Tag: reading
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NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN
The past couple of months have been especially good for me. Plenty of interesting reading and ruminating, yes, but also simmering excitement about some eagerly awaited news, some personal happy tidings and immense familial joys. My cup runneth over. Of course, the world around and beyond isn’t exactly a happy one and some of its…
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRATIMA!
She was my laughing Buddha. Nearly seven years older than me, she never made me feel that distance. She was wiser, kinder, yes, but she was also infinite fun. Always eager for a joke, finding humour even in the most prosaic, turning a word, a person, a situation on its head and cracking up at…
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OH, TO READ!
I am an inveterate reader. Committed, addicted, insatiable. I come from a family of readers. Growing up at a time and place where television hadn’t reached us yet leave alone the powerfully addictive internet, reading was my window to the world. We siblings would quarrel about who had first claim to a new book, wait…
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THE DUTCH HOUSE by Ann Patchett: A REVIEW
Everyone’s been raving about Ann Patchett and her fabulous books. A few years ago I had heard of her Bel Canto, how well-received it was, making waves in literary circles, and I had marked the book down for a later read. But then I recently picked her The Dutch House instead, trusting my instincts of trusting an old school-friend’s recommendation! The avid and discerning reader that she is, I often blindly follow her suggestions. And I was amply rewarded. What a page turner!…
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QUIET PLEASE!
Discourse is becoming increasingly fractious, I find. Frivolously fractious too. So much so that labelling it as discourse is an insult to the word. There are more verbal brawls today than there are respectful discussions. Am I growing out of date, I ask myself, when I fear I cannot keep pace with the histrionics that…
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Coping. Rebooting.
It hasn’t been easy, has it? This year and more of struggling, surviving, losing, coping, adjusting, wrapping our heads and hearts, minds and bodies around the new emerging normal. All yet fluid and floating, unsettled and undefined, allowing this today, prohibiting that tomorrow, and then perversely changing everything all over again. At first life threatened…
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The Sense Of An Ending
THE SENSE OF AN ENDING By Julian Barnes A Review I remember falling in love with The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes when I’d read it a couple of years ago. I also remember realising as soon as I’d finished, that I needed to read it again (which I did for a book…
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In the Company of Art
When I first started writing it was just something to do, to kill time that sat staring at me, mocking my uselessness in a world of busy and productive people. A bad back had put a temporary halt to my normal routine and I was at my wits’ end as to how I would get…