The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

 Another Friday and another batch of Favourite Things.  Back to my laptop and writing after far too long and it feels so good.  Sensitive and not sorry.  A new to me show that I am binging and loving. Reading in bed and feeling cozy. Meem Se Mohobbat finale was just too cute for words. Light and trying to find my way out of darkness. 

  Book: Won't You Stay, Radhika?  Author: Usha Priyamvada  Translation: Daisy Rockwell  Publisher: Speaking Tiger  Pages: 184  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days  Plot Summary:   After her widowed father marries a younger woman, Radhika’s world falls apart. She feels betrayed—the emotional and intellectual bond that she had forged with him since the early death of her mother breaks with that sudden marriage. To escape the unbearable situation at home—the growing rift between her and her father—Radhika moves to Chicago to pursue her master’s in fine arts. She returns to India two years later, burdened by a sense of alienation and homesickness, only to realize that while nothing had changed in her country, everything had. The family that she had longed to be reunited with barely acknowledges her arrival. The sense of belonging is missing, leaving her in ‘an emotional state of in-between-ness, of universal unbelonging’. As days pass, Radhika i...

  It's only March but summer is here and how!  The days are hot, yet the nights still feel pleasant.  This tall jar of Gadbad (an icecream sundae) is bringing me so much sukoon.  A book I recently read and loved.  Ma is Scared is collection of stirring short stories about women in North India and what life looks like for them and everything they have to overcome and ignore and survive.  There are also quite a few Dalit perspectives in here which were important and nuanced.  Reading as always has been a constant.  Fruits 🍍🍎🍓🍇 are life.  Seen here some prep for Fruit chaat. 💛  A thing of joy.  Flowers 🌸🌺🌻🌹🌷🌼💐 Adding some Spring vibes to my room. 

Summer is here.  And I am making a decided effort to find the silver lining and make the most of this season and not be such a frump about the heat and dust and humidity.  So yesterday morning I made a whole list of things I love about summer. Instead of my Morning Pages, I sat and did a deep dive into things I enjoy about summer.  :)    I went all out and found matching stickers to do up my spread.  Stickers are from The Bodhi Shop, I got two kits from them recently and I am really pleased with the quality of the stickers and other paraphernalia.  Here is my motley list of summer loves.  In no particular order.  🍋🍍🌻🍉🌿🍈 Summer also means summer salads. I avoid cooking in a hot kitchen as much as I humanly can. Salads, chaats and fuss free meals is how I like to spend most of May.  I eat a plate of fruit on most days.  Watermelon, grapes and of course Mangoes or even a sweet Papaya is my lunch on most days.  The Salad I ha...

  Book: Normal Family  Author: Chrysta Bilton  Publisher: Little Brown & Co.  Pages:  336   Read On: iPad  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days  Plot Summary:   For most of her life, Chrysta Bilton was one member of a small, if dysfunctional, family of four. There was her sister, Kaitlyn, her hedonistic, glamorous, gay mum Debra, and Jeffrey, who Debra hand-picked, in an LA hairdressers, to be the father of her children. During Chrysta's unstable childhood, Debra struggled to keep the family afloat and Jeffrey wandered in and out of their lives. Then, in her twenties, Chrysta discovered that her father had secretly donated his sperm over 500 times - and that she had at least 35 other siblings. A Normal Family  is a captivating coming-of-age memoir about Chrysta's reckoning with the secrets both parents had carefully kept from her. Heartfelt, warm and funny, it's a story of embracing the family we have, in all the forms we fi...

  Book: Cat People  Editor: Devapriya Roy  Pages: 320 Publisher: Simon and Schuster  Read On: Paperback Edition  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days  Plot Summary: I n Karachi, a writer house-sits for her father and his cat, while keeping track of his - the cat’s - list of obsessions: ironed white sheets, kheer, KFC fries, warm custard, finely chopped sausages, and the flaky tops of chicken patties.  In San Francisco, a couple adopt a cat, without anticipating what it will do to their relationship.  In Noida, a cat and two dogs line up peacefully every morning for their daily dose of vitamin syrup.  In Bombay, a lyricist and screenwriter roots through the litter tray first thing in the morning, to investigate if his cat’s UTI is better.  In wintry London, a young millennial wonders if she is actually a cat.  Capturing the many moods of felines and their humans, in many forms and voices, Cat People, is a timely celebration of t...

 Hello Loves!  How has life been treating you lately?  My life has been curiously busy and full of other drama and books have not exactly taken a back seat but have definitely been on the back burner. I have been reading but in a distracted sort of way. I read but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the books.  I just life to calm down a bit and find an amazing book to sit down and really focus on.  Hopefully this weekend I do just that: Sit tight and read.  For today's post I want to talk about two books I read this week.    Heaven by Mieko Kawakami:   Hailed as a bold foray into new literary territory, Kawakami’s novel is told in the voice of a 14-year-old student who subjected to relentless torment for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, the boy chooses to suffer in complete resignation. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate who suffers similar treatment at the hands of her tormentors. T...

  Book: The School for Good Mothers Author: Jessamine Chan  Pages: 336 Publisher: Simon and Schuster Read On: Kindle  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days  Plot Summary:   Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough. Until Frida has a horrible day. The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida — ones who check their phones while their kids are on the playground; who let their children walk home alone; in other words, mothers who only have one lapse of judgement. Now, a host of government officials will determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced w...

  Book: The City of Palaces (also published outside of India as The Sleeping Dictionary )  Author: Sujata Massey  Pages: 488 Read: On Kindle  Read in: ~5.5 hours  Plot Summary:  An orphaned girl.   A cruel twist of fate.   A spectacular adventure. Bengal, 1930. Young Pom’s life changes forever when her family is wiped out in a devastating flood. She becomes a maidservant in a British boarding school where she discovers her gift for languages.  Amidst the drudgery of her duties, she finds unexpected friendship and experiences the stirrings of first love. However, tragedy strikes and she is forced into hiding.  Alone and desperate, she is recruited into a brothel for English officers. She hopes this secretive, decadent world will shield her from the demons of her past.  But fate intervenes, and our heroine is on the run again—to Calcutta, the city of palaces, where she finds herself caught up in the rising tide of Indian nationalism. ...

  Hello Loves!  August is Women in Translation month and a time to read and talk about the incredible stories that exist in languages other than English.  There is such a treasure trove of stories and characters written in various languages (regional languages in India and many international languages) and I am so so so grateful for the work translators do to make these stories accessible to all of us.  I've been meaning to compile this list all month long, but it's taken me forever to sit down and get this written.  I will split this post in two parts,  Part I is All Indian Books.  Part II is Books from All Around the World.  So let's get Started.  First here are some Indian Women Writers you need to/ have to/ got to Read.  INDIAN WOMEN IN TRANSLATION: BOOKS TO READ 1. Matchbox Stories by Ashapurna Devi (translated from Bengali) 2. The Kept Woman and Other Stories by Kamala Das (translated from Malayalam)  3. Lifting the Veil by I...