Tag: books

weeknotes, 45/24

back home, at long last! :D it always feel like a bit of relief, going through the door, coming back to our things, our space. this time, i brought home some virus from the kid too, so it’s been a week of throat aches, snotty nose and other ailments.

our neighbors told us it had been raining quite a lot the previous weeks, and both the garden and the little plot in the back were luscious green.

the olive tree is full of olives, so we took some and pickled them using a local recipe. we’re not sure which species of olive this is, or how good the result will be, but we’ll give it a try! the birds are super happy with the abundance of olives that falls on the floor too, like an open banquet… sparrows, blackbirds and redstarts spend their days picking at the fruit.

after years pestering him, the boy finally got himself a bike! now we have what feels like a two-wheeled fleet, and it makes me happy. :D planning some nice bike rides, when the weather and my health improve.

i finished reading the bee sting, which was a brilliant book but i was infuriated by the ending. i feel very strongly that 600+ page books should not end ambiguously. *humpf* afterwards, i also finished double blind and artificial condition (murderbot #2), which were both good for decompressing from the longer books. lots of hours on trains and flights (and some insomnia too) make for lots of reading!

weeknotes

weeknotes, 35/24

the big thing this week was that, in addition to our friends and their dogs, we also had my brother, his wife and baby LJ in the house! 😅 they needed a place to stay while taking care of other family stuff in faro, and prices in algarve are predictably off the roof during summer… so they ended up staying with us for a few days.

baby niece is still her delightful self, now with the addition of a few gimmicks that she’s been learning, like the sound a few animals make, where her tongue and nose are, how to say she’s had enough food… and paulo’s name! the boy has been so consistent trying to teach her his name, that she suddenly started saying it — well, a version of it that sounds like “pau-ummmmm”. it’s adorable!

i’ve also finished a few books here and there, a mix of things. i enjoyed the thursday murder club (about a group people in a nursing home that solve murders!), contos da montanha (the vocabulary is beautiful, the words just straight out of my grandma’s kitchen), all creatures great and small and a thousand splendid suns. this last one, about the lives of 2 women in afghanistan in the years since the revolution, was a punch in the gut, every page filled with heartbreak… i’m not sure how i managed to finish it, but i definitely needed some lighter literature after that.

geek

2023 in books

my reading seems to have continued its upward trend in 2023. i feel like i’ve read a bit of everything: a lot of light romantic novels, children’s stories (which often got gifted to my little cousins or niece), historical stuff, health books, books about life in faraway places, books about making art and comics, quite a few featuring death, some graphic novels, a whole series from elena ferrante, and a lonely planet guidebook… i like the chaotic nature of this selection — it feels right for my scattered brain and its many interests.

some thoughts:

– the number of books read surprises me a bit, because i don’t feel like i spend a lot of time reading — apart from audiobooks or time spent in waiting rooms, i rarely read during the day. i had an inkling that i did spend a lot of time reading fanfiction in the night, but it’s only now that i’ve replaced it with books that i know how much i was actually reading. 😳

– getting a digital library card definitely helped, as did the new kindle with backlight. i still wake up in the middle of the night a lot, and reading helps pass the time until sleep comes again. as a result, most of these were read in digital format, then some in paper form and less as audiobooks (mostly while cleaning or cooking):

– i’m the kind of person that gifts books to all the children in my life, and i’ve doubled down on this since my niece came along. it’s been a pleasure exploring new books for her, discovering the ones that are appropriate to different ages and will help her stay curious. i have been making a little stack at home, ready to dole out at the right time.

– highlight reads of the year… probably discovering the light, fanfic-ish style of ali hazelwood, which became a kind of comfort reading. the same with alice ozeman‘s heartstopper series (which i’ve read in one go, on a bout of post-christmas indigestion). i think outlive was probably the book i “underlined” the most, and mouth to mouth was the one that surprised me the most at the end. there were 2 books that i finished but did not enjoy: all of this and i feel bad about my neck.
– looking at the nationalities of the authors i’ve read, i think i actually did a good job spreading things around… but i feel like i could have done even better. in 2024, i want to try to read works from a wider set of nationalities— i guess that will be my reading goal for the year.

just life

2022 in books

2022 finally saw me reading a bit more again, and i’m glad for that! here’s a book montage of my reads, courtesy of goodreads:

i visited the local library a few times, and did my best to keep things interesting and always have a few different books around in case i got tired of what i was reading. and as a result, my reading was all over the place: there’s children’s books and graphic novels, sci-fi and romance, historical stuff, a memoir, a couple of productivity-themed books… even an encyclopedia about a particular mummy! about half were digital books (either kindle downloads or audiobooks) and the other half i read as physical books, mostly from the library, but also a few that were gifted to me, and one that i found on the trash!

i’m not going to give myself pressure to keep up this rhythm in 2023, but i’m happy this is how last year turned out. onwards!

languages

graded & grided readers

graded readers are books that are “easier reading”, written for a certain level of language proficiency. often, they use simpler language, or only have a certain number of words or characters in them. they’re great for when you want to read a book in the language you’re learning, but you can’t quite manage all kinds of literature yet… so you want something that matches your level. in chinese, graded readers are usually sorted by HSK level, or number of characters one has learned.

the chinese ones will sometimes have both the chinese characters and the pinyin transliteration in the page, so that it’s easier to read. the issue with this is that our western eyes immediately float to the latin characters we’re familiar with, making the exercise a bit pointless.

and this is where the magic grid comes in! :) you apply it over the text, and it hides the pinyin lines, so that you’re left just with the characters themselves. i didn’t know what it was for when i first noticed it tucked into the back cover, but it’s such a simple and elegant solution — i love it!