I haven't done very well at remembering to read books for the 1% Well-Read Challenge in the last few months. So far I've read one, which I guess makes me .1% Well-Read. I just finished Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. The book group at work is going to discuss it at lunch tomorrow. I'll be interested to see what other people think. I actually found it a chore to get through. I don't quite understand why people consider it a classic. If you've read it, and loved it, care to share why?
posted by Kristin Buxton at 6:24 PM

I think I'm finally realizing why I never post anymore, or at least why my post frequency has dropped so much: I'm no longer working a job I dislike. Back when I was writing code I posted often from work. I needed the break. Now I don't. I'm not saying I'm not online at my new job, but it's usually for quicker things. Skimming through some blog posts and marking the ones to read later. A quick turn at scrabble. Checking email. Not sitting down and trying to write something. Fortunately I didn't have a large audience waiting for my next post.

Last night I finished Masha Hamilton's The Camel Bookmobile. A bored librarian from New York goes to Kenya to help start up library service to some of the rural population by transporting the books by camel. A boy in one of the villages doesn't return his books as promised and she arrives off-schedule to try to get them back and she begins to get a taste of what life is really like there.

The bookmobile really exists, but the story around it is fiction.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 7:35 AM