Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: Five People You Meet In Heaven
Author: Mitch Albom
Imprint: Time Warner Books
ISBN: 9780751536140
Genre: Fiction, Drama

Who doesn’t know Mitch Albom of Tuesdays With Morrie fame? Well, if you don’t know, you can read about the book and the author here.

The story is about Eddie, a lonely old man, who has lived in a small town by the sea all his life. When he dies and goes to the other side, he meets with five souls; some known and others unknown. But why does Eddie meet these souls? Why isn’t he sent straight to either heaven or hell? Let’s just say it is something on the lines of Newton’s Third Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Not exactly the same, but you will know when you read the book.

There is just the perspective of the author, but nothing scandalous. However, there is a subtle attempt to make people feel guilty about having a good life, especially if they have survived death. I personally didn’t like the way the story turned out. In some ways, I wouldn’t say the author, but the story indicates you need to make peace with everyone. I am of the belief that some people don’t deserve the loss of my peace of mind. Just too preachy. But, at some parts of the story, it occurs to the reader that it is always better not to judge someone without knowing the complete story. I think the author should have implemented this in his own life, especially while writing this book.

Well, I would say Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom is a one-time read. I wouldn’t pick this book up again later in my life.

Always Postpone Meetings With Time-Wasting Morons: A Dilbert Book by Scott Adams

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: Always Postpone Meetings With Time-Wasting Morons
Author: Scott Adams
Imprint: Andrews and McMeel, a Universal Press Syndicate Company
ISBN: 0836217586
Genre: Comics, Satire

Scott Adams is an American author and cartoonist known for his Dilbert satirical comics that hit close to every home because of its theme being corporate work and life. He was a contributor to major newspapers before becoming the originator of a hate wave towards blacks.

Always Postpone Meetings With Time-Wasting Morons is the first compilation of Scott Adams Dilbert comics. You will also see Dogbert here. Most of the other characters that became famous through these comics are not seen here. While the theme remains corporate work and lives of white collar workers, the title of the book, though alluring, appears only once in the book. However, what made me laugh are the comics on Ruler of the Heck and “rulers are meant to be broken” to name a few.

While some of the comics are only from the cartoonist’s perspective and I didn’t understand what was being made fun of, there are a lot of comics that I could understand. But what made me laugh were very few.

The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W E Bowman

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: The Ascent of Rum Doodle
Author: W E Bowman
Imprint: Arrow Books
ISBN: 97800993317708
Genre: Fiction, Satire, Mountaineering

William Ernest Bowman (W E Bowman) was an English writer whose notable work is The Ascent of Rum Doodle, this very book being reviewed.

Seven British mountaineers attempt an expedition to summit Rum Doodle, said to be the highest peak on the face of the earth. Binder being the lead, the rest are equal contributors to continuing disturbances faced by themselves along with their Yogistani porters. The mountaineers don’t understand the language of the porters spoken from the gurgling of their throats and rumbling of their stomachs while the porters didn’t get a single word coming from the mountaineers. Nobody dies on their way to the peak, but they do lose their way plenty of times, especially Jungle, who doesn’t seem to find the will in himself to stay with the rest of the team. Of course, there are other team members who are carrying excess weight for the sake of experiments at higher altitudes, who are unruly, and so on. Wondering if they would make it to the summit of the Rum Doodle? You will be surprised.

To be honest, I was a bit annoyed at the narration, as it seemed that the author was mocking people and cultures that are foreign to the British. But then, that is how any foreigner would approach anything new to themselves and their culture. However, it wasn’t until I had read half of the book that it could make me laugh. Not the book’s fault. Being a trekker myself, I got more seriously invested in the descriptions than finding them funny. It wasn’t until the mountaineers got petrified of their cook and his cooking and ran for their lives at the sight of him that I was thinking of the line on the cover page: one of the funniest books for years. This line turned out to be true a bit later than expected. Once started, the laughter riot didn’t stop and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book at home, on commutes, during breaks.

