Starting from my holidays these are he books I've been reading:
Dec
1. Roman Stories by Jumpa Lahiri. - classy collection of short stories set in Italy. moving slices of life
2. Inspector Singh in India Shamini Flint - funny, also sobering to read about Sikh targeting in India
3. Unsolicited advice for murderers Jesse Ho - too funny for words one of my favourite books ever
4. Frangipani murders Ovidia Yu- okay bit slow
Jan
5. My Mother Pattu Saras Manikam - searing slices of life. they stay in your mind. Well crafted . master at work. Makes me glad to be Indian in Singapore not Malaysia!
6. Lucy by the sea . started awhile back but plan to finish it now. slow but familiar. and the jolt of joy at seeing familiar figures like olive kitteride appear suddenly. the power of this book is, it moves so slowly and suddenly an idea will jump up ferocious and horrifying and you can't unsee it ever
7. Liar Liar by Mitch Albom. Young adults book from pov of truth. about wwii. Reading it to vet for suitability for aishu actually. it's ok. not sure she would be ok with it. it's pretty mind blowing. right next to book thief.
8. Valmiki's women. interesting so far. I am bowled over. to see the stories from the ladies' perspectives, Amanda Neelakantan has woven stories from the little available to create a beautiful tapestry of behind the scenes of fanous character like Manthara and Tataka and Soorpanaga whose name is Meenakshi!
.Reading is a little like reading Bertha Mason's story in Wide Sargasso Sea. I had to put the book down several times just to take it all in. truth or not is not the point. the what if, is the point here, in these stories that make us question good and evil as we have always thought of, in our myths and stories .
9. Brian Bilston's Days Like These. A poem a day for 365 days so this will go on for the rest of the year! loving it so far, funny ones aplenty and one really sweet one too.
By 26 Feb:
10. The siege by Helen.
11. the shell collectors Antony doerrr
12. African Short Stories
13. our town
14. island of sea women
How do i describe ny February reads? they have been illuminating and devastating
10. the siege. Such a book. I can't put it down. I want to cry. I wonder how I'd be in a situation so stark so desperate. and it's not a past evil it's a present evil. blocades. destroy the land the food stocks and wait for people to die.
11. The Shell Collector by Antony Doerr
lyrical collection of short stories, each not so short, each drawing you in to read till the end without drawing breath, about the lives of everyday people in sometimes everyday situations and sometimes not.
12. The island of sea women- marvellous lyrical book. learnt so much. about hayeno. about Korea in the war, after the war. I feel ashamed I didn't know all this about Korean history other than in passing . am so glad Korea is dominating the world imagination now thru k pop and k drama. if we just let people be they can be so much. the war. shudder. and at the heart of it all.. the friendship between two women... begs the question is there anything unforgivable between friends?
March reads
13. Our Town by Thorton Wilder. This is play I'm re -reading , and as we all know, re reading is a different joy onto its own. I feel I better understand and appreciate the play now than i did then. makes me feel like what will I see if I went back to a day to take a peek, knowing I'd never live again, and saw how we lived. wouldn't we too cry that we lived like that, not seeing one another properly, just rushing thru the motions with good love and intentions, but rushing nevertheless. moving. I want to see a production of it. the best part of this play is its everydayness of it. the great turn of events is the not so great fact that people die everyday. really hits home that every day we live we inch one day closer to the end. begs the question so how will we live that day. Will we see one another properly and cherish the time we have?
14. the trojan war by pat barker . continuation of the silence of the girls. quite wonderful and terrifying. to enter the Greek world of war from the women's pov. see everything again. priam begging for his son's body. the bond between achilles and patrocles. the tearing grief at his death that creates a monster. how many such monsters are we creating now? this story continues and its more about the present than the past. not sure I can read it. too close to heart.
1. Pat Barker's Trojan Woman. This book continues from Silence of the Girls and gives us an insider view if the Trojan war from the ladies' perspective. It's powerful, I almost don't want to read any other versions haha. I enjoyed Silence of the Women more, perhaps because it was my first introduction to this world and these women, and also perhaps because that had more action, whereas this is after the war is won, and they are just waiting.... Great book and I looked forward to reading part 3, about their journey home
March ... has been about short stories for me this time. a genre I don't usually turn to but am finding surprisingly fun.
15. five love languages of teens- didnt finish
16. Katherine Mansfield short stories. Ms Brill, Garden Party, The Bay.. glimpses into interiority of lives . I liked reading about her a lot too, her move from New Zealand to England, her friendships with Virgina Woolf and DH Lawrence. She sounds like quite a character!
Reading Kathleen Mansfield’s short stories, written near the end of her short life, makes one feel breathless, truly. There’s a sense of rush and urgency in her writing, to capture the little things, passing feelings, before it’s all gone. Could be me reading into her stories knowing these facts about her, but even if I didn’t, I’d say there was a breathless quality about her writing that I enjoy.
