Reading on a Rainy Day

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

2012-02-10T12:03:00.000-05:00

Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn't what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.

When Chihiro's mother dies, she decides to move to Tokyo to grapple with the grief that's enveloping her. Her parents had never married since her father is a respected businessman and her mother is the owner of a bar - her father's family was always opposed to their relationship. However, Chihiro feels as if she is losing her father as well, since the link that held them together - her mother - is no more. In Tokyo, Chihiro, hoping for a release from her pain, begins to imagine that maybe her mother's death is indeed a blessing in disguise, as she is now free to do whatever she wished. She becomes enamored by her neighbor, Nakajima, who she sees often from her window. It seems as if he is just as captivated by her. Over time though, they slowly progress from window infatuation to a friendly platonic relationship. Nakajima, though is just as complicated as Chihiro - there is something in his past that scares him tremendously, he keeps talking about a couple of friends he wants to meet but is scared to, and he even sleeps with a wire rack under his arm.

Banana Yoshimoto has a lot of fans in the literary world, which is what made me want to read this work. So when Melville House offered it for review on NetGalley last year, I jumped at the chance. It did however take me a while to get to it (blame the hype, shall we?) and when I did finally read it last month, I was disappointed. Something about the book just didn't work for me, although for the most part, it was good. I think it might have been my elevated expectations that did it in, but not entirely.

The one thing that bothered me was that the book read like a bunch of disjointed journal entries. I never knew where the jump was happening until a few lines into the new tangent. It could be that my ebook wasn't properly demarcated, but that frequent change of thoughts messed with my flow. I also felt bothered by the narrator's (Chihiro's) stream-of-consciousness. That made the book one-dimensional, even though the story wasn't. As a reader, I like to make my own interpretations of actions in a book - unfortunately, with the narrator explaining what every single thing meant, I felt frustrated. I usually don't have a problem with stream-of-consciousness but I guess that is when the stream feels more personal to the narrator than when I feel that the narrator is imposing his/her thoughts on me.

I think I began to relate to the book, when I was more than two-thirds in. Yoshimoto definitely gave an interesting look into a relationship in its nascent stage. How at first, both persons start compromising and accommodating, focusing on impressing the other person, letting the other do whatever he or she wants, without appearing to let it impact their relationship. But at some point, both start to grapple with the question of where the relationship is heading. Should they invest more into it? Should they finally break it up, seeing as how much they are just adjusting and excusing? Chihiro was also trying hard to convince herself that she loved him - I didn't really buy it. There was too much pitying in her attitude for me to feel that she was genuinely in love with him. Occasionally she was doubtful too - one day she woke up wanting to help Nakajima and the next day, she was confused about why she was holding on to him.

The Lake also addressed the feelings one feels on losing a parent, in this case, the mother. Both Nakajima and Chihiro were trying to come to terms with their mothers' deaths, and I felt that this was the best aspect of the book. The emotions were addressed well - the desire of the characters to run away from anything familiar, the confusion and anxiety of the change that follows leaving home, the feeling that they could have done more when their mothers were alive, and even missing the dreaded visit to home that one made to meet their mother but not having to do it anymore.

Although the first half explored these themes through the relationship between Chihiro and Nakajima, the second half used Chihiro's artistic talents to show their coming-of-age. Grief was the predominant theme. I did like how the characters evolved over time, addressing their failings and their expectations from each other, one way or the other. Overall, I enjoyed some aspects of the book, but others fell flat on me. I'm feeling less inclined to try other of this author's works, but I've heard her Kitchen is a fabulous read and that The Lake did disappoint some of her fans. Maybe I should give Kitchen a try?

I received this ebook for free for review from the publisher via NetGalley.

This stuff is so disturbing!

2012-02-09T12:12:00.000-05:00

I've been reading a book over the past couple of days, which has a theme that I had pretty much sworn never to read about. Religion. Or to be more specific - blind religious faith involving glorification of one's religion, belief that people of other faiths are unbelievers and therefore less deserving of being alive, insensitive discussions of the 'my god' vs 'your god' and 'my faith' vs 'your faith' kind, and spreading ill-propaganda about other kinds of people. I didn't really know what the book was about before starting it, but in a strange way, I'm glad that I didn't, because I might not have dared read it otherwise.

This is pretty much how my reading experience went:
Session 1: Uff, all this religion mumbo-jumbo is alienating me!
Session 2: What a sick weirdo! Why am I even reading about it? Where are the parents when they are most needed?
Session 3: Really? You leave your child's religious education to someone else? Even if that someone is your best friend?
Session 4: Okay, I'm giving up.
Session 5: But this stuff happens. Haven't I read about worse things?
Session 6: Okay, let me rein in my prejudices and just try to understand this character.

Trust me, it was a battle. I didn't really realize that I had a topic that would make me squirm in my chair. And this is after having read about maniacal psychopaths, incestuous relationships, horrendous killings, etc. It helped that the book is just a confession by a character whose knowledge about religion was based on what he was taught by his aunt and what he heard from people having a societal leadership status. It also helped that this book isn't a propaganda book or a glorification of one way or the other. And the more I read it, the more I understood how someone came to possess that blind or twisted faith. I have to credit the author for setting the stage well.

But enough about that. All this introspecting basically made me wonder about the challenges or taboos in reading. My reading policy is usually that the more challenging the subject of a book to the reader, the better the reading experience. Comfort reads are great too and I need them as well. But I learn more from characters I hate, characters who do things I can never forgive, characters whose real-life counterparts literally agonize me. When I read books about such characters, I never find myself eventually agreeing or sympathizing with them, but I find that once I turn the last page, my whole understanding of the character (and people like them) has shifted a great deal. The picture no longer looks black or white to me, but has immense shades of gray.

But does it always work like that? For instance, does reading about a disturbed person, say, psychopath, proselytizers, propagandizers (yeah, I made up that word) or any kind of person you usually cannot relate to, make you any more comfortable with the idea of such a person? Do you become more tolerant of the person only in the book-world and not in real-life? Or maybe also from your living room couch but not actually in the presence of such a person? I don't really think that my personal boundaries have moved much in any direction, nor do I like these characters any more than I did before. I just know that I won't be so quick to judge or dismiss them because I feel I have seen a thread of their complex thoughts.

Do you have a topic that you find yourself very reluctant to read about? Have you tried to change that, and if yes, did it work?

Yet another Monday! (Feb 6, 2012)

2012-02-05T22:06:00.001-05:00

Sheila @ Book Journey wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

We're one month already into 2012 - looks like Doomsday will be here soon! Yesterday, I started reading American Dervish, by Ayad Akhtar. This is a book I had been waiting to read since the ARC first strolled into my hands - a few months ago. Something about that awesome cover and the fact that the characters are of Pakistani-origin (I have never before read a book set in Pakistan) made me want to get to it right away. When I finally read a few pages, however, I was disappointed. The writing isn't that impressive and the plot isn't holding my interest too much. I'm only 50 pages in though, and there is a lot of ground to cover, so I'm hoping something changes soon!

Which pages were turned...

I finished reading Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow, my second of the Indie Lit Awards reads. I am looking forward to talking about it, once the awards are announced.
I'm also halfway through Lynn Sheene's The Last Time I Saw Paris and Mary Ann Shaffer's The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Right - that makes it three books going at a time - book polygamy's in full swing. The Guernsey Literary, which I'm reading at work is pretty entertaining, making me wonder why it took me so long to pick it.
As part of my current goal to read more short stories, I read another one recently - A Moment of Wrong Thinking by Lawrence Block.

...And other news
Review: Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri (Short story)
Review: The Silent Land by Graham Joyce
Review: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
Oh, and for Hunger Games' fans: My brother (and fellow fan) just shared with me this awesome map of the Panem courtesy io9 - looks like a good chunk of North America is in the water or bombed off - my town just about made it into District 12, barely.

Happy reading!

Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri (Short Fiction Review)

2012-02-04T22:02:00.000-05:00

I first read Jhumpa Lahiri years ago, when her Interpreter of Maladies was making a huge buzz. At the time, I didn't catch any of the buzz, but for some reason, when I saw the book on the shelf at the store I was browsing in, I felt it just might be a decent read. Funnily, I read the entire short story collection without complaining about it, but for some reason, I cannot read any collection anymore without agonizing over its disjoint nature.

I did enjoy Interpreter of Maladies, but I did get bothered by the thread of loneliness and infidelity and distrust that laced through the stories. For that reason, I have been reluctant to read Unaccustomed Earth. However, when I came across Hell-Heaven at the NewYorker - a free short story from her book, I decided to go ahead and read it. I can't resist the pull of stories set in India or featuring Indian characters, and it is that same aspect that hooked me throughout this story.

In Hell-Heaven, the narrator contemplates the relationship between her mother and a friend of her parents'. Pranab Chakraborty was a fellow Bengali who met the narrator's parents when he was a graduate student at MIT. The narrator's mother, Aparna, developed a soft corner for Pranab and would wait for those moments when he would visit them. (Her own husband had given himself completely over to work.) Over time, she began to feel a deep affection for him, but being a married woman, she drew the line there. Still, when Pranab falls in love with an American woman, Aparna reacts poorly, waiting for Pranab's girlfriend to leave him. Pranab and his girlfriend however get married, leaving Aparna to nurse some deep resentment for the couple.

Despite the unsaid and unacknowledged feelings that Aparna had for Pranab, there is nothing in the story to make one uncomfortable or judgmental. I found Hell-Heaven to be a nice character-focused story, with Aparna being the main focal point. There is not much in the way of a plot, but there is enough to move the story along and leave you feeling for the characters. I did however, feel that the story was a typical Jhumpa Lahiri fare. There are her usual elements of loss, love, yearning and family. I kind of knew where it was going, but I didn't mind the predictability because the lyrical prose held a lot of emotion. Is that emotional manipulation?

Still, I enjoyed the story because I could relate to the middle-class status of the family - their need to move away from orthodox customs and yet struggling to cut those threads away because what did they have if not those customs? And like other immigrants, their desire to be accepted is very palpable - they are treated as foreigners both in India and in the US - where then is home?

I read this book online on the NewYorker. Go ahead and read it.

The Silent Land by Graham Joyce

2012-01-31T18:26:00.000-05:00

Zoe's face clouded over. "This can't be right. This just can't be right."
"What?"
Her face registered her alarm. "Look at that hotel. And look at the church at the top of the hill."
"What about it?"
"The tower. It's the same. Same as the one in our village."
"Similar."
"Not similar, Jake. Not similar at all. It's the same. So is that hotel. We're back in Saint-Bernard. We haven't gone anywhere!"

Jack and Zoe, a young married couple are enjoying a beautiful day skiing along the French Pyrenees when they are buried under a flash avalanche. Somehow, they both manage to crawl their way out of the snow and decide to return to the hotel to help in any rescue efforts. They arrive back at the town to discover that there are no people about - it looks as if the entire town was evacuated. They decide to wait a while before trying to leave town. While they wait, they notice that they are not able to use their cell phones or land lines, that cuts of meat appear to remain fresh for much longer than is usual, they do not bleed. When they try to leave, they keep getting back to where they started. Almost as if the town doesn't want to let them go.

It's been a while since I read The Silent Land, so I wasn't sure if I wanted to review this book. But, I remember that I had enjoyed it a lot, so I find it difficult to let it go without even trying to recommend it to you, however briefly or inarticulately. I picked The Silent Land impulsively after seeing it listed in the ebooks catalog at my library. Since I knew next to nothing about this book, I decided to read it.

The Silent Land is not a supernatural or paranormal story. It is a regular literary fiction with elements of the unknown and the unimaginable woven in, in a very realistic manner. It's hard to say more about this book without giving away the core element of this book - the whole mystery of what happened to the town post-avalanche. I had a ton of guesses as to what could be the matter, but as the story progressed on, and I read of more strange happenings, I began to have a strong suspicion of what might have happened. Still, when the climax rolled along, I felt very sad for Jack and Zoe.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the writing, however. Some of the dialogues felt way too cheesy and immature, and there were times I felt the characters were acting too childish to suit the circumstance. I was able to look past these however because the story held intrigue. There were times I thought that some stuff were too weird, but when all is explained and done, everything begins to make sense. This is however not a book I'd like to see adapted to screen, mainly because this idea has been exploited a lot on screen and I tend to scoff whenever I come across it. For some reason, reading about it made the premise more possible and realistic, probably because it's a while before the truth is revealed. Overall, I enjoyed this read a lot.

I borrowed this book from my library.

The Sunday Salon: Long hauls

2012-01-29T09:45:00.001-05:00

After more than a month of awesome fun and incredible changes, my visa issue finally got resolved 3-4 days ago, and hubby and I left for the US the very next evening. Talk about last minute plans, especially those involving travels between different countries. Because of how quickly we made the return plans, I haven't had the chance nor the time to feel sad about leaving my parents. When we first got out at the New York airport to chilly wet and foggy weather, we both felt so good at finally being back. 37 hours after we left hubby's parents' home in India, we reached our home in Virginia! I should be jet-lagged now, but luckily I just have dull aches all over my body from being on the move for so long.

Long flights suck, even if you are sitting in the most comfortable airplane ever!

I spent most of the flight either sleeping or watching some of the movies they had on catalog. One of the movies I watched was One Day, based on David Nicholls' book. While I'm on that topic, why the hell did he do that at the ending??? I was all prepared to say that the movie was coasting along the theme of predictable mushy romance flicks, when bam! came that ending. I actually cursed out loud at that point, but since everyone had headphones on, I didn't get any funny looks. I liked the structure of this movie though - it was a pretty nice way to tell a story. When I was not sleeping or eating, I was reading Silver Sparrow. My next read is (probably) going to be another Indie Lit Awards shortlisted book - The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene. I have to admit that I had barely glanced at this book when I first came across it sometime last year. But reading the description now, it does sound promising, so I'm excited to check it out.

Tomorrow, it's back to work for me. Although I had been doing my work from home for the last couple of weeks, I'm still feeling pretty lazy about heading back, albeit a good kind of lazy, the kind you feel after a good vacation.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

2012-01-24T09:48:00.000-05:00

Most of us on the boat were accomplished, and were sure we would make good wives. We knew how to cook and sew. We knew how to serve tea and arrange flowers and sit quietly on our flat wide feet for hours, saying absolutely nothing of substance at all. A girl must blend into a room: she must be present without appearing to exist.

Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic tells the story of a group of young Japanese women who were brought to San Francisco as picture brides in the early 20th century. Their journey starts by boat, where they discuss their many expectations from marriage, exchange photos of their husbands whom they haven't met yet and share their deep fears about the unknown future towards which the boat chugged forward. What they arrive to in San Francisco was mostly very different from what they set out expecting, but going back to their lives in Japan was not an option as they wouldn't be welcome there either anymore. But the women somehow manage to lead and adapt to their new lives, working daily and keeping their husbands happy. Eventually, WW2 arrives to throw everything they earned and lived for into the abyss.

It's been a while since I read this book, so I'm not sure my review will be as articulate as I want it to be. What I strongly remember is enjoying the voice of the narration - the narration is from a plural first person perspective - through "we", "us" and "our". As similar as the stories of many of the women were, they were just as disparate. It took me a while to get used to the style, but once I did, I enjoyed it. I expected it to get boring after a few chapters - I wasn't sure how long the author could sustain interest in that manner of narration, but it held my interest throughout, probably because of the rich diversity in the lifestyles of the brides, which all seemed to go along similar phases of life at the same time.

The Buddha in the Attic shows the prejudice of the times very well - it isn't overdone. While some of the families are able to get "better" jobs, many still worked in farms, subject to the occasional ridicule and striving to do an honest day's work. This book is primarily a collection of the women's stories, although after the first chapter, when they are united with their husbands, the women's stories are intertwined with those of their husbands and children. The passage of time is well captured in this book - even though this is a slim and quick read at 120-odd pages, by the time I turned the last page, I felt as if I read about someone's long life story.

My favorite chapters of this book were the last few - when the WW2 rolls around and many Japanese folks are moved to internment camps. I felt that the collective voices tool is made more powerful here - when the people try to react to missing neighbors and share their fears, uncertainties and worries about their families. The reactions of the American neighbors were even more intriguing to read. Reading these chapters made me realize yet again how easy it is to have a Holocaust-like event right under your nose and still look bemusedly at what's happening. Within days, the memory takes on the vague sepia tones of the past, and then it's like it never happened. The Buddha in the Attic eventually left me feeling sad and indignant but not depressed. Since it's one of my top reads from last year, I strongly recommend it.

I borrowed this book from my library.

Yet another Monday (Jan 23, 2012)

2012-01-23T00:47:00.000-05:00

Sheila @ Book Journey wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

So far this year, I've been reading slower and been more thoughtful while reading. I like it this way, because I appreciate the time and thought I've been putting into choosing a book to read. They may not turn out to be five-star reads (In fact, I've only had 1 four-star and two 3-star reads so far), but all three books left me feeling satisfied at the end, a feeling that doesn't always come to me. Moreover, since I'm not planning my reading in advance anymore (at least I haven't so far this year), I probably have only one book going at a time. Right now, it is Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow, a candidate for the Indie Lit Awards in Fiction category. I'm enjoying it, but there won't be any of my thoughts published on the blog until the winner is announced.

Which pages were turned...

Lately, I've been in mood for some short fiction, a medium that I used to shun previously, simply because the brevity usually left much to be desired for me to sufficiently enjoy the read. So far, this month, I've tried two short stories, both available in the public domain - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (read my review) and Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri from her short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth (will be posting the review next week). I've enjoyed both, so I will keep looking out for more short stories. But I doubt I'll be reading an entire collection anytime soon.
Last week, I read Banana Yoshimoto's The Lake - my first read by this author. Can't say I was impressed - I'll be posting my review next week, after I have thought more about it.

...And other news
In case you missed, here are my 2011 favorites and plans for 2012.
My guest post on Marjane Satrapi's Best and Worst over at Alyce's At Home with Books.
A potpourri of random thoughts that I wanted to talk about over the past few weeks.

The Sunday Salon: A potpourri of random thoughts

2012-01-22T03:09:00.001-05:00

I woke up today morning to the thought that I'm finally going to post my first Sunday Salon of the year. Then I remembered that it's Jan 22nd today. Where did this month go? After the very hectic weeks that I had over the last month, I have the sensation of time having stopped for everyone while things settle down for me. It's strange realizing that not only have I gone many days without reading much, rather the first month of 2012 is almost over as well. Weird!

Anyways, since I have a month's worth of Sunday Salon-ish thoughts, I'm going to simply write down whatever comes to my mind.

I completed my two years of blogging a month ago! I've missed my blogiversary twice already now - since it always comes during the winter vacation, I seem to always be missing it.
My google reader is beginning to look tamed. One of the last things I did before I disappeared on my vacation was to really organize my reader according to how it makes sense to me. I'm glad I did that because catching up on blogs was far easier and much less overwhelming now than it usually used to be even after a week off. After two years of blogging, it feels great to have a balance on this front.
During my month lurking around blogs (yes, I admit to still having been reading blogs when I was busy, but no, I didn't have the time or feel the compulsion to leave comments simply because it was busy), something I noticed was how many of you were trying to kick in the new year with that one special read. If I remember correctly, it was Sheila at Book Journey who introduced the idea, and I so wanted to do the same, preferably start with a reread of the Harry Potter series, but that didn't happen. Instead, I started 2012 with a book about a mentally ill woman, who was seeing things in wallpaper patterns, and whose secluded life in an upstairs room in a mansion was no fun, and whose actions in the climax left me feeling very disturbed. I wonder what my book choice tells about me?
My husband and I are still in India - my visa ran into some administrative roadblock that typically takes its own sweet time to get resolved. Although, we're relishing the extra unplanned time at home that this has brought me, being away from life as I know it for this long is no fun either. Worse, all my books are in the US - horrors! I just hope all my mail (especially any books) are being kept safely at the leasing office or the post office.
I just started reading Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow today. I had been yearning to read this one since it was released last year, and was glad to see it on the Indie Lit Awards shortlist. My physical copy is in the US, so I had to borrow an ebook from my library to get started on the awards reading.
Kim @ Sophisticated Darkness recently shared an essay she read at The Bygone Bureau, called In the Land of the Non-Reader, which I liked. I particularly enjoyed this quote in the book, because it spoke for me.

