August Reading Wrap-up '22

AUGUST IN REVIEW

 

August was an eventful month for me. It marked the end of a phase of life and  the coalescence of the real world and adulthood for me. It felt like a place more than a time when I look back at it with how fast things changed overnight. That being said, I think with how busy the final semester of college ended up being, it became pretty obvious that I'm not going to be able to complete my goal to read a book from every country in Asia. I've accepted my defeat, for now. I think with how many things I achieved in other aspects of my life, allowing myself a leeway in making it to this goal is fair. So, i will attempt this challenge in the future and complete it while taking you along on the journey but until then, we have other books to talk about.

So these are the books I managed to read in August with a side of real-world adulting and anxieties to keep me company.

1. The Fine Print by Lauren Asher

2. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

3. The Gunslinger by Stephen King

4. Whisper to me your lies by Novoneel Chakraborty

And the one book that I dnfed with much passion- Lajja by Taslima Nasrin. An attempt at reading a Bangladeshi author.

What I read?

The Fine Print by Lauren Asher

Genre: Romance

This is the first book in the Dreamland Billionaires series which follows the Kane family who are rich, bad boys falling in love with what I assume are normal women well below their “status”. The first book follows the youngest brother, Rowan Kane who is a control freak and would be called problematic if it weren't for the billions in his bank account and the other perspective is that of Zahra who is a 'grounded' person with no money, who cares about workers' rights and the only thing she "owns" is the love and affection of her family. Something that Rowan secretly yearns for considering how his father is a neglectful parent, his mum’s dead and the grandfather who brought him up passed away is obviously true love. So it's your basic grumpy x sunshine trope with the "rich, bad boy" x "poor, good girl" trope that's the story of every other Indian soap opera ever. 

The former, my favourite trope ruined by the latter. For all the hype it got and the 4.02 stars it has on Goodreads this book is super underwhelming. It wasn’t that enjoyable, the insta-love and intrigue was all based on superficial qualities and the chemistry was non-existent. It pretty much seemed like Rowan was attracted to Zahra because of how exotic she looked. I barely remember how the characters read.  It did start off strong with a woman who had lost ambition and was looking to create and explore the world on her own terms but the reasons they fall for each other weren’t very deep or interesting and to be completely honest, the reason Zahra has a family is just a plot device since there was barely any depth to her relationship to her parents and her sister.

It was stated several times that they were close but not depicted so through the plot of the story. The ending was a bummer for me. I recommend it to people who enjoy happy endings and do not want to delve into relationship dynamics or layered character studies.

My rating: ⭐⭐

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

Genre: Literary Fiction

Set in the Sundarbans, in the labyrinth of riverine islands of the Bay of Bengal, the occupants of which live in a constant struggle to stay adrift economically and physically in the Tide country, the story follows Piya Roy and Kanai. Piya is an American cetologist, of Indian-descent on a journey to track down the Irawaddy dolphins and Kanai is an Indian businessman on his way to meet his aunt and figure out the last missing piece- the final written account written by his uncle before his death. This book is an ode to climate change, the environment and the tide country as much as it is to the people and culture of the Sundarbans. The trees, animals and the storms are as important to the story as the two main characters whose perspectives we follow throughout. The vibe of "floating in a river in a wooden boat, in the middle of summer -waiting for river dolphins to surface with the forest alive and in motion around you" is exactly something I was looking for. The fear and fascination with alligators and tigers and the storms; the overlapping of human conscience and nature were depicted beautifully. The prose was simply brilliant and the setting came alive with vivid clarity. This book was *chef's kiss* a work of art.

The absolute awe I felt, exploring this world through the characters lenses from the helplessness of summer storms to destitution caused by partition to falling in love wordlessly. The themes and ideas were immaculate and I highly recommend this to people who enjoy literary fiction and climate fiction. 