She writes about people at the start of things – a young man proposing to the first and only girl he has loved, a young lady at her first ball, and all the accompanying rise and fall of feelings – these stories are permeated with the knowledge that first times can never last. Her short stories capture the fleeting moment, like Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn captures the notion of the lovers reaching out but never touching, in an urn, in a poem, and here, in her stories. They are recognizable feelings.
Then the story of two sisters kept under the watchful rule of the strict father, quite uncertain how to behave or be, now that he is gone. Her writing makes us question who we are when the things we hold on to, or the things we allow to define us, are gone, especially when we may not have had much choice in “allowing” these things to define us in the first place, like a strict father. It’s rather brutal the way, in another story, Ms Brill suddenly realizes how she is perceived by others. Recognising our sheer insignificance, just when we thought ourselves special, it’s like a rug being pulled out from beneath us – that feeling, am sure we must have all felt it at some time, where we thought we mattered only to find out we didn’t. She captures the essence of these things, these fleeting passing emotions, in this collection of short stories.
My fav story at the moment is the singing lesson.
17. Ken Liu's sci fi short stories. some too close to home, like where the ai system controls all aspects of our lives and we willingly give up ourselves to ai to do so.
18. individual short stories
a. How to talk to Girls at a party. so funny and surreal. boys think talking to girls is like talking to aliens and they actually talk to aliens. and one of them tries to create a whole new world of aliens thru one kid.
b. The ultimate safari by nadine gordimer
c. Ms Brill by Katherine Mansfield.
April reads l
April has given me a dose of unexpected reads... in the field of children's literature! I read books now that I should have ages and ages ago. but better now than never ya!
19. James and the giant peach by Roald Dahl. can't believe I've never read this. mighty fun. a rhino ate up the kids parents! they suffered only 35 sec while the kid suffered much longer, orphaned. got to love a beginning like this! and the rest of the story just rolls and rolls, literally. Loved this
20. Iggy's house by Judy Blume. Man oh man blume is indeed a class act. Complex theme- racism, but for grade school kids. she keeps the language simple but not the issues. It's like a prelude to A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. You can almost see Herbie grow up into the guy in the play. I literally could not put it down, picked it up as a break and finished it less than an hour. highly recommend if you haven't read it yet.
21. Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. Bought it 2 years ago I think and finally picked it up one day this month and got thru half the book in one go. So close to home. Peppered with absolutely arresting pieces of writing throughout. Set in the future where we have well and truly burnt up our planet and are on a quest for new spaces to live in, with human like robots making better humans and fellow humans, where ladies arrest aging at 30 and men at 40, and now some everyone is young and fit, nothing excites anyone anymore. Scary, possible, must read.
May read
22. Alexa what is there to know about love. so fun to read this again. found new poems to love from this collection
23. the art of holding space
24. what you're looking for is in the library
25. Enigma game. Read this coz I watched this movie about Turing. Read how he cracked the enigma game. then remembered i had this book from ages ago. and I'm in! Follows story of Jamie Beaufort, whom we first met in another spy book by Elizabeth wein. and a punky heroin called Louisa a bit like maddie from that book. I like her recognisable spunky characters. and her stories about war and flying planes. but.. my interest wants halfway. the switch in perspectives that worked so well in code name verity is overdone here making it hard to follow. and precisely because I watched the imitation game and saw the guys there work so hard to crack the code I fins it harder to believe this world where three amateurs crack the code. I may or may not finish it
26. read a tamil story for pleasure gasp ! a short story by Kalki. an atmospheric story about an unnamed stranger who ( I think) quietly and unobtrusively saves the lives of a train full of people.
27. One part woman by Perumal Murugan. just love the story. didn't expect to. its like reading a village story we see in movies but better on the page. And that all consuming desire and pressure to have a child... oh! what it leads to, my gosh. very powerful story. now I want to read all his works. This is the translated version I read. I may pick up the Tamil version soon!
27. started the story of fiction
June book end
28..now reading about shells. love it. but waiting to finish it.
29. where the crawdads sing. loved it.
30. 4. Short story galore. I read so many fun, quirky, thought provoking indvidual short stories this month, including The Appendix by Yu Hua, Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies by Rushdie, Cell One by Adichie, Sci fi stories such as "Standard Lonliness Package" by Charles Yu, The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst and May by Ali Smith. It was quite a ride!
July
31. aalavan. I think. one of the part 2 to one part woman. love it. but is work to to read it. must have undivided time to do so. perhaps will read over weekends when waiting for kids at classes. enjoying this very much.
32. Tiger moth journal issue 12. and then all the back issues. why am I not reading these ! meant for me and my nature loving soul.
33. started the 100 years of solitude book. magic realism.