Bear with the narration, stay with the book and you are promised a good laugh for The Ascent of Rum Doodle is a satire on all the mountaineers thronging the Indian subcontinent and its neighbouring countries where the mountain ranges offered the greatest challenges to individually wealthy as well as sponsored to scales new heights, truly.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: The White Tiger
Author: Aravind Adiga
ISBN: 9788172238476
Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers India
Genre: Fiction, Drama, Political, Adult

Aravind Adiga is an India-born US based financial journalist, who happened to win The Man Booker Prize 2008 for his debut novel, The White Tiger. A few more books followed, but none of them were noteworthy.

Balram a.k.a. Munna, is one of the lakhs of illiterate and uneducated people, who migrate from the remote rural places shrouded in poverty and oppression to metropolitan cities in search of a better life. The book doesn’t jump directly to where he moves from his village to the city. There are plenty of events and characters that trigger his decision to go to the capital of India. What does he do in the city? Are you expecting a happy ending or sadness? Does he survive Delhi or does he go back to his village? Let me just say that Balram undergoes a lot of struggle, some similar to what our grandfathers and fathers say every time we overspend or rest a bit in our lives, but it doesn’t involve walking miles together or swimming across the river to go to school. Yes, there is a school, but not the exact struggle. Well, this book is from the times when the “India Shining” slogan was flashing at everyone irrespective of the relevance.

The White Tiger is a raw, anger-filled and very adult book. I binge read it. I regret not reading it sooner! This fast paced book is what kept me going as long as I read it. The White Tiger is totally recommended to every adult.

Indian Love Stories edited by Sudhir Kakar

Reviewed by Shwetha H S

Title: Indian Love Stories
Editor: Sudhir Kakar
Imprint: Roli Books
ISBN: 9788174362797
Genre: Fiction, Romance

Sudhir Kakar is a distinguished psychoanalyst and writer. Winner of numerous honours including the Goethe Medal, his books have been translated into several languages. I hadn’t heard of him before reading this book. So, all of that in the first sentence of this paragraph is from the back of this book I am reviewing.

I had read Indian Love Stories about seven years ago and had completely forgotten about it. Probably because this didn’t mean much back then. Now that I have grown older, I can understand what each story is actually talking about between the lines.

The Empty Chest written by Indira Goswami in Assamese/Asamiya and translated to English by Pradipta Borgohain: talks about clinging on to past love until realizing that the other person has moved on. Indira has used cruel metaphors to convey the meaning of her story.

The House Combustible written by Subodh Ghosh in Bengali/Bangla and translated to English by Dipen Mitra: talks about why it is better for everyone to not rake the dried layers of past relationships and move on, even if you cross paths again, by not saying out loud what is going on in your mind to avoid embarrassment and retain self-respect.

Stains written by Manjula Padmanabhan: is not only a suffocating love story but is also about feminism, culture contrast, superiority-inferiority complex, taboo, standing up for self, and patriarchy. I had never come across any piece of writing that addressed all these topics at one go. My favourite quote from the short story is “The bleeding woman is penalized for being in that ‘state’: the correct condition, of course, is to be pregnant or nursing.” To me, this quote not only talks about women facing untouchability during periods in certain cultures, but also about situation of rape victims.

A New Triangle written by Ratanlal Shant in Kashmiri and translated to English by Neerja Mattoo: is a short story about a toxic marital relationship between two individuals. Towards the end of the story, it feels like they didn’t want to get married, but wanted to just live together and hadn’t realized it sooner. There is a mention of Harmukh peak, which apparently, has been attempted by only one non-Indian so far and hasn’t returned from his expedition. I had been on a trek on which I could see Harmukh peak from far and seeing its mention in this story brought back the memories. It also gave an authenticity to the story, a nod to the nativity.

Chastity Belt written by Damodar Mauzo in Konkani and translated by Xavier Cota: is not a love story but is a crap-load of male chauvinism and patriarchy’s whims and fancies made to look like love. This story just made me want to spit on it.

The Game of Chess written by Kamala Das in Malayalam and translated to English by Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan: is about the dilemma of mental infidelity and unrequited love. Each emotion-led action and each action-led emotion is beautifully described in this short story. So much so that reading it begins to give a feeling of you undergoing each of those emotions and actions. Isn’t that the purpose of good narration?

