Far From the Madding Crowd

by  Thomas Hardy

Genre: Classics

Date Published: 1874

Synopsis:

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the whole community. The first of his works set in the fictional county of Wessex, Hardy’s novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and landscapes, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships.

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My View: I am doing #TheGreatThomasHardyReadalong2022 along with @annathebooksiread and @pezzasclassicbooks on IG. Here’s my second read after A pair of blue eyes last month.

Hardy has a knack of keeping you hooked and although sometimes I am tempted to skim the description paragraphs, his plots keep you on your toes. It’s almost like if you blinked, someone could die, or you know, a major plot twist might happen. There’s no giving warning with him. Here you were thinking, ah finally, there seems to be some stability, and then boom. I love how Hardy managed to make a romance feel like a thriller and it was. Oh, I really did enjoy reading this book.

Before you think the plot is all there is, oh no, not at all. Hardy got his charcters etched to a tee. A strong female character as the one whom the story line revolves around and I am half way there already, patting the author on the back.

Unabashed, not to be bullied and the one who stands up for herself. You got me swooning right there. I am going to gloss over a few not so good decisions coming up. “Oh, Bathsheba, what in the world were you thinking?” But when you have been driven to the brink of emotion, you know you got a winner in your hands.

This book takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions and reminds me of Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Castorbridge’ which I loved so much, precisely because of all the drama. It’s just life on a farm and a couple of suitors, you say, who’s creating all this drama? Well, humans, as usual. Who else?

Here’s how it’s with Hardy, “A-turn-at-every-corner plot, beautifully etched characters so that you can know them intimately, and absolutely emotionally inhibited personalities of the characters, some side characters to produce humor”, and tada, you got a winner in your hands.

Have you read the book? What did you think of it?

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

About the Author

Thomas Hardy, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy’s poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy’s serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Genre: Non-Fiction

Date Published: December 30, 2003

Source: Library

Goodreads Synopsis: Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

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My View: As I sit here gathering my thoughts about the sublime essence of this book, I don’t feel like letting go. Not yet. The magic, the hold that it had on me was unparalleled in its intensity. Wanting to rush back to its pages every day was the kind of pleasure rarely found in the mundane existence these days.

The Iran, I had read about and forgotten, the pages of Persepolis, washed clean from my memory, once again, rose to a reality that goes on in one part of the world. Nafisi’s words, making you stop and ponder on your life, often comparing it with that of women in Iran. But she stops you from doing just that. “Somehow there was little consolation in the fact that millions of people were unhappier than we were. Why should other people’s misery make us happier or more content?”

The constant push and pull of wanting to leave off yet staying on for your identity and hope that things will change. This and countless other scenarios that lead one to sink into the mire of relentless thoughts, making you sit up and take notice, reflect, and ponder. Reading Lolita in Tehran is the epitome of everything that was once reticent, now opening up to words and feelings that lie deep at the heart of the life there.

The book constantly shocks you, jolting you awake of your indifference and ignorance. It makes you feel. It makes you want to do something about everything that is wrong and unfair in the world. And yet, you sit, bound by an invisible rope, at a loss of words and actions. There’s this intense desire to close one’s eyes to the reality happening in front of your eyes. The point when you want to stop reading for the fear of what you might encounter but the need to know doesn’t let you stop.

And you read on, getting entangled in the life of Nafisi and ‘her girls’, afraid of their fate and destiny, wanting strongly to etch their future with hope and delight. But being unable to hold any impact on their lives, standing still as a bystander as life parts them away from their innocence bringing along dark reality into their worlds. You cringe from the truth, wanting to hear the fictional lies than to reconcile with the truth.

There’s this constant desire to touch her ‘magician’ intimately, to coax out of him, his life story, and tend to his wounds. For in his words and actions, emerges a fragile self hidden beneath the wisdom of the ages and the nonchalance that marks his actions.

Nafisi and her words lead you to a world far away from your own and she leaves you there, long after you have finished reading the book. And there you are, trapped in the Islamic revolution, covered with a chador and veil, bereft of your beloved books, needing to have a chaperone for your visit to the pastry shop with a fear of being arrested lest a strand of hair or last bit of makeup shows through. You live that life, day after day, year after year, until one day everything breaks loose and you give up. If not for Nafisi, I would never have known her world this intimately, seeing it from such close quarters.

