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Around the World in 2000 Books

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An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands: Wikipedia FTW

July 13, 2016January 4, 2017 ~ Kelly Dunagan ~ 3 Comments

An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean, vol. 1, John Martin and William Mariner, 1827

Tonga, #1
Free from Google Books
Read November-December 2015
Rating: 2/5
Recommended for: sticklers for detail

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An Island to Oneself (because one is an insufferable jerk)

May 18, 2016January 4, 2017 ~ Kelly Dunagan ~ 2 Comments

An Island to Oneself, Tom Neale, 1966

Cook Islands, #4
Digital edition, free from privateislandsonline.com
Read September 2015
Rating: 2.5/5
Recommended for: People who don’t like people

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Doctor to the Islands

May 9, 2016January 4, 2017 ~ Kelly Dunagan ~ 2 Comments

Doctor to the Islands, Tom and Lydia Davis, 1954

Cook Islands, #2
Borrowed from San Francisco Library
Read: September, 2015
Rating: 2.5/5
Recommended for: Tropical epidemiologists

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The Island of Desire: Slow-paced adventure and frustrated aspirations

May 5, 2016January 4, 2017 ~ Kelly Dunagan ~ 10 Comments

The Island of Desire (The Story of a South Sea Trader), Robert Dean Frisbie, 1944

Cook Islands, #1
ebook, free from Project Gutenberg Australia
Read: August 2015
Rating: 3/5
Recommended for: people who fantasize about expatriating, not because they want to be a part of a different culture, but just to get away from their own, and have romantic and fairly unrealistic ideas about what that would actually be like

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Tomorrow, When the War Began

June 27, 2015August 7, 2015 ~ Kelly Dunagan ~ 2 Comments

Tomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden, 1993

Australia, #21
Paperback, Alibris, $0.99
Read December 2014
Rating: 2/5
Recommended for: teenagers, as long as they are fairly naïve and not sensitive to being talked down to.

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For the Term of His Natural Life

May 15, 2015November 23, 2015 ~ Kelly Dunagan ~ 3 Comments

Australia, #1
Kindle edition, £0.77 from amazon.co.uk
September 2014
Rating: 3/5
Recommended for: Fans of Victorian adventure stories; people who are interested in reading about Australia’s history as a penal colony and don’t mind it coming with a hefty serving of classism and romanticism.

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A slightly belated #burmese #bookstack

I have been reading this book since November. It’s not terrible or anything; in fact it’s a pretty compelling story of a young woman who marries a man who doesn’t understand her and treats her like a doll, determining what she eats, what she wears, when she sleeps, and (most harrowingly) whether and how often she can see her family. The heroine’s passivity in the face of all these ever-tightening restrictions is a little frustrating to me, but it’s set in Burma in the 1930s, where women were pretty much expected to be passive and compliant all the time. It’s not exactly a page-turner, but I don’t think that’s why I’ve stalled out on this book. I don’t know whether to blame the pandemic or just life with two small children, but for perhaps the first time in my life I just haven’t felt like reading. Might as well say “I haven’t felt like breathing,” but there it is. But at last I’m nearly finished with “Not out of Hate,” and I decided to download the Kindle edition of “Letters from Burma” and the audiobook of “Burmese Days” so that hopefully I can get a little more reading done during the long long hours I spend nursing my toddler to sleep in a dark room. I would very much like to reach a stage where parenting and reading are not in conflict, but I’m afraid that day might never come.

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post. Frankly it’s been a while since I read anything that wasn’t by NK Jemisin or Stephen King. But I still have all these books from Southeast Asia that I’ve read and haven’t written about, so I jumped back in with quick takes on a whole bunch of books from the Philippines, including this fantastic buddy-cop serial killer mystery starring two Jesuit priests.

Folsom Street Fair, 2015

#tbt to my last blog post of 2019: America Is in the Heart, by Carlos Bulosan

Drawings from today’s blog post, Philippine Food and Life by Gilda Cordero-Fernando. Link in profile.

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