The Bed of Arrows written by Gopinath Mohanty in Oriya and translated to English by Sitakant Mahapatra: is a pain to read. The protagonist of the story is in pain and is on death bed and reading about her emotions and day-to-day ordeal inflicts pain on the readers.

Housewife written by Ismat Chughtai in Urdu and translated to English by Fatima Ahmad: is an erstwhile version of a rom-com; is a total laughter riot. However, it subtly yet heavily hints at patriarchy.

Weekend written by Nirmal Verma in Hindi and translated to English by Kuldip Singh: is either an aimless story or a bad translation. I neither liked it when I read it first nor now. Even if I try to make sense of this short story, at the maximum, I could say it is about insecurities. But, I still cannot make much sense of it.

The Weed written by Amrita Pritam in Punjabi and translated to English by Raj Gill: talks about the cock and bull stories people tell innocent girls about what love is and how it happens or what it looks like. It is also about experienced lives and their inexperienced sides.

Indian Love Stories is a book that offers something for everyone. But it all depends on you how you interpret the emotions evoked by each short story. Read at your own risk.

I Wonder by Jane Altman, Illustrations by Joan Chiverton

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: I Wonder
Author: Jane Altman
Illustrations: Joan Chiverton
ISBN: 9781478765820
Imprint: Outskirts Press
Genre: Children’s Book, Picture Book

I like the “attempt” at creating modern rhymes by Jane Altman, but not the rhymes themselves. But cutting short the word alligator and using the words like mater, I don’t think small kids would be able to understand. Being a grown-up, I don’t know what agog is. I had to look it up. In order to have rhyming words, the author has used some difficult words. Beaver is shown as a weaver, but in reality is more of a builder. Again, in search of rhyming words. Scion also is a difficult word for small children. However, the whole rhyme about the lions sounds a bit messed up. Suffused is another difficult word. The glow-stones story is somewhat about going back to our roots and if we are completely devoid of our roots, we will not fulfill our purpose. Why this notion? In the poem For Parents and Other Grownups, I wonder whether the author is laughing at the grown-ups or just writing to make it lengthy! But it made me laugh! Worked for the grown-up in me! I found the poem Mowers and Blowers extremely lame. And there is a story about what I think is on bra! Life of a Bra. No, that’s not the title. Title is T’Aint Fittin.’ In a children’s book.But I like the way the author has a poem to a child reader and a page where the child can paste its photograph.

As the author writes in the book, this book is for children, parents and other grown-ups. Although the book doesn’t have any adult content to be warned about, read the book to the small children while skipping the sorrowful parts about death and loss. Joan’s illustrations are supportive.

2035 by Shruti Jain and Nilutpal Gohain

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: 2035
Author: Shruti Jain and Nilutpal Gohain
ISBN: 9781661616434
Imprint: Half Baked Beans
Genre: Fiction, Dystopia, Young Adult, Sci-Fi, Thriller

2035 is the first full-fledged novel by Shruti Jain and Nilutpal Gohain, who went on to write distinctive individual works.

2035 is a science fiction, dystopian novel, very near to reality even now. It is fast-paced. No dragging narration anywhere. One can find many personally relatable points. To me, Rhea binging on Kaju Katli is extremely relatable as it is my favourite! Her need for half an hour to reboot after waking up in the morning reminds me of my friend, but she needs almost an hour. There is an Alexa of the future – Alie, Slurpp for Zomato, Nile for Amazon, Toggle for Google, TPay for GPay, and Slambook for Facebook. I love the idea of how Nile forces us to buy something, at least to exit the shop. The whole story is very gripping, an edge-of-the-seat dystopian thriller with good covering of any loopholes that can occur until the climax. But the ending seemed out of place. Since it is an AI, still in progress, maybe just the instructions were enough to put the doomsday on hold. What I could not comprehend is why would the AI accept instructions from a newborn baby, Ayang, whose Toggle id Siddhanth was using. Maybe by then Toggle Id had understood that Ayang is not a newborn, as Jaydeb had informed. But if Toggle’s AI was so invasive that it could understand Siddhanth was not a newborn that he was posing to be, and constant data transmission was happening from Siddhanth to the AI to create VR for him, then the AI would also have seen his past. It could have easily judged that Siddhanth was declared dead years ago.

