Saturday, October 19, 2013

Booklist

Instead of leaving things to chance I have taken things into my hand this time. Er.. it just means that I put a bunch of books I had wanted to read, on hold at the Library. Once I got the e-mail notification all I had to do was just pick them up. Surprisingly enough I finished all 4 books plus 1 in two weeks! Things must be slow or I am just preparing for the onslaught of projects gearing up soon. May not get much time later. In between we even managed to attend Hcousin's wedding in the East. Kids had a blast and for me it was a relaxing few days. Bride and groom are the very best kind of people and it was great to be there for this day with all the family around. Now that my son is in 8th grade he is busy shadowing at different High Schools and preparing for his Entrance Exams. A preview to the senior year in four years when he will be busy looking for college! Years are flying by I say. Zeus is flourishing after missing us dearly when we left him for a few days for the wedding. We were happy to be re-united with him. Here he is getting ready to read the books with me:-) He is using the glasses borrowed from my girl's doll. She likes dressing him up and sweet that he is, he lets her.



So here are the books in no particular order.

Thrity Umrigar's 'The Space Between Us'
Very perceptive book about two women whose lives are oddly bound together despite being from two different classes of the Indian society. Umrigar shows uncanny perception in portraying the lives of Sera and Bhima for the reader. It is this same perception that makes us want to stick to the book and read all of it even if the melodramatic turn of events at the end are a bit too common. I also loved all the Parsi names that sounded strange yet very Indian! Bhima is a grandmother who lives in a slum and works for Sera who lives in a bungalow. Despite the differences they are able to empathize with each other in their own ways. Definitely a good read.

I also read Umrigar's 'The World We Found'. It fell a little short of my expectation but still was a decent read.

The Krishna Key by Ashwin Sanghvi
I heard about this book from soulsearchingdays and was happy to see it in the library offerings.  Thanks SS! In what can be described as the Indian equivalent of Dan Brown's Da Vinci CodeAshwin Sanghvi has made a decent effort. I wished he didn't try to create a literal parallel to Brown's book though. This is a limitation. The vast possibility of history, mythology and realities of the Indian pantheon gets diluted a bit as he tries to put it all into one book. It really came alive for me at the Taj Mahal segment. The equivalent to The Louvre in Brown's book. He talks about trying to be careful in picking Krishna as a subject for the book in a country like India with its multifaceted population. It is clearly a work of fiction and should be treated as such.

The Shadow of The Wind By Carlos Ruiz Zafon
This is one of those books that has winding subplots that will keep you gripped till the end. It is sort of a mystery and also good literature. The overall feeling was very similar to Orhan Pamuk's The New Life but taking place in Marquez's Macondo! It starts by describing how the young protagonist gets hold of this unlikely book the very first time his father took him to a used book store. The rest of the story revolves around his search to find more about the mysterious Julian Carax who wrote the book. There is also this odd stranger who goes around looking for any remaining books written by Carax, only to burn them! Though Carax is not a big time author, his books are still loved by those who choose to read them. Any lover of books worth their salt will find it difficult to put this book down. A wholesome book satisfying the reader in you on many levels. I am like that boy now, looking out for books written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon:-) Seriously, just get going guys. Isn't the name itself intriguing?

I think the last book deserves a space of its own. So I will blog on that in another post.

1 comment:

soulsearchingdays said...

Hi Lan, Thanks for the mention. I am going to try the books one by one... for sure...