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Genre: Fantasy

This is the first book in The Dark Tower series- a fantasy series set to be one of Stephen King's masterpieces with intricate world-building and questionable morality. The story follows Roland- a gunslinger (a now, decimated race) who is alone on a journey to find the Man in Black and the answers to his questions. It reads like a long prologue which tries to be the doorway into a world of loneliness, quiet adventure and desolation. I picked up this book convinced that since Pet Sematary was the book that made me like Stephen King, the mixture of my favorite genre- fantasy and King's writing would be an absolute masterpiece but I did not vibe with it. At all.

It dragged on and on literally and figuratively in a desert with no sense of meaning or direction until the very end. I did not at any point understand why Roland was pitched as an enigmatic hero when he was written with the personality and thinking capacity of wet cardboard. Even his reflections about having to kill people and the effects on his conscience were uninteresting. The most reaction this "spell-binding" story elicited from me was that of utter disbelief at how nothing was explained even until the very end. And I'm not the least bit inclined to find out what happens next.

None of the characters were interesting, the 'allure' of Alice was just Roland being a hoe but pretending it was out of pity. I do not appreciate how King decided to make all the women antagonists have the hots for Roland's desert-battered body? Also, Alice was an absolute girlboss who ran her own bar and dealt with drunk customers while having amazing empathy and a healthy sex-life, but she was reduced to a woman who sought out pity sexual interactions. 

It's a slow-burn, Western-fantasy. (imagine: cowboys, deserts, locals who are suspicious of the new guy in town, cult-y churches, blowing desert winds, holsters and gunpowder but set in an alternate reality that is like Earth but not Earth). This was precisely the kind of book I was looking to avoid. But if you like all the things I listed above please do give it a shot, take my opinion with a grain of salt.

My rating: ⭐

Whisper to me your lies by Novoneel Chakraborty 

Genre: Mystery-thriller

This book follows the story of Ekantika Pakrashi, an IAS aspirant living in Delhi- whose boyfriend becomes the latest victim of the previously dormant 'Sellotape' serial-killer. The other perspective that crops up as you go is that of the serial killer describing his origins and how he started killing people. Ekantika vows to find the serial killer and solve the case and that's how the story unfolds. As intrigued as I am by true crime cases involving serial-killers and unlikable protagonists in thrillers, this book just did not work for me. 

The plot was interesting enough to follow with all the reveals, some of which were pretty obvious but that did not take away from the story. It was the writing that ruined the whole experience for me. The amount of times the characters 'smirked' instead of just 'smiling' or 'grinning' made me want to exact unspeakable violence onto the paperback copy I own.

The sentence framing at several places left me with disappointment and I blame it entirely on the editor for not revising the text enough before publication. Simple writing is not the problem here, I've enjoyed several books with very simplistic prose that have the sole goal of conveying an idea with clarity, it was the obvious flow of language of the text that sounded like it had been translated from Hindi without a care in the world for proper editing was the reason I felt disgruntled. While Indian readers may not prefer English as a first language, putting forth juvenile prose and using preference as an excuse for quality just screams laziness and a lack of respect for the audience.

My rating: ⭐.5

And the final book that I attempted to read in August but did not complete is,

Lajja by Taslima Nasrin

Genre: Literary Fiction

Lajja is an angry story written in response to the communal hatred and violence that spewed in Bangladesh in response to the destruction of the Babri Masjid in India. It’s a fictional account told through the perspective of a Hindu family living in Bangladesh and realising how endangered their lives were now because of the incident while also reminiscing about how their own countrymen who had fought alongside them for independence now hated them-leaving them bereft of a home and a motherland. While I appreciated the thought behind the idea of the book and why it achieved acclaim during the said political climate when it was published, the writing was anything but readable. 

I dnfed the book at 25% and returned it to the bookstore I bought it from in exchange for another. That was how much I disliked it. It reads like a history book- every other thought the characters have are just dates and places, just factoids of where violence was occurring. The conversations were all just facts too. Imagine thinking in historical facts and events instead of a coherent thought process with feelings. The nuance which I desired was unfortunately absent and the author chose to tell the story through the perspective of men which I did not find very intriguing. Especially after she belittled the depths possessed by the women characters in the family through the male gaze of her protagonist and perpetuates the very culture she claims to fight against. Maybe the book or the narrative voice got better over the course of the story but this book was just not for me.