I usually wait until mid to late January before posting my reading plans or goals. Mainly because I'm very optimistic about my superhuman capabilities during the start of a new year but much of that enthusiasm fades over the next couple of weeks. I tend to believe I can read more than ever but reality is usually closer to how much I averaged in previous years. So, to allow myself the opportunity to dream big and then plan well, I take the ambitious goals for a road test during the first couple of weeks of the year. If they still look achievable, great! If not, I will part ways with those that are a stretch. The numbers I have an arbitrary number set in Goodreads for this year but it's not a number I will quote as I tend to change it often and it is intended to factor in the many picture books I read with my kids. But that said, there are three numbers I would like to improve this year (last year's stats in parentheses) - total number of pages read (approx. 11k), average n
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at Should be reading,
this meme asks you what great books did you hear about/discover this
past week?I am typing up this post with near-droopy eyes. I am sleepy, tired, and aching for my bed, while sitting in my lab trying and failing to work. That's my cue to get hit the sack.
I came across some interesting books this week, the chunk of which are Orange Prize winners, but I'm only mentioning one of them here.
Hidden Wives by Claire Avery
I
just noticed this some time back on Shelf Awareness. The book synopsis totally had my attention, and the cover looks so serene and beautiful.
Fifteen-year-old Sara and her beautiful sister, Rachel, are too young
to legally drive a car—but are approaching spinsterhood in Utah’s
secret Blood of the Lamb polygamist community. Having long since
reached the “age of preparedness,” they will soon be married off to
much older men selected by the hidden sect’s revered Prophet. As Sara,
chosen to become her uncle’s fifth wife, grows more distraught over her
impending incestuous marriage, she begins to scrutinize the faith she
has followed blindly her entire life. But for Rachel, who will be
married to one of the many powerful community leaders vying for her
hand, disobeying the Prophet means eternal damnation. Her friendship
with the newest member of the community, the young and handsome Luke,
starts as an attempt to save his agnostic soul, but ends with the pair
falling helplessly in love. When Rachel is forbidden to see him, her
absolute faith in the Prophet is severely tested. When Rachel’s future
husband is finally announced, violence erupts, and the girls must find
the strength to escape the only life they have ever known…before it’s
too late.
Chef by Jaspreet Singh
Also noticed at Shelf Awareness, I was, yet again, attracted by a book on the Indo-Pak feud. I usually follow / read books on other world tragedies, but shy away from what's happening in my own country. Not a good thing!
Kirpal Singh, called Kip, is riding the slow train to Kashmir. With India passing by
his window, he reflects on his destination, which is also his past: a
military camp to which he has not returned for fourteen years. Kip is shy and not yet twenty when he arrives for the first
time at General Kumar’s camp, nestled in the shadow of the Siachen
Glacier. At twenty thousand feet, the glacier makes a forbidding
battlefield; its crevasses claimed the body of Kip’s father. Kip
becomes an apprentice under the camp’s chef, Kishen, a fiery mentor who
guides him toward the heady spheres of food and women. In this
place of contradictions, erratic violence, and extreme temperatures,
Kip learns to prepare local dishes and delicacies from around the
globe. Even as months pass, Kip, a Sikh, feels secure in his allegiance
to India, firmly on the right side of this interminable conflict. Then,
one muggy day, a Pakistani “terrorist” with long, flowing hair is swept
up on the banks of the river and changes everything.
Property by
Valerie Martin
The 2003 winner of the Orange Prize, it has everything I am looking for. Has anyone read this?
Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave
rebellion, Property takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to
the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman
slaveholder. Manon Gaudet is pretty and petulant, self-absorbed and
bored. She has come to a sugar plantation north of New Orleans as a
bride, bringing with her a prized piece of property, the young slave
Sarah, only to see Sarah become her husband's mistress and bear his
child. As the whispers of a slave rebellion grow louder and more
threatening, Manon speaks to us of her past and her present, her
longings and dreams - an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart
of moral darkness.
Did you sign-up for the Glorious giveaway?
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