tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640161672337075402.post1046601217198317227..comments2023-07-11T01:30:07.061-07:00Comments on Traveling in Dusty Lands: media consumptionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640161672337075402.post-49816069305824304142010-09-20T06:58:23.047-07:002010-09-20T06:58:23.047-07:00I really enjoyed _Siddhartha_. Isabel Allende'...I really enjoyed _Siddhartha_. Isabel Allende's _My Invented Country_ and Steve Reifenberg's _Santiago's Children_ give a good sense of what Chile is like (if you're curious--I certainly wasn't, before I lived here).<br /><br />Have you read Iain M. Banks and Vernor Vinge's novels? I haven't picked up a ton of scifi in the past years, but I found them really engaging and different from everything else I'd read.<br /><br />_100 Years of Solitude_ (in English) was the summer reading for my Spanish AP Literature class. It's definitely got a lot of the tedious in it, and I remember it being very abstract and not very meaningful without the context of the politics and culture it references; actually, I recall it as being mostly political, about the devastating American corporate and military interventions in Central America of the 1825-1950 period. So, yeah, not a sparkling page-turner.Chris Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11377834549568033187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640161672337075402.post-42846431431929962152010-09-19T21:06:18.519-07:002010-09-19T21:06:18.519-07:00Hmm, I wanted to just say something about how I ag...Hmm, I wanted to just say something about how I agree with you about the weather, but I feel like I'm somehow failing as a comment conversationalist to do so... so... I'll just say that over the summer I read "100 Years of Solitude" for a similar reason. It was an odd book, and I don't know that I really got much out of it. It seemed so superficial, there was hardly any dialog, more a chronicling of a town & family in broad strokes, and I found it hard to connect to. I might have to pick up East of Eden next time I have time to read something for fun - I've gotten a bit tired of sci fi and fantasy somehow, so I'm on the outlook for good recreational reads. Maybe I just don't know where to get any good stuff anymore.<br /><br />Heh, I've been "writing" (read "staring at the screen, going through references, occasionally composing) a grant proposal all week. You'd think I'd be sick of writing, but here I am babbling like an idiot. Oh well. Next: more grant writing, and also, a paper. wheee!!!! *brain-splode*Celestehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04147189485901615466noreply@blogger.com