...when I was a reader, it often troubled me when friends claimed that they had no time to read. Was it possible that their lives were so full of wonders that they could not spend five minutes here or there to read? How was it that my life, in comparison, seemed to offer so many chunks of reading time throughout the day? A train ride, a late-night break, and an office wait. Through marriage, babies, graduate schools, and new jobs, I always found time to read for pleasure.

Anyone planning to read the books listed in the 2012 Tournament of Books? There are a number of them there that I want to read and Ann Patchett's State of Wonder is the only one I've read. I'm tempted to read some others before the tournament, but I don't really need another reading project or plan. Still, last year, I would never have entertained the idea of doing such a reading, since by now, I would already have lists of books that needed to be read. I'm really relishing my affair with serendipity.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Short Fiction review)

2012-01-21T07:46:00.001-05:00

Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is a work I have seen on and off on many blogs and websites but never really got to read until now. Mental illness is a topic that I tend to gravitate towards reading about, so when I finally finished reading this short story, I wasn't disappointed. The woman in the story is suffering from a mental illness that her physician husband has diagnosed as temporary nervous depression. He doesn't listen to her suggestions or wishes but instead forces his opinions on her. She believed that working, socializing and writing would help her recover faster, but her husband worried that those activities would stimulate and excite her condition unfavorably. He therefore takes her to a summer mansion and keeps her in an airy upstairs room, and persuades her to stick to a rest treatment, in hopes of curing her. Over the next three months, we get to see the effect of this treatment on her, through her journal entries that she writes in secret.

The protagonist is oddly fascinated by the sickly yellow wallpaper in that upstairs bedroom. Initially repelled by its appearance, she asks her husband to remove it or let her move to another room, but her husband insists that she not cave into such fancies and not let the wallpaper bother her. Even though she is still creeped by it, she cannot look away from it and keeps obsessing over the patterns. She begins to imagine that she can see eyes and heads and even a woman in the wallpaper patterns.

I loved the multiple issues that were highlighted in this story. The unreliability of the narrators adds a powerful punch to the story. Most of the time, I wasn't even sure what to believe, but that didn't matter. It was very evident that she was suffering. She was obsessed by the woman in the wallpaper, and the climax was strangely disturbing.

In addition to the insight in to the mind of an ill person, we also see the imbalance of the household. John, the husband, doesn't believe his wife deserves to do anything she wished. He believes her only temporarily ill and coaxes her to listen to him. When she gives into her emotions (anger, irritation, sadness), he asks her to rein them in and to exercise self-control over her emotions. He even makes her feel that she is ungrateful for not valuing his help enough. While I don't think that he was acting out of malice in wanting to care for his wife, I do feel that he lacked respect for her as a person and a patient, and believed her weak and wanting.

I loved Charlotte's writing! Who knew you could write so much about something so boring as wallpapers. Here's a passage I kept reading because it felt lively and colorful to me, almost as if describing a vibrant personality. The "it" refers to the wallpaper pattern.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

I'm glad that I finally read this really short work. This epistolary work is available in the public domain, and I actually read it via DailyLit, in under an hour. I only have one complaint and that is that occasionally the writing was so archaic and missing pronouns that I felt compelled to fill them in. On researching about this book after reading it, I learned that The Yellow Wallpaper is actually based on the author's own depression and the rest treatment that she was subjected to. In some respects, it reminded me of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

I read this book online via DailyLit.

Back with some updates

2012-01-17T09:39:00.000-05:00

Whew! A whirlwind two weeks later, I'm finally somewhat less busy. I'm still in India, but slowly getting back to some form of a routine. After two weeks off the grid, I find myself even reluctant to get back online, because of everything that's pending and needs attention.

The wedding went great! It was very tiring by the end of the day, but still fun. I still haven't uploaded the photos yet, but I have one photo available on PhotoBucket (click the link).

A few things that happened during my absence from the blog.

- I had guest-posted over at Alyce's blog, At Home with Books, on the Best and Worst of Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi's Persepolis was my introduction to the graphic novel medium, and it's still one of my favorite graphic books.

- The shortlist for the Indie Lit Awards is up! Since I'm judging in the Fiction category, I can't wait to read the titles! These are the books shortlisted for the Fiction category:

Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney
Cross Currents by John Shors
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene

- I had already posted my favorite reads of 2011 and plans for 2012 before I took my blogging break.

- I haven't read anything so far this year, save for a short story - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The short story medium is still a challenging one for me, and I hope to change that this year. I just started reading Banana Yoshimoto's The Lake today, and so far I'm enjoying it.

I still have a few reviews from last year pending, so I'll post them over the next few weeks as I get my posts written. I don't plan to be OCD about reviewing all of them, because I want to get started on my 2012 reading. What have I missed over the last two weeks?

A Year in Reading (Challenges and Reading Plans)

2012-01-02T08:21:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, all! It feels really weird saying 'last year' to mean the last 12 months rather than 2009. Time sure does fly like crazy! One of the best parts of any new year is starting on a fresh slate and making plans for the next 12 months. I tend to make a lot of far-fetched and ambitious plans, that all fizzle out within a month. This year, I'm going to try not making any plans, except to listen to serendipity more often.

Challenges

At the beginning of this year, I signed up for a few challenges, but eventually got rid of all but one. The Graphic Novels Challenge is possibly the only challenge I ever finished in my two years of blogging. I don't plan to do the challenge again in 2012, because I've been automatically reading more graphic books lately and know that I will be reading a lot more in future. I had signed up to read 10 graphic books this year, and eventually read 20. I have my full list of graphic books I read here, in case you are interested in checking it out.

So far, I've signed up for two challenges in 2012. At the moment, I plan to stay with just the two - I've realized that I genuinely suck at challenges. For some reason, once a book makes a to-read list, it loses all its pull and motivation, making me not want to read it anymore. Serendipity is still my favorite source for books, and I've found some truly wonderful books that way last year.

The first challenge I joined is The League of Extraordinary Gentle- Men of la - Book Challenge, which Zohar @ Man of la Book is hosting. I've already read a couple of the books, so all I need now is an incentive to read a book from a list. The other challenge is the Middle East Reading Challenge, hosted by Helen of Helen's Book Blog for the second time. I only read one book towards this challenge the first time round, but this time, I'm hoping to do better.

Reading Plans

At the beginning of last year, I started keeping a PIE list, in which I mention all the titles that I keep hoping to read someday, but the someday never really comes. I had hoped to read at least 5 books from the list, but I only managed 4. I did start the fifth one a few days before the end of 2011, but have not finished it yet. This year, I'm again hoping to read 5 from the list. Here's the four I read:

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

This year, I've decided not to plan for the whole year. I know perfectly well how seasonal my interests are, and I hate making plans and not feeling up to seeing them through. I'd rather make quarterly plans - that way I can easily make and break lists and choose something different to focus on every few months. I'm still not sure yet what I want to do for the first quarter, since right now I'm reading sporadically based on which book is nearest to me. It will be a while before I get back to routine, so I'll wait until then before I decide what I want to do this year. Still, chances are it'll be one of these - read some of the much-awaited 2012 ARCs waiting in my shelves back in Virginia, read a few of the 2011 releases that I didn't get to read last year, or get a head-start on Helen's Middle East Challenge! We'll see which one will pull me more when I get back.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to being less planned and more impulsive about choosing the books I read. I've found that most of the books I loved have been what I picked without planning to. I do want some structure and will be planning my reads a bit (it would be hard to get a book from the library without some advance list-making), but I don't want to stress out looking at a list.

I've been happy with the ARCs I accepted last year. I made a decision a year ago to be more picky, and so far, it's been easy deciding what books I was willing to accept. Moreover, if I didn't get to a book, it didn't worry me like it did earlier.

So that's pretty much my plan, or rather a lack of it, for this year. Let's see how it goes!

A Year in Reading (Favorite reads of 2011)

2011-12-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

Like any other year, 2011 was a mixed bag of sorts for me. I read about 85 books this year (15 short of my original target) - but many were books that I enjoyed at so many levels that I'm not too fussed by the number. There were a few I could have done without, but overall, it's been a good year in reading.

Of the 85 books I read, 36 were 2011 releases. I'm quite impressed with that because I imagined I read far less 2011 books. Depending on which side of the bed I wake up from each day, I either like reading more current books or not. It's a fluctuating thing - sometimes I wish I read more classics, but the very next day, I'm all into the new releases.

Still, 36 isn't a huge number, so I'm going to list the books that made an impression on me, without looking at their publication dates. I read a total of 62 fiction titles, so I'm listing 10 titles that I would gladly recommend to you.

Favorite fiction reads

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn
Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb by George Rabasa
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
Far to go by Alison Pick
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton
Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile

Favorite nonfiction reads

A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres
Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford
The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik
The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke
The Freedom Writers' Diary by Erin Gruwell

The first four titles above were all ARCs. I was intrigued that most of the nonfiction titles I read are those offered as review copies. Lately though, I've been looking out for more nonfiction titles, so I hope the stats change next year.

Favorite graphic books

Maus 1 & 2 by Art Speigelman
Anne Frank by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen
Vietnamerica by GB Tran
Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme

I read about 20 graphic books this year and loved most of them. I hope to continue reading more of them next year.

Some of the books I loved when I first read them no longer seem to hold me in the same awe now, so I did change a few ratings today, but on the whole, I remember most of the books to be just as good as I first wrote about them. Have you read any of these?

A Monday Salon for a change

2011-12-25T23:58:00.002-05:00

Before it becomes too late - (Belated) Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! I hope all of you are having a great holiday season.

After almost two weeks of running around like a headless chicken, I've finally got a morning to myself. I'm typing up this post from India, where I arrived early morning yesterday. It's been more than 2.5 years since my last visit, and I was curious about how much this place has changed since, or most importantly, how much I have changed. There are a lot of things that once used to be familiar, which now surprise me. It's kind of refreshing that way, considering how many things I used to take for granted. But by the time, everything just settles down, I will be back in the US.

I had very optimistic illusions of doing a lot of blogging during my last week in the US, but as I expected, there really wasn't any time. I'm not going to assume the same thing again, now that I have a lot of family (extended, included) around me. Of course, when I need some breathing space, I'll be checking out some of my favorite blogs, even though I may not have the time to leave comments. True, planning a wedding doesn't really leave much free time, but if mornings like today come, I can get some brain fodder.

Right now, I'm in Chennai - in South India, staying at my favorite aunt's place. I'll be here for another couple of days before leaving to my home in Palakkad. After staying through cold temperatures of 20-40F in Virginia, wearing sleeveless clothes feels really weird, and we're still in the northern hemisphere!

On the bookish front, I haven't read much at all, but I have a few graphic novels I want to check out soon. Also, we're in the last week of the Indie Lit Awards nominations! If you have a 2011-released book that you loved a lot, don't forget to nominate here! I'm really looking forward to seeing which books made the shortlist for the awards. There are a few of my favorites that I hope to see on the list.

What have I missed in the bloglandia?

Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn (WOW!)

2011-12-12T08:22:00.002-05:00

Had she continued straight, she might have seen the Fiat moving toward the next intersection. She might have seen the intersection's green light turn yellow. She might have heard the RPMs kick up a notch as the driver of the Fiat strained the small car's small engine further, pressing the gas pedal to the floorboard. She might have seen the yellow light turn red. She might have seen the Fiat fly into the intersection despite the red light. She might have seen a green pickup truck entering the intersection at the same time from the right.

Kat Marino was returning to her Queens apartment from her shift at a local bar at 4 AM in the morning, when she was attacked by a man, who was hiding beside a tree nearby. Kat had never met the man before and is completely taken by surprise and shock. A few of her neighbors whose apartment windows face the courtyard, where the action was unveiling, hadn't yet gone to sleep and were watching dazed, having been interrupted from whatever argument or conversation they were preoccupied with at that hour. None of them however make a move to help her. None call the police either. While Kat screams for someone to help, and every observer assumes someone else is making that 911 call, this 280-page short book gives us a brilliant insight into the lives of all the people, whose paths cross Kat's, however marginally, between 4 and 6 am.

This is one of those books I wish I had reviewed right away. I know my head was buzzing with thoughts to share with you but somehow I'm only getting to it now - a good month after reading this book. Even now, I cannot stop thinking about how brilliant this book was and how much I would love to reread it. Good Neighbors is based on a true incident whose details are very much similar to that of this book's. If you don't want to be spoiled by the details of the real crime, skip the rest of this paragraph. New Yorkers will probably be aware of this incident better. 29-year old Kitty Genovese was returning home at 4 am in 1964 when she was attacked by a man thrice, the last time fatally, over the span of a half hour. A lot of the neighbors saw some part of the attack but no one saw the whole thing. Nobody called the police believing that someone else was making that call, though a few claimed to have called. There's a term for it - bystander effect. The New York Times posted an interesting article on this tragedy a few days later. A lot of the facts about this murder are disputed, but it does appear apparent that very few people responded to her calls for help, and although one man did call the police, they didn't turn up. "I didn't want to get involved" was the predominant sentiment.

Good Neighbors is a work of fiction. Although it is based on the Kitty Genovese murder, all the characters in it are fictional. In Good Neighbors, Ryan David Jahn sets an incredible array of characters against this tragedy. On one side, we have Kat making her way home, only to be attacked by a man who then just runs away, leaving Kat shocked and immobile outside. On the other side, we get an inside look into some of the neighbors who see a part of the attack. They are each however plagued by their own problems, so much so that they only feel an odd sense of curiosity over what's happening in the courtyard, before they return to their problems. There is a 19-year old boy who has been ordered to report for the Army's Physical Examination, but he also has an ailing mother he has to look after. Another couple is playing swinger for the first time, until it goes horribly out of control for them, making them question their own relationship. Yet another man is trying to come to terms with his homosexual orientation, but is finding himself reluctant to. Another man, who knows Kat very well, had just left in his car when his wife returned home panicking after hitting a stroller. His own actions form a subplot within this book, opening the pages to more characters - a paramedic, a corrupted cop and his equally corrupted chief, and a paedophile, while they get themselves involved in a car accident just down the road and in an attempted murder.

The huge number of characters is the main asset of this book. While it would have been easy to end up with cardboard cutouts instead of solid characters, Ryan manages to carve out intricate characters, none of whom get 'boring' for the reader. The primary sensation you get is that of the role of fate or chance in life and people's beliefs that they are the center of the world and hence their problems are the most important ones in the world. I found it very interesting to read about all the problems the other characters were having, while a woman was dying outside and calling for help. The last chapter left me thinking a lot - was it worth trying to fix your problems while a woman was losing her hold on life minute by minute? When is it okay to say that "my problem is important, because it affects me and only I can fix it!" Would you be selfish for thinking that or just looking out for yourself? Would you be happier having saved a life, but in return lost everything that meant the world to you? Or would you end up feeling resentful towards life for how things turned out for you? It's fascinating how complex we humans really are. There's plenty of gray in every picture. This book could be an intriguing theater production - I'm sure the questions it raises will be quite humbling. Quite a few of the stories come to some interesting conclusions by the time the clock strikes 6 am. I did feel very curious as to how their stories led from there, because many of the lives did change drastically.

Good Neighbors is one of the best books I've read this year, and I think waiting a while to write this review was a good thing in one respect - in that I know the book has withstood the test of time, wherein sometimes you find you loved a book immediately after reading it, but days or weeks later, your perspective changes a lot, and you start criticizing the book quite a lot, but this book has managed to leave me still impressed a month later. Have any of you watched the movie Crash? The story-telling technique is very similar here - a multitude of protagonists with their own issues, apparently unconnected, but they all have something that ties them together. If you haven't watched the movie, you should. I hope I have convinced you to pick this book right away!

I borrowed this book from my library. If you're interested in reading about the real Kitty Genovese, this piece on TruTV is fantastic.

The Sunday Salon: A November review

2011-12-10T15:00:00.001-05:00

I had a great November in reading. Not so much in blogging. It appears as if whatever time I didn't or couldn't spend on blogging ended up being used as reading time. I hadn't read more than 8 books in a month since April - I'm not sure how I managed 9 books in November, since it was crazy busy, but the two long train trips probably helped there. Better still, I found it really hard to decide which the best books of the month were. I kept going back and forth between 5 of them! The bad news (for me) is that I am many reviews down in the pit!

Books of the months

Notable Mentions

(As if I'm giving away Oscar awards!)

Other Reads

Reviews posted

Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (My September Blogger Recommend, which I loved)
Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen
Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile
The Secret of Lies by Barbara Forte Abate

Other posts

Traveling with my books this year

So far this year, 30 of the locations in the books I read have been in the US, while 33 have been non-US. Not exactly the ratio I was hoping for, but I'm not disappointed. Next year though, I'm hoping to include more literature from non-US countries, but that will also require that I accept even less ARCs, since most of the ARCs I receive are set in the US.

View Traveling with my books (2011) in a larger map

My favorite 2011 books .... that I haven't read yet!

2011-12-08T21:02:00.001-05:00

Between now (seriously, people, it's actually too early now) and the middle of February (sometimes, even that late), we'll be seeing a ton of Best-Of lists jumping out at us from every corner of the book industry. In fact, didn't Amazon decide to have an early year-end party a month ago when it released its Best Books of 2011 list? Now that's something I can understand if this were 2012, because the world might be ending soon and everyone wants to get the word out already. So, while being forced to reckon with deciding the books that made the most impact on me this year, I keep getting distracted by the books that I didn't get to.

The one book I wish I had stood in lines for on its release date and hunkered down in my bedroom for hours with is Murakami's 1Q84. This book has been receiving a lot of buzz since months earlier, and while that had made me very curious, I didn't exactly share that fascination then because I hadn't read any of his books. Until Kafka on the Shore, which I read couple of months back, and which I admit quite abashedly that I didn't fully understand, but the brilliance of the book and Murakami's indifference to the rules of fiction simply stood out. Since then, I've been looking forward to reading more of his books, and 1Q84 quickly climbed to the top of my must-read list. Sadly, it has stayed there since, because I can't quite churn out the time to read this monster of a book at close to 1000 pages!

One of the books that was much talked about during BEA 2011 was Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. Said to be about baseball to baseball-fans and not about baseball to the non-fans, it is a book that I've heard had a lot of good stuff packaged for both camps. To a non-sports fan like me, the word 'baseball' in the blurb alone turned me off, but then when I read glowing reviews from others who also didn't much like baseball, I was intrigued. I still have my big fat ARC copy sitting in my ARC shelf, waiting for me to someday pick it up.

By now, some of you may know about my love for Craig Thompson. His previous book, Blankets, is one of the best graphic books I've ever read, and I have been waiting for his next one ever since. I actually read a few pages of Habibi when I went to B&N once, and much as I wanted to walk with the book to the cashier, grinning as if Christmas came too early, the price tag scared me away. Firstly, the artwork on this book is just so beautiful. And secondly, can I just say how much I love the font of the title on the book's cover? - how well it mixes the Arabic alphabet with the English! (The 'b' in the title are actually Arabic characters - since they have the dots below them).

Orientation by Daniel Orozco was another book that I wish I had already read by now. I'm not exactly sure why I'm drawn to this book - I guess the colorful cover has something to do with that. It has enough diversity, quirks and uniqueness that makes me feel that this is a book worth spending some time with. Orientation is a book of short stories about the hidden lives of a cast of characters who are as different as can be. And since characters are the make-or-break-deals of a book for me, and since I love books with multiple protagonists, this book held enough of a fascination for me to want to read it.

