Nora Ephron's "I Remember Nothing" and 2 more books

I didn't know that Nora Ephron had written the screenplays for "When Harry Met Sally" & "Sleepless In Seattle" when I spotted her book on the shelves of a bookstore. The title words "I Remember Nothing", with "Nothing" put on a sticky pad proved quite interesting. I was glad to have found a copy in our library. It was not what I thought it was, but the book was engaging except for a few pages here and there that didn't make much sense. Ephron is essentially claiming not knowing much of anything lately, even what she is writing in the book! Well then we can't blame her for anything in it either. Curiously, I was OK with this premise! Now I know why my son loves the Pseudonymous Bosch book series so much.Who doesn't want to know a secret? Ephron's book starts off in a similar vein except instead of knowing a secret she claims no  knowledge at all:-) I fell for it. It has many chapters, each not necessarily related to the other.In the book Nora talks about life in general and things that happened before and happening now in an endearingly elderly yet sharp narrative.A short, fast read for when you want a quick non-fiction fix. Liked Nora's digs on e-mails and other social media interactions. Also loved how she incorporated some cooking elements into the book. I'll be trying the bread and butter pudding recipe of her deceased  friend Ruthie with whom Nora used to compete for the potluck dessert assignment during their annual Christmas get-togethers.

A Spot of Bother By Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon became well known with 'The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night Time' and this book is written in similar wry tones that characterizes his prose. Instead of the woes of a misunderstood autistic teenager, he has opted to give voice to a retired man in this book. George thinks he has a grave illness but not sure what to do about it.  So he goes into silent panic which makes his actions quite confusing to those around him. I can't say I liked this as much as "curious Incident..." but it still has some teeth in it for a decent read.

A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
Helen Dunmore's book was picked for the first ever Orange Prize in 1996 and it is no surprise. Cathy is the narrator who lost her mother and eventually her father when she was still young. All she has left was her brother and her reticent Grandfather who happened to have come from nowhere to the place where Cathy was born. This rootlessness could partly be attributed to the eventual making of Cathy. She is so sweet and accepting that the various events in her life fall into place without so much as a raised eyebrow from her part. Instead you will nod your head while fervently hoping that no one you know should be that accepting or gullible. Helen Dunmore's mastery in story telling is evident in every single page. Skillfully set scenes through Cathy's narration takes the reader into her life without much ado and therein lies the strength of this book and its merit. That it ends on a happy note redeemed me greatly from prolonged misery. Sweet understanding Cathy deserves all the happiness she can get.Read here for some Amazon reviews.

The Tiger's Wife and The Missing Person

Read these two books recently. Here is my take.

The Tiger's Wife By Te'a Obreht
(The apostrophe should be above the e and I am not sure how to do that so I added it after..)

Literally an aphrodisiac for the nostalgic minded, this book is a fun read. It is full of folk tales effortlessly woven into the story fabric. Set in an unnamed Yugoslavian province, the story spans over many wars, both internal and external with indirect references which the author seems to be quite good at! I love reading good first books because a lot of the time it will be the story they'd been waiting to tell their entire life and has the most depth and vivid characters. There is some disagreement on the authenticity of the Balkan terms used but for those to whom this is transparent, it does not make a difference on the read.

The narrator is a young doctor and the stories are of her life with the maternal grandfather who was also a doc.
She travels through many time periods while narrating, mainly following her Grandfather's footsteps all the way to his childhood village of Galina. The Tiger was a real tiger that escaped from a zoo and blundered into the forests surrounding Galina. Grandfather was the one who identified the strange animal to the villagers as Sherekhan from his Junglebook illustrations. A book that he kept with him all his life and therefore very familiar to the narrator.

The deathless man is my favorite character and I believe Obreht has an amazingly controlled handle on this tricky player in relation to the story. Realism and fantasy is mixed so well that the boundaries are rather vague here. If you like waxing in a general nostalgic feel this book is for you.

The Missing Person By Alix Ohlin

The book has certain redeeming qualities that makes it a good addition here. It is about a New York Grad student from Albuquerque returning home in search of her brother who seems to have taken up with a group of radical environmentalists. In the process of finding him she almost becomes one of them. Then there is the little matter of her research subject of American women painters of the 1970s that brings up some interesting discussions on paintings that always appeals to me.Ohlin has done a fair job and I like what she has to say here. If you want to write that book, go for it and not be afraid of bad first drafts.

