Monday Malarkey

A few words, in case you missed last week's update. I'm going to dedicate this week to finishing off Don Quixote, primarily to avoid being institutionalized. However, I pre-posted two reviews and will stop by Facebook and Twitter to add links to them when they publish. I'll also post a Fiona Friday pic because that's easy peasy. So, the only difference between this week and any other week is that I'll be off the Internet, except when I need to post links to the reviews that have been pre-scheduled. Otherwise, I plan to avoid social media to encourage the reading.

Recent arrivals:

• My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan - purchased
• Mad Boy by Nick Arvin - from Europa Editions

I requested My Oxford Year for review but didn't get a copy and since it was one of my most anticipated books (I've been to Oxford and love England, in general, as a setting), I decided to go ahead and order a copy. Mad Boy is a finished copy that was kindly sent by Europa Editions. I'd already reviewed the book, by the time it arrived, and I will proudly add this one to the good shelves. It is one of the most memorable, clever, unique books I've read in 2018. Grab a copy. You won't regret it.


Books finished since last Malarkey:

• The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik by David Arnold
• The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (and Their Muses) by Terri-Lynne DeFino

If nothing else, it was definitely my week for reading books with lengthy titles. I struggled a little with both of these. Sometimes I felt like I knew where Noah Hypnotik was going and I would love it for a while and then I'd feel lost. Bar Harbor was similarly frustrating in that I would get completely immersed in certain passages and those characters would begin to feel like I could touch them. And, then some poorly-written sentence would throw me out of their world. So, neither was a brilliant read but I don't regret the reading of either of them.


Currently reading:

• Israel/Palestine by Alan Dowty
• Don Quixote by Cervantes

I didn't read a page of either of these till last night, when I closed The Bar Harbor Retirement Home, etc. Then, I read a bit of Israel/Palestine. I'll probably begin my DON QUIXOTE OR BUST reading week, tomorrow (when family members are back at work) because I can just visualize myself picking up my chunkster and getting interrupted. Better to wait till quiet descends. I will keep reading it till I'm done. If I haven't finished by next Monday, expect a pool of blood instead of a Monday Malarkey post and a headline, "Woman Driven to Madness by Inability to Finish Don Quixote." Film at 11.


Last week's posts:

• April Reads in Review, 2018 - (Everything I read in April, in brief)
• Mad Boy by Nick Arvin - (book review)
• The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik by David Arnold - (book review)
• Fiona Friday: Another Izzy close-up (cat photo)

Oops, I just noticed I neglected to write the author's name in the subject line of my Noah Hypnotik post, so I've corrected and republished that.


In other news:

It's so stinking hot and humid that I'm trying to think up cold places to fly. Youngest son was in a cold climate, last week, scouting out a site to build a well (I think?) in Ecuador with Engineers Without Borders. "Ecuador," he said, "is very photogenic." True. I'm particularly fond of the photo he took of an alpaca with volcanoes in the background and another (in a national park) of a caldera, now a lake. Gorgeous. So envious of his week in the cold. It looks like the first named tropical storm of the season has landed far to the East of us, so we get a break from thunderstorms during the daylight hours, although we've been having afternoon and nightly pop-up storms almost daily. I miss winter. Winter in the South is so pleasant.

Also, just FYI, another one of my cats has melted.

©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.