I have a big appetite for immigrant stories - probably because I identify with them best - the culture clash, the feeling that you don't belong anywhere, the frequent questioning by people on both sides about where home is. My Korean Deli wasn't so much about immigrants, but about the author's experience managing a store that his wife buys as a gift for her immigrant parents. I read a chapter of this book at my bookstore (I really should stop just reading and go ahead and buy the books too), and found it laugh-out-loud funny.

Something about the mind and the way it works engages the intellectual in me. I very nearly considered doing a part-time 'fun' major in brain science, but I'll stick to books like The Psychopath Test instead (I don't think I can go through another hormonal intensive graduate course). I usually feel that psychopathic tragedies are preventable, but they are also the hardest to stop once started, since psychopaths don't feel remorse nor are their scales of right/wrong the same as the rest of the sane world's. Although I came close to reading this book many times, I never really got to it.

And finally (finally, just so that I can end this post somewhere, not for a lack of books I wish I had read), Reamde by Neal Stephenson was the last book to make that list. My brother loves Stephenson so much, that I won't be surprised if he has a secret man crush on him. But for some reason, I had never read this guy yet. I probably wouldn't have been too eager about it, if not for falling head over heels in love with Ready Player One. Cyberpunk is becoming my new favorite. At close to a thousand pages, this is another book that will just have to wait awhile before I can get to it.

So these are some of the books that I wish I had read and possibly rave about (assuming I would enjoy them). Maybe they should be my first picks for the next year, when I can finally get some reading downtime, but until then, I'll resort to living vicariously through some of you.

So which book(s) do you wish you had read by now?

The Secret of Lies by Barbara Forte Abate

2011-12-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

Eleanor had no use for the card catalog, firm in her opinionthat a novel was only as good as its cover. Roughly translated,it meant that any book featuring a portrait of a wildly handsome couple with untamed hair and torn clothing on its jacketmore or less cinched its assurance as world-class literature, andshe missed few opportunities each summer for cramming hermind to saturation with such classics.

When The Secret of Lies begins, we find Stevie Burke abandoning her home, husband and a contented life heading to nowhere specific - she hasn't figured that out yet. All she knows is that she has to address the demons of a past that is slowly but surely overwhelming her. A past that begins from when she was thirteen, and culminates to a horrible tragedy when she turns fifteen. Every summer until that tragic year, Stevie and her sister Eleanor would travel to her uncle and aunt's summer house in the North Atlantic coast for a fun-filled summer. It is during one of these years that they meet deaf Jake, who becomes their good friend. Over two years, however, feminine discoveries and desires catch up with the sisters, until in their last year at the summerhouse, things get out of hand for one of them.

When I first started reading The Secret of Lies, I realized that this isn't my usual fare. But, interestingly, it also turned out to be hard to put it down. I found this book more engrossing than I expected it to be. Something happened to Stevie when she was fifteen, and although it took a long time for that to be revealed, the character developments in the meantime were fascinating. At one point, way before the tragedy, I could already see where this was going, and it even surprised me that the characters allowed it to continue.

The story is told in a mostly linear form, with just the beginning chapter set in the present. I found myself judging Stevie too harshly at the start. Her thoughts appeared to me too rambling and confused, and I couldn't quite figure out why she finds it necessary to leave home. I can't say that I understood it any better in the end, but at least, by then, Stevie turned out to be less one-dimensional and more dynamic than she was at the start.

Although the story is told from Stevie's point of view, the other characters get center-stage opportunities many times. Barbara's writing is very beautiful - that's one of the reasons I found the book very intriguing. Occasionally though, it slips into an overly formal mode that makes it awkward hearing the thoughts of a thirteen-year old girl. Still, that was just few and far between. I felt that some times the buildup to some event was too long and obvious, and the events in between felt too trivial to be written about.

Still, I was glad that I didn't let my taste preferences interfere, because The Secret of Lies was quite enjoyable. My copy had quite a few typos that did bug me, but reading this book was mostly a breeze - I probably finished it in two nights. A nice debut book from the author!

I received this ebook for free for review from the author.

Yet another Monday! (Dec 5, 2011)

2011-12-04T21:42:00.001-05:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

Yikes, it's December already! After a long two weeks of some medical drama, busy work weeks and apartment shifting, I'm finally back to reading for what few free days of this month I have. When we were busy shifting, my friend stacked all my books from the shelves against a wall so that he can taunt me about how many books I collect and not read. Of course, he "steals" a few books from me every time he visits, so he shouldn't tease. Besides, I keep telling him that I don't have as many as some of you!

Books finished since the last update

  Before I go to Sleep by S.J. Watson (Engrossing, but not very memorable)
  Cabin Fever (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, #6) by Jeff Kinney (Hilarious as always!)
  The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (I really loved this one! Very atmospheric)
  The Silent Land by Graham Joyce (Hadn't heard of this before, but enjoyed it a lot)

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
   Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile

Other posts
  An announcement hidden in all my ramblings in this post!
  What I did when I wasn't around for two weeks

Books on my nightstand
Last week, I started reading one book that I found very engrossing. In addition, there's another one I started and stopped, so I'll be picking that one up again.

Neuromancer by William Gibson: When Care mentioned that she is planning to read this book, I decided to wait a few weeks to read it with her. Unfortunately, things happened, so I'm only now getting to it, and Care should probably have finished it. But it's a good book, so I'm looking forward to reading it.

The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser: I had been looking forward to reading this book about online privacy. I tend to tighten my social networks to just as much as I can. And with the tons of ways that websites have been making all kinds of information available - like which song I'm listening to, to what articles I'm reading - I wanted a different look at the internet life. So far, this book is great!

The week that was, and is

2011-11-30T21:19:00.001-05:00

I didn't really mean to disappear for a week. It was busy, yes, and I expected it to be, but I did expect to have time to make a virtual appearance too. Didn't happen. As things are wont to be, life goes for a toss right when you are looking at a wonderful vacation. I was in NY this past weekend, and had a fairly good weekend. There was an emergency, because of which I had to extend my 'vacation' by a couple more days, but things are okay now. I am also moving this coming weekend, and I have only just begun my packing, so my next 2-3 days are going to be unenviably busy.

But I've been reading too, a lot in fact. I wonder if the fact that the end of the year is near has anything to do with it or whether being busy is making me churn out non-existent time to spend on reading, but I'm glad either way.

Before starting on my vacation, I read Before I go to Sleep (engrossing, but not as good as I hoped) and the sixth book in the Wimpy Kid series, Cabin Fever (yeah, call me a middle-grader, if you wish, but I just cannot get enough of these books).

At the beginning of my vacation, while half crazed with sleep in the Amtrak train at 6 in the morning, I read a couple of pages of The Night Circus, intending to go back to sleep afterwards. Reading early in the morning is usually my lullaby. But after the couple of pages, I decided that sleep was overrated and went to buy a cup of coffee, because there was no way I could put The Night Circus down. There was just so much awesome magic, thrill, excitement and wonder in this book that I really would happily reread it right away. I finished this book by the next night.

On a whim, I decided to read something relatively unknown next. I found The Silent Land in the Overdrive link on my library's page. This was another book that held my attention all throughout. The idea of two people facing an avalanche, surviving it, and appearing to be the only two people left in the world sounded very intriguing. Were they dead or alive? Were they dreaming or living it fully? Needless to say, I enjoyed this read too, and can't wait to review this one.

By the end of the trip, I was in mood for some nonfiction, and picked up The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser. Not only is this book entertaining, it also calls out to the technogeek in me. I came across this book couple of months back at Amy's blog, so I was thrilled when I saw this one in my library's catalog.

As if that wasn't enough, I had to visit The Strand before I left NY. Last year, when I first visited this store, I loved every corner of it - 18 miles of books stretched out before you, isn't that heavenly? Besides, the stacks were so high, that you needed to climb on ladders just to get a book on the top shelf. After a lot of difficult decision-making, I finally bought these four books:

1. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
2. Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
3. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
4. The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni

What all this reading means is that I have a ton of reviewing to do. That'll have to wait until next week, until I have moved - books, clothes and moi - into my new apartment, which is just down the road. With my upcoming vacation, and the end-of-the-year busyness, there's just a lot of things to do. Worse, work isn't any less busy.

The Sunday Salon: A lazy mornin' with coffee

2011-11-20T11:12:00.001-05:00

Today is one of the days when I'm not feeling particularly bookish - things are slowly getting busy here and I'm trying to not feel that busy. I am still reading - thank goodness for that - so I haven't got into any funk, but the next two months look insanely busy to me that I could use a time blinder-of sorts that doesn't let me look so much into the future. But then, it is that season - Thanksgiving, Christmas, vacations, family time, winter, did I say busy vacations?

This week, I'm going to New York to visit my brother, after 9 months. While that's not a huge timeframe by any scale, it has been a rocky phase for him managing his health and studies, that I am looking forward to it. I am writing a couple of reviews for the week, but since writing posts in advance is not my kind of thing (I'm just lazy that way), I am looking forward to staying off the internet (mostly) for the coming weekend. Thank you, Google, for 'Mark All as Read', even though that leaves me mostly guilty.

Next month, I'm going to India for a quick 'vacation', after more than two-and-a-half-years. Why exactly? Scroll down. It's going to be busy, horribly, that I'm already looking forward to coming back. There's a ton of shopping to do, which is leaving me with dread. I like shopping for myself, but not for anyone else. There's the whole Will they Like it, Will they not? phase that's just terrifying. Worse than that is the What should I buy? phase. Never fun, because everyone else is also shopping at the same time.

But most importantly, my fiancé and I are getting married in January! That's the whole reason things are very hectic. The planning's been going about for a while - luckily, my dad's organizing the wedding in India and I don't have to worry about the logistics, but there are still a lot of things to think about. I'm not the girly-excited-about-the-wedding-day kind of person, and I'm not into building up fanfare, but it's still going to be a big day. So, if you don't see me around as much as usual over the next couple of months, you know why! So, there's my big announcement for the day!

Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile

2011-11-15T21:15:00.001-05:00

There was the one photograph of him, kept in the middle drawer of the heavy dark sideboard. When I was alone I used to take it out and hold it in front of me, staring so hard that I could vivify the image and believe that he lived and breathed for me. I felt that he understood me. I do not recall that there was ever a time when I looked upon my father's face with anything but adoration.

Fifteen-year old Susanna grew up with a sister who was ready to embrace her sexuality the minute she crossed that threshold and a mother who couldn't care less about what her daughters wanted or did. Her mother didn't have a great opinion of her daughters' father either, who she claimed was a womanizer and who wasn't around much. But Susanna was fascinated with the idea of her absent father. Having grown up on tough or no love, under a mother who is only focused on her own love life with a married man and with a sister who moves from one bed to another, Susanna mostly visualizes her life with a father who is always there for her. And then one day, she does find him. Using the flirting strategies she learned and concealing her identity, she seduces and then begins an illicit affair with her father.

When I first read the synopsis of this book, I thought this was a weird and unconventional premise for an award-nominated book. Repeat it Today with Tears was longlisted for the Orange Prize and I badly wanted to read it. Incest is such a taboo, discomfiting and disturbing topic, but it's also an oddly fascinating one - one which leaves the two sides of your minds warring with each other. On one side, you don't want to understand a character like Susanna - if I understood her, does it mean that I approve of her actions? On the other hand, you do want to know why she did it, and to know that, you have to let go of all the inhibitions, prejudices and biases that you bring to the reading experience. I say prejudices, because even though I don't see any legal, moral, ethical or biological good in incest, there is usually more to a picture than meets the eye. And while, during the first half of the book, I was railing against Susanna to not do something like that, and use her common sense instead, halfway into the book I began to empathize with her and really understand her. Eventually, I was able to close the book without judging her, and for me that was very important, because it meant that the author didn't use incest as a plot device or to manipulate a reader but to create a fascinating character who was simply lost.

I had to say the above, because I am not a fan of books that take controversial matters or true tragedies and weave them into fiction. My instinctive reaction is usually to feel exploited or taken advantage of. I didn't feel that here. There's also the fact that incest is a very hard topic to read about. Most of us have fathers, mothers and siblings we love, which is what makes empathizing hard. How do you empathize when you cannot put yourself in the other person's shoes? This book didn't glorify, sensationalize or sully the concept of incest. Interestingly, it felt like reading about any other affair. In addition, the author didn't cast her judgments into the story or the character, or make it appear a right thing to do or a wrong thing.

Repeat it Today with Tears was actually pretty fascinating and intriguing, despite its subject. Most of the time, I was curious about how this will unfold, because there's definitely not going to be a happy ending. Susanna's father had no idea that she was his daughter. He had given up his womanizing ways for years and was surprised to find a young beautiful girl want to even be with him. Since Susanna's mother had all but neglected her daughters completely, there was no one to stop her from doing whatever it was that she wished. I loved how the author constructed the novel - as I mentioned above, I was all anti-Susanna initially. But over time, you could see why Susanna did what she did. I felt sorry for her - any girl who makes sordid life choices at 15 and doesn't think so, didn't have a proper home or guidance. At some point in, I began to see The Bell Jar's Esther Greenwood and Audrey Tautou's Angelique from He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not in Susanna. You could see her erroneous reasoning, her descent into the madness of love and life, her attempts to obsessively protect everything that she considers hers, her jealous-woman reactions to her father/lover's conversations with his wife, her easy willingness to give up on her life even before it has begun. You could see that although just 15/16, she was behaving mostly as someone much older than that, and yet still trapped within the vulnerability of a 15/16-year old mind.

In the end, I thought this book was wonderfully written. Mostly, it's a character-driven novel - a very powerful one - as the author builds the background of the characters and establishes the relationships between them. Occasionally, I felt the writing slip up - as if the author was trying too hard but instead falling flat. The second half of the book felt more intriguing to me, because we learn of the consequences of Susanna's actions - on others and on herself. Here was a chance for a girl to get over the affair, but... I'm not going to spoil it for you. I would strongly recommend this read, which at 186 pages, packs a lot of emotion, intrigue and a wonderful story arc.

I receive this book for free for review from the publicist, Meryl Zegarek Public Relations.

Yet another Monday! (Nov 14, 2011)

2011-11-13T20:30:00.001-05:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

I had one of those good reading weeks, when I seemed to be with a book always and even managed to finish a couple.

Books finished since the last update

  Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn (I loved this book!)
  The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (And this one too!)

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
   The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
   Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen

Other posts
  'Tis the season of challenges
  And I started a tumblr

Books on my nightstand
I didn't get to any of the books I meant to read last week, so I have one of them still on my stand.

Neuromancer by William Gibson: From the father of cyberpunk himself, I'm so far intrigued by the world he created and the techie undercurrents through the book.

Cross Currents by John Shors: I read a few pages from this book, and it certainly is beautiful and engaging. I didn't make much progress yet, but considering that the book starts on Dec 18, six days before the tsunami, I can't wait to see what happens.

The Sunday Salon: 'Tis the season of challenges

2011-11-13T09:48:00.001-05:00

It's been an unusually good week of reading so far at my end, having thumbed through two books, being three-quarters through a third and just starting off with a fourth. And I still have been busy with stuff, so it's nice to know that I have been reading a lot too. Now that it's close to the end of the year, we all know what that means. The challenge-and-list-making season! Although, mind you, I had perfectly good intentions this time. Yeah, you did notice the "had"?

Couple of mornings ago, I had typed up a post, scheduled for one of those days in December when no one's around reading blogs, and hence one can make any lofty promise and rest assured that no one's going to remind us about those posts. In that post I was making a promise not to join too many challenges for 2012, barring the one Helen has up on her blog (What? You haven't checked it out yet? You better go look it up. I'll be here, waiting till you get back), and the many reading projects I do on my own (which don't have any better success rate than the challenges I sign up for, but then at least I can quietly retire them). And what do you know, the very same day someone comes up with a challenge that I really cannot refuse.

Zohar @ Man of la book is hosting a perpetual (thank goodness for that) challenge to read all the books whose protagonists make up the main cast in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Many of those titles are on my PIE list too, and I had been meaning to read Alan Moore's comic book for many bookish eras, so when you combine an impressive collection of classics with a comic book based on famous literary characters, underline these books with science fiction and add a touch of perpetuality to the mix, you get a reader who cannot say No.

So these are the books that make up the challenge:

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker: I listened to this one two years back, expecting to not like it but instead loving it. I believe it's time for a reread to catch all those details I missed while I was gasping or OMGing or dreaming as I listened.
2. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: I have only read Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne which is still one of my favorite classics ever, but I never had the ~~chance~~ time to read Twenty Thousand Leagues.
3. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: This is probably the first classic I ever read, when I was 12 or 13. I still remember a good chunk of this book, because I actually read it twice or thrice back-to-back. To think about all the time for reading I had then!
4. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells: I read this shortly after Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and remember not being too impressed by it. We'll see if a reread changes my opinion.
5. The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells
6. Any Fu Manchu novel
7. Any Sherlock Holmes novel: All the Sherlock Holmes books I've read have been huge disappointments for me, because that guy solves mysteries before I've even started piecing the clues together, and sometimes apparently from nothing.
8. Any Allan Quatermain novel
9. Any James Bond novel
10. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel

So that's some fabulous list of books to read, and am pretty much tempted to start right away, which I may. My main pull to this challenge is the science fiction kick that I have been on ever since I read the cyberpunk novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One. Since then, I've been meaning to read more such works and been on the lookout for books of that genre. Since I'm still more of a literary fiction reader, and a capricious reader of most other genres, I decided to move all my science fiction ramblings to my Tumblr account - SCIdora. If you're on Tumblr too, feel free to add me or leave your tumblelog in the comments below.

Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen

2011-11-10T07:59:00.001-05:00

Early last month, there was a new graphic nonfiction book getting a lot of buzz. It's very rare that I see non-comic graphic books getting some much needed hype, so I was quite thrilled to see Green River Killer featured. But I wasn't very sure about the subject itself. I prefer reading non-graphic nonfiction about true crime, I wasn't sure how the graphic medium was going to handle that. How sensitive would it be? Words in reference to psychopaths can make me queasy, but pictures, even more so. Sometimes, it helps to be judgmental when you read - seeing the picture of a tragedy breaks open some vulnerable part in you, and can affect your perception of an incident. With pictures, there's usually only one side that's presented. Even in writing, it's hard to present two sides justly. Not that there's anything just or right about killing - but to understand why a killing happened, I find it necessary to understand the killer himself. But I needn't have worried much - this book was less about the killer and more about the detective who took charge of the investigation. And in that respect, I think the writers/illustrators did a genuinely wonderful job in bringing forth a lot of emotions and issues related to the case.

Green River Killer is, as the title says, about the Green River Killer, the serial killer who raped and murdered a possible 90+ women, many of them prostitutes. Most of the murders occurred between 1982 and 1984, and the bodies were disposed off in the Green River area in Seattle, hence the name. The killer, Gary Ridgway was arrested twice on charges of prostitution, but no one had any concrete proof to link him to the killings. When, finally, DNA technology made it possible to conduct more reliable tests, Ridgway was formally arrested and charged with seven murders. However, Ridgway came forward with a plea bargain - he will lead the detectives to the bodies of as many of his victims as possible. Rather than give him the death penalty for seven solved murders and leaving the remaining dozens of mysteries go unresolved and the victims' families without closure, the State Prosecution decided to spare him the axe and get as many answers as they could. Green River Killer is the story of that investigation, particularly from the viewpoint of detective Tom Jensen, as told to his son Jeff.