I am finding anew that reading is very subjective. What appeals to one person may not appeal to another.
That is where classics come in I guess where the book and its story is essentially timeless. Both of today's
books may not become classics but have the potential to be of great appeal to one reader or another.

Anniversary Reading

It is the 4th anniversary of my blogs this month and I am honored to have received an award from reflections at the same time! See here for award details and I would love all readers of my blogs to take it up and follow the steps as outlined.

So what have I been reading amidst all the rumble? Wait, wait,wait. First things first! Hope everyone is having a good stable New Year so far and wishes for it to remain so for the rest of it.

I have finished quite a few books and  I will add them here in a  few posts as always.

The Zahir

It took me a while to realize that Pauolo Coelho is a household name to the reading public of the Indian subcontinent (and the rest of the world of course)  through his famous novel The Alchemist. I saw it on the library shelf but my hands went for The Zahir instead. Some critics think this is  not up to his usual standards. I liked the book partly due to the integrity with which Pauolo handled the pitfalls of married life. Looks like the work is very much autobiographical.

Not sure if a marriage can survive that many affairs but Coelho's honest prose makes it a possibility to read on for more. As Coelho so painstakingly points out, most of us have encountered living with a zahir. Be it human, an inanimate object or a goal of one kind or another, it is there. Unless we find a way to disarm the zahir so that it won't overwhelm our lives, we may never chart the true and free path that our lives should take. The narrator is an author and he talks about the books that he could write only after his wife came into his life. He realized this rather late. From their description the books are essentially The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage. The zahir here is the author's wife who left him to look for the presence of true love in this world. This presence is addressed as a Lady and the book has a prayer to Mother Mary in the beginning pages but not sure if a connection is intended.. It is dedicated with a loving tribute to his wife and muse Christina. Like Odysseus's journey to Ithaca  all of Coelho's books appear to be about a journey to somewhere.  Here our author's journey starts off as a search for his wife because he thinks he loves her and because of that cannot live without her. He sinks in the realization that she'd been his muse all along and gets so obsessed in finding her that she becomes his zahir.

The trip eventually teaches him universal love and turns his journey into a  search to find himself before anything else. This helps him to make the discovery that  he loves his wife for who she is rather than what she is to him. This is a very important message and it is a learning process. Some people are born into this world with love as their anchor which enables them to love without reservation. Some others are not like this but it is in them to be discovered.  If they are lucky enough to recognize the chances, they will be able to take that journey to find the true love of the world and through it contentment. I feel all of us are on this journey in one way or another. Some find it earlier, some find it later, some may find it and enjoy it without being aware and yet some other may never find it. The book is thought provoking and is a great, expanding your heart kind of read.

Vinegar hill

This is a grim novel and therefore not for the airports I'd say. Take it up when you really need a serious read. I wouldn't have braved it after the first chapter if I wasn't so relaxed when I started it. No, it is not a gory, ghost story. Just raw lives of a family through the eyes of the young tired  mother of two school going kids and her husband. It is his family that makes the grim so depressing. A. Manette Ansay's strong, unwavering language tells the events of the story with the panache that it deserves. So read it definitely and you will find that it was not a wasted effort.

Hugo: The Movie and The Book

So we were all set to watch TinTin over a November weekend when we came across the little fine print that said it will be released in the US of A only towards the end of Dec. So what do we do? Like any law abiding citizens we picked the next available children's movie which was Hugo. Plans were made and time was available and we simply had to watch something on the silver screen. And what a movie it was! I knew it had my husband at the clock and gears. It had me at the view of the panoramic old train station, my son with the automaton and  my daughter with the girl who read a lot like the avid reader she's turning into. Directed by that maker of grand movies Martin Scorsese, this gem of a movie stars Ben Kingsley which should seal the deal for anyone sitting on z fence:-) I can't believe we would have missed this had it not been for TinTin being released late. The boy reporter was not forgotten and we watched him later on during the holiday trip to visit relatives in the east. In the middle of writing this note I heard over the radio that Hugo captured the most Oscar movie nominations. Go Scorsese!

