Bridget Jones's Diary

Author: Helen Fielding

Pages: 307

My Rating: 4.0/5

This book has been on my wishlist for a long time. Finally picked it up as part of the Orbis Terrarum Challenge (I just have 1 more book to read to complete the challenge by end of this year..phew! thought I would not make it).

Written by Helen Fielding, the book is based on a year in thirty-something-Bridget Jones's Life. I wont get into the details of the plot 'coz you can get that by googling :) The book is a very easy-read and I just couldn't put it down. One of the most hilarious books I've read this year. Though it is funny, it does not fail to touch your hearts becoz it has its own share of problems, pain, emotions, self-doubts, disgrace, disasters and victories. We've all been there at some point and we can all relate to it one way or the other; that's what makes it very appealing.Also, the story is set up in London and it has a typical British humour and lingo which is quite interesting. The characterization is brilliant and the writing is excellent!

I loved the way the book is written, in the form of a diary. The way Bridget keeps track of the amount of cigarretes and alcohol she has consumed everyday and her weight, in every journal entry shows her obsessions and fears..At one point when she goes thru a break up, she even counts the number of times she has had negative thoughts in a day! It feels like you are actually peeking into a friend's diary and getting to know all about her personal life! :) One more book that I remember of similar kind is The Diary of Anne Frank, which I had enjoyed too. Would love to read more such books...which is written in the form of journals or letters.. If you have any recommendations do leave me a comment here...

My next step is to watch the movie based on the book. Am sure the movie will not do complete justice to the book but nevertheless...it will be nice to see bridget's character in action!.

The book is wonderfully hilarious and it is a must read!!

Purple Hibiscus

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Pages : 307

My Rating : 2.5/5

After reading a couple of excellent reviews about this book I decided to pick it up as part of my Orbis Terrarum Challenge. This one is a debut novel of a Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie, who is also the author of 'Half of a Yellow Sun' , winner of the Orange Broadbank Prize for Fiction-2007. Amazon reviews give a rating of 4.5/5 for Purple Hibiscus, but for some reason I just didnt enjoy this as much as I thought I would. Maybe I had very high expecations from it! Nevertheless I would still recommend it if you enjoy fiction a lot and you are interested to know more about the life in Nigeria - politics, social customs, food, et.al. The book also has a strong message - it emphasizes on the role of the family in the formation of children's lives, the importance of a loving and caring atmosphere in the household and the effects of monstrous discipline...

The book is about a 15-year old girl Kambili, the daughter of an affluent man who is a Catholic patriarch doing a lot for the community. There are thousands of citizens who are showered with his blessings and help and look up to him like he is God. Yet Kambili, Jaja (her brother) and their mother see a violent side of him which no one else does.

Kambili and her brother are forced to live with their widowed aunt and cousins, due to a political coup in Nigeria. During their stay, Kambili feels unexpectedly liberated and unravels the aspects of her life and personality which never seemed to have existed... **spoiler ahead ** Even after I finished reading the book, there were a lot of questions unanswered. Certain things left me confused. Am not sure if the author wanted it to be that way or if I missed out something. There is one incident towards the end where Kambili's mother poisons her father and kills him but the blame is taken by Jaja, who is driven to prison. I never really got the actual reason behind this killing. Was it because he turned more and more violent that Kambili's mom could not bear it anymore? That's the only explanation I could come up with. If you have read the book and have some opinions I would love to know your views on this..

It took me some time to figure out why the author chose the title 'Purple Hibiscus'. I couldn't draw an analogy to the story but after pondering over it for a while I realized that the blooming of the hibiscus flower is used to describe the way Kambili's life blossoms when she starts living with her aunt.. as Kambili slowly transforms from a young girl into a woman.. So that's a nice one, I liked it!

If you want another opinion on this book, here's a review by Ramya ..

Ramya's Bookshelf - Purple Hibiscus

If you have read this book already and reviewed it, let me know and I'll add a link to your post.