The book slips back and forth in time, almost unobtrusively - in the present, the detectives are interviewing Ridgway, who isn't exactly having any significant detail or evidence to share. The images set in the past almost always follow the fruitless investigation and the immense effect it has on Tom Jensen. Following a true detective "story" on graphic media was an interesting experience. Some of the guys had been working on the case for years. Jensen had been on it right from the start and following the progress on the case was like cheering on an embattled fighter in a ring, or the valiant underdog team in a high-stakes game. You just wanted him to nail the guy, and go home to enjoy his retirement. But it wasn't easy. What he expected to take "no time" at all, took almost twenty years. During that time, the years catch up on Tom Jensen, though he remains as charismatic as ever and still smoking many cigarettes a day, after having promised to give it up when the case is finally solved. In all these years, he remained the primary investigator in the Green River killer case, which pretty much overtook every aspect of his life.

(Picture source)

This book is as much about the detective process as it is not about the killer himself. And that's where I was slightly disappointed. Ridgway was shown as mostly the killer he is with not much remorse or back story. What we hear about him is what's mostly in the public domain already - his troubled childhood, his compulsion to conquer in sex and death, his fascination with committing necrophilia and difficulty to resist it. Although I hoped for a little more insight into this man, this wasn't the book for it, as the writers also made it clear. Still, that's not to say that Ridgway was portrayed as one-dimensional. There are times you can actually see some feeling in him, while you're trying not to feel that sensation of your skin crawling when you look at his pictures. I hated it when he tried to justify his killing habits by saying that he was doing a good thing for the country by ridding it of prostitutes. On the other hand, he loved his wife (his third), and even liked one of the women he killed. When he was trying to provide evidence to the detectives, it was hard to not feel sorry for him while he tried to recollect his memory. The detectives kept accusing him of how they would never forget it if they did something of this magnitude. My guess was more that raping and killing was such a routine exercise for him that it wasn't hard for him to forget the details.

Green River Killer was very thought-provoking and well-done. It had the right amount of mystery, intrigue, and humanity added to the illustrations. The black and white sketches also gave the book a dark gothic tone, well in sync with the tone of the story itself. This is yet another fabulous graphic book that I will strongly recommend to you guys. It's far less disturbing than it might be reading about the killer, and the crime itself is never exploited in graphics - giving it just the amount of truth and sense of tragedy as is necessary, but the people's emotions and reactions lend the tragedy the rest of the weight.

I received this book for free for review from the publisher, Top Shelf Productions via NetGalley. Green River Killer was published on October 11, 2011.

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

2011-11-09T08:23:00.000-05:00

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons that I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Emerelda, more or less on a whim.

That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again.

It was just a stage I was going through.

Frank Cauldhame is a sixteen year old who has killed three people and doesn't bat an eyelid before torturing an animal or insect. He has an impressive system of nomenclature for any significant landmark in the dunes behind his house on an island, such as The Snake Park, where one of his victims was killed, The Bomb Circle, where another victim died, and so on. His brother Eric, who was admitted to a psychiatric institution after setting dogs on fire, had somehow managed to escape from the institution, leaving his father and the cop worried. Frank himself doesn't know whether to worry or await Eric's ultimate arrival at his house - he has been perceiving signals around his house that Eric's arrival might not be such a good thing. Should he take the initiative and stop Eric or wait and watch?

When I first heard of this book on Jackie's blog, I was reminded of Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb, which I read earlier this year and loved! The Wasp Factory also has a protagonist whose definition of what's normal is heavily skewed, and I love reading from perspectives of characters like these (which also include serial killers, psychopaths, depressed/bipolar people, etc). Reading about these characters makes me realize how fragile the thing called the brain actually is, and how a tiny snap is all you need to careen from being a sensible person to someone still intelligent but highly irrational, emotional or antipathetic, and incapable of leading the life that was. On that grounds, I felt that Iain Banks succeeded in creating a character whose reasoning was flawed and yet very sound, who explains his killings without any remorse, and who left me worrying about the plight of the other characters, despite his promise not to kill again.

Frank has a lot of prejudices - he despises women and doesn't shirk from thinking venomous thoughts against them. He had a calculated calm manner to doing things, and could explain away even the most stray occurrence as a sign from the Wasp Factory. And the Wasp Factory itself is an intricate invention of this kid who except for possessing such disturbing thoughts is otherwise a genius in many ways. I had been waiting to see what this factory was all about, after it being mentioned a ton of times all throughout. I guessed, of course, that whatever it was, it was not going to be pleasant, seeing as Frank reveres it and the author wasn't giving away too much. After all the buildup, when I finally reached the chapter, it turned to be sort of anti-climatic, because I was expecting a whole lot more in there, but let me just say that the wasp factory in itself blew me away. I did end up feeling way too sorry for the wasps, and I'm just glad that Frank didn't invent something like that for bigger living things.

Although I wouldn't classify this book as creepy, despite its contents, (and it didn't leave me with any kind of nightmares), the author does succeed in giving Frank's actions a kind of real-world feeling. At some point through the book, I had to keep telling myself that this was fiction. Frank had all the tell-tale signs of a future serial killer, and I desperately wanted someone to take note and do something about it. His brother Eric was another enigmatic character, and half the time, I was left wondering who I would choose to keep home, if I had to. Their conversations were hilarious when you think that you wouldn't go to either people for advice. It was just totally mind-blowing how no one wised up to Frank's actions, his own father spends most of his time drunk and leaving Frank to his own devices. Of course, his father has a bigger secret locked up in his study, which Frank had been trying to enter for years. When he finally manages to enter the room, I totally never saw that twist coming even from a mile away, even with all the hints dropped through the book. That ending somehow eased up some of my worries of Frank's possibly shady future, but it didn't feel very convincing.

This is my first experience with Banks' work and I didn't know until recently that he had published a lot of known works. This book took me a while to finish - I would have appreciated a map of the island, because I had trouble picturing some of the descriptions of the island and the dunes. It is however a book that I hope to reread at some point, because I'm sure I didn't get the significance of some aspects. I did feel that some questions weren't answered and am still left wondering about them, but I could just as easily have overlooked them while reading. Overall, The Wasp Factory was a nice literary sketch of a cold, impassive mind.

I am a bookaholic and I purchased this book.

Yet another Monday! (Nov 7, 2011)

2011-11-06T22:13:00.003-05:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

Books finished since the last update

  Repeat it Today With Tears by Anne Peile
  The Secret of Lies by Barbara Forte Abate

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
   Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch

Other posts
  Blogger Recommends (October finds)
  Twin month recap (September and October)

Books on my nightstand
I have a couple of ARCs that I plan to get to this week. I'm trying to clear off a stack of ARCs that I didn't have a chance to read earlier, and am finally excited to get to.

The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison: A few months ago, I had seen this book in a lot of blogs and been intrigued by it. So I'm glad to finally get the chance to pick it and read.

Cross Currents by John Shors: I had been looking forward to reading this book with mixed expectations. On one hand, the topic of the 2004 tsunami (which I hear has a small appearance in this book), hits very close to home, since I was staying at a beach where the tsunami made a grazing pass. On the other hand, the plot of the book also sounds very intriguing.

The Sunday Salon: Blogger Recommends (October Finds)

2011-11-06T10:32:00.003-05:00

Every month, I bookmark some of the strongest book recommendations that I come across. Most are books I hear about for the first time, others are books I've previously not been interested in, but this particular blogger has managed to convince me otherwise. Then, I choose one title from the list and read the book.

So far, I've chosen two books via Blogger Recommends - Kafka on the Shore and The Wasp Factory, and it's interesting that I may not have read them (at least now), if not by doing this feature. And both books were amazing, making me look forward to my next choice. Now, I wanted to highlight some amazing titles and reviews I found last month, while I debate which one to read next.

My Top Five Finds

1. I'm sure I have read way too many books on the Holocaust - but then many are fiction or near-fiction. Auschwitz by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli is his eyewitness account about the horrifying medical experiments conducted on Auschwitz prisoners under the "Angel of Death", Dr. Josef Mengele. In his review, Zohar @ Man of la book does say that it was difficult to get through it, but I can't imagine passing off a book about a topic that I've never yet read much about.

2. The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka is now a very popular title, what with being a National Book Award finalist, but the first time I came across it was via Carrie @ Nomadreader's review. This book about a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as "picture brides" sounds just fascinating. At just 130 pages, I wouldn't expect it to be holistic and deep enough, but apparently it is.

3. Amitav Ghosh is one of those authors I always mean to read, but somehow never get to. That dreaded thing called hype turns me away each time. So when Tiina @ A Book Blog of One's Own reviewed The Calcutta Chromosome, I thought this a better book to start with. Not having heard anything much about this, it's almost intriguing in its relative lack of hype. Set partly in the past, the future, and sometime in between, this sci-fi novel about malaria sounds very compelling.

4. Amara Lakhous' Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio caught my eye right away thanks to its intriguing title and the fabulous cartoonish cover, when I saw Marie @ The Boston Bibliophile's review. I love reading books that feature multiple (more than the customary 2 or 3) narrators - sometimes they might not be connected at all, and it's fascinating to explore life through the web of vague associations that exist between people.

5. Terry Trueman's Stuck in Neutral has a really fantastic theme - it's about a young boy who has cerebral palsy, because of which he cannot communicate with anyone or move his body. To anyone who has been in close proximity to someone with any kind of brain illness, the whole concept of not being able to reach the other person is more a harrowing reminder than just a fearsome thought. So when Helen @ Helen's Book Blog reviewed it, I had to go wishlist it.

Other titles that caught my fancy

6. Kindred by Octavia Butler - The Sleepless Reader. I already have this in my wishlist, but I wanted to say how much I loved Alex's review.
7. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Sophisticated Dorkiness. Books about technology? You got me there! Especially one written so early as 1981!
8. Instant City by Steve Inskeep - Wordsmithonia. Nonfiction books about South Asia almost always catch my attention.
9. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran - Book World in my Head. I love books with a shade of feminism! (Note: my definition of feminism could be different from yours.)
10. There but for the by Ali Smith - At Home with Books. Another one with multiple narrators.

My choice

I'm still torn between two choices and might just read both of them. The Buddha in the Attic has finally arrived from the library after a long wait (I requested it when I first came across it). I also want to read Auschwitz. I would have imagined that after reading the somewhat-creepy The Wasp Factory, I would go for a lighter read, but this book sounded too good to pass up!

A twin month recap (September and October)

2011-11-05T10:48:00.000-04:00

Has anyone realized yet that it is November already? Can't say that I'm excited about getting older so fast. In my last recap, I did innocently ask if anyone was excited about Fall. I don't know what happened this year, but the leaves are too eager to fall, so Fall hasn't been long enough. And if the weather outside is any indication, looks like we are going to have a long winter. Not that I'm complaining. I love the winter, and have been waiting since April for the winter. Summer though makes me meh! Anyways, I didn't recap last month, because I didn't really have that good a reading spree then, so here's a twin recap.

Books of the months

Other Reads

Reviews posted

Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
The Giver by Lois Lowry (WOW!)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Goliath (Leviathan #3) by Scott Westerfeld
Naked and Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

Other posts

Traveling with my books this year

Japan and Guyana are the new additions. My around the world reading has taken a hit. I think I'll forget about it for now and start afresh next year. There are some books I want to clear off my shelves now.

View Traveling with my books (2011) in a larger map

Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch

2011-11-02T22:59:00.000-04:00

If I could go back in time and talk to my twenty-year-old self, the first thing I would say is: "Lose the perm." Secondly I would say: "Relax. Really. Just relax. Don't sweat it."

I don't usually read celebrity memoirs. For one thing, I don't follow anyone so much that I want to know their life history. Okay, there have been times when I have had this insane schoolgirl crush on some handsome actor (anyone remember the Leonardo DiCaprio craze following Titanic?) but with time, I've come to feel respect for them and nothing more. The other reason is that I don't watch so many TV shows or movies to be able to relate to any showbiz talk. So Jane Lynch's Happy Accidents was a first of sorts for me. I don't think reading this memoir is going to make me more eager to try other celebrity biographies, but I'm glad that I tried.

I wanted to read Happy Accidents because I love Jane Lynch's role in Glee. I don't think I've seen a more malevolent, cruel, racist and yet sensitive, and funny (without meaning to be) character on screen. That's a deadly combo and would be too hard to pull off, but Jane Lynch does it well. So many of her quotes have become near-pop culture (at least, I like to say that). And I wanted to read more about her, because here was an actor who looked as next-door-neighbor-like as was possible.

In Happy Accidents, Jane Lynch talks mostly about her career and her personal life. If you read the first few pages and the last few pages, you can really see that her life has changed drastically. At 14, she yearned to be actor, only to quit a school play out of fright. When she realized that she was gay, she knew that she could never ever tell anyone about it, fearing that it was bad to be so and that people will mock her. By the end, it's amazing how she has catapulted to being a very popular actress, and happily-married to a wonderful woman who she totally met by chance.

(Picture source)

What I loved most about this book was that Jane didn't rattle off Hollywood facts and figures or talk so much about Hollywood in itself that I was able to read the book as a regular memoir. Sometimes, you could even be fooled into thinking that Jane Lynch wasn't a popular actress, if you didn't know it beforehand. Even though, I didn't know all the movies/TV shows she had acted it, it wasn't hard following her growth from acting in theater to getting some regular jigs.

But what I loved reading the most was about her personal life. Her relationship with her friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, and how she kept pushing off people and struggled with getting closer to them. Jane also talked about her homosexuality and how she stayed in the closet for a long time, because of her reluctance to embrace or accept it, even though one of her closest friends in high school was also gay; and how she began to distance herself from her family gradually because she couldn't come to admit it to them.

In a nutshell, I enjoyed this memoir. It was an easy read and funny in spots though not reminiscent of Sue Sylvester (because of course, Jane Lynch is so much nicer!) There are a lot of pictures scattered through the book spanning Jane's life from when she was very little to her more recent photos with her wife. There were some repetitions that bugged me occasionally, making me think that the book could have done with some good editing. I loved some of the stories that Jane shared from her life, and appreciated that she didn't get all preachy on the reader, but only stuck to what worked for her. But mostly, I appreciated her honesty in sharing even her innermost fears and desires, and some very embarrassing mistakes without trying to sugarcoat things on paper.

I borrowed this book from my library.

Yet another Monday! (Oct 31, 2011)

2011-10-30T22:55:00.000-04:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

Because of the unexpected weekend at home that I had, I've finally managed to finish another Blogger Recommends read and am excited about my next choice.

Books finished since the last update
  The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (The creep factor of this book will make it qualify for Halloween even though it isn't truly horror)
  Green River Killer by Jonathan Case (A really well-done graphic nonfiction!)

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
   A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

Other posts
  My harrowing start to this weekend

Books on my nightstand
I have one book going now, but I haven't yet decided what I am going to read next. I was tempted to look at my stack right now, but I'll let myself be surprised. The less time I have to think about my next book, the better.

Repeat It Today With Tears by Anne Peile: I am almost done with this book and found it pretty fascinating, albeit disturbing to read about a girl who conceals her identity and begins an illicit affair with her absent father.

An early Sunday Salon: Which I'm writing out of necessity, because I have to rant big-time

2011-10-29T19:59:00.000-04:00

Once again, I had to turn to writing to help me grapple with the enormity of a mess I faced yesterday. Writing is therapeutic to me in that way, and putting down my thoughts on paper (or screen) works wonders.

There wasn't a blogging plan on my radar for this weekend, because my friends in Raleigh and I were supposed to be in Asheville now, enjoying the last few leaves holding out this Fall. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, or I wouldn't be typing this out. Instead, about an hour out of Lynchburg, on my way to Raleigh via US 29 S, with cars blazing at 60-70mph on the highway, a massive west-bound truck-trailer combo (I sadly never saw what the vehicle was, this is what the witnesses told me) FRIGGING pulled in front of me at an intersection, with no lights on and not even looking at the busy traffic. I saw the back of the vehicle, 2 seconds before I would hit him. I was flying at 60mph, he was dragging at 15mph. Can you imagine being 2 seconds away from a deadly crash? I was too gobsmacked to even curse or honk!

There was a car on my right, so switching lanes wasn't even an option, nor was staying on the lane. I did the only trying-to-save-myself thing I could, and that was drive left into oncoming traffic. Luckily, somewhere at the back of my head, I knew there weren't any vehicles there (yet), and since I was royally screwed any which way, I turned around, braking all the way. I banged through the uneven grassy median, hit some pole on the way, crossed the other side of the road, and ended up on the uneven elevated grass on the far side, a centimeter in front of a tree, missing an electric pole on my left and every other damn car on the way. And that's when I cursed.

After that, I was so shocked and out of it that I was actually backing out and thinking of continuing on my journey, as if nothing happened. It took a minute for that terrible realization to sneak up on me and realize shockingly, but surprisingly that I was fine, with no injury. While I tried to figure out what I was even supposed to do, two amazing Samaritans came by to help me out. They saw the whole damn thing happen, they even had had to slam down their brakes when that truck started crossing in front of them without any lights. (If you have ever faced that split indecision about whether or not to stop and help someone in an accident, trust me, stop and help them. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world to see a couple cars stop by to help me.) The ambulance came in two minutes, but I didn't need any care, and we waited 30-45 minutes for the trooper to pull in. In the meantime, the driver who caused the mayhem actually came by. I didn't know then that he was the guy, because if I did, god help him, he wouldn't have known what hit him (yeah, this is empty threat speaking, I wouldn't really have done that, but I would have loved to yell and rant at him). And funnily, what do you know, he knew everyone on the fire brigade and they were all laughing and joking. I felt pretty horrible about that later.

The trooper came by, did his investigation, and didn't even issue that guy a ticket. He said it was no one's fault that the accident happened, that's like saying hitting a skunk wasn't my fault. I don't know since when obstructing traffic (with deadly consequences) was an okay thing to do. The fact that I know the roads in Lynchburg well doesn't mean that I can close my eyes and drive. I understand that the trooper was looking for evidence of lights on the truck-trailer, since if the driver had them, I would have seen them from far back and slowed down early enough. Apparently, he did have lights, but they were not enough.

One of the guys who helped me out last night was a mechanic, and he helped patch up my car, even test drove it (can I just say how awesome that is, considering we didn't even know how the car would react?) and decided that it was driveable. It's in pretty good shape, considering, but I don't know if there are any hidden dangers. In the meantime, my friends had driven up to the home of the couple who invited me to rest, so they drove behind me all the way back to Lynchburg. Anyways, at this point, I'm waiting for my insurance company to contact his company and figure out who'll pay for fixing up my car. If I have to, I'll know what it feels like to be wronged by justice. But, I'm hoping he will pay, because I did hear it hinted that he will. We'll see.

So that was my pretty overwhelming experience last night. I was plain lucky that nothing happened to me, and that's an even scarier thought. I spent the last 24 hours reliving it, and I know that I did nothing wrong (I was even driving at 5 below the speed limit since it was raining), and reacted with the best option. That's what the witnesses told too, and if I were my mom, I would be embarking on a spiritual pilgrimage now, even to the ends of the earth. There are so many what-ifs that run through my mind, but I know that, if it wasn't me, someone else would have gone through that, because that driver will still be doing that goddamn thing at that minute, putting other people's lives at risk.

A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

2011-10-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

There were worse punishments: when Tommy failed a class, Jones sentenced him to fifty whacks with the board of education, and Brian got fifty whacks for refusing to attend services in Los Angeles. It was humiliating, as a macho-posturing teenager, to be spanked in front of the entire congregation, to have a whimper of pain escape your mouth as a microphone was held to it.

