Mundane Musings

The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni My rating: 4 of 5 stars I had started reading Chitra Banerjee's The Forest of Enchantments with a casual detachment thinking this was a reproduction of Valmiki's Ramayan. Any self respecting Indian has in some time or the other gotten introduced to the story of the valiant and perfect prince Lord Ram and his suave, strong, utterly wronged wife Sita. I didn't expect this book to be different. I empathized strongly with Sita who had to keep proving herself to her husband and his praja (citizens), in spite of wrongs done to her . And though Valmiki's Ramayan is a colossus that deals with a lot of other stories including Ram's unfair banishment from Ayodhya, Sita's story demands empathy and just retribution. So Chitra's retelling of the classic is important and relevant. Chitra Divakaruni's Forest of Enchantment focuses on Sita's side of the story - from the time she marries Ram, taking her ...

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak My rating: 3 of 5 stars Spoilers ahead... Since The Book Thief was one of the most stirring books I have ever read, I was more than eager to lay my hands on Markus Zusak's recent book - Bridge of Clay. This book is 579 pages long, which could have been a good thing if the story was worth something. Unfortunately it is not. We don't get invested in the lives of the characters and feel like bystanders of the Surrounds - the now derelict race course which witnesses the lives of the Dunbar family. The story is told by Mathew Dunbar, a school drop out, the eldest of the five Dunbar brothers living in Australia. I don't know if it is intentional then, that it is written in bursts of prose and regular speech. Most of the time it's only his words that tell us to feel something, like - see, my brother is hurting and he is coping the way he can; see, my mother was a woman with some spunk; see, my father felt deeply for my mother. There are...

We are well into 2019 I know, but if I gave this post a miss, I wouldn't feel like 2018 was dusted and left behind. I have been distinctly absent from writing about books in this blog. The absence is not because of not reading books, but happily because of the opposite. I have been reading voraciously the past year. So much so that I was forced to change my Goodreads Book Challenge number from 24 to 27 books. I have been reading so much that I want to slow down and re-read some books. In the heady rush to complete the book in hand and start on the second one, my habit of re-reading favourites is slowly fading. But some of the books that I have listed here have been relished and read with great fervor. This year I laid my hands on an eclectic variety of books. Some of the stand outs have been written under the following headings: Unique and Memorable A Musicophile's Delight Heartwarming Comics Unique and Memorable Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders  -  Thi...

This book came recommended on Senior Reading Raccoons, a group I follow on FB. I finished it yesterday and I am still wrapped in the warmth of the book, pretty much like how the main character, Rinko had felt by the aromas of her cooking. From the moment I had come across a mention of Rinko giving madeleines to her landlord to reduce the rent of her love nest, I was sold. When have I last read a book which wasn't a cookbook that featured a madeleine? Never.   And then on the 17th page I came across this passage - At first, the words my grandmother used to describe differing amounts of seasoning such as tekitou and anbai were like another language to me. But I gradually came to understand what they meant. They were soft terms with rounded edges that painted a vague picture of the appropriate amount of flavour, and only those words could describe the resultant state of perfection .  I have often felt this way too when I have wanted to express flavours in our...

Nutshell by Ian McEwan My rating: 4 of 5 stars Nutshell - Ian McEwan What a marvellous conceit this book is. It tells the story of a woman having an affair with her brother in law,and of the two plotting something sinister. Only, the story is told by the most unexpected narrator - the foetus of the unfaithful woman. And far from being gibberish the language and tone of the narrative sways to the other end of the scale - it is eloquent, astute, perceptive and exquisite. How can the author get away with this you wonder? Right from the first part of book.. ."So here I am, upside down in a woman. Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting and wondering who I'm in, what I'm in for" we understand that this is no ordinary narrator. He is sharp and he peppers his monologues with exceptional opinions about things in life which he has experienced second hand through his mother's womb. "I'm hearing pillow talk of deadly intent and I'm terrified by...

2017 is underway and I am in a jolly land of books. I can sincerely say that books make me feel the way I do when S and Ana kutti are around – make my heart beat faster, in case you were wondering. I love the whole idea of meticulously reading book reviews and coming up with a list of books that I’d like to read or own, and then the wait to hold them in my hands and if it is a new book then to smell the pages and admire the covers and the fonts, and then to actually sit and read them. The last part has become pretty challenging with Ana kutti zooming around seeking attention. But my nights are for my books...at least that minuscule time frame I have between checking social media and almost dropping off to sleep. When you have an active, naughty 20 month old, you’ll be surprised how innovative you get to find ways to do things you like. That’s another post anyway. 2016 was a good year considering I surprised myself by reading quite a few books and enjoying many. In orde...

Reading is something that I still make the time for. The other vices would be watching movies, listening to music and writing something. All three have been rather hit after Ana babush’s arrival. While I was pregnant with her, I had difficulty reading even a mild thriller. I don’t know…it had something to do with the bile rising up, threatening to bring with it my breakfast or lunch and I also had an overwhelming desire to hold on tight to the little one growing in my womb. So I got into mild reading – Chicken Soup for the soul for new moms (a gift from a group of well-meaning friends), Mills and Boon, random books and articles on pregnancy and child birth, Susan Elizabeth’s book/s which I can read and re-read a million times. I tried and failed to read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and also Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but I hope to pick up both in the near future. Anyway, after a long time as I browsed in Madras Gymkhana’s Library, I happened on Gillian Flynn’s Dark Pla...

Yes, this blog post has been loooong in coming. Even I cringe when I see the date of my last blog entry. Where did the time go? Now let me see, there was Dussehra in between (and I did not do anything at all except catching up on some excellent Tamil movies on TV), then there was this nice, neat trip to Kolli Hills that a few friends and us managed to pack in to the long weekend and lots of reading…ahem…apart from this I know there hasn’t been much to not keep up with my blog entries. But the irony is that while I have been meaning to post on the books that I’ve been reading in the past month, it is also the reason why I haven’t been able to finish the blog. Books are very distracting. After being served a pretty dismal fare at the box office last month, with the exception of Lunch Box and perhaps Shudh Desi Romance , I found myself falling back on to the wonderful, trustworthy world of books. I was lucky to get some good books from my local library in September and F’s birthday...

Oh boy, the joy of reading a good book! Felt that a couple of weeks back and still feel the glorious warmth filling me up like a good movie could or even good sex! The book in question is Khaled Hosseini’s – The Kite Runner. I don’t read tomes which are too serious or which ponder over the philosophy of life and such. And I stay away especially from books which proclaim self improvement tips or the how-to –types. My kind of reading veers alarmingly from pithy strong romance to some good serious fiction. I am quite partial to reviews written by my favorite critics, leaving the job of keeping abreast with the myriad books being published per month and deciding which ones are a good read, to them. So it was, that I sat down with the Kite Runner one lazy afternoon and was tugged and pulled to great heights like a kite, by the skilful writer. That it was his first book and that he could write it with such simplicity and understanding amazed me. The characters in the novel are so real that...