The Wedding People

 Listening to this very well-written book the Wedding People, by Alison Espach, about a woman who's booked into a hotel for one night to kill herself after a heart-breaking divorce and a feeling that life is not worth living. The rest of the hotel, except for this one room, is booked up for a week for a wedding, and the novel expands the relationship between Phoebe, the bride and then the rest of the wedding party. Even while dealing with various issues that the bride is facing, Phoebe gets to work through her own issues. The book is written with a lot of humour and plain-speaking and is refreshingly honest. 

My friends - Fredrik Backman

Just finished an absolutely amazing book - Fredrik Backman's latest - My Friends. He really must be a wonderful kind person in real life

It's such a heartwarming story, filled with characters who are teetering at the edge of broken-ness but are able to claw their way back with laughter and love. The book is filled with the same grace that Anxious people contains. 

I promise it won't always hurt like this; Things in Nature merely grow

 I promise it won't always hurt like this - Clare Mackintosh says it all. Her words resonate, her grief is familiar even if her anger is not, and her initial inability to cope, followed by her learning to grow into her grief could easily be my story. A very good book, one that I hope to go back to someday soon. 

Things in Nature merely grow -  Yiyun Li
This book on grief is by a mother who lost two sons, in an identical manner a few years apart. It is a book about radical acceptance, and about an abyss that is very familiar to me. 

Book Club for Troublesome Wonen

There are so many ways one can write, and then can also add sequels to, a book about a book clip. One can keep adding characters and  have different things happening in their lives. This particular book by Marie Bostwick is written beautifully. It starts off a bit vague but then as she builds up the characters, especially the character of Margaret, it becomes interesting, and then adding this whole bit about the politics of the day makes it even more interesting. Very readable book and I've highlighted a few of the names of books which I would like to read based on what the Bettys in the book club in the book were reading.

Goldfinch

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff 

"Lauren Groff’s audacious novel, Fates and Furies, is an astounding portrait of a marriage. With all the elements of Greek Tragedy, Mathilde escapes her dreadful childhood when she marries Lotto, who believes his destiny is to fill the Great American Artist archetype. In “Fates” we are seduced by Mathilde’s and Lotto’s inspiring union, but the “two sides of every story” trope is never truer than in a marriage. “Furies” reveals Mathilde’s tempestuous rage boiling beneath the surface." - https://www.nationalbook.org/books/fates-and-furies/

The para above says it well so I will not write a separate review.

14/03/23 

Finished the Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

- The book is about a young boy who survives a bomb attack at the MOMA in New York. He leaves the Museum with a valuable painting and the gold ring given to him by a dying victim (some lovely descriptions there). For some reason he does not tell anyone about the painting, and while that was understandable, what was inexplicable was the sudden anxiety about it in the middle of the book. The book became really gripping while describing his life with his abusive father and his (the father's) girlfriend but lost me somewhere after that. I couldn't fathom why he started cheating and duping people when his life was taking a turn for the better, with a loving guardian and a possible girlfriend. I didn't stay with the book long enough to find out what happened at the end, but something surely went awry with the plot.

Glad it was a library book and not something I purchased.

Why we kneel how we rise

 Why we kneel how we rise - Michael Holding - written with so much grace and dignity, even when writing about how human beings can really be horrible to one another. Has some very illuminating interviews with other celebrities and their experience of racism.

Nothing was the same

 Nothing was the same - a memoir by Kay Redfield Jamison - a very moving memoir of how marriage to an absolutely wonderful man helped the author battle and overcome her manic depression. A beautiful description of grief and how one learns to live with it. Definitely a book to keep going back to. More than anything, it is an amazing love story

Accabadora

 Accabadora by Michela Miguela - found this on Ellena Ferrante's selection of favourite books by women - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/21/elena-ferrante-names-her-40-favourite-books-by-female-authors?utm_source=pocket_mylist  - its a lovely story of the love between an elderly caretaker for the dying and a young girl who is left in her care. The young girl grows up learning to understand and accept choices made by Bonaria.

Travelling with pomegranates Sue Monk Kidd

Ann Kidd Taylor and Sue Monk Kidd 

Travelling with pomegranates is very readable, with alternate chapters written by the mother and the daughter. very interesting to see the 2 very different perspectives to the same event/s. They travel through Greece, Italy and Spain during an important phase in their lives, and the descriptions of the places they visit are very vivid.

An interesting takeaway is that the apple in the Garden of Eden could have actually been a pomegranate, as that was a fruit available even in those times in the Middle East, where the birth of Christ and Christianity is said to have occurred. . It is also considered a fertility symbol 

Book reviews by me, for me

 As I go through my list of books based on recommendations from friends all over, I have decided to write myself a short review of books I finish. Whether it is because of age, or because I am reading too fast, I am not able to recall whether I did or did not like a book when someone asks for my opinion. And thankfully, my own opinion is never exactly like any one else's, so this ..... 