In 1954, a pastor named Jim Jones opened a new church in Indianapolis called the Peoples Temple. Being charismatic and fully aware of how to influence people, he began preaching his idealistic beliefs and managed to quickly gather a good number of followers. Over the next twenty years, as the church moved from Indiana to California, and ultimately to its deathbed, Guyana, Jones would amass a huge number of followers, many willing to follow him to the ends of the earth, in the hopes of making the world take heed to their socialistic beliefs. Their temple did make history in 1978, but for its role in the largest mass murder/suicide of Americans, when close to a thousand people either killed themselves or others, in answer to Jones request to commit 'revolutionary suicide'.

I had never known something this horrific had even happened. I ordinarily wouldn't have read this book because of its heavy leanings into religion, but the tragedy behind this book kept popping in my radar. If there's one thing I struggle to understand, its how people can stop trusting their instinct or listening to their inner person, and do something so outrageous as kill themselves. And this isn't one or two people we are talking about - the statistics are incredibly hard to believe. Moreover, this tragedy wasn't the result of a war or a religious faction taking control - instead these people had free will and the freedom to do as they wished. But, as Julia Scheeres shows in this book, A Thousand Lives, it's one thing for me to tell my friends that I'm not interested in joining them for something. It's a totally different thing and an impossibly hard one to walk out of a huge violence-capable mob, with your freedom and dreams intact. And that's why riots are hard to control.

A Thousand Lives chalks the intertwined histories of Peoples Temple, Jim Jones and many of its members. It is written based on the diaries, letters, and several tons of paperwork left behind by the people of Jonestown, recently declassified by the FBA. Some of these documents contain evocative dreams, hopes and wishes, while others are devoid of feeling and very robotic. From very early on, Jim Jones and his temple made for fascinating news material. Stuff about Jones' healings and miracles attracted people. These staged miracles did find him a lot of believers who couldn't wait for him to pull a magic trick on them and ease their sufferings. Jones also seemed to pull in more African Americans with his call for equal rights for all, at a time when America was going through an intense segregation period. And he even had some interesting but disgustingly cheap tactics to discourage people from leaving his temple. From the moment Jones had the eureka moment of taking his power a step beyond, his followers were doomed. And this was many years before the actual tragedy.

Scheeres shows how Jones started off as a perfectly reasonable, though idealistic person. It would be hard to refute his claims, especially by someone looking for some identity, something to belong to. His intentions were initially noble, he genuinely wanted to provide his people a place where they can all be equals and find in others a companion rather than an adversary. And despite what horror he cultivates in the end, it was hard not to see in him what people like to see in some leaders. But power is a dangerous thing in highly influential minds. And paranoia soon starts becoming him.

At the outset, the reader (at least me) doesn't know who manages to survive the tragedy. Although there is no single protagonist, some victims/survivors take the reins of the story occasionally. Some are highly religious people and have always been so, others are looking to find something to help overcome a recent tragedy in their lives, yet others are barely religious, but Jones' teachings made perfect sense to them and hence they decided to join the group. While most of the principal 'characters' in this book sounded sane to me, it is the ones who are always in the background but playing important roles in Jonestown that didn't sound so sane. Almost all the information on them are third-hand, which makes it hard to know exactly what they were thinking or why they felt compelled to partake in Jones' paranoia. Religion and socialism are the two major characters of this book, apart from the architect Jones himself. The author paints a clear picture of how even sane people like you and me ended up committing the unbelievable act.

Ultimately, I'm glad I read this book. Full suspension of belief in some religious people has always boggled my mind. Having been fiercely independent for most of my life, I find it hard to fathom someone else making a decision for me and deciding what I will do each day. There's usually a word for the kind of behavior described in this book - cult. The author makes it clear at the start that she wouldn't be using that word in the book, because it isn't the right word here. The book does justify her perspective (of course she wrote the book), and although I do think it's not too hard to write a story to make it look both cult-like and non-cult-like, I am inclined to agree with her here. There was nothing cultish in the behaviors of the people here, except for maybe their final action, which I'm still struggling to understand on so many levels.

I receive this book for free for review from the publisher, Free Press.

Yet another Monday! (Oct 24, 2011)

2011-10-23T22:21:00.000-04:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

We're almost at the end of October, and I'm scrambling to try and get more reads in before the end of the year. A funk had better stay clear of me now.

Books finished since the last update
  Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
  A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres
  Happy Accidents: My Gleeful Life by Jane Lynch

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
   Goliath (Leviathan, #3) by Scott Westerfeld
   Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk and Naked by David Sedaris
   Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Other posts
  Shelving a read book (and fretting about it)
  Blogger Recommends (September Finds)

Books on my nightstand
I have two wonderful books in my pile whose subject matter is strange and unique, in addition to another book that I'm reading during my lunch hours.

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks: This very graphic book from the head of a boy who has killed three people and enjoys torturing animals is very strange, and yet hard to put down. I'm glad it's a slim book, I wonder how much more venom the rest of the book packs.

Repeat It Today With Tears by Anne Peile: When this book was longlisted for the Orange Prize this year, it raised quite a few eyebrows with its theme. Having been abandoned by her father when she was a child, Susanna conceals her identity and begins an illicit affair with her father. So far, I'm "enjoying" the read - I haven't yet arrived at any disturbing sections.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Considering that I'm reading this book as a spooky October read, I'm hoping to finish it sooner, since Halloween's almost here. I'm only one-third of my way in and some of the 19th century writing is fascinating, but truthfully, I'm glad we are past all that formality even within the same families.

The Sunday Salon: Shelving a read book (and fretting about it)

2011-10-23T13:12:00.000-04:00

I am one of those nuts who have to categorize a book. I don't need to find 10 possible categories for a book, just one is enough. One is necessary. So, every time I finish a book, one of the first things I do is figure out which shelf it goes to. To me, this is about as exciting as even reading a book, because deciding a shelf is the ultimate way to find which concept of a book made the most impact on me. Was it its fantasy elements or the women power? Or was it its young adult focus or its literary style of writing? Most often, it's an easy task, almost intuitive and requires no pondering for longer than 2 seconds. But sometimes, a book comes along that can easily fit into 3 or 4 categories and none of those individually describe the book well.

I had one of those moments last week. I had just finished A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres, which is about the Jonestown murder 33 years ago. Many of you are probably familiar with the event behind the book - how 900+ adults and children committed suicide (some willingly, some unwillingly or without a say) because their pastor was paranoid and obsessed with the idea of taking a thousand people with him when he died. There's more to it and I'll talk about that when I review it this week. At the core, there are three main elements:

- 1. religion, the people who joined Jones' temple were looking for a church that accepted them, irrespective of their color, past history and financial status. They wanted to be accepted and Jones represented that sense of utopia that they were looking for. There are shades of blind faith but there are also shades of valid reasoning beneath all the murky implausible beliefs.

- 2. communism, Jones was a communist and he used his beliefs to get a large wing of people under him. In this case, I found the events of Jonestown mirror George Orwell's Animal Farm. And that's funny, because Animal Farm was also based on communism but it was written almost 30 years before the Jonestown events were set in motion.

- 3. crime, ultimately the book is about the largest mass murder in the US before 9/11 took away that credit. How is it possible to make 900+ people consume poison?

I eventually shelved the book under crime, because I don't like to have a religion shelf, and also because communism as a shelf doesn't make sense to me. I typically define my shelves based on categories that I read. So political ideas maybe, communism, no way. And almost all times, I've had a single dominant theme to describe the book by, but this one title defied me on all counts. Sure, it's about a major crime, but the whole events weren't a case of meticulous planning typically involved in crimes of this magnitude. There was some planning, but the book didn't focus so much on that as on the people who constituted Jonestown. Which brings me to the people themselves - they were clearly looking for a faith to define themselves by, but this book isn't about different kinds of faith or what faith means to people. That's all covered, but they aren't the standout elements of the book. The same goes for communism as well. It made some great appearances through the book, but the book wasn't about the practice of communism at all.

Ultimately, this was a book more about the people than anything they stood for. It was about how they started out as vivid enthusiasts of Jones' methods, how they willingly left their homes and moved with their church and how they took that eventual macabre step of branding their names in history. Should I create a people shelf for these kind of books? But that covers all the books ever written, except those about animals. *Hair pulling moments ensue*

When I can't categorize a book, sometimes I take the easy route and look at how goodreads users categorized the book. Sometimes that helps me, but other times, there are shelves I never use at all, like contemporary or chicklit. I shelve a book based on what it meant to me and not on how it would be shelved in a library or a bookstore. I approach it the same way I approach writing a review - I look for my experience in reading the book, instead of its merit in professional or academic circuits. I also keep my shelves at a minimal number but that doesn't help when you have so many possible baskets to drop a book in. Eventually, when I've spent enough time on the shelving process, I dump it where it makes most sense, even if it makes only 30% sense.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

2011-10-21T00:00:00.000-04:00

"Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in, Mr. Nakata. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still."

Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore primarily follows fifteen-year old solitary Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home because he can no longer stand the presence of his malevolent father. His father had prophesied that Kafka would fulfill the Oedipal curse - that he would murder his father, and sleep with his mother and sister. His mother had run away with his sister when he was four, so he had no memory of how they looked. To escape the curse, he leaves Tokyo and travels down to Takamatsu, where he whiles away his time at a private library and the local gym. In alternate chapters, we follow an elderly Tokyo man named Satoru Nakata, who suffered a strange episode when he was nine, causing him to lose all memory and his ability to read or write, but giving him the ability to talk to cats. One day, he decides to travel down to a place where there's a big bridge. He has no idea what to do once he gets there or why he needs to go there, but decides to worry about that later. And so, across 430-odd pages, the two characters run away and towards forces beyond their control, increasingly intertwining their lives, but never crossing paths once.

Kafka on the Shore took me close to a month to finish. It isn't even that huge, but there's so much intrigue in here, that occasionally I spent a few days digesting what I had just read. Had I known beforehand what this book had - magical realism, people who can talk to cats, people who can cross the invisible barrier between life and death - I may never have read this book. Interestingly, I never read much about Murakami's works before - these are apparently standard elements in his books. And despite my usual reluctance to read anything that's not grounded in reality, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There were times, I emerged from the book as if in a trance. The writing is deceptively simple - I loved it that Murakami didn't bother with flowery sentences, rather relying on simple straightforward language to drive home his point.

Kafka on the Shore also follows other wonderful characters - Oshima, the person in charge of the library, who loves music and shares stories about musicians with Kafka; Hoshino, the truck driver who leaves everything and decides to accompany Nakata on his strange journey; Miss Saeki, the fifty-year old patron of the library whose tragic past clings to her even thirty years later, and who Kafka imagines to be his long-lost mother. These characters are as well-created as the two protagonists. When I started reading, I was more interested in Kafka's story, but as the pages kept turning, Nakata's strange mission intrigued me more.

Like I said, there is strange stuff happening in this book, and not even in the paranormal realm, but in a very metaphysical sense. Although my first brush with surrealism made me a bit worried, soon as I accepted it, I found I didn't have problem with anything else that the book offered. What I loved most about this book is that it definitely challenged me. It questioned my ability to accept the impossible or see beyond. It challenged me to accept the idea of people who can talk to cats and stones, people who can live as their present 50-year old self and their own 20-year old self, at the same time (though in different spaces). It challenged me to accept the idea of a world where you can meet dead people to get answers to your most pressing questions. This isn't your usual fantasy - think of it as Neil Gaiman's Coraline, who could go through a door in her home to the other side only to see an identical world, but much crueler. Like they say, once you accepted the impossible, the possibilities are endless. Mostly, Kafka on the Shore challenged me to construct my own barriers between reality and otherworld, and keep moving the barrier further as he put forth an idea.

Reading Kafka on the Shore made me remember why I loved the TV show, LOST. LOST wasn't a show you could take at face value. There was nothing superficial about LOST. For everything that happened in the show, there were layers and layers of hidden meanings underneath it. Two of the most common complaints I have heard of this show are that unbelievable stuff happen, and that no answers are given. And that's exactly how I would classify Kafka on the Shore. Unbelievable stuff happens on the outside, but underneath those, there are meanings. The book is written at such a metaphysical level that it's easier to grasp the threads once you understand that the world in this book runs on a different dimension. For that reason, this is a book that has to be reread - it's almost impossible to get all the threads at one go. And if this weren't a huge book, I would have reread it, but I think I'll revisit it next year. I'm pretty much astounded at Murakami's ingenuity at writing this book. How he managed to hold this story together with all that happens is pretty much incredible.

Kafka on the Shore was the first book I read for my Blogger Recommends feature. I saw this book reviewed on Ti's blog, Book Chatter, and I'm glad I finally read it. Now I can see the appeal of Murakami, and am looking forward to his huge new book 1Q84.

A note about the translation: The edition I read is a translation done by Philip Gabriel, and while it was a good piece for the most part, occasionally I felt as if the book was Americanized at places. I was especially disappointed to see the American currency used instead of the Japanese one, and in some places, the phrases are almost entirely American.

I borrowed this book from my library.

Listening to David Sedaris (Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk and Naked)

2011-10-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

This summer, I was on the lookout for audiobooks to listen to during the few road trips I had planned, when I finally decided to listen to David Sedaris' titles. Although I had a print copy of his Naked on my shelf, which I started reading sometime last year, I couldn't appreciate his self-deprecating humor too well then. I had also heard it told that Sedaris' books are best appreciated on audio than while reading, and after listening to two of his books - Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk and Naked - I have to agree.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk was his first title that I listened to. That was the shortest audio my library had of his and since my drive wasn't going to be too long, I wanted to be done with the book before I reached my destination. In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best decision I made, because from what other readers told me, it wasn't his typical fare, and I didn't enjoy it too well either. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk contains several fables from the animal kingdom - most of which are very dark tales and typically ended in tragedy or cold humor.

As it has been a while since I listened to this book, I don't remember the specific details of some of the stories, but I do remember enjoying the first story very well. The stories following that got progressively depressing, so towards the end of each story, I braced for a potential macabre twist. One thing I did enjoy about most of the stories was that many of them drew parallels with the real world human situation. One of the stories tackled racism, yet another one talked about bureaucracy, a third one about sitting through mandatory AA meetings. But some were pretty morbid too, and I won't go into any detail on that. Suffice it to say that I needed to roll down my windows occasionally to let in some air. On the whole, I did enjoy some of the stories, while others were a letdown.

For another ride, I picked Naked, hoping it was as different as possible from Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. While the latter was fiction, Naked is a nonfiction account of some events from David Sedaris' life. All his stories are underlined by a self-deprecating humor that, if you read at the right moment, you can't help but laugh at. Like with most books of essays/stories, there were some I liked more than others. My favorite was the last story - which is also titled Naked - and recounts the author's experiences staying in a nudist colony - a place where the visitors do everything naked, that is everything they would do at a resort - play outdoor games, swim, relax in a jacuzzi or even go for a stroll.

I enjoyed Naked a lot more than Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. The stories are funny, even when they are not meant to be. He manages to lace even his disappointing or sad experiences with humor so although I felt sad for him, I loved how he looked at them. I liked his perspective on a wide variety of topics, including his own family. His stories about his obsessive-compulsive behavior, his gay orientation, his sarcastic mother (who I loved!), his crazy grandmother, and his strange wonderful family. This collection was definitely ride-worthy, and I'm looking forward to listening to another David Sedaris soon.

I borrowed both audiobooks from my library.

The Sunday Salon: Blogger Recommends - September Finds

2011-10-16T03:00:00.000-04:00

Last month, I talked about a new feature that I planned to do - Blogger Recommends. Every month, I bookmark some of the strongest book recommendations that I come across. Most are books I hear about for the first time, others are books I've previously not been interested in, but this particular blogger has managed to convince me otherwise. Then, I choose one title from the list and read the book.

I know I still haven't reviewed my last month's choice for Blogger Recommends - Kafka on the Shore, from my list of August finds. But, I'm still grappling the ohmygodliness of this book and trying to figure it out on a lot of levels, so once I have a pattern emerging, I'll hit the Post button. But for now, before it becomes too late to still say 'October', I wanted to highlight some amazing titles and reviews I found last month, while I debate which one to read next.

My Top Five Finds

1. Last month, Amy of Amy Reads reviewed A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight as part of a project she was doing with Amanda to read the books recommended by the Association of Black Women Historians as alternatives to The Help. I haven't read an African-American literature in close to a year, and although I have a lot of good choices at hand, I haven't had the time to pick any of them yet. A Million Nightingales sounded to me a great place to resume my African-American reading - fourteen year old Moinette, is sold into slavery in early 19th-century Louisiana, without a chance to say goodbye to her mother. Being bright and imaginative, however, she begins to plot her escape.

2. I have never read an Ian McEwan book. He is one of those authors who receives strongly polar reviews - people either love his books or hate them with a passion. And that's usually all the motivation I need to read a book, just to know which camp I will be in. Except I wasn't sure where to start. Ti of Book Chatter reviewed On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan last month and this was a title I hadn't heard about. And everything about this book screamed character focus - which I love the most in the books I read. Two newly married people, who barely know much about each other sit to dine one evening at a hotel. What follows is a focus into the past and the insecurities of these two people while they have their dinner date, and before long things begin to change.

3. Last month, Diane of Bibliophile by the Sea reviewed Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz, which funnily sounds like it could be a Richard Yates book, from the title alone. One family on a road trip stops at a gas station when their ten-year old son Josh walks towards the road. Another father is driving to his ex-wife's home to drop his son before the visitation hours is up when he hits Josh, but drives on thinking he only hit a dog. What follows is a story of the two fathers, one grieving, and the other struggling to spend time with his son. In a way, this book reminded me of Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt.

4. My fourth find was The Alienist by Caleb Carr, which I have to admit, I was never interested in before. I think it is the simplicity of the title, which sounds too general to me and doesn't capture any intrigue. But last month, Stephanie at Reviews by Lola wrote a convincing review that finally made me want to wishlist this psychologist thriller about teenage male prostitutes being murdered by a serial killer in 1896 New York City.

5. When I read Jackie's review at Farm Lane Books of The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, I knew I had to read it. My chief attraction to this book has to do with its very morbid content - about a teenage boy who kills three people and tortures animals. I can usually stand through human murders, but let's see how the animal tortures get to me. Mostly, it's the fact that the reader gets into the mind of the protagonist that makes me want to read it.

Other titles that caught my fancy

6. Strangers by Taichi Yamada - Dolce Belleza.
7. Strangers by Anita Brookner - Book Chatter. Some day, I promise to read Anita Brookner.
8. Absent by Betool Khedairi - Farm Lane Books.
9. The New Kids by Brooke Hauser - A Striped Armchair. Because it's about immigrants. I think I've felt like one for most of my life, even in my own home country.
10. To be With Her by Syed Afzal Haider - The Boston Bibliophile.

My choice

My first choice for reading this month: The Wasp Factory. I already have my copy coming in, and can't wait to start. What would your choice be?

Goliath by Scott Westerfeld

2011-10-13T03:00:00.000-04:00

When she reached the prow of the ship, Deryn raised her field glasses to scan the horizon. A moment later, she saw the trees.

"Barking spiders." The words coiled like smoke in the freezing air.

"Down," Bovril said.

Ahead of the airship was an endless fallen forest. Countless trees lay on their sides, plucked clean, as if a huge wind had blown them over and stripped their branches and leaves. Strangest of all, every stripped-bare trunk was pointed in the same direction: southwest. At the moment, straight at Deryn.

The final book of the Leviathan trilogy by Scott Westerfeld finally released a few weeks back and I was glad to receive my book right away from the library. I'm not going to provide a plot summary here because it will be spoiler-ish for anyone who hasn't read the first two books and also because if you have read the first two books, I suppose you will be reading the third book as well, with or without synopsis. So I'll just talk about this book and the series in general and hope that if you haven't read this series yet, you will get to it soon.

This book starts off where we left the characters at the end of the second book - Behemoth. Although it took me a while to remember some of the events that happened in the previous book, the author helped me along on the way by providing a few strategically placed recaps. The recaps weren't completely rehashed, but were just minimal enough for me to remember the fainter aspects of the previous books. In that sense, I felt that Goliath could have stood on its own as a single book, although of course, you should read the previous two books to completely appreciate some of the references.