Highly recommended for an insight into Iran and the times it has been through.

Have you read the book? What did you think of it?

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

 

 

Author Bio:

Azar Nafisi, Ph.D. (Persian: آذر نفیسی) (born December 1955) is an Iranian professor and writer who currently resides in the United States.

Nafisi’s bestselling book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books has gained a great deal of public attention and been translated into 32 languages.

 

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Genre: Fiction

Date Published: September 12, 2006

Source: Owned Copy

Goodreads Synopsis: All children mythologize their birth…So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter’s collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.

The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself — all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter’s story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida’s storytelling but remains suspicious of the author’s sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.

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My View: I read this book for the first time in 2011 and fell in love with it. It was marked as one of my all-time favorites and awarded 5 stars. And then I remember picking it up in a book fair because favorites need to be bought and re-read, right? Even gifted to friends. So after doing all that, this paperback kept staring at me from my bookshelf waiting to be picked up. I almost did, several times but nope.

Fast forward 9 years later and 2 weeks of home quarantine helped me get my reading goals in line (the only ones that made the cut, haha) and here I was pouring over this book. Scared as hell of whether or not it will keep up to my old expectations (one of the reasons I hate re-reading favorites. Poor Anna Karenina bit the dust not too long ago) but went with it nevertheless.

This line from the synopsis, “The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling” sums it well. The book had me drooling over all the book references, the gigantic libraries, the first editions, and the love of reading in the main characters. Oh my, oh my. My imagination was running overtime, hiding in the lanes and alleys between ceiling-high bookshelves, propping into a corner, resting my back on a shelf and turning the pages, lost in the story until the light streaming through the high, wide windows dissipates and it’s time for dinner.

Setterfield takes you on a journey through the two protagonists’ lives, weaving in and out, drawing similarities. You can’t help but feel for them. Wanting to know the truth, to scratch the surface and delve deep into when it all began.

The characters are painfully sketched, each one embedded in your memory as a long lost friend that’s come back from oblivion. And you hold them close wanting to hear their life stories.

The only thing that disappointed me was the mystery. Something that appealed to me 9 years ago didn’t do so to my more mature brain which felt, “not this, anything but this”. But there it was staring me in the face and I wrapped up the book with a sigh. Hated putting the book off my favorite shelf. Still good but didn’t make the cut. It always surprises me how what we loved once, we don’t years down the line. We might appreciate it but the love’s lost somewhere in the years that went by.

Would I recommend this book? Why not? Go read this one, for the love of reading, if nothing else. It’s a tad bit long and a bit dry towards the end.

I didn’t know there was a movie! Got to watch that now.

Have you read the book? What did you think of it?

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

Author Bio:

Diane Setterfield is a British author. Her bestselling novel, The Thirteenth Tale (2006) was published in 38 countries worldwide and has sold more than three million copies. It was number one in the New York Times hardback fiction list for three weeks and is enjoyed as much for being ‘a love letter to reading’ as for its mystery and style. Her second novel, Bellman & Black (2013 is a genre-defying tale of rooks and Victorian retail. January 2019 sees the publication of her new title, Once Upon a River, which has been called ‘bewitching’ and ‘enchanting’.

Born in Englefield, Berkshire in 1964, Diane spent most of her childhood in the nearby village of Theale. After schooldays at Theale Green, Diane studied French Literature at the University of Bristol. Her PhD was on autobiographical structures in André Gide’s early fiction. She taught English at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie and the Ecole nationale supérieure de Chimie, both in Mulhouse, France, and later lectured in French at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She left academia in the late 1990s to pursue writing.

The Thirteenth Tale was acquired by Heyday Films and adapted for television by the award-winning playwright and scriptwriter, Christopher Hampton. Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Olivia Colman, it was filmed in 2013 in North Yorkshire for BBC2. The TV rights to Once Upon a River have even sold to Kudos (Broadchurch, Spooks, Grantchester).