After watching this epic movie that has two important crowd pleasers we came home and discussed it for a while. The first half had this majestic and crowded Paris train station full of old time monster clocks that ran on gears and levers that needed winding.This was done by Hugo, the young boy who is the movie's namesake and the last half was a treatise on silent movies based mainly on the life of Georges Meliez. The next day my son brought home the book from his school library! I thought I wouldn't read it but curiosity got the best of me and it was all for the good. Brain Selznick's book is an instant classic on its precise and large scale illustrations alone. As you will see from the book, Selznick is first an illustrator and then a story writer. Whether you read the book or watch the movie, don;t forget to go to his web site for a unique experience.

In Hovering Flight By Joyce Hinnefeld

Lets us say, only hypothetically, that you are not into historical fiction and would rather read something else. I have just the book for you. This is it my friends, it is bird fiction:-)

I'd grown up reading about the foibles of the great Indian ornithologist ,  Salim Ali. I should say that some of the inspiration in watching birds that flitted around our farmland came from these readings. The rest of course was from the inexplicable tie that bound me to the fertile green land itself. The other day my Mom was telling me about two "bhoomikulukki" (wagtail) birds that visit our front yard (muttam)  everyday and how she thinks of it as a visit from me to her... My Mom loves watching birds which is second only to planting stuff and making things grow. I cannot grow a thing if I tried but I love them birdies just like my Mom. My daughter too enjoys watching the many birds that visit our backyard thanks to our neighbors who are great gardeners.

That this book came with Ursula Hegi's recommendation is what made me pick it up in the first place. A few pages into all that the book was unraveling and I just couldn't put it down. Be forewarned that you may not like it of you don't like birds since the book is sprinkled all over with bird watching facts and fiction. It revolves around Addie, Tom and their daughter Scarlet who was named after the Scarlet Tanager. It also includes John James Audubon's depiction of the cuvier's kinglet which no one has really seen except for Audubon and his illustrations. That was, until Adie's claimed to have seen it. At the end of the novel one is not sure if Adie has seen it or not but it truly does not matter. If Adie and Tom's passion for nature is not enough, then the bare truths of their familial existence and how it binds with their love of nature will keep you rooted in this on-the-way-to-be-a classic book.  I find a strage reluctance to discuss their story here, it is almost as if it is personal and must be read in peace and quite. Adies's love of birds takes the form of activism while Tom's is the balancing act of the quiet yet unstinting support. Joyce Hinnefeld is to be read and absorbed, period.

The romantic and doting pair in the above pic set up home in the palm tree behind our house and it was a pleasure to have them around. And no, it is not the camera but the setting sun that provided the flash! Heading into the holidays I hope everyone will have a Very Merry Christmas and a jolly good time!

A Moment Of Prayer And A Book

I  knew kochuthressiamma pj (kpj) of pareltank only through her blogs and some exchanged comments.  I'd been a faithful reader and an admirer of her courageous, thought provoking, spiritual and sometimes hilarious posts. Offering a moment of prayer in memory of this beloved blogger here.

The Four Seasons 
Today's post is in honor of kpj as I am sure she would have loved knowing this angle of Vivaldi's Venice and of the orphan girls who were wards of the state as well as one time students of the Maestro. As made clear from interviews with the author, the book is not really centered around Vivaldi but rather around the lives of the girls. Laurel Corona hit the nail on the spot when she decided to do the book this way. Her interest in the lives of the figlie (wards) is genuine and paves the way for a very interesting and rewarding story. Fact and fiction are intertwined in this book and Corona differentiates relevant events/chronology at the end of the book.

I first heard Vivaldi from a CD of the Four Seasons my husband had. The name cannot fail to gather one's interest and the outstanding music cinches the deal. So when I got this book I assumed it to be all about Vivaldi. I was both right and wrong. You do get a good picture of the famous composer who was also an accomplished violinist. What you really love is the heartfelt portrayal of the figlie del coro who were trained from childhood to master music and perform mostly in churches and private parties in eighteenth century Venice. They were held in high esteem and the public enjoyed their music. Despite a natural sympathy you feel for the girls, I was truly amazed at how the Venetian setup managed to do so well by the orphaned girls. Many of the abandoned kids were a result of the strange system of allowable marriages in families which is made more complicated by the presence of courtesans and convents alike.