One aspect I like of Scott Westerfeld's books is his very strong female characters. They aren't strong in the sense that they do superhero stuff or are perfect people, but rather in the sense that these characters could be any girl, going through all the normal challenges of being a teenager and having all the normal desires for a good life. They are fallible, and thus very human. And yet, they go a small step ahead in pursuing their dreams or correcting a mistake or just plain doing the right thing. One of Leviathan's protagonist - Deryn - is a character I would love to meet. She pretends to be a boy in WW1 England, just so that she can serve on an airship. If her country finds out about it, no matter how many sticky situations Deryn has saved her airship from, or how many dangerous events she has participated in, they will court-martial her. I imagined there would be a very unpractical yet very happily-ever-after and manipulative ending. The kind of ending I would call cheesy. So, when I actually reached the ending, where Deryn/Dylan's gender is finally to be addressed, I was surprised by the turn it took. I have to say that the author stayed true to the custom of the times, didn't try to change history overnight, and although it was still an HEA ending, it was also a more practical one than I imagined.

The other thing I loved about this series is the liberty the author takes with creating steampunk stuff, be it machine-based or biological. There are all kinds of funky gadgets and animals that I would love to see in today's world. Sure, many of them are meant to be used as war weapons but I loved their sophistication. The amount of detail he gives to these creations lends a huge amount of genuineness to the steampunk world he has created. To add to it, Keith Thompson's illustrations are wonderful. If ever you decide to read this book, please read it in paper - the illustrations are truly eye-catching.

What I most loved about this book is the amount of actual truths in it. One of the main characters in this book - Nikola Tesla - was an actual physicist who lived through the WW1. The fictional Tesla is as eccentric as the real Tesla was known to be. There are also some true historical events cited in this book - a meteoric impact in Siberia in 1908, Tesla's research, an electric tower in New York and many others. Of course, in the afterword, Scott distinguishes between what was fact and what was fiction, but as I was reading, I tried to make my own guesses as well. And some of those were good examples of truth being stranger than fiction.

Although there are a few coincidences scattered through the book, I was willing to overlook those. For the most part, this book was very entertaining - I liked it better than Behemoth, though Leviathan still remains my favorite book of this trilogy. If you still haven't read it, you should. This book is a fabulous example of the steampunk genre.

I borrowed this book from my library.

Yet another Monday! (Oct 10, 2011)

2011-10-09T22:46:00.000-04:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

I didn't realize how long I've been missing from here until I checked my blog front page. I ended up doing a Houdini act for a week! First, it was an injured finger that made typing a chore. And then it was a good reading rhythm that I didn't want to break. From my almost-two years of blogging, one big lesson I've learned is if you're in a mood to read, drop everything and do just that.

Books finished since the last update
  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Banned Books Week read)
  Goliath (Leviathan #3) by Scott Westerfeld (Another wonderful series is over)

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
   The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
   Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Ugh)

Other posts
  When I feel like throwing a book

Books on my nightstand
I'm finally finally going to finish Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I don't know yet what to think of this book. It's one of the most different books I've read, so I can't wait to discuss it soon. I'm also reading two other books, and getting excited of a title I just picked from the library.

A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres: This is about the Jonestown Massacre, that many of you might have heard about. I hadn't, so I'm as fascinated as I am disturbed. Blind faith isn't something I understand that well, but I've known a few people who do it.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: One of my online book clubs is reading this book now and I decided to join in. This is the other classic (after Dracula) that I was very reluctant to try, simply because of its genre, but considering that I pretty much know what Frankenstein is about, I'm running out of reasons to not read it.

Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch: I LOVE Sue Sylvester aka Jane Lynch! I watch every episode of Glee, wondering what the hell will she do this time to drive more trouble towards the glee club. So the moment I heard about her new memoir, I just had to go reserve it at my library. I've been reverently staring at the cover since then and can't wait to start it. Have you seen the trailer for this book? It's Sue-typical! And my favorite Sue liner? "I'm committing Sue-icide"

When I feel like throwing a book

2011-10-08T11:58:00.000-04:00

Early this week, I settled in to read a book, which let's call "The Book of Errors" for the moment. I was unsure initially, because the principle theme of the book is that of religion - something I rarely read about and am barely curious of other than for checking some specifics or tragic happenings in Wikipedia. But then The Book of Errors is about extreme obsession with religion and about a major tragedy related to it. So I was piqued, I was curious about the said incident because apparently everyone had heard about it and I had no idea. Of course, I could still wiki, but when there's a book on it, who needs wiki?

(Picture credit)

So then I settled down to read it, found it to be a really fast read for a nonfiction, and an engaging one too, until I came across a typo. Okay, never mind, I told myself. After all, I'm reading an ARC. Typos are expected in ARCs. That's why they are ARCs! Knowing that, I kept reading, but before soon, another typo jumped out at me, and then another, and soon again another.

This began to turn into a contest of Catch Me (the typo) If You Can.

This isn't the first book I'm reading with typos. I've read published books with the occasional typo. And I've read a few ARCs, with a little more than that occasional typo. But this is the first time, I'm coming across a whole lot of them in one book. I was very disappointed. The author had published another book previously which, although I haven't read it, had received some good reviews. And The Book of Errors is also well-written - featuring some good research, good pacing, fascinating build-up, and I can't wait to see how this ends in tragedy.

(Picture credit)

Except, the typos have me seriously rethinking.

I love reading ARCs as much as the next reader. There's something about holding a fresh-off-the-press copy in your hand, that will not be published until days or weeks or months later, and trying to figure out if it's going to make people rave about it or not. The downside with reading an ARC, however, is that they are not finished copies. Some of my favorite sections in a book - the Preface, the Afterword, even the Acknowledgments sometimes, could be missing. Whole sections or chapters may be changed when the book finally comes out for publication (although I haven't directly heard of this), and there is no saying what level of proofreading has been done by the time my copy was printed. There could be some good volume of errors in the ARC or there could be next to none.

I read for the reading experience. And that means, I expect a whole lot from the book I'm reading, especially language. And although I try not to pick on the typos in an ARC and just focus on the general writing and the flow of the book, sometimes it isn't possible, like with The Book of Errors. At some point, the obsessive English tutor in my head starts brandishing her red pen and virtually scratching across the pages. At that point, I know, ARC or not, my reading experience will be heavily influenced by the issues I have with it. That's usually the time to let go.

Since this is my general reaction to a book peppered with typos, I didn't want to reveal the real name of the book that had sprung this reaction in me lately. If I finish The Book of Errors, I'll review it, in which I will mention about the typos.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Banned Books Week)

2011-10-01T00:14:00.000-04:00

A sudden noise of shrill voices made him open his eyes and, after hastily brushing away the tears, look round. What seemed an interminable stream of identical eight-year-old male twins was pouring into the room. Twin after twin, twin after twin, they came–a nightmare. Their faces, their repeated face–for there was only one between the lot of them–puggishly stared, all nostrils and pale goggling eyes. Their uniform was khaki. All their mouths hung open. Squealing and chattering they entered. In a moment, it seemed, the ward was maggoty with them.

In Huxley's utopian (or dystopian, depending on how you look at it) future, a capitalist civilization has been carefully constructed on the principles of stability. New life is literally manufactured in an assembly line process where the fertilized eggs of to-be-top citizens (called Alphas and Betas) are cultured without much treatment, while those of to-be-the-dregs-of-the-society (such as Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons) go through a lot of processing to make them stunted and intellectually challenged. A lot of these low-class citizens are twins. As in, one fertilized egg made to divide so many times, that you have 40-80 identical people staring at you. Creepy? Through the growing years, all the citizens are conditioned (or brainwashed in their sleep) to believe a bunch of tenets that the government has drawn up. Nobody questions their existence or revolts against what they do. Everyone grows up knowing what they will become when they are old enough. They are trained not to fall in love or have any sort of emotional connection with anyone. Since no one is conceived in the traditional manner, the idea of a mother or father is repulsive. Worse, people have sex on a regular basis with different people and even encourage their friends to "have" this woman that they slept with last night, because she is fabulous in bed.

Repulsive? I nearly puked my way through the pages.

In trying to create a utopia that has no violence, no negative sentiments, no conflicts, no individual above a group, no poverty, no famine, and no dearth of anything, Huxley invents a world that has no humanity either. The ideas for his utopia are derived from the world as he knew it in the 1930s - the increasing dependence on machines, the industrial revolution, the wars, the arrival of capitalism. Of course, there are no computers in his book, because computers weren't invented then.

Most of the characters in the book are conditioned into the new world way of thinking - "Dating" the same person for long was considered improper, the act of birthing a child is a very obscene act that when they have their controlled "history" lessons, people cringe at the mention of the words "mother" or "father", and when people wanted a break, they took a drug called "soma" to get them high and take them on a dream-holiday. You can say that soma is something like pot, except the government encourages its citizens to have it, but in limited quantities. However, a man named Bernard isn't entirely in agreement with the system, but only because even though he is an Alpha, he doesn't look like one, probably because something messed up his cells during his fabrication, as I like to call it. When he goes with his current "girlfriend" to a Savage reservation, which houses the few natives who aren't yet civilized, he comes across a boy named John born of a once-civilized-woman. Bernard then proceeds to bring John to the civilization.

I thought Huxley did a fabulous job of creating a world that stood on its own, all just for stability. All through the book, I had my arguments against a lot of things that are done, but they are all from the humane perspective. In one chapter, the World Controller (something like a President) manages to dismiss all my questions. Despite what I thought about the book having been written well, I didn't really like Brave New World. In creating a world as different as possible from the one we live in, Huxley spends a big part of the book talking about sex and his characters' fascination with it. Young kids were even encouraged to play erotic games - all part of their conditioning. All of it makes the reader uncomfortable - that is definitely his intention, but there were a lot of other aspects of the world that he could focus on than just on individual characters recommending their date of last night to their best friend because she is "pneumatic" or having curves, and how the kids playing those games kept popping up on every other scene.

Then there is the fact that a lot of the low-status citizens are Negros or Senegalese or Dravidians - again meant to make the reader uncomfortable, but I couldn't see the point of explicitly mentioning certain races, especially races that are traditionally biased against. I also found this book a mashup of a Shakespearean novel and the arrival of capitalism. The ending is almost entirely inspired by Shakespeare, and I found it very comic rather than tragic. I went in expecting something huge and moving to happen at the end - I wanted to feel inspired to not let the world we live in get to that end, but I only felt disappointed by what happened. Of course, I should note that this book was written in 1932, and the themes were probably more relevant then - with all the uncertainty about where the world was heading, still the ending felt to be from a totally different book, and not fitting in with the rest of the story. I found the writing very hard to get through occasionally - that meant I had to read past the first page before I could get myself invested in the story. Sometimes, he stated the same thing so often that I wanted to say, alright, let's move on, please. But there were also times when the book made for wonderful reading.

So that's a lot of whines, but I was disappointed. I did expect a lot, and while I enjoyed the book at some level, I found more issues with it than things to praise. I do not however think that this book should be kept away from young adults, because there are a lot of things to learn from this book, most importantly whether stability is more important than humanity. I know many of you have read this (and loved it), so I would love to hear what you thought of it!

I borrowed this book from my library. I have to say that both the "banned" books I read this week - Brave New World and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian were shelved in the YA shelves in my local library, as they should be. Yay!

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Banned Books Week)

2011-09-29T03:00:00.000-04:00

Everybody on the rez calls me a retard about twice a day. They call me retard when they are pantsing me or stuffing my head in the toilet or just smacking me upside the head.

I'm not even writing down this story the way I actually talk, because I'd have to fill with stutters and lisps, and then you'd be wondering why you're reading a story written by such a retard.

Do you know what happens to retards on the rez?

We get beat up.

At least once a month.

Yep, I belong to the Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club.

Budding cartoonist Arnold Spirit, better known as Junior, was born with too much fluid in the brain, or water or grease, as he likes to explain. He is regularly picked on, even by guys 30 years older to him. But his best friend Rowdy saves him from all the bullying and even gives the bullies some of his own blows in retaliation. Now Junior wants to leave the troubled school that he attends on the reservation and instead join the all-white farm school where there are no Indians, barring the school mascot. His decision isn't received well by anyone but his own parents. His fellow Indians have almost ostracized him, his best friend isn't talking to him anymore, and the students at his new school are either vividly staring at him, completely ignoring him or laughing at him. To make matters worse, his ambitious writer-wannabe sister has quit school and moved to the basement of their house, refusing to get out of the house. And now Junior's trying to get his life in order.

I've been seeing The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian around for quite a while. Each time I come across a review of the book, I am intrigued but then a short while later, I forget about it. I remember it was Sheila's review that first introduced me to this book and convinced me that I had to (someday) read it. Banned Books Week was just the perfect excuse for me to finally read this book and join the club of those who read and raved about this title. Both the cover and the title of the book screamed out quirkiness.

I started reading this book last weekend, and before I knew it, I had turned a lot of pages. The narrator, Junior, has a magnetic voice that was hard to ignore. He joked a lot and knew how to look at the sunny side of things, even when he was sad. And yet during those sad times, if I looked closely, I could see the sadness that was splitting him, the sadness that he was struggling to express. Junior's life is no cakewalk. He has a family that appears to be falling apart, which is no news in the reservation, where every family has deep cracks in its facade and foundation. The kids all carry the anger of their generations on their shoulders, the parents drink most of the time, and education doesn't have any importance. To top it, they hate Whites and renounce any association with them. Of course, the Whites don't like them any better.

So it was no surprise that when Junior joins the white school, the Indians have given up on him and go out of their way to ignore him. Junior walks into his new school expecting to be bashed right from the word go. He associates huge basketball players with bullying and when a potential fight turns in a direction he didn't at all expect, he begins to revisit his beliefs and assumptions.

My first impression of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was that this book is freaking funny albeit in a self-deprecating manner, the saddest kind of humor. It is also very innocent and has a thread of melancholy underlining the humor. Junior is disappointed with the low-class status invisibly meted out to the Indians on the reservation, but he doesn't get all preachy on the reader. He is intelligent enough to understand that there is a lot of racism against the Indians but that the Indians he know don't strive to improve their situation either. He wants his best friend to join him, but cannot even get him to talk to him. Worse, a lot of tragic things do happen and each time, Junior felt broken but mans up. I felt terribly sad for Junior but proud of him for how he handled the events.

I did feel though that too many things were going wrong for him. And at some point, it felt cliched, though Junior does say that the reservation has a high probability of tragedy. Other than this minor issue, I found the book a wonderful read. There were a lot of illustrations scattered through the book. Junior occasionally shared his thoughts on a lot of matters via cartoons. He also drew illustrations of the people he knew and shared some part of their personality. I loved these pictures, because they were really funny, even when they were not meant to be.

I don't get why this book is even banned. Well, I don't get why any book is banned, but this is a book that speaks teen angst in a non-Holden manner, and also has a lot of teen problems covered. Sure, there are a few profanities, and some sexual references, but nothing out of the ordinary in a teenager's world for this book to deserve a spot on the pyre. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was also a really quick and fun read, with a protagonist one would find hard not to like.

I borrowed this book from my library.

Yet another Monday! (Sep 26, 2011)

2011-09-25T22:01:00.000-04:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

The past week hasn't been great reading-wise. Blame it on the Fall shows, especially Vampire Diaries and Glee. Plus, I'm planning to add Person of Interest (Ben Linus, how I've missed you!) and Whitney.

Books finished since the last update
  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Banned Books Week read - I'll talk about it this week)

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
  The Giver by Lois Lowry (WOW!)

Other posts
  Why it's okay to have robots recommend books

Books on my nightstand
Two of the books on my nightstand are the same from last week - both are fabulous, and I'm hoping to finish them by middle of this week.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: This is my first read (Ti's recommendation) for my Blogger Recommends feature. I'm only just halfway through this massive book, which is why it's taking me so long to read it but I just love it so much and can't wait to talk about it!.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: This is the other book I chose to read for this year's Banned Books Week. I found the first couple of pages of this book very hard to read, but after that, it has been an almost-smooth reading. It's pretty disturbing both in theme and in the writing - I could easily call it a Halloween read as well, even though it isn't really horror (or is it).

The Sunday Salon: Why it's okay to have robots recommend books

2011-09-25T00:04:00.000-04:00

The question of man vs machine, physical vs online has always been a sensitive one. Whether the topic is why we should support independent bookstores instead of Amazon, why we love a print book more than an ebook, or why recommendations from a person is better than from an algorithm, there are always a lot of strong arguments and complex issues quoted. It's funny that man invented the machine to make his life simpler and he then turns against the machine because the latter is usurping him. Which is to be expected. Heck, I'm going to be severely annoyed if they invent a machine that can write code and design software products, because that's my job. So it's not hard to see the perspective from which the naysayers come. After all, we all have bills to pay and mouths to feed, right?

That said, when Goodreads announced the release of its new Netflix-style Recommendations system, I wasn't expecting much resistance. And true enough, there wasn't any brouhaha. Many, like me, were waiting for it to roll out from the time Goodreads announced its acquisition of Discovereads (the link basically redirects to Goodreads itself), in March 2011. Goodreads is my very favorite bookish site, the place that actually introduced me to book blogging, the site that linked me up with this hidden community of book-ravenous people. So their announcement of their new better-than-Amazon, something-like-Netflix recommendations system earned a big cheer from me.

Still, over the last couple of weeks, I have come across a few articles on the idea of recommendations itself - whether robots or humans are the best sources for picking our next book to read and how machine recommendations are lame when there are living breathing people who can do the same thing, with the added bonus of actually hearing them talk about the book to help us decide if it is the right thing for us. And that's exactly why I read book blogs. Especially the blogs, whose authors review books from the subjective point of view as opposed to the objective point of view. I read to learn more about different kinds of people, about history and its consequences, and also to learn about any topic under the sun, from ancient civilizations to viral diseases. But the reason I keep reading book after book, turning page after page, eagerly devouring the print word is because of the experience of reading itself. So when someone describes how wonderful a book made him/her feel, I am more inclined to read it.

I also listen to Books on the Nightstand podcast, whose 'Two Books I Can't Wait for you to Read' is my absolutely favorite moment of each episode. Some of the recommended books are probably not my usual fare, but the presenters - Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman - do a fabulous job of talking about the books that I still make it a point to read a few passages from the books.

But I love machine recommendations as well. Much as I won't hear the computer talk back to me about how moving or funny a book is, I like it that I don't have to explain my likes and dislikes and issues to someone before hearing him/her respond back with the perfect book for me. I like it that it does all the homework for me and tells me how Leila Aboulela's Lyrics Alley is something I may like because I enjoyed The London Train and The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives. Besides, as Time puts it, "While peer recommendations are important, it's hard to argue against math". Math may have no feelings, but it's accurate. I also love how sometimes I can get choices that I have never heard of, and the element of surprise is retained when I actually pick the book to read, because I know absolutely nothing about it, and to the best of my knowledge none of my favorite bloggers have read it recently, so I feel that I may have a recommendation for them too. To me, peer and algorithmic recommendations go hand in hand, just like you look at Netflix for inspiration when you can't find a friend to talk to about movies.

Of course, Goodreads isn't the first book site to come up with a recommendations system. There have been many before it - What Should I Read Next?, Your Next Read and one of the most recent ones, Booklamp. But this is the one I've been most impressed with. The fact that Goodreads' recommendation algorithms not only look at the genre of books we enjoyed but also at user data (what other users thought of a book) probably has a lot to do with that. I tried to get a few recommendations today based on the three Newbery medal winners that I've already read so far. And out of the 24 recommendations the site threw at me, only three were titles I wasn't interested in, and even then only because they were books of poems. When I checked the literary fiction folder, there were a ton that has me eager to hit the library right now. There's something wonderful about seeing books you have probably never heard about, and that's what gets me excited about seeing mass online recommendations.