AIDS Sutra

Author: Multiple Authors (Anthology)
Pages: 345
My Rating: 4.0/5
AIDS Sutra presents a side of India which is rarely seen before. This is one book which needs to be read by a wider audience. It will definitely open your eyes to the harsh realities faced by people in the underdeveloped & underpriviliged societies.

AIDS Sutra is an anthology put together by the 'Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation', which is a collection of 'untold stories from India' by 16 renowned authors. These stories deal with a wide range of subjects, all with a common theme of the major problem facing the developing world (HIV/AIDS), starting from those innocent children who acquire this deadly disease by birth, to sex workers, homosexuals and transgendered people.

India is home to 2-3million HIV cases. Ignorance and prejudice have been the 2 most contributing factors for the rapid spread of this deadly disease; it is still stigmatized and people live in denial. This is where books such as 'AIDS sutra' play an important role. These stories not only humanise the tragedy of the HIV/AIDS victims, but also admire their courage and respect the victims without getting sentimental or showing pity. Authors such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Kiran Desai, Shobha De, Nalini Jones, Siddhartha Deb, William Dalrymple have uncovered the realities behind this epidemic writing candid yet refreshing stories about their real-life encounters with the AIDS victims in India. Amartya Sen's introduction in the beginning, about the injustice committed through prejudice is extremely thoughtful and downright awesome!

The very first thing that you realize reading this book is the fact that ignorance about AIDS is still widespread in India. Though India does put up an image of a developing country and a growing technology giant, when it comes to matters of sexuality, it still in dark and has a long long way to go! It is this kind of an attitude which is actually impacting the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS to a large extent. Sooner the people realize this, the faster will be the progress.

If you are planning to pick up this book at any point, let me warn you - the facts stated in the book through these stories are extremely disheartening and depressing. This book, as a fiction would be very heart-breaking; so you can imagine how sickening and horrifying it could be as a non-fiction (based on true stories). It took me nearly 1.5 months to finish this. Every story would have such a deep impact on my emotional state that it would just get impossible for me to continue reading. I have given up reading this a couple of times during the course; but finally decided that I need to read it to get the real picture of the state of this disease in different parts of India - which otherwise you would never get to see...

If you have read this book, I would love to know if you share my views and if you really did manage to read it completely or did you give it up midway, unable to deal with the depression?

The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch (oct 23'1960 - July'25 2008) , a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. When he was asked to give his 'last lecture' at CMU, he didn't have to imagine it as his last; he was already counting his last few days. This book was inspired by that last lecture he gave on Sep 18-2007 titled - " Really achieving your childhood dreams". Some of you might have already watched the video of the lecture.... if not, here is the link to the video on youtube. It's amazing and really worth a watch!!

This book combines the inspiration, humour and intelligence that made his last lecture so memorable and phenomenal. I read a review of this book on a friend's blog and immediately bought a copy, 'coz from the review I read I knew I would treasure this book for a long time to come!

The book is a light read but offers you so much wisdom and food for thought. I finished it in just a few hours (it was too interesting to keep it down!) but I can see myself remembering a lot of things that he has said, for the rest of my life. Such is the impact. It's not some sort of a self-help book which gives you N-steps to success or happiness. Randy Pausch, by just describing his attitue towards life, his childhood dreams and his stories of success and failure, shows you a path to leading your life the right way. He says, this lecture/book was not intented only to those 400 people in the auditorium but for his kids. This, he calls as a head fake - which is nothing but 'indirect learning'. According to him,
There are 2 kinds of head fakes. The first is literal. On a football field, a player will move his head one way so you will think he's going in that direction. Then he goes the opposite way. It's like a magician using misdirection. The second kind of head fake is the really important one - the one that teaches people things they dont realize they're learning until well into the process. If you are a head fake specialist, your hidden objective is to get them to learn something you want them to learn.