Diane Setterfield has been published in over forty countries.

Diane lives in Oxford, in the UK. When not writing she reads widely, and when not actually reading she is usually talking or thinking about reading. She is, she says, ‘a reader first, a writer second.’

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

Genre: Non-Fiction

Date Published: April 2, 2019

Source: Online Library

Goodreads Synopsis: One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

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My View: I picked up this book long after two of my pretties told me to do it right away when one day, I just couldn’t get into anything else. And lo and behold, I think it took me 2, max 3 days to wrap this beauty up. Don’t you make that mistake. Pick it up sooner than I did.

First things first, Lori Gottlieb, you are amazing. Even more than your book. Because as a therapist I know how hard it is to bare your soul and tell the rest of the world that we are as vulnerable and fragile and it’s okay for us to undergo therapy just like everyone else out there. It takes a strong self such as you to drive that message home. Revealing your raw, tender self and those myriad number of emotions- my, my, I am in awe. So proud of you really.

Lori has done a great job bringing the storyline together. It weaves in and out without making you feel like you lost your place. From her personal life to the clients’, it’s really been brought together very well. A huge thank you to the clients who agreed to their lives being penned down and out there for everyone to see as much impersonalize one may do it.

Let me cite the reasons why you might consider picking up this book.

1. You are considering going for therapy.
2. You are in therapy.
3. You are a therapist thinking of going for therapy.
4. You are a therapist who’s in therapy.
5. You want to know how a therapy session might go like without having to actually go for one.
6. You are interested in therapy and the nuances of it.
7. You want a good, engrossing book to read.

I guess that’s more than enough reasons and covers atleast 80% of the world, if not all.

This book is a fitting tribute to the world of therapy and all therapists out there. But it makes for a great reading for everyone including lay persons. I am really hoping it gets across the message of ‘it’s okay for a therapist to go for therapy’. It sure needs to get around.

Lori Gottlieb, thank you for sharing your personal journey so that ours could be a little easier.

P.S. I am glad you wrote this book instead.

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

Author Bio:

LORI GOTTLIEB is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE, which is being adapted for TV with Eva Longoria. In addition to her clinical practice, she writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column and contributes regularly to the New York Times. She is sought-after in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, and NPR’s “Fresh Air.”

Learn more at LoriGottlieb.com or by following her @LoriGottlieb1 on Twitter.

Ignorance by Milan Kundera

Genre: Fiction

Date Published: September 30, 2003

Source: Library

Goodreads Synopsis: A man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier when they chose to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence “their memories no longer match.” We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion. Then again, what can we expect of our weak memory? It records only “an insignificant, minuscule particle” of the past, “and no one knows why it’s this bit and not any other bit.” We live our lives sunk in a vast forgetting, a fact we refuse to recognize. Only those who return after twenty years, like Odysseus returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance firsthand.

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My View: My relationship with Kundera has been of a strange kind. For the longest time, I thought he was an Indian. Yes, I know. You can kill me now. *facepalm*

My first brief tryst with him was with Identity which I ambitiously thought I would borrow from a friend and finish it in a single night after I had had a long day and a couple of drinks. Pretty ambitious indeed. I think it was an easy read and I made it to page 50 but the flight home next day prevented me from finishing it.

And then came The Unbearable Lightness of Being which I had my eyes on since forever and finally had my own copy. I thought it was going great but somehow somewhere down the line, I put it by my bedside and forgot all about it.

A library visit introduced me to Ignorance and three days after having borrowed it, I finished it. Kundera. That’s Kundera for you. Or rather for me. Unique. Puzzling. Eliciting different reactions with different books. Sometimes I put him down, sometimes he’s unputdownable.

His writing. His slow-moving plot. His deeply etched characters. Their stories. Their life and yours depicted in them.

He takes you on a journey of worlds that intersect. Those that were once known, became alien, and then you try to familiarize yourself with them yet again only to realize that they no longer exist. These worlds that you once knew. They have vanished, disappeared since you left. And it’s futile to look for a part of yourself in the rubble of the past.

His words, mesmerizing, beseeching. Reminding you of things that once were. Making you ponder, reflect. On the mundane of things which you see with new eyes. His writing that creates magic.