Do you like getting recommendations from a non-person?

The Giver by Lois Lowry (WOW!)

2011-09-21T03:00:00.000-04:00

“What if we could hold up things that were bright red, or bright yellow, and he could choose. Instead of the Sameness.”

“He might make wrong choices.”

“Oh.” Jonas was silent for a minute. “Oh, I see what you mean. It wouldn’t matter for a newchild’s toy. But later it does matter, doesn’t it? We don’t dare to let people make choices of their own.”

“Not safe?” The Giver suggested.

“Definitely not safe,” Jonas said with certainty. “What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?"

“Or what if,” he went on, almost laughing at the absurdity, “they chose their own jobs?”

In Jonas' utopian world, adult males and females are matched to be a couple based on their traits so that their dispositions balance out. If their 'marriage' works out for three years, then they can apply to bring home a child. There are separate birthing females who deliver children, and these children are sent to be cared for by couples who have applied for a child. Each couple can have only two children - one male and one female. In December, there is a two-day ceremony during which each child between the ages of one and twelve celebrates the milestone of completing another year. Depending on their age, a child is given a bicycle, assigned volunteer hours, gets his/her hair cut, or given a life career. Jonas himself is approaching twelve years of age, the age at which he will be assigned his career, and he is feeling apprehensive about it. What if they assign him a career that doesn't fit him? But then, the committee gives him the highest honor of being the Receiver - the one person who receives all the memories of the past (including all the horrible things that happened - hunger, pain and war, and the good things like color, snow, happiness and love) from the previous Receiver (who is now the Giver). Except, now Jonas feels strange about the life that he took for granted thus far.

This past weekend, I drove to my friends' place in Raleigh, which is just a little less than 3 hours from my home. As I always do on those drives, I popped in a Newbery Medal winner in my car CD player and settled in to listen to the one book I was most reluctant to read, for reasons I don't remember any more. But as the narrator started reading the first few passages, I was hooked. For the first time since I started listening to audiobooks (or rather the second time - Dracula would have the honor of first place), I began to find ways to lengthen my drive, especially on my return - driving through tiny towns en route or taking unnecessary pit stops. Just as Kira-Kira (another Newbery Medal winner) wowed me, The Giver also had me intrigued from the first page.

Lois Lowry creates a very utopian world in The Giver - a world where the concept of "Sameness" has been adopted. In this world, everyone is same - they have the same skin tones, same hair color, same eye color and have their decisions made for them by a higher authority. Since there are no differences to exploit, there are no competitions. It's easy to see the appeal of such a world, where you get your perfect career, where there is no bigotry or racism since everyone has the same basic physical attributes, where the old are taken care of in a housing by professional people whose job is to do that, where couples move in with other childless couples once their own (assigned) children move on to their careers, where rudeness, bragging, and wrong use of language are all punishable offences. For someone who has tasted freedom (people like us), we can immediately spot the failings of such a community - while it may be a great idea never to have to worry about your career, the fact that people don't have freedom of choice would be a huge put off for us. But, for people like Jonas and his parents and friends, who have not known any other world, the idea of choosing one's own career is a hugely laughable and impossible idea.

I loved this book! I've been a huge fan of dystopia for many reasons, but mostly because I stop taking things for granted when I come across great dystopian literature. While most of the worlds explored in such books will probably never come to pass, they explore ideas that are ostensibly the solutions to today's problems or ideas that are extreme versions of the troubles of the world. The Giver envisions a world where no one starves, everyone has equal opportunity, there is no pain and there are no bad feelings between people. Accidents don't happen, and everyone lives to a ripe old age. But to make a utopia, there would always be some sacrifices - to lock up all the badness in the world, the people were forced to also lock up the goodness as well. The people don't feel pain, but they also don't feel happiness and love, and family isn't a concept that's understood at all. There was a scene where Jonas experiences the memory of Christmas, and I was terribly moved by that moment, realizing that Jonas and his people don't celebrate life and living. All these good and bad memories had to be held somewhere - that is the Receiver's (Jonas) job. Ultimately, we begin to see that there can never be a utopia without an accompanying dystopia - a yin for a yang, heads for tails. Even for a book like The Giver, targeted to an audience far younger than me, I was hugely impressed by the depth of this novel, by the questions it raises, by how it makes the reader actually think about the consequences of wishing for utopia.

Although this book is slim and a fast read, Lois Lowry gives a well-etched description of Jonas' world. There were some aspects that weren't explained all too well, but they didn't bother me. The ending of the book was very ambiguous, but I don't want to give it away. It was an ending that's fitting in so many ways, and I could see two possible interpretations - one somewhat dismal, the other very optimistic, but however I chose to see it, the message is a happy one and I liked how the author left it to the reader to decide what could have actually happened. As I understand it, the question is resolved in the third book - Messenger, which makes me eager to go grab the next books right away from the library.

And there's a lot more about this book I want to keep talking about, but then I'll find it hard to stop. I was thrilled to discover that this book has two more sequels and there's a fourth book coming out next year. Mostly I loved how it becomes obvious that you cannot live in a world in any way than how we live in ours - would you rather live in a perfect world with no wars, hunger and famine but no happiness, sadness, family or love; or would you live in the world as we know it with all the horrible evil but with the ability to have feelings, appropriate or not.

I borrowed this book from my library.

Yet another Monday! (Sep 19, 2011)

2011-09-18T22:07:00.000-04:00

Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

It's been a while since I did this, mostly because I've had something or the other come up on the past few weekends. Not that I managed to read very many books, but at least I've been reading a bit.

Books finished since the last update
  Lost and Found by Shaun Tan
  Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
  The Giver by Lois Lowry (WOW!)

News from over my blog

Reviews up!
  Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
  Yo! by Julia Alvarez
  In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

BBAW posts
A toast to some favorite bloggers
The reader in my blog
The fun techie side of the blog
  Grace of Books like Breathing won my giveaway

Other posts
With Indie Lit Awards just around the corner, I've posted some of my favorite books this year from the Fiction and other categories
The August Reading
  New Reading Project: Blogger Recommends
  Geeking out over a sci-fi list

Books on my nightstand
Since it's been a while after my last Monday post, the books on my nightstand have changed drastically. The ones that have been languishing there for a while have been shelved and I have some different ones holding my interest right now. I'm in the middle of two fabulous books and hoping to start a third one soon this week.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: This is my first read (Ti's recommendation) for my Blogger Recommends feature. There is enough fantasy in this one that it's not my usual fare, but there's enough intrigue that I just. cannot. put. it. down.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie: I chose this as one of my reads in celebration of this year's Banned Books Week. I was quite surprised by how easily it pulled me in and I can already see why many others loved this book. As always, I can't get why this book is even in a banned books list!

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: This is the other book I chose to read for this year's Banned Books Week. I read a couple of pages of this book and found it incredibly hard to get in. I'm definitely disappointed by that, but I'm hoping that was just because I was distracted. Have you read this one? If so, what did you think of it?

The Sunday Salon: So Not The End Of Year Other Favorites List (Part 2)

2011-09-18T03:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I did part one of this post - some of the favorite fiction titles I read from this year's releases. Since the Indie Lit Awards are just around the corner, I wanted to list out some of the books I loved and enjoyed, so that you may read some of them or nominate any that you enjoyed as well. Since I'm voting in the Fiction panel, I listed some of my favorite fiction titles yesterday. Today, I'm talking about some books in the other categories.

Some other books that I loved reading this year are Ready Player One (Speculative Fiction), The Good Daughter (Biography/Memoir), The Long Goodbye (Biography/Memoir) and Bringing Adam Home (Nonfiction). Ready Player One (Speculative Fiction) is one of my top reads this year, and I'm still looking out for a similar read, because I just can't get enough of it. It is a science fiction fantasy novel set in a future when the conditions on the earth have deteriorated a lot and people find happiness inside a virtual world called OASIS. However, the creator of OASIS dies and he leaves his massive estate to the one person who manages to find a hidden easter egg in his game. If you still haven't read this book, you should be opening your favorite bookstore website right now to order!

I read The Good Daughter (Biography/Memoir) in January and it still stays in my mind as a wonderful memoir slash story (and a WOW book) I read this year. The author writes about her mother, who grew up in Iran, and lived through all its prejudices to emerge as a strong woman. Lili is lucky in that she was born into an affluent family, but her experiences were still those of many Iranian women, who are considered second-class citizens to the men. Still, she makes her way in a world where things are set against her, thanks to the support of her family, especially her father, who early on abandons his wife and starts living in with another woman. There's so much that happens in this book and I could barely put it down. This is one book that I hope each of you will read.

The Long Goodbye (Biography/Memoir) was another favorite of mine because of the way the author talks about her grief in losing her mother. I was myself going through a very miserable period at the time of reading this book, so I found it very easy to connect with the author. As many people in grief do, the author has also committed actions that she isn't too proud of - something I can very much relate too. It's a time when the one who's suffering tries to protect his/her bubble as much as possible, and yet wants the world to fully understand what's happening. I found this memoir deeply moving.

Briging Adam Home (Nonfiction) is another favorite (and WOW) read this year. It is a topic that's probably sensitive for a lot of parents, with young kids, but it's an impressive documentary of a two+ decade long investigation process that needed to be told. Young Adam (son of America's Most Wanted host Ron Walsh) went missing one day at the Sears parking lot and was never found. The main detective that investigated the case did a shoddy job of trying to solve it and was more affrontal than receptive to others' suggestions and clues. The case kept going off and coming back on the radar, until many years later, another detective put all his efforts into finally closing the case. This narrative nonfiction was splendidly written, and I may even put it in the same category as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. In other words, a must-read.

These are some of the other books I loved this year, in addition to the Fiction titles I spoke of yesterday. Have you read any of these?

So Not The End Of Year Favorites Fiction List

2011-09-17T03:00:00.000-04:00

Now that BBAW is over and things have hopefully settled down in blogland, there's another big event that's just around the corner - The Indie Lit Awards. You must have seen posts about this event sprouting up all over in your reader, but in case you missed it, here's the gist. Indie Lit Awards are annual awards given by book bloggers in various categories, such as Biography/Memoir, GLBTQ, Fiction, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Speculative Fiction. This award is now in its second year, and if you wish to see the winners of last year, go here. The nominations for this year are already open and will continue to be so all the way through December. The winners are announced next year. So if you have a book you would love to see win in any of those categories, go here, select the genre of the book and place your nomination.

I am a voting member of the Fiction panel, and hence I cannot nominate. But I would love to share some of my favorite books I read this year so that if you also loved any of them, you can nominate. I looked at my read shelf this year for 2011 releases, and this is the one time I'm glad I don't read too many books in a year, so it wasn't too hard to draw up my favorites. Today, I'm focusing on a few Fiction titles that I loved. Tomorrow, I'll post about some books in the other categories.

Some of my top favorite books so far in Fiction among this year's releases have been Irma Voth, State of Wonder, Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb, The Four Ms. Bradwells, In Zanesville and The London Train. It's pretty hard to choose a single favorite among these books, since each of them brought something different to the reading experience but if I had to, it would be Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb.

Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb was about a young boy with a mental illness. He becomes friends with and later obsessed with Pia, who likes to be called Miss Entropia, because of her obsession with fire. Since the two first meet, their lives are heavily tangled, until the end, while all the time their minds are slowly unraveling. The interesting thing is that despite the very eerie sensation of watching a person crumble slowly, the book was hilarious! I would never have put humor and mental illness on the same shelf even, but the author makes it work wonderfully!

The Four Ms. Bradwells left me breathless once I finished it. It was truly in all ways a woman's novel, especially a career woman's. I loved how this book tackled some of the issues women in law or politics face and how being in a high-visibility career position, they are sometimes forced by others or circumstances to not talk about the tragic events in their lives. I also loved how when I took some things for granted, Meg Clayton questioned that. If you especially loved this author's The Wednesday Sisters, this is a book you may not want to miss!

Ann Patchett is probably the only author I have read twice this year. Her State of Wonder is as magical as Bel Canto, even though I did have some issue with the ending. Still, it is pretty hard to forget how she could hold me captivated over 300-400 pages, especially during the lulls in the story. There are many things that happen in this book - an unmarried woman's private love life, a former professor's obsession with research, a tribe whose women can get pregnant even in their seventies, and research on humans with all the ethical issues around it.

The London Train was also a slow book in terms of what happens through the pages, but I still loved how the book evoked feelings of loneliness, love, anxiety, and desperation. The two protagonists in this book are running away from their own lives and at some point, they cross paths. That meeting has huge consequences on their own lives and their relationships with others. Although this book is actually told as two independent stories, it doesn't really read as a book of short stories.

Irma Voth was my most recent read. I had loved one other book that I had read by this author, so her writing style was not new to me. What most appeals to me about her books is how she can personalize a feeling without ever mentioning it. The characters' actions, drives, words and thoughts paint a portrait of emotions much better than one could write about it. In Zanesville was another favorite of mine with a nameless teen protagonist who has a wacky sense of humor. This isn't a YA book, even though the characters fall in that age-group. It's a coming-of-age story but there's so much more - in a strange way, it reminded me of my own junior and high-school years, in a way very few other books managed to.

So these are some of my favorite reads so far this year. I hope I did convince you to check out one or some of them. If you did read and love any of these books, then I hope you will vote for them in the Indie Lit Awards! What 2011 releases made your favorites list?

BBAW 2011: The fun 'techie' side of the blog

2011-09-16T03:00:00.000-04:00

And finally it's the last day of Book Blogger Appreciation Week - this has been a fun week, with a break from reviews, and having a different reason to visit blogs, seeing a lot of new faces around and reading some wonderful perspectives on interesting topics. Today's topic about any tools we use for blogging is pretty interesting to me, because I can't think of very many I use. In fact, I'm pretty positive that other than this blog itself, and Photobucket for pictures, and maybe one or two here and there, I don't really use any tools. I'm pretty lazy that way - I like my job to be simple.

I used to love having a ton of widgets on my sidebar. I still do like widgets, but I no longer put everything I like on my blog, since they heavily slow down the site. It took me a while to get there, but I removed all widgets that I didn't think anyone would ever look at. My rule of thumb is scroll down the sidebar quick, and if my eyes get screwed up, remove one more widget. The one thing I have become obsessed with is how fast my blog can load up. Both Chrome and Firefox browsers have really useful tools (Inspect Element in former, Firebug in latter) for people who like playing with their sites - speeding it up, changing colors and fonts, seeing how things look with different layouts, without really making a change in the site templates. I find this a big time-killer, but unless you really love to play with code, it may not be your thing.

Unfortunately for all my obsession with speed, I went and installed a third party commenting system (Disqus) on my blog. Disqus is super-awesome, let me say that, but it loads externally, so it takes its own sweet time. Which means, if you're on a slow connection, you can step out to get a coffee, come back, and still see the 'loading' symbol. But otherwise, you wouldn't notice. Ordinarily, this wouldn't matter, because most of my readers probably have fast internet. Occasionally though, I have heard from a blogger saying it isn't loading up, and I know I myself have seen it at least once. Still, the benefits of Disqus far outweighs its minus points, which I know is kind of shallow to say because it sounds like I'm saying I don't care if you can't comment but the tool is awesome. But no, I did everything I could to try and work it out, at the moment I'm hoping time just speeds it up. I would happily go back to blogger, but I absolutely hate their non-threaded commenting tool. Besides, Disqus eventually loads up, right?

Other than that, I don't really use many tools. I have tried a lot, kept some, abandoned others. I store pictures that I use on my blog almost exclusively on Photobucket. I use Flicker to find Creative Commons-licensed photos, so that I don't run into trouble with the content laws. I use Creative Commons to copyright my blog's content. Then there's goodreads, in itself. All my book links and images are from that website, the one website that first introduced me to the massive online reading community.

What tools do you use?

BBAW 2011: The reader in my blog

2011-09-15T03:00:00.000-04:00

It's day 4 of the week-long Book Blogger Appreciation Week and I'm missing it already! I spent some time over the past three days catching up on all the wonderful posts erupting in my Reader, and I'm nowhere there. I loved reading the posts - there were a ton of blog recommendations, all of which I managed to resist adding to my reader - not by choice though, only because I was reading mostly on my phone or iPad, and they aren't really the best devices on which to go jumping from page to page.

Today's topic about how blogging has influenced your reading was the one I was most looking forward to, mainly because I didn't know my answer yet - I was planning to write it out and see where I end up. I know for sure that what I read and the way I read has changed tremendously since the early days of blogging. And it's funny that I sit down to type up this post now, because just five minutes ago, I came across Goodreads new beta Recommendations feature that I had fun checking out. One of the first things I did, was compare the recommendations based on my Read-in-2009 shelf and my Read-so-far-in-2011 shelf, and I did come across one of the biggest changes in my reading.

Here's a portion of the 2009 recommendations:

And here's a portion of the 2011 recommendations:

I had forgotten how much light women fiction I used to read at one point. I even once bought a sack of such books that I just donated unread a few weeks ago. I can barely feel inclined to read them anymore. I still have three books to go into my supposed-to-be favorite Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. Whenever I pass by such books in an airport bookstore, I automatically move on to the next shelf, without thinking.

From the middle of last year, I've been reading a lot of literary fiction. I used to read them long before blogging too, except I didn't really know that's what they were called. This year, I started reading more graphic books - fiction and memoirs. And this is one genre I would never have discovered if not for blogging. I had always associated graphic books = superhero comics, despite having read and loved Persepolis, pre-blogging. Last year, I saw a few bloggers do the Graphics Novel challenge, and in spite of having deep reservations, I decided to try it out this year, and who knew it was going to be another favorite category of mine?

With blogging, the way I read books has also changed. I used to read faster and quicker, pre-blogging. And right away move to the next book. I rarely gave much thought to what I read, and what any of that meant. Over the past two years, my reading has slowed down in quantity, but made up in quality. I've rated more books higher now than before. And moreover, after reading each book, I spent quite a bit of time reflecting on the journey of reading that particular book - how it compared to other past reads, how it measured up with other books by that author or in that genre, what other readers (bloggers and otherwise) thought about the book. In other words, my participation in the reading experience has been more proactive than ever. There are all aspects of the book that I get pulled into now.

The best change I can say however is that - until two years ago, if someone asked me for a recommendation, I can only choose from my measly read pile. Now though, I quite easily recommend books from across the genre, even books I haven't read or seen the cover of. It's a funny feeling standing in front of a shelf in B&N and looking at a book I just saw praised that day on someone's else blog. Or looking at another book that I'd never have found on my own unless some of my favorite bloggers had put it out there as The book to read. Book blogs have given me wonderful choices. They have also made it impossibly hard for me to get out of a B&N store empty-handed!

BBAW Giveaway (Worldwide)

2011-09-13T03:00:00.000-04:00

(This giveaway is now closed. Thanks for visiting!)

It's the second day of the week-long BBAW, and today I'm featuring six books from my stacks for a giveaway. I'll be giving away two of those books to one winner who will be chosen on Sep 17. All you have to do is select the one set (out of three) that you would love to win. The winner will receive the set that he/she chose. Some are ARCs I received, and five are books I've read and enjoyed. The sets available for the giveaway are:

Set 1 (Literary Fiction): South of Superior* by Ellen Airgood (my review) and Hello Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth (my review).

* My copy of South of Superior is an ARC.

Set 2 (Literary Fiction set in India): Someone Else's Garden by Dipika Rai (my review) and The Girl in the Garden** by Kamala Nair (my review).

** My copy of The Girl in the Garden is an actual bound galley.

Set 3 (YA books): Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz and Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten (my review).

