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Books

Books finished and in progress

Don’t worry, I won’t write here about all the books I am currently supposed to be reading. I just want to mention a novel I actually finished (this happens all too rarely lately with novels) and one I am reading avidly.

The one I finished is The Missing Shade of Blue, by Jennie Erdal. The Guardian liked it, but not as much as I did. It was the strong review of it in the Economist that I read some weeks ago that made me get it in Kindle ebook form, and I think of the book as highly as they did. Then again, I always fall for discursive books on philosophical topics, which is not to imply that this book has no action at all. It just has a lot of thought-provoking observations and dialog, in addition to action, and paints vivid pictures of characters, moods, and locations. I brought the book to Bermuda on our recent trip along with many others on my Kindle, but only read about half of it there; today was the day to finish it, made propitious for this by the necessity of spending more than three hours at the car dealership waiting for some routine car maintenance to be performed.

The one I will be finishing soon is The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale. I got that at the airport in Bermuda, right before going in to board the plane back to Philadelphia on Thursday. It caught my eye in the little airport bookshop. I remembered having seen good reviews but having thought that the title promised too weird a book. Well, I was wrong then! This is a fabulous book! Nabokovian use of language joins an intellect well-versed in literature, painting, linguistics, anthropology, and even economics to make a book so marvelous and unique that “unique” is rendered an inadequate descriptor, as is “marvelous”. I can see that I will be finishing it before the weekend. I will also have to stop myself from starting it all over again when I finish. There is work to be done this summer, after all, and work I very much want to do, at that!

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Life Photos vacation

Another nice photo of us

Continuing this narcissistic streak for a moment more, here is a photo of us on a glass-bottom boat tour out of the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. Photo credit: Rob Gilles.

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Life Photos vacation

A nice photo of us in St. George’s, Bermuda

Photo credit: Rob Gilles

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Life vacation

Back home

We had a smooth trip back home from Bermuda today. More posts with pictures coming soon.

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Life Photos vacation

Longtail bird

OK, from a diorama. You didn’t think I came this close, did you? We did actually see a few of these, one over the beach yesterday and three from the boat today, but not THAT close up.

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Life vacation video

Fish

We took a glass bottom boat ride from Dockyard today. One of the neat things we saw was a school of fish swimming right next to our boat (they had a good incentive, they were being fed by our crew).

Video clip here

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Life Photos vacation

Dinner at Café Coco

Café Coco is the restaurant of the Coco Reef resort, right next to the Elbow Beach hotel where we are staying. We had a nice dinner there tonight and the view from our table was very nice.

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Life Photos vacation

Beautiful beach day – good Sangria, too

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Life Photos vacation

Rob, M and D after dinner in Elbow Beach

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Life vacation video

Lovely evening in Elbow Beach

I tried to capture a bit of the ambience after dinner with a movie. I need a steadier hand…