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Hi, I'm Angi
Welcome to my corner of the internet! My passions include travel, photography, books, music, Japanese language and culture, Italian language and culture, and art.

Here at Abbott Lane you'll find my thoughts on these topics and much more. Thanks for stopping by to visit!

August 2021 TBR

 


We're creeping ever closer to September, which means Autumn - my favorite season - is nearly here! Maybe this will lead me to read a bit more? Maybe not? I dunno. What I do know is that I have a some catching up to do to keep up with my reading challenge this year, so I hope my concentration will return. 

Since I'm working on downsizing and being a bit more intentional about how I spend money, I'm going to try to "shop" more frequently from the vast collection of books I have sitting on my shelves and ereader. It seems I absolutely LOVE collecting books, but then they kind of fade into the background of life and I forget to actually read them. So I'm hoping to start making a dent in that pile. Here's what I plan to read this month...



The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware

In this tightly wound, enthralling story reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s works, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

To be completely honest, every Ware book I've read has left me mildly disappointed, but I still keep reading them! It's a very weird phenomenon, but I think it has to do with the fact that her prose is actually really lovely (the plots on the other hand...), and generally I listen to the audiobook versions, which are performed by the absolutely brilliant Imogene Church. They're easy, fun, digestible reads and I often turn to them when I'm in a reading slump, so...



The Final Girls Support Group - Grady Hendrix

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.

I love Grady Hendrix, so I'm excited to read this new book by him! It sounds funny, but meaningful, in that way that Hendrix always is. 










Dune - Frank Herbert

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for....

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

I'm still sloooooowly working my way through this one on audiobook. It's not that it's bad - it's actually fantastic! - but I find that it requires a lot of concentration for me to keep up, so I can only listen to it at certain moments. I read Dune maybe 20 years ago and only have faint memories of everything that happened, so it's thrilling to dive into that world all over again.




Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: A Guide to Getting Out - Aph Ko

In this scintillating combination of critical race theory, social commentary, veganism, and gender analysis, media studies scholar Aph Ko offers a compelling vision of a reimagined social justice movement marked by a deconstruction of the conceptual framework that keeps activists silo-ed fighting their various oppressions―and one another. Through a subtle and extended examination of Jordan Peele’s hit 2017 movie Get Out, Ko shows the many ways that white supremacist notions of animality and race exist through the consumption and exploitation of flesh. She demonstrates how a critical historical and social understanding of anti-Blackness can provide the pathway to genuine liberation.

A friend gave this to me for Christmas, and I'm just now getting around to picking it up to read. I've read some of Ko's work before, and am fascinated by the ways that she talks about animality. I'm excited to read more about her theory.




One by One - Ruth Ware

When the cofounder of Snoop, a trendy London-based tech start-up, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other: PowerPoint presentations and strategy sessions broken up by mandatory bonding on the slopes. But as soon as one shareholder upends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. The storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, however, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hadn’t made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit.

Two Ware's in one month?!? Truth is, I need the boost! Ware's books are "easy" reading for me, and I'm behind on my reading challenge. So it's time to pull out the big guns!






Book Club Pick - Unknown

As always, there's one "wild card" pick for book club!

















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