“I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past, they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That’s where the misunderstanding starts: they don’t have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don’t intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals but also because they don’t hold the same importance for each other.”

Give Kundera a try. Maybe you will get lucky with the first book you pick up of his. 😉

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

Author Bio:

Milan Kundera is the only author today who can take such dizzying concepts as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transform them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.

The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in Brno and has lived in France, his second homeland, for more than twenty years.

He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, The Farewell Party, The Books of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short story collection Laughable Loves, all originally written in Czech.

Like Slowness, his two earlier nonfiction works, The Art ofthe Novel and Testaments Betrayed, were originally written in French.

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

Genre: Non-Fiction

Date Published: March 2005

Source: Online Library – Audiobook

Goodreads Synopsis: The second child of a scholarly, alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family’s nomadic upbringing from the Arizona desert, to Las Vegas, to an Appalachian mining town, during which her siblings and she fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors and the authorities.

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My View: This book tore out my heart and stamped on it, again and again until I couldn’t breathe anymore. Oh, the feels. And to know that this was someone’s reality, the way they were born and brought up and lived. It’s just too much.

I couldn’t help but draw a comparison with Angela’s Ashes even though they are starkly different from each other. But the pain sometimes has no identity. It meshes from one into another and goes on until you emerge out of it stronger than you would have ever been.

It’s hard to believe Walls is where she is and with every single word of the book, I commend how far she has come. The author being the narrator was the best thing ever because she knows the inflections, the pauses, the pain. This is her story and no one could have read it better than her.

This book is devastating. It would melt your heart. It would wrench at your insides. It would make your stomach cramp but you would want to keep listening, waiting for it to get better. Does it? Get better? Read and find out for yourself.

Every once in a while comes a book that makes every book before it, disappear into the oblivion. This is one such book. Pick it up. Get into Walls’ world, see it from the inside.

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

Author Bio:

Jeannette Walls is a writer and journalist.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, she graduated with honors from Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University. She published a bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle, in 2005. The book was adapted into a film and released to theaters in August, 2017.

 

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Translators: Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin

Genre: Short Stories

Date Published: August 29, 2006

Pages: 333

Source: Library

Goodreads Synopsis: Collection of twenty-four stories that generously expresses Murakami’s mastery of the form. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.

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My View: Murakami. *Sigh* Here we go. After two books and two short story books, I am beginning to get Murakami. No no, don’t get me wrong. No one can ‘get’ Murakami (not me, at least). I have even come to doubt if Murakami gets Murakami! What I mean is that I have made my peace with him. So while Kafka on the shore had me pulling my hair (read more about that here) and wanting to hunt Murakami down (which I tried to unsuccessfully, on my trip to Japan), Colorless Tsukuru had me heaving a sigh of relief. Men without women had me rooting for Murakami (more on that here) and recommending the book to each and everyone I knew.

What did Blind Willow and Sleeping Woman do? It made me urge all my bibliophile friends to drop whatever they were reading and begin this with me because I wanted to talk! Which is what you want to do when you are reading a Murakami. It feels better to have some company while hitting your head on the wall. And my precious friends did give me company. Not one, not two but four friends decided to give me company. With one story a day each. 2 stories later, one dropped out. 3 stories later, another one dropped out. 4 stories later, the last two dropped out. *Sigh* It was good while it lasted. We had all these different interpretations going on. It was fun!

But I didn’t give up. That has to be something, right? I persisted. And not with a push or force. It was natural, I wanted to. I decided to take it slow and continue reading one story a day. Giving it time to find its way through the mazes of my mind, set its rhythm with my breath, and settle in somewhere deep within the recesses of my heart. Murakami weaves a net and you fall in, struggling in the beginning but the more you struggle, the more you are tangled up and then eventually you give up, you surrender. And it is then that it hits you. How good it feels not to have to struggle. Just to let go. To be. To savor the breeze in your hair, to let the world pass you by. And you’re there, entangled but content.

I have come to realize interpretation isn’t everything (grapes are sour, eh? 😉 ). Sometimes the story and the writing needs to be savored and inhaled not inspected and analyzed. Murakami is one such author. He pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. No matter if you don’t understand what just happened.

