Finkel, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea-Culpa I listened to this for about 5 hours while working out and doing basic chores around the house. I believe that I'm still in for some surprises in part two, so I'm looking forward to finishing it with a week's worth of commutes.
Ben McIntyre, Agent Zigzag (read 50 pages) This was my late-night-read-on-the-e-reader-so-as-not-to-wake-the-husband book. I've wanted to read something by McInture for a long time, though I didn't get very far into it. So far, it's an interesting character study of a British con-artist and bank-robber who stumbled into being a Nazi spy for personal gain.
