Reading on a Rainy Day

   Published in : 2019   ||    Format : ebook   ||    Location : US One line review : What does it mean to be American if you have to constantly question your place, especially as a six year old? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Thoughts : When Mira Jacob's six-year-old son, Z, starts asking her some very difficult questions on race (Does the new President hate him? Can he make his hair like Michael Jackson's? Is it bad to be brown? Are white people afraid of brown people? Is daddy afraid of them?), she can't say that she has all the answers, and even when she did, that she was ready to discuss the answers. As a child of a first-generation Indian American mother and a Jewish father, Z's questions span many topics, many of them touching on identity, belonging, and acceptance by his country. Neither Mira nor her husband want to package the truth with a nice bow for Z even though they are tempted, but the truth is not pretty. How do you tell your child that yes, ...

Recently, I read two verse books in quick succession, which is very unusual for me, because I don't read a lot of verse. The first book I read - Garvey's Choice - was so beautiful and worth every word that I quickly moved on to the very next verse book that I could find - Brown Girl Dreaming. The latter is a very popular book and most of you may have already read it, but I haven't seen much of Garvey's Choice around. Or maybe I've missed its hype. If you haven't read either, I hope you'll pick one of them to read, and oh, don't let the verse tag get to you, these books are incredibly readable. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Published in : 2014 Format read in : ebook Location : Ohio, South Carolina, New York Rating : 4/5 Why I read it : After reading tons of great reviews of this book, it was simply begging to be read. One line review : Great memoir in verse and often very moving. Who should read it : Anyone who loves verse or is interested in ...

Now I had learnt that honour requires large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one's honour. Firdaus was sentenced to death for killing a man, and although several people have offered to apply for a pardon or some kind of mitigation of her sentence, she has staunchly refused any such interference. Our narrator is curious about this prisoner and wants to meet her, but Firdaus is firm - she doesn't want any visitors. However, on the night before she is to be executed, she changes her mind and decides to talk to the narrator. What follows is her story from her birth to the present, and all the ways she has been mistreated and taken advantage of. Firdaus' story is not pleasant. Her father only wanted sons and didn't care for this girl who outlived all or most of her siblings. Her earliest memories of her mother show a woman who may have cared for her, but very soon she was replaced by someone (either a crue...

I first read Maus in March of 2011. I remember approaching it with some trepidation - after all, this book is in a lot of lists and has even won the Pulitzer . What if I didn't get the "greatness" of this book? When I finished it, however, I loved it. This book blew my mind in a way no other graphic book did but when I sat down to review it, I couldn't for the life of me string two words together to form a coherent review. I eventually decided not to review it. Some books are great, and it is enough to say that. Last year, I reread Maus . That's rare for me - I rarely reread and if I do, it is always the Harry Potter books that get that honor. So I'm not sure what made me want to reread this one, though wanting to read Metamaus after, may have something to do with it. I reread Maus and rediscovered how amazing this book is. Again though, I couldn't put a review together to say all I wanted to. But I'm giving it a try this time. Maus is a g...

Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling. By now, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken has been on countless award lists and reader best-of lists. It has even won quite a few awards and after reading Unbroken , it isn't hard to see why. I waited a good three years before trying to read Unbroken because of the tremendous hype that followed this book (for good reason). I listened to the first quarter of this book in the car by myself and caught up with the rest of it w...

Suddenly, Rockefeller pushed his pursuer away, put his daughter down, yanked the car door open, and pulled the child into the limo so fast that she hit her head on the doorframe. "Go! Go!" he shouted, and the driver stepped on the gas, dragging the social worker, who had hold of the back-door handle, several yards before he let go and fell to the pavement. On July 27 2008, Clark Rockefeller was to spend the day with his daughter, Reigh. Having lost custody of her to his wife, after their nasty divorce, Clark is allowed only three supervised visits a year. This was however not going to be a regular visit. Instead, it was going to be the incident that finally unmasks this supposedly wealthy person with a famous surname. After making small conversations and pretending to be on a stroll with Reigh, he manages to violently shake off the social worker and jump into his private limousine, having duped the driver as well. After six days of a wild goose chase, Rockefeller is fi...

