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Recent Reads: August 2021
August has been a month of building technically complex reports at work, festivities, and outings with family and reading a few books but excellent reads. I want to take this opportunity to write about reading challenges here and buddy reading events.
I have to say if you’re serious about your reading you must participate in them. Maybe once a year or once a month but set aside some time for finding challenges that suit your schedules and challenges that would be fun for you.
Why? For one they challenge you to read more diverse books and discover hidden gems. Second, through them, you network better with fellow bookstagrammers and book bloggers. Third, the diversity keeps your reading journey fun and feels like an adventure.
This month I discovered some true gems through reading challenges like Kim Ji Young that I discovered through a buddy read with my Bookstagram friend Jasmine. Then I read Know My Name (a powerful, powerful book) for a reading challenge again on Bookstagram, Prompt: Memoirs. I discovered Spanish Translated Literature by the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez and revisited my childhood favorite author R.K.Narayan all because of reading challenges across the book blogosphere.
To participate in at least one soon. If not wait a few months, because I’m designing a reading challenge for 2022 for our very own Mru’s Books and Reviews. Yay!
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Unique Book Recommendations to help you find your next read!
General Fiction
Articleship Diaries by Akhil Manuel
Jo has just finished his first year CA exams and is now entering three years, called Articleship, of working as an apprentice at a CA firm. As a newbie learning the ropes of the trade he shares his first-time experiences, his frustrations, his attractions and so much in a fun and humorous way. That will have you remembering your college years.
The technicalities of a CA profession the author shares have been simplified with examples and that’s the best part of the author’s writing I believe.
Kim Ji Young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam Joo
To say I wasn’t surprised by this book would be a lie. I went in expecting a memoir, but it was fiction laced with so many real-life facts and events that it turned out to be so much more and better than a memoir. Kim Ji Young in her thirties is possessed. Possessed with the bodies of the living and dead women she knew all her life. These women have been smothered by the patriarchal system prevalent in Korea. The author describes it through everyday things food, studying, sleeping, and working. But she has a radical way of describing the event that feels like a rude awakening.
Most Asian women will relate to the happenings, but others will love the story nevertheless.
This is a collection of charming stories by R.K.Narayan set in the fictional town of Malgudi. You’ll find moral stories like The Astrologer, and Ishwaran, The Blind Dog, and stories packed with surprises like the Tiger’s Claw and the Gateman’s Gift. The village setting and the quirky characters will leave you with a smile, wanting more. Don’t miss this collection by one of the founders of Indian literature.
Faith and Beloved by Shibu
A book fit for adaptations into a web series. All the drama is packed into 250 pages. Murder, mafia, love, lust, criminals on the run, deceptions and so much more. Told through the perspective of the central characters in the plot the story moves back and forth portraying why the characters developed to the stage they are through their backstories. The plot ultimately leads to priceless diamonds that none had an inkling of until the very end.
Graphic Novels
Saga Volume 1 and 2 by Brian K. Vaughan
An action-packed story narrated by a baby who was born to parents belonging to different worlds – the horned and the winged. These two worlds are currently at war and they are each looking for the couple who deserted their kingdoms and want to kill them and their offspring.
The story is followed through volumes and I happened to read in the first two and cannot wait to move on to the third. The illustrations are beautiful and expressive, it’s like watching stop motion animation.
Romantic Comedy
The Meeting Point by Olivia Lara
Do you believe that matches are made in heaven? Well, this couple just proved. Maya wanted to surprise her boyfriend with a surprise visit on her birthday. But she is left broken when she finds out from a Lyft driver that he forgot his phone there and was in the cab with another woman and getting pretty busy. A conversation begins with the cabbie and before long she can’t stop texting and soon enough is desperate to meet him.
But was this a passing fancy or the one true love? Well, read just a few pages and I guarantee you won’t stop turning them.
But was this a passing fancy or the one true love. Well, read just a few pages and I guarantee you won’t stop turning them.
Classics
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The story of the four March sisters - gentle Margaret, fiery Jo, fragile Beth and wilful Amy and their dear friend Laurie. This book is about everything – family, friendship, sibling relations, love, marriage, making a happy home, education, books, knowledge, living a life of dignity irrespective of financial circumstances, neighbors, society, independence freedom, honesty and oh so many things.
If you read one classic in your life, read this one.
The Chronicle of Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Early one morning a murder is about to happen in a village somewhere in Mexico. Every person in the village knows the details of the murder – who is going to be murdered, by whom, when, and why. But not one of them can stop it from happening.
Marquez’s writing packs a punch and the twisted plot calls for a special shout-out. At about 100+ pages you have no reason to skip this captivating classic translated from Spanish.
Indian Classics
Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto
How does India talk about mental illness? They say a person is MAD. But what does being mad entail. How does it affect a family? How do they cope with it? Does it change their relations? Is the victim restricted to an asylum? Are they given shock therapy? How did this even begin?
Em, Imelda is the narrator’s mother who has a mental illness. The life of the remaining three people in the house is built around taking care of and keeping a watch out for Em. Every event in their life is punctuated with hospital visits, therapists, and some of the other drama.
This book is a specimen of exemplary writing in Indian literature about a topic that isn’t openly discussed and has little to no information about it.
Memoirs
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
On Stanford campus one night Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted when she had passed out. Two passing cyclists stopped the perpetrator Brock Turner, from creating more damage. Brock was sentenced to six months in county jail a sentence Chanel felt extremely insufficient for his crime. Her victim impact statement became viral online and her case and name came forth.
Chanel became the face of a sexual assault survivor and she received accolades from the White House and made America change its age-old sexual assault laws in favor of the victims.
A powerful, impactful true story about how a victim is judged, humiliated, and considered at fault for instigating malicious behavior in the attacker.
My Days: A Memoir by R.K.Narayan
Narayan was born on October 10, 1906, in Madras. He speaks of his life in My Days. The book is in three sections - in the first, he describes his life as a lonely child growing up in his grandmother's house in Madras with a monkey, a peacock, and a parrot for companions!
The second section deals with the obstacles he encountered as a young writer; his falling in love, and marriage to Rajam, the birth of their daughter and the poignant tale of his wife's untimely death that left him devastated and his experiments with psychics. In the last section, he gives a detailed account of his overcoming the writer's block and the writing of the book English Teacher.
Books on my September 2021 TBR
I will try to read books on my shelves this month and forbid myself from buying any more books until I have read a considerable amount of books from my owned copies.
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I have an interesting poetry collection review copy too.
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