1.25.2007

It's Not My Fault!

Okay, so I know I promised to start my Days in Uganda Series yesterday, but then my hubby sent me that article about the Chinese adoption and I felt too passionate about it not to post something on it right away. So I planned on posting my first "Day in" post today, and then I ate lunch with my hubby and forgot my purse in his car which has my journal in it.

I know, I'm sounding like a completely disorganized slacker here and I really do apologize and I promise that I will get at least one post up no later than this weekend! And it'll be a damn good post too, you'll see. Part of the problem is I really want to write well written, well thought out, well edited post on Uganda because I have so much to say and it's all so important to me that I keep putting it off to a time when I can really focus on it. As much as I'm able to blog at work, it's hard sometimes to really focus and concentrate, so I think I'll just need to suck it up and spend some time on it at home, as much as I hate hanging out on the computer at home since I sit in front of one all day long.

Further I must apologize for being such a reading slacker. I had expected to get like a ton of reading done on my trip to Uganda. I mean there's the full day of travel to and back from Uganda and then I had thought that the travel to and from Gulu could count as reading time, as well as the fact that I always read before I got to bed. Well, as it happened, not only was I in and out of sleep on the flights, but also international flights apparently have personal TVs for everyone (which I did not know) and so rather than making myself more motion sick by reading I opted to watch movies and TV shows instead! It was quite wonderful, I'm not going to lie to you. And the trip to Gulu, well try reading when you're being jostled and bumped around every other second by the horrendous roads. I have motion sickness already and reading always makes that worse, but with those roads I would have been puking out of the little matatu window! Also, since I devotedly journaled every night and had so much to journal about, reading before I went to sleep just didn't happen. Exhaustion usually made even journaling a huge task. So yes, I did finally finish Crime and Punishment, I know, it took an embarrassingly long time, though in my defense I often put it down to read other books for specific purpose (as in the other book was being made into a movie, for a book club, etc.), but I have not been able to start another book yet, partly out of just the exhaustion and jet lag I've had since coming home. There are so many books I want to read right now that I think my head will explode, but of course I couldn't resist starting with my dear friend's upcoming debut release, The Cleaner by Brett Battles! I've been very excited to read it and I think going from a psychological thriller in Crime and Punishment to a international thriller is a great transition! Plus, I'm sooo all into international traveling right now, so I'm really pumped to read it. After that, I've been dying to read a couple of books and I've just ordered some highly recommended books on Uganda and Africa that I really want to devour. Sometimes I just wish I could eat books and absorb them that way, I'd get so much more read then! The boredom and monotony of my job just leaves my brain so unstimulated at the end of the day that by the time I get home it's just complete putty and all I want to do is vege in front of the TV, especially since I have so many episodes of The Office, 24 and Six Feet Under to catch up on.

So under that paragraph of excuses, I do promise to get back on track with my reading and return to providing my book reviews. I didn't write a review for Crime and Punishment because I thought it was so well read and since I read it in pieces over such a long time, I didn't think I'd write a well rounded review, it'd probably have been heavily focused on the second half of the book! But if you just absolutely have to have a review just give me a ping in the comments and I'll relent. Overall I can say this, the book was intriguing, dark and just endlessly interesting. The characters were complicated and I felt like I was always learning something new about each character. At first it was a little difficult for me to get into the style of writing but once I did I really enjoyed it and moved through the book fairly easily when I got a chance to actually read it.

For funsies I thought I'd throw out a couple of links for y'all, just since you've been so patient to read through the drudgery of my excuses.

Books are finally cool!!! Well, sort of... do you guys remember when mint was the cool word for cool? Nobody seems to, but I totally do, and it was so mint.

I swear, I really did read Crime and Punishment, but if I were to lie about reading a book, that'd have been a good one... so what books have you lied about reading? Honestly, I really tried to think about it and I really can't remember lying about reading a book. The closest I think I've ever come is pretending to have heard of a book when in fact I haven't if someone acts like I so totally should have heard about it. Still pretty lame of me, no doubt.

2 comments:

Brett Battles said...

I look forward to reading your Uganda posts! I'm very interested in hearing your experiences and views.

Also I am honored that you've moved me up your reading list. :)

mai wen said...

I think I'm going to "The Last King of Scotland" tonight (so excited, it took F-O-R-E-V-E-R to come out in regular theaters! I haven't read "The Last King of Scotland" yet but I really want to catch the movie in the theaters so I'll just have to watch the movie before reading the book for once, something I'm very strongly against. Then tomorrow I'm going to set aside some good time to get out a stellar post... except now I feel like I've built it up so the pressures on. Damn. Hopefully the movie tonight will put me in total Uganda mode, it's filmed in Uganda so I'm sooo excited to whisper and point excitedly the whole movie telling my hubby, "Pssst, I was there! I totally bought a Fanta there!"

And I'm only too happy to move you up the list, I'm super excited to read your debut novel! Seriously, I'm all about the international scene right now so it's just perfect for me. :)

 

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