Reading on a Rainy Day

  Published in : 2021   ||    Format : ebook   ||    Location : Pakistan, Iraq, US One line review : War does different things to different people - some escape without so much as a scratch while others carry with them lifelong scars. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   My father had once given me the "birds and the bees" talk. It had been brief. He'd asked me if I was studying biology in school. "I am, Dad." "All of it?" "Yes?" He'd nodded, apparently satisfied that his work in this regard was done. Thoughts : Anvar's father decides in 1995 that he has had enough of the fundamentalist fever gripping his country and moves his family to the US. Not everyone in his family were in favor though. While Anvar and his father thrive in their new home, his mother and his brother remain extremely devout and often critical of those who weren't like them. Still Anvar and his family lead a relatively comfortable life; on the other part of the world, Safwa and her famil

This past weekend, I started my reading with a book that I hoped would be a fun but fast read. It sure was both but it also led me to more wonderful books (by virtue of Goodreads 'Readers Also Enjoyed'). Before I knew it, I was reading books about the Asian and immigrant experiences - two topics very dear to me and also among my favorite to read. Books about immigrants  After reading and loving The Bad Muslim Discount , I started looking for more books from South Asia, particularly those focused on the immigrant experience, mainly because I don't come across as many of these as I'd like. That led me to some really amazing books - Pashmina , Almost American Girl , and Good Talk .  Of those four titles, Almost American Girl has got to be my favorite. Trying to blend in when you don't speak the language and look nothing like the majority population is extremely hard and Robin does a great job in showing the good, the bad, and the ugly, without shielding anything or an

Happy Valentine's Day, if you celebrate it! In this home, Valentine's Day now means it is time to buy cards so that the toddler and the kindergartener can celebrate at school with their friends. It's become that now LOL. I hope yours has a special meaning to it. We don't have any plans here but it's a long weekend and a cold one, so we'll be staying warm.  Life We had SO much snow last week - more than we've seen in the past few years. That led to one no-school day and two delayed starts. It's still the deep freeze here this weekend so if it weren't for the people, I'd say it looks like dystopia out there. The kids were thrilled of course - finally, enough snow to make a snowman (who's still standing, 4 days later) and to have some sledding fun. There's more snow starting tomorrow night, so I'm glad for this long weekend because pretty sure that Monday is going to be another no-school or delayed school day, so might as well have the

Published in : 1968   ||    Format : ebook   ||    Location : Earth, Moon, Space One line review : Monoliths can mean bad news, disappearing monoliths even more so; sometimes, they can have ulterior motives too and make you smarter. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Thoughts : Ever since I read 2001: A Space Odyssey , I have been seeing references of this book in everything - the monolith that suddenly showed up and just as suddenly disappeared in Utah. And then, that report of an interstellar object ( Oumuamua ) that visited our Solar System recently. Plus, the mystery in  2001: A Space Odyssey  is not even unusual if you have recently been watching a lot of Star Trek. For a glorious minute, I almost said 'eh, been there, seen that' before earth came crashing to me and reminded me that even Star Trek was fantasy. (That was a very glorious minute though.) In 2001: A Space Odyssey , the sp

Busy work, sick kids, barely any reading followed by a reading spree - last two weeks have been more or less the same as much of the year so far.  Life My daughter was sick for a few days last week and considering that the winter season illnesses have the same symptoms as Covid does, she had to take a Covid test before she and my son could go back to school. Thankfully it came back negative, as we expected it to be, but it still made me nervous. Her school has even more strict policies in place than the district school - even one sick day requires a negative Covid test before the child can return to school. So while I appreciate all that and wouldn't have it any other way, I'm also wondering how many tests we may end up taking by the end of this school season. Those two days that we had the kids home were difficult - neither my husband nor I could take the days off and since work has lately been much busier for both of us, we just had to plow through. This coming week is going

I can't believe we are already into February. Another month and we'll have hit the one-year mark (in the US) since the lockdown started. In so many ways, it still feels like March 2020 around here, minus some of that initial confusion, but plus a lot more frustration and angst.  February reading plans On the reading front, I've been eyeing a few books that I'd like to get to. Some of these are new releases and others are books I want to read for a challenge. That said, for the most part, this month, I want to finish all the books I've started and not finished so far. Every few days over the last few weeks, I kept getting a library hold come through and that messed with my reading plans. This means, I now need to finish So You Want To Talk About Race , Black Buck , and The Bad Muslim Discount . In addition, I need to make progress on A Promised Land (which is a long-term read). There are two new and recent releases I'm hoping to get my hands on - Detransition, B