Free Time Fridays – September 26, 2014

Free Time Fridays is a weekly meme created and hosted by Shannon at eatupmyfreetime.

If you’re new to Free Time Fridays, the details are at eatupmyfreetime here.

 

The past week I finished two non-fiction books I’ve been reading for a while: Letters from Africa by Karen Blixen and Balzac’s Omelette by Anka Muhlstein. I also started A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction so this is an unusual number of non-fiction books for me to have going at once.

I finished two fictions works this week. The first was a short story by Jack Finney, Of Missing Persons. Finney is the author of Time and Again which is a masterpiece of time travel. He’s also the author of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the basis for several movies. The other book I finished was Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, the first book of the Sookie Stackhouse series.

On the tv front, I watched the season premieres of Person of Interest and Survivor. Of the new series I sampled, Gotham and Forever were my favorites.

Did I actually ever leave the house? Oh yes, the highlight of my week was getting my flu shot, lol.

That pretty much sums up my free time for this past week. It’s your turn now. How did you spend your free time this week or what are you looking forward to this weekend?

 

Karen Blixen and the Earthquake

Written from Kenya, dated January 8, 1928

The strangest thing that happened here this week was that we had an earthquake on Friday night. It is true that it was only a footling little one; but for someone who has not experienced an earthquake before it was a special sensation all the same. I was in the bathroom getting ready to go to bed and my first thought was that a leopard had somehow got up into the loft; but when the whole house began to rock there had to be another explanation. Despite the fact that it is an uncanny feeling there is something, if I may say so, intoxicating about it, that something one has regarded as lifeless can start to move. You feel as if you want to pat the earth and talk to it: Well, so you are alive after all, old Earth!–Juma says he has experienced it before in Uganda, and then King Edward died the same day!–so now we must be prepared for great events.

Letters from Africa 1914 – 1931 by Isak Dinesen, translated by Anne Born

Teaser Tuesdays – July 15, 2014

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can participate.

If you’re new to Teaser Tuesdays, the details are at MizB’s Should Be Reading or on my Teaser Tuesdays Page.

 

 

Mine for this week is non-fiction.

Letters from Africa
1914 – 1931
by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

Edited for the Rungstedlund Foundation by Frans Lasson
Translated by Anne Born

My teaser is from a letter to Ingeborg Dinesen (her mother) dated Hopcrafts Shooting Box 20.1.14.

There is no sleeping car, but Bror had brought sheets and blankets. By the following morning the landscape had completely changed and then it was the real Africa, vast grass plains and the mountains in the distance and then an incredible wealth of game, huge flocks of zebra and gnu and antelope right beside the train, and although when you hear about that you don’t attach much importance to it, when you see it for yourself you find it really impressive.

 

What are you reading now? Do you have a TT to share with us?

Please leave a comment with your link on MizB’s Teaser Tuesday post or below. If you don’t have a blog, you can share your Teaser here in the comment section instead.