Randy Pausch with his 3 kids. Photo courtesy: his website

The book really makes you think about what you want the most out of life - your job, your family, your marriage etc.. How would you spend your life if you knew you had only 6 more months to live? How would you leave your memories back to the ones who love you? What dreams would you fulfill? What would you give more priority to - your work, spouse, kids, friends, family? Such are the questions that you will inevitably start asking yourself as you read the book...
The book, which has immense amount of wisdom in it, also has a baggage full of emotions. I could see myself in tears at certain points. It was not out of sympathy but I was so moved by his love for his family, his wife and kids and his extremely optimistic outlook towards life. It's just amazing to see how strongly, and with a smile on his face, he faced his terminal illness. If you watch his video, you wont believe that you are actually listening to a guy who is suffering from cancer at its final stages.

Am sure by now you would have realized how much I loved this book!!! I highly recommend it and I really feel every one of u who reads this book will take away something with u which u will remember for the rest of your life...

Some useful links if you are interested to know more:

His blog - http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html

http://www.thelastlecture.com/

http://www.cmu.edu/uls/journeys/randy-pausch/index.html

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

If you have already read this book, let me know what you thought of it and I'll add a link to your review..

Non-Fiction

A few months back I had come across this Non Fiction Five (NFF) reading challenge (May-Sept)and was really keen on doing it. But I got so occupied with reading my already stacked fiction books and other stuff that I just couldn't get to this on time. But as my enthusiasm for non-fiction is back, I am up for this all over again. I already have the books lined up by my bed-side too! Here's the list - Keep watching this space for the reviews :)

1. The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

2. Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

3. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

4. Built to Last - Jim Collins

5. Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis

In the Country of Men

Author: Hisham Matar

Pages: 245

My Rating:

My next stop in the OT challenge was Libya. I never read any prior reviews of this book and the only reason I picked it up was becoz it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize -2006. I have a tendency to choose books that are shortlisted for prizes, coz I always feel they have some substance in them for being nominated for a prize! More often than not I am proved to be right; so was the case with this book too. Though I didn't LOVE it and it doesn't feature in my top-favorites list, I still enjoyed reading it - learnt a lot about the life in Libya and the Libyan revolution especially.

The book is Hisham Matar's debut novel set in Tripoli Libya. It deals with Libyan Qadhafi's September 1969 revolution; the social and politcal life in the seventies. One aspect I loved about this book was the author's usage of poetic prose and the attention to detail in the important scenes of the plot. The writing style is very simple so it really helps you concentrate on the plot and the characters.

The author doesn't give us details of the revolution, but he explains the impact of the revolution on the day-to-day lives of people and especially on children, through the story of a 9 year old boy - Suleiman, who narrates the story as an adult. The author has developed the child's character and that of his mother's as a complex yet complete multi-dimensional human beings. The emotions in Suleiman, his cruelty, dilemma, betrayal and all the contradictions he goes through are portrayed very well. But somehow it still failed to make a lasting impact on me. I am still not able to figure out what could be the reason, but I know that at the end of the book I felt that it did fall short of something! One reason could be that the author did not spend enough time and effort to really build up and highlight the relationships better - be it the one between the father and son or between Suleiman and his best friend Kareem. So I always felt I was at the surface and looking at what's happening, rather than feeling that I was a part of the story or engrossed enough to relate to the characters.

Nevertheless, I still recommend this book as it's not just a run-of-the-mill fiction. It's based on the real life events during Libyan revolution and helps you gain some insights into the same.

If you have read this book, I would love to know what you felt. If you reviewed it already, do let me know and I'll link it here.

The Orbis Terrarum Challenge update..

I realized I haven't written an update about the OT challenge in this new book blog. It's been quite a while since I started this (April 2008) and it's progressing much slower than I expected it to be :( I thought by now I would have completed reading all 9 books, but I still have 3 more to go....
Here's the udpated list and the map -

1. Sister of my heart - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (India)
2. The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan)
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
4. The Bastard of Istanbul - Elif Shafak (Turkey/Armenia)
5. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Russia)
6. In the Country of Men - Hisham Matar (Libya) - Yet to be reviewed