A life of books . . .
When the publicist reached out to me about this one, I wasn’t sure I had the capacity, but it was five months before it was published so I figured I’d make time!*
That sort of happened. Khabaar was on my TBR pile nonstop from February onward but between all the knitting I was doing and getting distracted by EVERY MM romance novel possible, I kept putting it off to my detriment.
I’m not sure how I stumbled across this one, but when I did back in May I requested a copy from the publisher and they kindly obliged.* I was interested because of the subject matter, but also because Reynolds is based at UNC Chapel Hill (my undergrad) and his name rang a bell because he’d chaired the Sexuality Studies program there at some point in the recent past. And then with my master’s degree focusing on the Civil Partnership Act (2014) in the UK, of course I was going to want to read this book and see what he had to say.
Continue reading “Book 658: The Children of Harvey Milk – Andrew Reynolds”
June was an incredibly busy month! We traveled to the West Coast for almost two weeks for a wedding and to see friends/family, I read 14 books, and we did some local exploration too. June was also pride month, and shockingly—we usually avoid it because I don’t like crowds and it’s usually too damn hot in June—we actually attended pride in Portland, Oregon. See what I did with the rainbow hop and the intro…yeah 😀
Now that I’m starting to settle into my new job (and have two weeks of vacation—when this posts I’ll be somewhere between Seattle and Alaska), I’m starting to catch up on galleys/ARCs that I received at the end of 2016.*
This is one of those books that goes in the pile of I would probably never pick up on my own, but since the publisher sent it and it was vaguely interesting to me I read it. I found the concept interesting and the idea of goodness outside of institutionalized religion is something I “believe in,” so I figured why not.
The book itself was easy to read and I enjoyed Viljoen’s writing style and the bits of himself he let seep into the book, but overall this was just a meh book for me. I’ve definitely read books that were much more focused than this one and maybe that’s what it was for me, what felt like a lack of focus.
Continue reading “Book 497: Ordinary Goodness – Edward Viljoen”
I would never have selected this book to read for a few reasons: it’s nonfiction; it’s a memoir/autobiography; it’s set on the African continent; and it’s not by someone I know anything about. Now I have nothing against any of these things, they’re just not on my usual list of go-to’s for books to read and that’s why I’m glad book group chose auto/biographies and memoirs this year. We’ve already done Fun Home and Girl In A Band, and there are a few interesting ones left on the list, so we’ll see what’s next.
That being said, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It did take a little longer to read than expected, but adjusting to a new job while trying to read a piece of nonfiction wasn’t exactly the brightest idea, but that’s book group for you. I think it also didn’t help that Fuller’s story telling style would I think be better in person or as a spoken story rather than a written narrative.
It was hard to know what I was expecting from this book. Going in I didn’t know if it would be about the revolutions/civil wars that took place or if it was going to be about post-colonialism. I also had no idea where in the hierarchy of white settlers Fuller’s story would fall. Thankfully, it sort of talks about all of this but through the eyes of a child. Continue reading “Book 439: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight – Alexandra Fuller”