34. Reading the keeper to aishu. what a book. just love it. re read this classic. about forests and football, about father son relationships, ... I have read this so many times and each time I can't put it down. Can be read anytime but most recommended just before during or after world cup season! but that's two years away so suggest a read now and then a re read then!
35. lieutenant kurosawa's errand boy.
36. the living world by David Attenborough
think July reads will be
1. keeper
2 living world
3. aalavan
also reading
4. on art
5. ban this book
6. flowers for algernon
Ban this book by Alan Gratz. wow this is a must read haha. it's a kids book but has a brilliant take on censorship. Best part my youngest recommended it to me! and she got it in her class library! am so happy
Reflections on July reading
This was an interesting month for me, where I read more non-fiction that fiction for once. I found myself absolutely mesmerized by reads which include:
Art by Simon Schama, on the art works of Michael Carvaggio. In this book, Schama made art jump right out of the page and I found myself compulsively searching out the paintings he mentions in his writing. What I enjoyed about it was firstly the size – it’s a handy book advertised as part of the series ‘Great Minds. Big Ideas. Little Books” – absolutely – I want to read many more in this series. Then it has a great introductory essay about “What is Art For” with some gems like “The power of art is the power of unsetting surprise and “its mission, beyond the delivery of beauty, is the disruption of the banal” – hey this applies to Literature too! And the book immersed me in the works and life of a painter so easily, I just slipped out of my world into 16th century Italy every time I opened a page, and came back to mine a little changed.
The Living World by the one and only magnificent David Attenborough. Reading this book is therapy, truly. He makes the whole natural world of past and present flutter and flit past us in vivid colours just through his words, and you can hear his mesmerizing voice as you read it. I enjoyed this even more than watching his shows coz I can slow down, savour, re-read and be more immersed. Plus it has magnificent photographs within. All you can say as you read the book is “Wow”. We are incredibly blessed to be born in this amazing world, and we have to do what we can to protect it.
Ban this book, by Alan Grats. I enjoyed this so much. A children’s book with a brilliant take on censorship. And the best part, my youngest recommended it to me, she got it from her class library! Isn’t it wonderful, how one book in a class library can spread so far!
Aug
my aug to sep to Oct reads have been challenging for various reasons. so in three months now I only three books to talk about.
the reason they were challenging was eye opening for me in some ways.
okay one was a Tamil book. I read half way but haven't finished. I have the English translations tempting me on my shelf but I want to try to finish at least one tamil book.
the other I had borrowed and was trying to keep pristine. ha. meant I could only read it once in awhile and I discovered I get most of my reading down while eating.
another reason for my slower reading was well, exams. kids exams and I couldn't read . sigh thought that ended when I was a student
anywhere here is what I have for aug to Oct reads
1. 14 stories
2. like
3. days like these. okay this is by far my favourite. I've been reading this since January this year, there's a poem a day for every day of the year with a bit of history thrown in. I love it. gave it as gifts to some friends and have been reading this to my daughter almost all year. joy and laughter and some useful general knowledge is what this booms gives us. but most of us is the reassurance that we can just have fun with words.
35. Still reading aalavan. gonna give up I think. sigh.
37. 14 stories what a experiment. 14 writers 14 stories all interwoven and we wouldn't know who wrote what
Sep - Oct
38. like by Ali Smith. strange drawing in of mum daughter grandmother. new family norms. lyrical hypnotic read with some confusing loose ends never tied up, and maybe that is the point? enjoyed it quite a bit. it is very aware of it being fiction, so we have narratives that build up excitement and then unravel in a parallel narrative, making you wonder if this too will crumble. can't believe this is her first work. I have to read more of her work now. I've only read her essays before this, in intimation.
AUG TO NOV
1. Like by Ali Smith. Lyrical compelling writing draws you and pounds you with qn.
2. 14 days - collaborative writing experiment, fun, and superb twist. One story that stood out to me was a river and a prehistoric fish in it
3. What you're looking for is in the library- such fun, slice of life genre
4. Bird poetry - Swallows a book that called my name in the library
5. Watership down, again. My escape my leadership guide
6. Story of a goat by murugan perumal. So touching and affecting
7. Trial by silence by perumal murugan
DEC
1. To kill a mockingbird, again
2. Go set a watchman. I caved and started this after finishing tkam. So tempting to know of scout as a young adult. First bummer though was reading ever so casually that Jem died! A part of me died too. My nick name is inspired by jem! Jem finch. For me Jem Stones. Not sure if i should read on
2. Hitchhikers guide to the universe
3. A guidebook about Strasbourg Cathedral
4. Days Like these by Brian Bilston. Been reading this all year. 365 poems for 365 days in the year. This was one of our favourite night time reading for me and my eldest.
39. 9 yard sarees?
40.
Sep
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