Life happened.

You should read it. Don’t fall into the ‘interpretation’ trap though and you’ll be just fine.

4/5 stars – I really liked it

Author Bio:

Murakami

Haruki (Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as ‘easily accessible, yet profoundly complex’. He can be located on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/harukimuraka…

Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences.

Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse ‘Peter Cat’ which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife.

Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini’s opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute). Some of his novels take their titles from songs: Dance, Dance, Dance (after The Dells’ song, although it is widely thought it was titled after the Beach Boys tune), Norwegian Wood(after The Beatles’ song) and South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first part being the title of a song by Nat King Cole).

 

Giveaway (US/ CAN): Dying Well by Susan Ducharme Hoben

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

Date Published: March 2018

Pages: 249

Source: Publisher

Goodreads Synopsis:

Dying Well is an inspiring love story telling of how a man celebrated life while facing his death with grace and dignity. His widow guides you through decisions made and actions taken on their nine-month journey from diagnosis through celebrations and goodbyes, to a peaceful death free of fear and regret. She shares lessons learned as their family came to terms with her husband’s impending death and found ways to make this last stage of his life as loving and joyous as possible. This uplifting end-of-life story offers a thought-provoking perspective on dying, one that may help you and those you love achieve what’s most important at the end of your lives.

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My View: I haven’t been taking on review requests, for the most part, considering my reading is moody and I pick up books from the library and then I buy some to participate in buddy reads. However, when the request for review for this one came in, I immediately said yes. One reason being I am focusing a whole lot on non-fiction this year. And secondly, the book’s synopsis spoke to me both psychologically and as a person. So here I am.

It’s easy to get tangled in Susan’s life without realizing it. She weaves her life into a story, introduces the characters, makes us get a feel for them before venturing on to what happens to these characters. And this is precisely what happened. Reading ‘Dying Well’ is not just about life and death but so much more. About family and relationships and savoring the joyous moments of life.

Susan comes across as courageous, practical, well organized and someone who has her head firmly planted on her shoulders. And through her words, we get to know Bruce, her husband who knew what he wanted and how he wanted it in the face of death when most people would crumble and hang onto every thread of life left.

Reading this book is taking a journey with Susan, a difficult one but it has its moments of celebrations and joys that make us feel proud of their entire family and experience a sense of contentment about how Bruce lived the last few months of his life.

This book is about embarking on a journey with bravery and courage. It’s a lesson in dying and how to do it well; how to really live until the last moment of one’s life when death is staring you in the eyes. This ensures there are no regrets and you have lived your life well.

It’s a must-read for anyone and everyone who has a family member with a terminal illness or is undergoing one, themselves. It gives you a perspective of how until death arrives, every moment of life is to be celebrated and made use of, with friendships fostered and relationships made even richer.

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

 

Giveaway – 1 Paperback Copy of Dying Well (US/ CAN)

Enter the Giveaway here.

Author Bio:

Susan didn’t set out to be a writer but when life presented her with a compelling story that needed to be told, she rose to the challenge, beginning a new phase of her life. She hopes that what she learned can help the reader, or someone they love, achieve what’s most important to them at the end of their lives.

Susan Ducharme Hoben is a former executive consultant with IBM’s Strategy and Change Consulting practice. She put her mathematics degree from Cornell University and graduate studies at Georgia Institute of Technology to good use in a thirty-five-year career in information technology that began with systems engineering with IBM and ended with consulting. Upon retirement, Sue founded a travel journal about luxury barging in Europe.

Susan lives in Connecticut on ancestral land, and frequently visits her six granddaughters (and their parents) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Nashville, Tennessee. She celebrates life every day, never turning down an invitation, especially if it involves travel or dancing. Since retirement, in addition to regular sailing trips in the British Virgin Islands and barging trips in France, she seeks to expand her horizons by exploring a new destination each year, whether on safari in Africa, trekking the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, sailing the Gulf of Thailand, or striking a yoga pose on the mountain peak that rises 850 feet above Machu Picchu.

