Listening Now
Listening Now (1998), by Anjana Appachana, is a novel that tells the story of the love between Padma and Karan as told from the viewpoints of Padma's friends and family.
I read this book in one long stretch over a few days while traveling for work. It was hard to put down,
very dramatic. Padma and Karan each share a book-centered love - they both love books, their love is like the love stories one can read in books - that lasts in the physical realm for only a short time. Their time together alternates between troubling and beautiful with the beauty being the portion each active party remembers.
Society takes its toll on their relationship which is not allowed to continue. Both Karan and Padma continue their love affair in their minds, each going a bit crazy with their love. Mallika, the child of their love tells the story from her viewpoint as well.
Listening Now is an interesting study on gender roles in India. This is a good book to read in a stretch, as I did, because the feelings of each character are so fresh with the reader as you fall into the story as told by another character.
Labels: family, fiction, love
Blog Action Day
A note that Something to Read will be participating in the first annual
Blog Action Day on October 15. Keep your eyes peeled for a review of a book dealing with our shared environment.
Labels: environment
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm
Today’s book,
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, by Jon Katz is a nonfiction work published in 2004. This story of a man on
his farm, his three dogs, a couple of donkeys and his flock of sheep relates relationships – to the author’s self and with others, animal and human.
Katz spends a good amount of time sharing his thought process with us through his interactions mainly with his dogs. His love for his dogs seems to save him from himself. He watches how others’ love for their dogs also has palliative effects on them.
Most of the narrative takes place on a lonely upstate NY farm during a bleak winter. Having experienced many a bleak, harsh, lonely winter, I felt that his descriptions of the deprivations he and his animal companions met were very accurate. Another thing that rang true to me was the transformative effect of such
evil weather. Katz showed in his writing how surviving such a winter gave him a more contemplative and deep view on things in general.
Overall this is a great book to read when you have some time on your hands and you are in a contemplative sort of mood.
With this post I dispense of the thumbs up or down ratings, for I realize that if a book were not appreciated enough to rate a thumbs down, I probably wouldn’t be reading it all the way through (for pleasure) at any rate.
Labels: dogs, farm, nonfiction, winter
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
This 2000 novel,
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by
Michael Chabon, really moved me. Chabon tells a moving story of cousins making their way in the world.
Each of the cousins, Joe and Sam, has their own issues to deal with. Each boy is strong in his own way. Together they are able to make their mark in the world through their comics and the characters they create.
This book receives a thumbs up.
Labels: chabon, comics, family