2035 is a good sci-fi read. One of the few good ones written in this genre.

We Of The Forsaken World by Kiran Bhat

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: We Of The Forsaken World
Author: Kiran Bhat
ISBN: 9781771803663
Imprint: Iguana Books
Genre: Fiction, Adult

I have never read any of Kiran Bhat’s works. This is the first one I have read from his list of works.

There are multiple stories within We Of The Forsaken World. Illustrations in between the narration are good. Homemade chocolates mentioned in the book remind me of Ooty. Usage of the terms North and South remind me of India. People not learning their mother tongue are so relatable nowadays. But none of the characters or places have names so that the readers from everywhere can relate to them. However, the character Milker reminds me of Mohana Swamy by Vasudhendra. Silencer is the only sensible character in the whole book. One of the characters is similar to Sylvia Plath too. But this is where all the good things about the book end. Trying to depict the emotions, the author has made the narration tedious. Author has vented out his frustration of North Indians in South India. The stories sound more like sexual fantasies rather than anything else; nothing related to the blurb. The author should have named this book We Of The Forsaken World Of Sex. This book is more of a practice of polishing the language than having any story in there, in any of them. The only way the author describes females in the stories is that they are either ugly and bald or too sexy; so vain. The gooseberry cookies described are better whereas gooseberries are sour to taste. The description cannot even be imagined or makes me wonder if the author knows what he is writing. I have read convoluted things, but some sentences in the narration are so perverse like this one: “I heard that her father molested her, tried to drink the milk from her nipples and called her his cow.”

The only take away, something I already believed in, from this book is that education and living in a city doesn’t make one civilized. But in the acknowledgement, the author says the book didn’t make much sense when he began writing it. It doesn’t make much sense now either.

If You Were Me and Lived In Colonial America by Carole P Roman, Illustrated by Sarah Wright

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: If You Were Me And Lived In Colonial America
Author: Carole P Roman
Illustrator: Sarah Wright
ISBN: 9781523234073
Imprint: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Genre: Children’s Book, Picture Book

Carole P Roman is a children’s book author. You would have read my reviews of many of her books. She writes simple books on complex yet important topics that children need to know while growing up. Her books are illustrated by Sarah Wright.

The book starts with why Protestant churches came into the Americas and how that led to people migrating from England, also about Separatists and Puritans. It tells about the struggle there, by building everything from the scratch, It also tells the meaning of Thanksgiving, Breeches, etc. At the end of the book, there is an introduction to a lot of people who contributed to colonial America. After that, there is the usual glossary that gives meaning to a list of words and their pronunciations.

Apart from Carole’s writing, there are Sarah Wright’s illustrations. These are not too at all blurry, neutral coloured, to keep the attention of a young child.

If You Were Me And Lived On Mars by Carole P Roman, Illustrated by Mateya Arkova

Review by Shwetha H S

Title: If You Were Me And Lived On Mars
Author: Carole P Roman
Illustrator: Mateya Arkova
ISBN: 9781530361847
Imprint: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Genre: Children’s Book, Picture Book

Carole P Roman is a children’s book author. You would have read my reviews of many of her books. She writes simple books on complex yet important topics that children need to know while growing up. Her books are illustrated by Mateya Arkova.

Like the other books in the series “If You Were Me and Lived…,” this book too has all the details that a child of 3-6 years of age can understand and only as much as it needs; details like how many years are required to reach Mars from Earth, how you may have to live there, the characteristics of the planet and its moons, what you will do there, etc, are covered. As usual, this book too has a list of words with their meanings and pronunciations.

Apart from Carole’s writing, there are Mateya’s illustrations. These are not too blurry, coloured bright, to keep the attention of a young child.