Corona's book starts with two sisters named Chiaretta and Maddalena who were given to the Pietà,one of  four such institutions (ospedalis) in Venice. They were given up by their mother who could not take care of them anymore. The Pietà took care of them by teaching them arts and crafts including lace making, and learning one or many instruments and singing. If anyone was good at any of the arts they would go up the systemic ladder to finally perform as part of the coro (choir). They were allowed to marry and were given a dowry if the alliance was seen fit. After a certain age the ones who did not make it were asked to enter the convent. Before you raise your eyebrows, you must know that the social system in Venice was in such a way that even the wealthiest, noblest families could not afford to marry off more than one girl or one boy. The remainder entered convents or courted courtesans without being able to have real families. Corona did a fine job of mixing the calm, musical and organized lives of the girls of the Pietà with that of the rollicking, fun loving Venetians in the book. Chiaretta became an accomplished singer and Maddalena an accomplished violinist who presumably was also Vivaldi's muse. As in real life Vivaldi started out as a violin teacher and composer to the acclaimed choir of the Pietà. I was surprised to find that he was a priest though he was allowed to absolve himself from saying the mass due to problems related to asthma. He became famous while at the Pietà and moved to better patronage later in life. But his most accomplished music is said to have occurred while writing for the female performers of the figlie de coro.  Maddalena is shown as the inspiration for Four Seasons which apparently is quite different from his earlier music. In real life a singer named Anna Giro and her half sister who played the violin  were said to have closely associated with Vivaldi. I like Corona's story better where Vivaldi had strong feelings for Maddalena which were never brought out of fear for her future as well as his own since he was a priest. In time Vivaldi went on to produce magic through his operas and Maddalena became the Maestra de violin at the Pietà giving wonderful performances and achieving a great sense of the self through her music. Loved the way the author introduced the idea of Four Seasons from Vivaldi when he figured out that the then adolescent and underling violinist Maddalena was the only person who could understand/feel the 'bird flying' or 'the dog barking' that he played on the violin.

I feel that I have written more about Vivaldi than the girls here but the novel does complete justice to both. Maddalena is the thinker and musician who slowly figures out her life and achieves satisfaction on a higher plane and Chiaretta is the vivacious singer of the golden voice who marries the scion of a noble family and lives a full family life but never really sings again according to the rules for girls married off from the Pietà. A beautiful book to read, this will not disappoint you. For my part I'll be looking out for books by this author for sure. Visit here and here for a rendition of the Four Seasons.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

I  read this book a few months back and was so enthralled that I sat down right then to write my impressions.  I am glad to be able to post it at least now.

Tony Hsieh is an Evangelist. Not the kind that your are familiar with though. He is an Evangelist who wants you to find happiness in life. He is well qualified to do the job because he is proving it through his own life. Granted, I first heard about Tony Hsieh's book as a rebuttal to Tiger Mom's book. I haven't read Chua's book but had read a lot about what people had to say on it. One of the articles suggested to read this book to get an opposing view.

Once you get hold of this book, the first few pages are enough to tell you that you cannot really claim Tony to a specific category. His message is universal and his life seems dedicated to make this happen. Although I finished the book I have placed an order for it in Amazon as a keeper and for my husband and kids to read and for me to keep reading as a reference. Some of the things he is doing in his company may not be applicable to you and that is not what he wants. In the end he just wants you to be happy. What appeals to me is that I wholeheartedly agree with his premise that 'if you always do the right thing, then everything else will fall into place". I say this to my kids and try to do follow as much as I can.  At work I had seen that things improved 100% and made me a much happier person when I just focussed on doing the right thing without worrying about who does what or who gets what. This strategy makes good soul out of everyone at work where you do spend a majority of the hours in any given day. This in turn makes workplace less stressful and life easier to live. Being humans we have our faults, but once we know them and do our best, nothing can really bring us down in spirit. So while Tony may never know this I am excited to find someone who is in a position to practice what he preaches and does it.

Tiger Mom's part in this is that apparently Tony was raised by his Chinese parents in a more relaxed manner and yet he went on to become an achiever. This was point the rebuttal wanted to make. Rebuttal or not I was glad to have come into Tony Hsieh's amazing story. After graduating from Harvard, Tony  founded Link Exchange with a friend which he later sold to Microsoft. He had enough experience running his own small food business while in Harvard. Before that he did a profitable penny souvenir type of business from home! Come to think of it, the man was destined to succeed I guess.  After selling Link Exchange he did his time as a venture capitalist and ended up as the CEO of zappos which eventually was bought by Amazon. Since Amazon agreed to keep the Zappos spirit as is, Tony is still the life and soul of this well run company geared towards the perennial formula of success that many still somehow forget. Customer satisfaction is the missing word here. The book is a joy to read and Tony Hsieh's enthusiasm and love for people can be quite catching.