Books to be read

Books

Tagore:

Novels - Gora, Jogajog (translated by Supriya Choudhury OUP)
Short stories - Dui Bon And Malancha (translated by Sukhendu Roy)

Sue Stuart-Smith - Well Gardened mind 

Malina by Ingmar Bachmann 

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff 

Michael Morpurgo - author

Flamingo boy
waiting for anya
in the mouth of the wolf
warhorse

Talks and dialogues - J Krishnamurthy 

Normal people

Early Indians 

Latitudes of longing 

Case of the exploding mangoes 

Em and the big hoom 

Roopa Prabhu

Lonely Monarch - Sunil Gangopadhyay 

Mother wit - Urmila Pawar

Rouayda

Alaa al Aswany - Yacoubian Building 

Marguerite - yourcenar

Asha reco - 

Amulya Malladi : mango season

A separation - Katie kitamura  xx

Britt Bennett - The mothers xx

In the country- Mia alvar xx

Atlas of unknowns- Tania james.xx

Map of home- Randa jarrar. xx

Nawal  al Saadawi.

Rafael campo. Poet.

Taiye Selasi- Ghana must go.

A house of my own- Sandra cisneros. xx

Afzal  friese- 9968255979.

Tender- Belinda Mckeon.

Ross Gay- catalogue of unabashed gratitude.

The heart is a muscle the size of a fist- Sunil Yapa

The heavens we chase - lavanya shanbhogue arvind

The wedding photographer- Sakshama  Puri Dhariwal

The circuses that sweep through the landscape- Tejaswini

Neon noon- Tanuj Solanki

Family planning- Karan Mahajan

The association of small bombs- Karan Mahajan

the two asian Americas by Erika lee.

The other side of silence- Urvashi Butalia

Fathers and Sons- Ivan Turgenev

The conversations- Michael Ondaatje ( with Walter Murch)

Angry housewives eating Bon bons -Lorna Landvik

Half  Gods by Akil  Kumarasamy

That time I loved you- Stories by Carrianne  Leung

The other Americans by Laila  Lalami.

Walking on the ceiling by Aysegul  Savas

 Together  Tea by Marjan  Kamali

till here- Lara Vapnyar xx

The Czar of love and Techno- Anthony Marra xx

The Fortunes

Grief is the thing with feathers - max post xx

Here comes the sun.by Nicole Dennis- Benn.

The liberation of Sita- Volga.

Mohsin Hamid - exit west x

Meg Wolitzer - interestings, the Wife

Anne Tyler - clock dance xx

How to love a Jamaican 

How to write an autobiographical novel - Alexander Chi

Index card - Harold Pollackp

Beautiful boy  -  David cheff

Together tea - Marjaan kamaali 

How not to die - Michael Gregor 

Learning to love - Miranda July
A ghost in the throat - Doireann Ni Ghriofa
Light years - James Salter


Yuganta - iravati Karve
Sam Harris - podcast

Wind sand and stars - Antoine de Saint exupéry
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard
Katy no pocket
Isak Denisen's out of Africa

What you heard is true - pico Iyer recommended

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/books/carlo-rovelli-physicist-book.html

Durgabai Deshmukh who fought for a woman’s right to education
Tarabai Shinde, the author of Stree Purush Tulana (A Comparison Between Women And Men), the first feminist text

Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg

I read Lean In : Women, Work and the Will to Read recently. I had been hearing about it since it was written in 2013, but somehow thought this would be a very American-women related narrative. I am now wishing I had read it earlier. The traps women fall into, consciously because of external factors, and unconsciously because of the myths that we tell ourselves are facts are clearly expressed by Sherly Sandberg. Really makes for some interesting discussions. Looking forward to some discussion here in this post.

Why this blog..

This blog is being started so that we can share information about books we are reading that we think will appeal to the others in this group. We can expand the list of users of this blog depending on how active this becomes. I know all of us are reading very similar books, or at least want to be reading similar books so let's make this work.


I think the best way would be to just create a fresh post for each book, with the title of the book as the heading - this would make it easy to search for it. Also, let's add our comments in the same post.


Our inspiration:
Writer Ann Morgan set herself a challenge – to read a book from every country in the world in one year. While we do not aim to copy her and set a challenge for ourselves, she has inspired our group of voracious readers to share information about books we have loved with each other.

This is the link to Ann Morgan's list: 

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130715-reading-the-world-in-365-days?ocid=ww.social.link.email