To enter,

You don't have to be a follower of my blog.
You must be over 13 years of age.
You must be a Book Blogger (My apologies to my non-blogging readers, but since BBAW is an event celebrating blogging, I have to put this clause.)
Open worldwide.
Enter by Sep 16, 2011, Friday, 11.59 p.m. US Eastern time.
Fill the form.

BBAW 2011: A toast to some favorite bloggers

2011-09-12T03:00:00.000-04:00

After months of preparation and waiting, the Book Blogger Appreciation Week is finally here. Last year (being my first year of blogging), I was mostly watching the buzz from the sidelines. This year though, I volunteered to help Amy (BBAW founder) with any background help. And let me tell you, there was just a ton of work to do. It didn't matter that this has been running for 3 years already - there was still a lot of paperwork involved and clarifications to make, fine tuning of processes, and changing whatever didn't work last year to something more reasonable. And now, after all that hard work, I'm glad to sit by and do some posts in celebration of this event. There are a bunch of daily topics up at the BBAW site for this week, if you're interested in checking them out. I may be participating in some or all of the topics, depending on how busy things are at my end.

Today's topic is all about Community - "While the awards are a fun part of BBAW, they can never accurately represent the depth and breadth of diversity in the book blogging community. Today you are encouraged to highlight a couple of bloggers that have made book blogging a unique experience for you. They can be your mentors, a blogger that encouraged you to try a different kind of book, opened your eyes to a new issue, made you laugh when you needed it, or left the first comment you ever got on your blog. Stay positive and give back to the people who make the community work for you!" [from the BBAW site]

I can honestly say that one of the best decisions I've ever taken was to start a book blog. I am sometimes known for not completing things I start (which is not really a bad thing, sometimes I don't know in advance if I'll enjoy something), and when I was considering mixing my love for writing and reading on a more public level, I was definitely worried that I won't stick to it. Part of the motivation was all those book challenges being hosted annually. As I've learned since, they can be a terrible magnet that'll keep you planning lists for a long time, and the challenges rarely get finished. Still, I caved in, made up a design that pretty much smacked of beginner material, and settled on a name before wondering if the choice will come back to haunt me later. It's been a wonderful experience mostly because there is an incredible community to share the journey with. Sure, we have our dramas, we have been directly and indirectly ridiculed by professional reviewers, but we've also lobbied support for authors and rallied together vehemently when something crazy was happening in the book world. And then we have events like Armchair BEA and BBAW that only reinforce the meaning of this community further.

During my almost two years of blogging, I have seen a lot of regular visitors and a lot of changing faces. There are some who have quit blogging and some who have gone from just visitors to best blogging buddies. There are many bloggers I truly admire, whose blogs I visit almost every day, and whose recommendations I trust - Helen's Book Blog, Bermudaonion's Weblog, Tales of Whimsy, Raging Bibliomania, Tea Time with Marce, English Major's Junk Food, Bibliophile by the Sea, Caribousmom, Mental Foodie, A Bookish Way of Life, to list a few. Today, I feel more or less comfortable with what I do here, and once in a while, I try to shake up things to keep the novelty going. So, when I read this question, I went back to those first days of blogging (when you're basically blogging in the void and you feel weird joining in any blogging conversations).

I tried to find out who my very first commentor was, and I wasn't surprised to see that it was J. Kaye. J. Kaye used to blog over at J. Kaye's Book Blog, but when she decided to focus on her writing, it was taken over by Rachel. I have since lost touch with her (and if she's still reading book blogs, I hope she leaves a comment so that I can find her). I remember joining a few challenges at her blog, and she had many wonderful ones going on there. And then one day, she gave me a shout-out at her blog, which was kinda like being the shy girl at a party and then pushed into the limelight to all those stares, but it was oddly satisfying too. I found my readership climb since then, and I realize I could have stayed at low stats for a longer time, if not for the wonderful J. Kaye. It's not the stats in particular that flattered me, but more the sense of being finally accepted by the blogging community, and getting over the new-kid-on-the-blog feeling. Of course, it's all in the head, but it's still a wonderful transition.

The Sunday Salon: The August reading

2011-09-11T03:00:00.000-04:00

Anyone excited about Fall? I keep peeping out my window every day hoping to see colors changing drastically. So far, it's just the odd leaf here and there, and a vast, vivid-green mass of trees standing haughtily about to greet me. I am however done with the heat. There is a reason I stay in Virginia, and that is because I hate the heat and can just handle a couple of months of it. Fall also hopefully means more time indoors and hence more reading. My August reading sucked, but I'm not surprised - I had too much going on, and I'm hoping to unplug this month.

Books of the month

Other Reads

On second thoughts, I did have a decent month. One of those lovely surprises.

Reviews posted

Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda
Yo! by Julia Alvarez

Other posts

Traveling with my books this year

Dominican Republic (Yo!) was a new hit last month. Plus, thanks to In the Sea There are Crocodiles, Afghanistan.

View Traveling with my books (2011) in a larger map

Irma Voth by Miriam Toews

2011-09-06T03:00:00.000-04:00

I was rejoicing silently in my heart. I had asked a good question. And not only had I finally asked a good question, I had asked a good question of someone I was trying to be friends with as opposed to myself. A question that had breath attached to it, that had left my own body. Jorge told me not to ask questions, he hated them, he could always tell when I was about to ask one and he'd put his hand up and say no, please. Please. Was I betraying Jorge by asking a good question of Wilson?

Mennonite Irma Voth had been kicked out of her home by her father when she fell in love with and married a Mexican man named Jorge. Her father arranged for them to stay in a nearby house, but Jorge was to work for him for free. A year later though, Jorge is tired of Irma and the whole arrangement and leaves. Around the same time, a film crew moves into another house nearby to shoot a movie about Mennonites. Irma's father isn't happy about it, and is especially angry when Irma herself chooses to work for the film director. Soon, Irma's sister Aggie has also left home and wants to stay with Irma. One thing leads to another and Irma's father decides that Irma has to move out of her house and find her own stay. But Irma decides enough is enough and flees her home along with her sister, and tries to manage this new independent life.

I first read a Miriam Toews book - The Flying Troutmans - couple of years ago. That book dealt with a dysfunctional family, which was beginning to fall apart. There were elements of loneliness, sadness, family bonding and escapism lacing the book, and yet despite the heavy issues, the book was a quick read and funny at times. I don't remember feeling the urge to cry as I was reading the book, instead I felt a kind of closeness with the characters - the closeness you feel when you identify with the characters because they remind you of yourself when you hit the doldrums or felt aimless at any point in life. It was the kind of quirky sadness that everyone hits at some point - not a despairing sadness but more the-need-to-reconnect-with-self kind of sadness.

Irma Voth has the same elements. Although it's been two years since I read The Flying Troutmans, I could quickly see similarities between the two books. Both stories are as different as can be, but both tackle the same basic questions of a person's tendency towards flight in difficult situations, and how family can both be the bond holding them together and the wedge driving them apart. The characters are as usual dysfunctional and very human. Although Irma is the protagonist and the narrator, most of the secondary characters are well fleshed and lend their dynamic presence to the book. The Mennonite beliefs and ways of life was another big presence in this book. Although I was new to this denomination and reluctant to read anything with a huge religious element in it, I loved how easily and sometimes-hilariously Miriam Toews (a Mennonite herself) painted a vivid picture of the people of this faith.

As with The Flying Troutmans, I loved several of the characters that pass through the book - there are Irma and Aggie themselves, sisters, trusting each other, and yet always arguing with each other. There is the Russian-origin German actress, Marijke, who has her own huge baggage of issues that she drags all the way to the Mexican town, where the film crew is staying. The director, Diego, alternates between enthusiasm for shooting the movie and frustration at all the inevitable issues that crop up, both within the crew and from outside. When Irma works as the translator between Diego and Marijke, she easily feeds her own hilarious lines for Marijke to speak at each shoot. Then there are a whole host of minor characters - each one quirky enough during their brief appearances and whole enough to make those brief appearances memorable.

The second half of the book is set in an entirely different setting from the first. While the first half focused on the film crew, which served as the backdrop against which Irma’s family's dynamics played out, the second half was set in Mexico City, where Irma and her two sisters try to make their life work, away from their parents. Although Irma’s father is shown mostly as an adamant, over-protective and strongly principled man in the first half, we begin to see other shades of his personality in the latter half, through Irma’s eyes. Since Irma is rarely honest with herself and doesn't discuss what is bothering her, it takes a while before the reader catches on. There's a very ohmygodly bomb dropped in the second half that I never saw coming and made me feel overwhelmingly sad.

In classic Miriam Toews' style, the prose is quick and easy to read. Even though there is a lot of sadness and humor, the author doesn't infuse those sentiments heavily into her writing. The feelings of the characters are never discussed - the book is a first-person account written from the perspective of Irma, and yet, Irma rarely ever says if she is feeling happy or sad due to something. She only talks of what she is doing, or what someone else is doing - people's emotions aren't the principal focus. Miriam lets the characters' actions demonstrate the inner state of their minds. This is an interesting mode of writing because a character's behavior can be interpreted in so many ways or can be too complicated for a reader to analyze in the few seconds he/she reads that passage, but this works wonderfully here because there is no ambiguity in the meanings of what any character does.

Irma Voth is just as much a favorite of mine now as The Flying Troutmans is. Before starting this read, I was somewhat worried about how much this book will measure up to the successful image the other book has formed in my mind. But when I started and eventually finished it, I was thrilled that this book worked. It felt like revisiting an old favorite - and this has made me eager to check out her other books, and especially the book she wrote about her father, Swing Low.

I received this book for free for review from the publisher via TLC Book Tours.

Back to the den!

2011-09-05T16:37:00.001-04:00

So, when I said on Saturday that I may be off the face of internet, I didn't expect my smartphone to take it literally and commit suicide by drowning. Because, that's just what happened. I waited two days for it to power up, but at this point, I'm close to switching off its life support and handing off the phone to my friend who loves playing with the innards of gadgets. With that goes my main link to the internet. I still have the iPad, but I don't stare at it ever 5 seconds the way I check my phone. At least until I can upgrade my phone in May next year, I'm stuck in the Stone Age with a boring non-data phone (after I buy one). Believe me when I say that I'm ready for mid-2012 already!

Other than that blip, my vacation in West Virginia was super-relaxing. I'm usually used to fast-paced over-packed vacations, so this was a great stress-reliever. I guess that was mostly because the places we visited aren't commercialized or teeming with tourists. We also walked under a bridge (on its iron structure) and it was one helluva experience walking 850 feet above the long winding New River Gorge National River flowing underneath. I don't have any pictures yet, but I'll try to post when I get some.

In other news, the Indie Lit Awards are open for nominations. Please please please, get your favorite 2011 releases in. I'll do another longer post some day dedicated to some literary fiction titles, since that's the panel I'm judging in, but for now, if you have any books you loved (in any category), please nominate, or at least start thinking about the titles you want to see win. To nominate, head here, click on the specific genre of the book you are nominating and submit the form.

Speaking of Literary Fiction, I just found out an hour ago that my blog has been shortlisted in the BBAW category for Best Literary Fiction blog. I can't begin to say how honored and happy I feel though it was mostly surprise that struck me first. So, once again, I would love to say Thank you to all my followers and especially to those who nominated my blog. I also want to say thanks to the judges who deemed my blog worthy of heading into the voting round. The shortlists for all the categories have been announced today, moreover, the voting has also started (and ends on September 10th). Make sure you vote for your favorite blogs by heading over to this website and signing in with Twitter or Google.

Since it's a long weekend...

2011-09-03T06:00:00.000-04:00

I'll be off the face of internet (maybe, don't count on it) for three days...

(Picture source)

as I drive through the meandering roads all the way from my home in Virginia with close friends

to one of the awesomest nature's paradise on earth in West Virginia.

(Picture source)

I'm going to leave my baggage at home and stare at the beautiful cascading waterfalls

And go hike, enjoying the last days of summer (or is it the first days of Fall? But the leaves are still green!)

(Picture source)

And stare at others go river rafting!

Happy Labor day weekend to all who celebrate it and happy weekend to the rest of the world.

(PS: Please don't publish too many posts until I am back.)

New Reading Project: Blogger Recommends

2011-09-02T11:19:00.000-04:00

Couple of months back, I was staring at the state of the TBR and feeling that necessity to cull my virtual bookshelves all over again. And while going through those shelves, I came across many that I remembered adding after reading some gushing review (though I didn't remember who exactly gushed about those books.) Since at that point, I didn't have the memory of that gushing review anymore, I found myself less inclined to want to read them. This is a classic tale among many book bloggers. Every time we go on a trip through bloggerland, we come out with a ton of new recommendations that.... eventually get buried deep under the massive Mt. TBR that we each have and absolutely fear. And then, days or months later, we probably come across the same book, forget why it is even there, and remove from our wishlists. So there goes all our noble intentions to listen to our most trusted book-recommenders.

Which is why, I've decided to start this project. One of many that I am doing, but isn't that fun? Every month, I bookmark some of the strongest recommendations that I come across. Most are books I hear about for the first time, others are books I've previously not been interested in, but this particular blogger has managed to convince me otherwise.

Giving this a swing last month, I found that I ended up bookmarking 15+ links in total. I know I was not too liberal, but I didn't want to leaf through a 100 links later. I found some wonderful new titles among these and other return-to-the-tbr titles. I thought I will spotlight some of those titles here, while I decide which one(s) to read.

1. One of the very first reviews that I booklisted this month was Ti's review of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I had heard of Murakami many times, but he was one of those authors I was absolutely scared of reading. Ti's review convinced me that I'm definitely missing out on something - this was her first Murakami as well and since then, she has already read another one.

2. Gayle wrote a fabulous review of City of Thieves by David Benioff. This book is set in St. Petersburg, a city in a country that I have not bookisited yet! City of Thieves has a very interesting story - two men captured during the Seige of Leningrad are told that their lives will be spared if they can come a week later with a dozen eggs. I am definitely curious about what happens!

3. Another of my favorite bloggers, Helen, who always gives me these wonderful recommendations on YA books without fangs, gave me yet another one through Funny in Farsi (which is actually non-YA). For one thing, Iran is one of my favorite places to read about. I've read and loved several books set in Iran. For another, this book is laugh-out-loud funny in Helen's opinion. That would be an interesting combo!

4. Swapna reviewed a book of short stories last month, called Quarantine by Rahul Mehta. Although I don't ordinarily read short stories, this one fascinated me because it's about homosexuality in India - it's such a scandalous topic there, that I'm really eager to see the author's perspective on this subject.

5. One of my recent blogger discoveries - Heather - reads and likes pretty much the same books as I, which often makes me wonder how it took so long for me to find her blog! She reviewed Displaced Persons (among a ton of other books that I've shamelessly wishlisted) and that has got me excited to check it out. Set in post-WW2, it follows a few survivors and the lives they lead. I especially like the title of this book - so many things come to mind.

The other titles that caught my fancy last month are:

6. Rules of Tunnel by Ned Zeman - Raging Bibliomania. Mental illness is something I read about a lot.
7. The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam - S. Krishna's Books. A literary trilogy about a serious issue? I'm all for it.
8. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - Man of la Book particularly talked about X-Men when reviewing it. That was enough for me.
9. The Arrogant Years by Lucette Lagnado - Beth Fish Reads. This is one of the memoirs that sounds appealing to me from the synopsis itself.
10. The Filter Bubble by Eli Paliser - Amy Reads. I am pretty obsessed with privacy online, which is why I am curious about this book.
11. When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant - Nomadreader. Another book about embracing your Jewish identity in post-WW2.
12. Q: A Novel by Evan Mandery - Iris on Books, addressing the question of "What if I had known about this? Would I have done it differently?"
13. Stardust by Neil Gaiman - Always meaning to read this book but not terribly excited by it, but when Jen gushed about this book, I began to feel more interested in it.
14. All over Coffee - At Shelf Love by Jenny. A graphic novel/book. Need I say more?

Which book are you most interested in?

Yo! by Julia Alvarez

2011-08-30T22:39:00.002-04:00

"It really hurts, you know, that my family can't share this with me. I mean I haven't done anything wrong. I could have been an axe murderer. I could have gotten up on some roof in a shopping mall and mowed down a bunch of people."

I sure am glad that it's me she's talking to and not one of the psychologist sisters.

"All I did was write a book," she wails.

"Everyone's feeling a little exposed, that's all."

"But it's fiction!" she starts in.

Yolanda Garcia, or Yo, has just released a new book that has triggered a lot of angry reactions in her family. Even though Yo claims that it is fiction, each family member can identify themselves in some character of the book. They are frustrated, understandably, because their friends and acquaintances keep asking them which character represents them. Yo's mother is threatening to sue her while her sisters are refusing to talk to her. Yo cannot understand why her family is reacting as such and she keeps insisting that her book is fiction. Since her family members and sundry other people she knows are unable to do anything but rail at their portrayal in the so-called-fictional story, they each get a chance to redeem themselves by telling their story, and saying exactly what they think of Yo.

This is one of the most unique books I've ever read. I started reading it in Denver, when I missed my flight and was stuck at the airport for more than 12 hours. It was a good thing that I had just the perfect read to tide me over. Yo! is divided into 16 chapters, each chapter written from the perspective of a different person - not all family members. At the outset, it seems strange that a particular person may even be associated with someone vibrant and so full of life as Yo, but the connection soon becomes evident, halfway through that chapter. While some of the characters talk all about Yo and their relationship, and how Yo influenced their lives, others talk more about their own lives with Yo making a guest appearance. As I kept reading the book and entered the lives of different people, I began to get more curious about how Yo was going to make her appearance in that chapter - as a savior or as a person to keep away from.

Some of the characters who have their own chapters include close family members such as a sister, a cousin, her mother and her father. But in addition, there are other prominent characters such as an ex-lover, a maid's daughter, a landlady, a student, and a stalker. Not all the narrators know that they might have been caricatured in Yo's book, but they all have things to tell about Yo's life, and writing habits. Despite the changing narrator, I never found the flow of the novel to be disruptive - it actually works really well for this book.

Since all we had was the family's word at the start of the book that Yo "fictionally victimized" them, we get to form our own judgement through the stories shared by the characters. And though we never have Yo making a direct appearance other than in the narratives of other characters, the author still manages to create a rich and vivid person in Yo. From a young age, Yo was witty and stubborn. She also loved writing stories about the people she knew. She had gotten into plenty of trouble for telling tales - some of which could have almost gotten her family into danger in war-torn Dominican Republic, where she grew up.

The book reads more like a series of short stories than a complete book. Intertwined with each character's reminiscence of their relationship with Yo are snippets of their own life, as if they were caught in the middle of a household chore to sit in front of the interviewer. I loved how these little characters came to life and how no one appeared one-dimensional. The stories are in no particular chronological order. Although I wasn't initially sure of how things fell into place time-wise, before soon, I had a vague timeline in place. It is not until we reach almost two-thirds of the book that we really hear one person's experience of reading one of her books. Until then, I wasn't sure if Yo was just "inspired" by the stories in her life or whether there was more to it.

I have to admit that I was getting tired halfway through - reading so much about one person across 300 pages did wear me down a bit, but I'm glad that the focus on Yo's character shifts every few chapters, so that we don't hear the same thing over and over. Mostly, I'm impressed that you can write 300 pages about anyone in fiction, and without a plot. The whole story is set up for the reader to decide what they think of Yo, almost like a court case. The reader is the judge and the various characters with their own chapters are the witnesses. I loved the whole concept, and taking a stand on whether Yo did the right thing or not was not straightforward - by the end of the book, I learned so much about Yo, that I could only form an opinion but not slam the gavel. Overall, I truly enjoyed this very different read, and am eager to read more of Julia Alvarez's work.

I saw this book on the Beach reads display shelf at my local library and will give my librarian a big hug for introducing me to a book I may never have read otherwise.