A Bunch Of Books

 My husband presented me with that latest of the omnipresent gadgets meant for staying in touch. Steve Jobs's iPhone. I was completely happy with my good old phone but even I thought I could use a new one since one of the buttons came off of it. So here he (my husband, not Mr. Jobs) goes adeptly turning off my old phone and connecting the new one and depositing it in my bag all in a good evening's work. Then he calls me as I was driving to work and I was totally surprised and happy to find it in my purse! At first I couldn't find much use for its many features but now I am a complete convert and am a fan of Jobs for a job well done. This is a quality product where every little detail was thought about and implemented to the satisfaction of a critical eye. The only complaint - and I think it a valid one - is that it should have had a good GPS installed. Something along the lines of what the androids sport so well as evidenced by my husband's 2 year old and still going strong google phone. Why am I blabbering out all this here? I would not have been able to capture this beautiful swan if it wasn't for the excellent camera on this phone so readily available in my jeans pocket. It was on a visit to our local park. I had not noticed him there before but apparently he is a regular visitor!

So nance asks if have stopped reading books. Without nance this blog will wither and die and so this post is for nance. I never stopped reading and they are what keeps me sane when things get on a never ending roller coaster or life throws its lemons around. Though I read I didn't have time to sit down and write'em impressions I have of the book and then I feel the soul of it is lost and that I cannot put what I felt on reading it. These are a bunch of books I read the past week. I am writing down a few lines here on each of them. There is not much in common except that they are all about women.

Little Bee By Chris Cleave (Published as The Other Hand in Britain)

With an eye catching byline on the back cover that claims in uncertain terms that they don't want to give out too much about this special story, the book easily came home with me. Yes, it indeed is a special story and  one of the narrators is what makes it so. The girl who calls herself Little Bee is an illegal immigrant to UK from Nigeria and the story begins when she is about to be released from the Immigration Detention Center. It goes onto get her story combined with that of a British couple. The second narrator is the wife who is also a magazine editor. The story revolves around what happened one day at one of the beaches in Nigeria where Little Bee's world collided with that of the British couple as a byproduct of the oil conflict in Nigeria. What was most interesting about this book was Little Bee's narration in first person. Refreshingly worded and told from a different angle, it attracts you immediately. The author draws deeply from his own experience in West Africa and his connection is evident in how well he is able to bring out this female voice. The book has snagged a few awards and will be made into a movie with Nicole Kidman as the second narrator.


The Wednesday Sisters By Meg Waite Clayton

At first glance the urge is to dismiss The Wednesday Sisters as a run-of-the-mil chick flick er.. book. In addition to being a satisfying chick read, it incorporates so many other elements that ultimately it becomes a flick for everyone. Granted, being set in Silicon Valley Bay Area may have twisted my hand a bit but who can resist a bunch of wives meeting regularly in the park in the late sixties eventually evolving into a group of writers and publishers through mutual support and encouragement? I'd like to be a part of that myself. The birth of Intel/silicon valley is a quiet presence all throughout since that is where one of the husbands worked! The venerable Robert Noyce is presented as a distant yet familiar figure. Clayton had her own version of Wednesday Sisters and this could be written in tribute which makes it all the more endearing.

The Dovekeepers By Alice Hoffman

There's been a flurry of various type of keepers lately. Memory keeper, bee keeper, bear keeper, you name it we have it. Something about it makes me not want to touch it and yet when I read one it is always better than expected. So it is with Hoffman's Dovekeeper. It is about four Jewish women from around the time of the Roman occupation of Judea who keeps the doves for a dessert settlement of the diaspora. It is based on the ancient settlement called Masada built on the ramparts of King Herod's Fortress overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada is second only to Jerusalem as a tourist destination. It was appropriated by a violent sect of Jewish fighters against Rome. The book is replete with magic and mysticism, gained and lost love as well as mothers, daughters and war. Each of the artifacts used in the book to perform magic or war was based on an actual such object found in the Museums around Masada and elsewhere according to the author. I found that very intriguing. It is almost as if those objects came to life and told their stories!  It takes talent to bring such a story together with that of four different women and make it as interesting as it is. Hoffman has succeeded very well in doing this.