I need to pee by Neha Singh, Meenal Singh, Erik Egerup

Neha Singh (Story), Meenal Singh (Illustrator), Erik Egerup (Illustrator)

Genre: Children

Date Published: 2018

Pages: 32

Source: Penguin Random House India

Goodreads Synopsis: Rahi simply loves slurping refreshing drinks, and so she always needs to pee. But boy, does she hate public loos! On her way to her aunt’s in Meghalaya, she has to pee on a train as well as stop at a hotel and even the really scary public toilet at the bus depot! And when those around her refuse to help her with her troubles, her only saviour is her Book of Important Quotes. Travel with Rahi and read all about her yucky, icky, sticky adventures in this quirky and vibrant book about the ever-relevant worry of finding safe and clean public restrooms.

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My View: Such an innovative book, this, I just had to read it! What? Don’t judge me! I am a kid at heart, you know. And I am sure looking at those brilliant illustrations, anyone would scream with delight. I might have, just a little bit. And so did my three year old niece, with her eyes round and curious and gleaming when she took the book from me.

I am glad someone has written a book on this very important topic. What? Stop laughing! I am serious here. Humph. It’s such a good book to educate children on the laws regarding emptying their bladders in a restaurant or hotel without having to pay or buy something. I love Rahi’s book of important quotes, such a testament to children’s innocence.

I really enjoyed reading this book and so did my niece who learned a lesson or two from it. The beautifully etched illustrations are a delight to behold. I know my niece would be after my life to read and re-read it to her until she has got it backwards (the process has already begun). Get your hands on this, all you parents and uncles and doting aunts. Your kid is going to love it! (And you will too. Shhh.)

4/5 stars – I really liked it. 

Thank you Penguin Random House India for the review copy. All opinions are my own and unbiased.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Genre: Classics

Date Published: April 1925

Pages: 246

Source: Owned paperback

Goodreads Synopsis:

Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.

When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.

The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.

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My View:  Ah this book! *Sigh* I am so glad I bought a copy of my own. The book had me in its clutches from page 1 and never let go. This is such a beautiful piece of literature. The plot is worth swooning over, the characters real and fleshed out, and the writing is beautiful.

Kitty is a marvellous character. There are so many shades to her. The book is adequately paced making you want to go on reading. There are heartbreaks and reality-orientation moments which devastate you as a reader. And that, I believe, is one of the signs of a good book. You’re so invested in it, in the characters that you feel their pain, you feel their sense of loss and are bereft.

I wish it had ended differently but then it won’t have been the book it is, now. It’s not at all classic-y in that going-on-forever and hard-to-hold-interest-at-times kind of book. It’s a quick read. I wonder if the movie is as good. Have you read the book, seen the movie? What do you think?

4/5 stars – I really liked it.

Author Bio:

William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.

His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.

During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service. He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.

After You by Jojo Moyes

Genre: Fiction

Date Published: September 29, 2014

Pages: 353

Source: Library (Audiobook)

Goodreads Synopsis: “You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. But I hope you feel a bit exhilarated too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don’t settle. Just live well. Just live. Love, Will.”

How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future…

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.

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My View: Me before you broke my heart. And I wanted to repair it somehow. When I read the reviews of this one, they weren’t very promising but I needed something to fill that gap in my heart and immediately decided to listen to this on audio. Best decision ever!

Of course, there is no Will in here and that is sad. But the turn this book takes left me gaping. Very ingenious of Moyes to say the least. This book was so addictive. I wanted to listen to it all day long. No wonder I finished the 10-hour audiobook in 3 weekdays!

I am not sure if it was the medium but I found myself much more invested in this book even more than I was in Me before you. And I cried, twice, in this book and not once in Me before you. Yeah, how could I not cry about that! I know, I know. I just didn’t. I have a feeling it was a job well done on the part of the narrator, Anna Acton. She was marvellous. I couldn’t listen at my usual 1.5 speed because British accent is difficult for me to grasp at normal speed let alone the faster one. So I went slow with it but perhaps that is why I could feel and be one with all the emotions Lou was undergoing.

