Two in One

2022, wow. Just a couple of months in, and yet so much has already happened that I feel myself craving for another break soon. Work has relented a little now, just a little push and something really major will have been accomplished. But enough of that; on to the two months that I was completely remiss in monthly updates.

For January, I read a total of 4 books:

• "Under The Whispering Door" by TJ Klune - 4/5  Late last year, I enjoyed reading the "The House in the Cerulean Sea," a copy of which I gave to my tween daughter together with this, "Under the Whispering Door" because they were sold as a bundle online. I thought they were part of a series, and only when I started reading "Whispering Door" did I realize that they are completely unrelated novels. I plowed on anyway and found that I enjoyed both books independently of each other. Even if they mirrored particular themes such as gay love, loss and acceptance.  

• "People From My Neighborhood" by Hiromi Kawakami - 4/5  This was a very quick and quirky read! I've always been fond of the bizarre and the eccentricities that are distinctly Japanese, and this one delivered just that. Fun, this. 

• "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion - 5/5  Reading this from a place of grief, after losing my mother in 2020, reminded me again -- not that I need any reminding -- of the pain and regret and emptiness of losing someone so integrally a part of you, that you can't imagine your life going on without them. I felt like Joan was me: writing for me, transcribing my feelings, finding the words for me exactly. How fleeting and small we are in this life. 

• "The Book of Form and Emptiness" by Ruth Ozeki - 3.5/5 The rating is more a 3.5 really. I enjoyed the references to pop culture, the blurring of lines between the literal and the figurative ("bounding of words," holes to let the words out, etc.) and could somehow relate to Annabelle's hoarder tendencies (but I'm not THAT bad, I swear!) but something feels missing. There were also parts that I found unnecessary, that didn't really add any value to the story. Still, I liked the idea of speaking with one's "own" Book, that's narrating the story of your life like an omniscient being, and living a life where words Bound and Unbound have such lasting effect on one's decisions. 

Meanwhile, I slowed down a bit in February because of a major project in the office, but I did manage to read a couple of volumes: 

• "The Lost Daughter" by Elena Ferrante - 3/5  Leda is a complicated, “unnatural mother” as she called herself. I could understand, to a certain extent, the frustrations she felt when she was younger, but I could not at all comprehend where her actions at the present time were coming from. I watched Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation prior to reading this and to be honest, I wanted a deeper understanding of Leda’s entire psyche, why she did the things she did. Unfortunately, the book didn’t offer anything new as far as intentions and feelings are concerned, so props to my favorite actor Olivia Colman for portraying Leda so accurately.

• "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg” by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik - 5/5  I don’t always read non-fiction because they tend to bore me. The few times I read a memoir, the books were required reading for the book club. You get the picture. So I need to discern well that a non-fiction read will *most probably* be worth my time. How can one go wrong with a book that talks about RBG and all that she stood up for? RBG is Notoriously amazing. I love her. Need I say more? 

March will hopefully allow me more time for leisure reading. Today I just finished reading one of Raymond carver's collections, that will be included in next month's report. Ta-ta!