I'm sure one of these days she's going to go to principal and ask for her leave, but then again, what else is new? "These kids are going to make this lady quit the first week," my friends were saying. Someone else said, "She'll only last a day." I give her a month. I first heard of this book in Sheila's blog when she reviewed this during the Banned Books week last year. At that point, I wasn't too keen on reading the book, but when I saw the movie pop up in my Netflix recommendations list, I decided to check it out. I didn't have too many expectations from it, but by the end of the movie, I loved it. Who doesn't love a rebel? And I mean a good rebel -- someone who succeeds in something when everyone else expected him/her to fail. The movie was everything about changing your destiny, and all through my life, I've never tolerated the 'fate' and 'destiny' philosophies that anyone dished out to me. I like ...

The argument started like any other of their arguments. He'd come home late from a party. In the circles in which he then moved, it had lately become fashionable to take a puff of opium with liquor, a combination that had brought him home even more bleary-eyed and unsteady on his feet than usual. The old curses and recriminations flashed between them, though this time he didn't strike her with his open hand but instead made a fist. He struck her just once this way, but even in his state he managed to do it with such perfection that the room went black and she fell to the floor. When Kobra opened her eyes it was to the sight of her own blood, streaming so profusely onto the tiled floors that it had formed a small pool beside her. Jasmin Darznik's The Good Daughter is a beautifully written compelling biography about her own mother, Lili, who was born in Iran -- almost doomed to a docile and probably condemned life but instead goes on to pursue her st...

With a start Malika realized that the figure huddled in front of them was a woman. She lay in the middle of the street, crouched in a ball, and was trying to fend off the blows. But the men would not stop. Malika heard the dreadful slapping sound of the wooden batons as they hit the helpless woman -- on her back, her legs, over and over again. The author, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, was an MBA student at Harvard Business School, when she yearned to do some research in a subject that mattered but which no one cared for much. That brought her to the topic of women entrepreneurship in war-torn Rwanda, and then to Afghanistan. Her initial search efforts in Kabul raised no potential candidates. It was after a long hunt that she found the protagonist of this biography and this book,  The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is her attempt to tell the story of that woman entrepreneur. Kamila Sadiqi was just returning home after receiving her diploma when she overheard many r...

I first came across this title at Helen's blog . I had never heard of this book before, nor the incident narrated in it. Moreover, the title of the book - Yummy - sounded too weird, too out-of-place to me. I could tell from the cover that this book had no relation to food, whatever the title. Yummy is the nickname of the protagonist of this book, Robert Sandifer, because he loved sweets. This graphic novel was written by G. Neri and illustrated by Randy DuBurke. I thought the narration and the illustration effectively communicated the guns and gangs problem in the shady law-crippled areas. The setting is in Chicago actually, but it could have been any other place - don't we regularly hear about gang crimes in LA, NY, and many countries around the world? Yummy is just 11. He has already been recruited into a gang. He wants to impress the older members of his gang by displaying toughness and proving that he can do any kind of work. The US law couldn't convict kids -...

Anne Frank is no stranger to us. We all know about how she hid with her family and four others in a secret annex in Netherlands during the infamous Holocaust, for two years. Whether or not we have actually read or loved her diary, none of us would deny that she went through a harrowing experience - just as million other Jews, victimized simply because of their faith. But in so many ways, Anne has become a symbol of that period chiefly because she was just fifteen when she died (murdered is what I like to say, even if it was disease that eventually claimed her), and also because she recorded her stay in the annex in her diary, which has already been read by millions. That said, when I first read and loved  Anne Frank's Diary two years back, the most common sentiment I heard expressed among those who didn't rate it highly was that the book felt too "immature". In other words, it read like any fifteen year old's diary - with all the typical squabbles, compl...

Title : Chicken with Plums Author : Marjane Satrapi First Published : 2006 Publisher : Pantheon Books Source : Library 84 pages In a nutshell Nasser Ali Khan's beloved instrument, the tar, is irreparably broken and finds that no matter how many tars he try, none of them sound right to me. Convinced that he will never find a good tar, he decides to take to his bed and let go of his life. The rest of the book shows the next few days in his life, as the reader comes to understand the breadth of his decision through flashbacks and through his relationships with other members of his family. I am a big fan a Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels. This is yet another one that didn't disappoint, and I connected with this book more than I expected to. I think... Marjane Satrapi's skills as a storyteller are amazing. There is humor throughout her books, as they tell the state of affairs. None of her books are light in matter though. While they are ...