In Aug 2015, I read Defending Jacob. I thought I have lost interest in fiction - I no longer get the pleasure from being transported to a different world. Most of the time I say - this can never happen. However I did read this book entirely because it was not the romantic kind of fiction, it was scary and somewhat real to the 'mother' in me. The ending is abrupt and was disappointing to me. When Jacob was acquitted, I think the situation around it was too dramatic. Overall I have neutral feeling towards the book. I think I will not remember it for too long.
Sep 2015:
What Alice forgot - is this a trend? All fictions have a consistent story for the first 90% of the book and then in less than 10% the story turns dramatically. In this book is was in the epilogue. The 600+ pages were too many for a fairly average story about how love transforms into mundane life after a few years of marriage. If we could get memories back that remind us of how we felt during the first few years of love/marriage may be things would look different!!! Time for a non-fiction
The Nightingale - I liked this book. At some point reading it brought tears to my eyes. Many of us have never experienced a war and this book reminded me of how lucky we are. However I also pondered are people capable of such sacrifices, enduring such pain? Agreed this is a work on fiction but I am sure stories like this are real as well. I wonder if the 'stress' we talk about is even real? With good food and safe environments we all should be doing very well. Makes me think about complex human mind - capable of accomplishing the unimaginable and also creating the unimaginable. All in all a very good read. This is great fiction - story of French people during the WW2.
Dec 2015:
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. I always thought that many movies in the drama genre in the west have some relation to the second world war. The long war fought in the last century has captured the imagination of human beings - for its cruelty, hatred and the unimaginable atrocities that people endured. Similarly in India apart from the Independence struggle the partition atrocities have captured the imagination of the people. Many movies centered on that topic. People born many decades after India won its independence shudder at what happened during that time. I liked this book a lot for bringing to life many events that led up to India's independence. The best part of the book is it is unbiased (neither the English nor the Indians are the villains, though as an Indian it is hard for me to like Churchill). Most of the characters have their positives and negatives. I have read many books about Indian independence but this one opened by eyes to Nehruvian versus Gandhian politics. The role that Mountbatten played. Once again, opened my eyes to how hastily partition was handled. Also that like people countries go through up a down. India was once the ideal land while Britain suffered in poverty and then the times changed and it was the opposite. Makes me proud that with all the problems India was one country that started by giving equal rights to women constitutionally. Also the accession of states - wow what an eye opener. 500+ kings had the choice to go with India/Pakistan or go independent? I wonder what the map could have been? All in all a good book to read.
Jan 2016:
The Choice: This is my second book from Nicholas Sparks. I read The Longest Ride before. I liked that book a lot. It was a passionate love story and the characters came to life for me. I think I may have liked it also because I had not read a romance for a long time. With 'The Choice', I noticed something about Nicholas' writing. I would pick a book from him only if I am in the mood for romance. This book is also a hunky-dory love story. Kind of too good to be true, idealistic romance with a happy ending. The book reminded me of the pattern from The Longest Ride. The book is not bad but you need to be in the mood for unrealistic romance to enjoy it. I think I am out of this genre for now.
Feb 2016:
The started reading a book when we were well into February but I was lucky to find a book that was interesting. And so I did finish a book in Feb 2016 - Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt. I found it hard to believe that there lived a person who faced so many hard ships in childhood and lived on to write a book about it. It is a terrific experience and something that is so special about the human spirit. We are capable of a lot and we are resilient and can overcome the most negative circumstances. I have heard a lot of stories about poverty from close relatives who have memories from before India became independent. The tales are similar or extreme poverty and hunger and uncertainty. This makes me think are people like me living a 'real' life. We have never seen anywhere close to this in our entire lives but if anyone asked us - do you have any problems? We would probably say yes. I guess one of the things about human mind is it likes to solve problems. If there are real ones then it finds ways out of it. If there are no real ones we create new ones and solve them. All in all a great book about life during great depression, living in Ireland, living with Catholic faith, drunk father and confusion about faith. I would recommend this book.
Mar 2016:
I read 'Cutting for Stone' from Abraham Verghese. An author recommended by my sister. The book's style reminds me of some other writers from India. Too much detail about a situation that makes it painful to read. I have finally begun to skim. Overall a readable book.
Why do I like books - books make me live in the 'real' world. Sometimes I wonder have I really lived? So many things that authors mention as part of regular life, are things I have always known as 'not done'. I have scrutinized my thoughts and actions so much and found that the realm of acceptable thoughts and living is so limited. And then I read the books and see lives where so many actions happen and so much is hidden. What is a real life like? I think my main attraction for books is to realize what is possible even though I may never come close to doing any of that in life.
Also this book brings back my yearning to be an expert in something. I regret not pursuing to be an expert in any thing, instead I just chose to do a job. This book creates that craving for being deep and having an expert opinion, something I always believed to be a fulfilling pursuit in life.
The second book I read this month is 'The Life we Bury' by Allen Eskens. This is a short book and is a best seller. But I love trillers and because I have watched so many of them I found nothing exciting about the plot. I suspected the step brother from the beginning. In any case, a book I will not remember for long. The more worthy parts are about the main character, I am just grateful to be born in a family that made lots of efforts to make sure my future life is good.
I read a third book this month - Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges. The title is self explanatory.
Apr 2016:
'Take Me With You' a book written by Carlos Frias. It is about Cuban families that are separated. Frankly I could not 'feel' with the book. The book did not talk to me !!!! Way too emotional for my tastes.
All opinions on this blog are of the writer only and do not reflect on the opinion of the company she works for
June 2016:
'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi. This book is from an extremely successful neurosurgeon who died right after he completed his residency. The circumstances around writing the book makes it an okay read, this is a very small book too. But my most important take away from this book is 'no one is special' for nature/GOD. We are all here for a short term and we should just focus on making every moment special.
Sep 2016:
After a long hiatus - I got back to reading and read the non fiction book called 'Mindset: The new psychology of success" by Carol Dweck. The book essentially talks about the importance of how our mindsets affect our lives. It proves that learning to fail is an very important step to succeed. Also warns us against our tendencies to praise inherent talents in our children. Instead we should praise them for their efforts and the strategies they use to. The idea being that once kids believe that they are successful due to the talents they were born with - it is a dead end - meaning that they have it or they do not. Eventually the kids develop a tendency to try to prove that they are good by never attempting things that have a remote chance of failure - because they do not want to face the fact that they are not talented as there is nothing to be done after that. We all understand that by doing that we will never achieve our potential.
Another interesting input I got from this book is regarding the importance of working at relationships. When we have been in a relationship with a person for a long time we sometimes think how did we end up here? Did I change or he/she changed? How is it is we disagree so much? The fact is that we all change and we change differently. But for me the most important message is to understand that relationships need to be worked at. If you are going to look for made for each other or not then being in stable relationships will be hard.
I have been reading about behavior/mindset/attitude for sometime now. I also attend many of these workshops and watch videos. Many have been extremely useful and have helped me in immense ways. The issue with these books is that mind/personality is very complex, focussing on one aspect makes it very hard to understand and adopt. It is hard to judge if I have fixed mindset or not, am I optimistic and pessimistic. I think I display variation depending on the situation and so the books confuse me sometimes. I think the way to get over this is by reading vastly and then you get some of your own ideas and try to work through them.
