#lunchtime reading

[alotusstory]

09052021. How I spent my lunch break during work today. Any manga readers here?

[themancorialist]

Albert Square, Manchester.

[madlori]

The 10 best tales of online drama from 10 years of Fandom_Wank | The Daily Dot

The Internet’s premier fandom gossip site has given us a decade of fun, laughs, and for some fans, moments of immortalized embarrassment. These are the top 10 tales of Fandom_Wank.

[a-perfect-day-for-kangaroos]

“The only wave that changes anything is a tsunami. You have to tear down the houses and destroy that land if you want to be sure no one will forget you.” (Naomi Alderman - The Power)

[twiststreet]

The National Restaurant Association estimates that nearly half of all restaurants in America are now just breaking even or operating in the red.

-- from Esquire's profile of my television-friend Tom Colicchio and how he's closed his restaurant Craft. (I'd eaten at the Los Angeles Craft when I was a young guy and couldn't really afford it, for a birthday.)

They got rid of bookstores, they're beating the shit out of movie theaters, and now they're going to get rid of restaurants. Where is anyone going to go at night? What is it people are expected to do?

[wordrummager]

Carl Sandburg… “leave me a little love.”

[emmajanereading]

Finished reading my third "Reading At Lunchtime" book for the year at the start of this week:

Second in the series. Really enjoying the concept that the author established regarding time travel and why people would still choose the make the journey within the boundaries that are set. Even if it keeps making me tear up at work.

Am grateful for the translator's work in making this writing accessibleto lil monolingual me, am assuming they've done a solid job of conveying the author's original intent.

Have started a new book (Babel) now. Once it's finished I'll give the third in this series a go.

[emmajanereading]

What I Read This Year (2024)

So I picked this up at Melbourne Airport a few weeks ago when we were heading home from a wedding. Didn't realise it is a follow-up to "Kill Your Brother" (Jack Heath, 2021), but that didn't prove too big an issue as there's more than enough context provided within the narrative and from the characters who feature in both texts to make-up for my not having read the first book.

It was a pretty easy read, and I enjoyed the red herrings that are thrown in the way as you move between various characters' POVs as the chapters switch between points in time (events before, during, and after the fatal weekend) as well as perspectives/narrative voices. It works well to keep the reader (especially one who is only reading for around 20 minutes a day during her lunch break) guessing as to who committed the murder/s and why. There's also the element of unreliable narrator as the perspectives given in each chapter are coloured by that specific character's issues and motivations.

Recommend if you enjoy a whodunit with a decent resolution. Heads up there is some negative body-image in the narrative with one character struggling/dealing with issues around weight and aging, also discussion of infertility and the difficulties of IVF.