Yes, there are twists and turns in here which will sometime frustrate you and it does seem like a really long book but nevertheless, it was worth it. I know many people have been criticizing Moyes for writing this one and wanted it to end with Me before you but I am one of those that disagree. I think despite it being a series, we should look at each book on its own merit. To be frank, I liked this one more than the first one!

Just keep an open mind and you will love it. Don’t go comparing it to Me before you. Get to know Lou a bit better, understand her changed life circumstances, empathize with her and let her take you over completely. 🙂

Oh, and my advice, go for the audiobook.

4/5 stars – I really liked it. 

Author Bio:

Jojo Moyes is a British novelist.

Moyes studied at Royal Holloway, University of London. She won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to study journalism at City University and subsequently worked for The Independent for 10 years. In 2001 she became a full time novelist.

Moyes’ novel Foreign Fruit won the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) Romantic Novel of the Year in 2004.

She is married to journalist Charles Arthur and has three children.

Bread and Chocolate by Philippa Gregory

Genre: Short Stories

Date Published: Jan 1, 2000

Pages: 256

Source: Owned Books

Goodreads Synopsis: A  collection of short stories from one of our most popular novelists – the perfect gift. A rich and wonderful selection of short stories. A TV chef who specialises in outrageous cakes tempts a monk who bakes bread for his brothers; a surprise visitor invites mayhem into the perfect minimalist flat in the season of good will; a woman explains her unique view of straying husbands; straying husbands encounter a variety of effective responses. Just some of the delicacies on offer in this sumptuous box of delights…

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My View: I am not much for short stories so when I pick one up, I am either in the mood for something short or am not in the mood for anything and can’t decide. But this, my my, was a brilliant choice. I finished it in less than 20 hours on a workday which is saying a lot for a 250 page book.

I probably read one book by Gregory long long back. Oh wait, after a quick check on GR, I apparently haven’t read a single one by her. I think something is fishy here. I have 4 books from one of her series adorning my shelves. And I thought I had read atleast one  by her and loved it to justify buying these 5 but oh well, maybe the GR reviews did me in.

The title story, which is also the first, reeled me in by its smell of warm bread fresh out of the oven and the deliciously dark, melting chocolate. Can you visualize it yet? Taste it? Mmmm.. like a beautiful sin it goes…

This book is a mix of stories with some sad like ‘The favour” or “The if game” but also several clever ones like “The visitor”, “The conjuring trick” and “Theories about men”.

One of my favorites was ‘theories about men’. It’s so clever and funny at the same time. I also really enjoyed ‘the wave machine’ and ‘the magic box’.

All in all, I would say the stories are women-centered and play on the power of females. However, I am pretty sure if you are not a staunch believer in patriarchy, you will enjoy these as a male too.

Gregory weaves magic with a solid punch packed in the stories. Her writing is delicate and fragile yet visual and emotional. She makes her women characters capable and clever, just the kind of women I like to read about (and encounter in the real world unless they are the evil sorts then I would rather they be dumb :p).

The book makes for a quick read and I highly recommend it.

4/5 stars – I really liked it

Author Bio:

Philippa Gregory was an established historian and writer when she discovered her interest in the Tudor period and wrote the novel The Other Boleyn Girl, which was made into a TV drama and a major film. Published in 2009, the bestselling The White Queen, the story of Elizabeth Woodville, ushered in a new series involving The Cousins’ War (now known as The War of the Roses) and a new era for the acclaimed author.

Gregory lives with her family on a small farm in Yorkshire, where she keeps horses, hens and ducks. Visitors to her site, www.PhilippaGregory.com become addicted to the updates of historical research, as well as the progress of her ducklings.

Her other great interest is the charity she founded nearly twenty years ago; Gardens for The Gambia. She has raised funds and paid for 140 wells in the primary schools of the dry, poverty stricken African country. Thousands of school children have learned market gardening, and drunk the fresh water in the school gardens around the wells.

A former student of Sussex University, and a PhD and Alumna of the Year 2009 of Edinburgh University, her love for history and her commitment to historical accuracy are the hallmarks of her writing. She also reviews for US and UK newspapers, and is a regular broadcaster on television, radio, and webcasts from her website.

Philipa’s Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/PhilippaGregoryOfficial