A Climb Through Altered Landscapes by Ian Parks

Title: A Climb Through Altered Landscapes
Author: Ian Parks
ISBN: 09552855739
Publisher: Blackwater Press/1998
Pages: 50

I got this book from Ms Alex of Daemonwolf Books. As I write poetry, I am always happy to receive poetry books.

Ian Parks poetry touches many realms. The concrete as well the abstract. In the same poem you can find both. On a first read, most of his poems can be taken as love poems but not so. Those also make us glimpse nature, the seasonal changes. His love poems are in no way mushy but for me those are steeped in spirituality. I also see endless possibilities.

Quoting from his poems:

.......I'd left the wardrobe open:
in a queue behind the door
the stiffened shapes of our former lives
were waiting for the thaw......

~~~A Dream of Snow, page 11

Leaving wasn't easy
nor is this: the climb through altered landscapes,
different trees to find
each other as we really are.

~~~The Ridge, page 19

Afloat on a sea
of my own dreams, I was content
to let the pages fall while Sonny Boy was blowing
sweet and low. I woke
to a sunburst splintering
the trees: a rush of light.

~~~Hammock, page 17

Along with sense of loss, there is hope, beauty in that, regret and yet no regret. At places I found acceptance of that loss, after love was gone. Yet when it was there, nothing compared with that emotion.

For poetry lovers, readers as well as writers, Ian Parks' poetry is worth checking out. I am very glad I requested this particular book from all that she was offering to give away.

If interested, do check this interview with Ian Parks.

Musing about bookstores

How many bookstores do you frequent? Do you have a favourite? If so, which one and what makes it so?

Believe me or not, there arn't that many bookstores in Delhi. And nothing near my place. But there is one in the heart of Delhi, Bookland, which I frequent regularly. I have been buying from that small stall for the last 30 odd years. One can't browse books there but just giving a list to the owner does the trick. He finds all that he can. It is a small place, yet there are books and books and books. As I mentioned here several times, I also visit the Sunday pavement book bazaar very frequently. It is a book lover's paradise. I can spend hours over there!

Seven facts about Geraldine Brooks

softdrink of Fizzy Thoughts is holding a mini challenge based around lists as part of the Dewey's Book Reading Challenge.

Here I list a few facts about Geraldine Brooks, which I found via the net.

1) Geraldine Brooks, born in 1955, is an Australian-American journalist and author.

2) She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for March.

3) Brooks married fellow Pulitzer recipient, Tony Horwitz, in Tourette-sur-loup, France, in 1984.

4) She also converted to Judaism, which is the religion of Tony Horwitz.

5) She and Tony Horwitz have two sons, Nathaniel and Biju, and divide their time between homes in Martha's Vineyard, United States and Sydney, Australia.

6) She has written three novels. Year of Wonders, published in 2001, is an international bestseller. Her second novel, March, was published in late February 2005. Her third novel, People of the Book, published in January 2008, is a fictionalised account of the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

7) She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (1995) and Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under (1998).

Dream Country by Luanne Rice

Title: Dream Country
Author: Luanne Rice
ISBN: 055358264X
Publisher: Bantam Books/2001
Pages: 504

One of my friends insisted I read this novel, which she said was not only a romance. I was not to keen to read 500 odd pages of a romance novel. However, the premise interested me and I breezed through it.

Daisy Tucker's teenage daughter Sage, runs away from their home in Connecticut. Daisy is frantic with worry as she had already lost her son, twin to Sage, at the age of three. That incident had broken her spirit, and had culminated in her leaving her husband James Tucker, in Wyoming. Daisy has made a life for herself and Sage by designing personal pieces of Jeweller.

Sage is sixteen now but she still misses her twin. She feels incomplete without him. She leaves her mother to go to her Father in Wyoming, where she thinks she can find some peace. She takes train rides, hitchhikes and meets David, who somehow just turns up from nowhere to help her reach her destination. Sage feels a strange affinity with him. Meanwhile, Daisy is forced to go to Wyoming to wait for Sage daughter to arrive safely.

In the aftermath of the tragedy of losing Jake, Daisy and James had never grieved together. Suddenly they are forced to face each other again, and the old wounds come to the surface. Both are affected by it and wait for Sage to come home. When she finally arrives, they get much more than than they hoped for, wished for...

Dream Country is a homecoming for all the characters involved, in one way or the other. I liked Sage's thoughts about her twin, the way she feels half a soul without him. Her relationship with David, who despite being a stranger seems like someone she has known all her life. Dream Country is an easy read. All those romance readers can safely read it.

Love with a Stranger by Janelle Taylor

Title: Love with a Stranger
Author: Janelle Taylor
ISBN: 0821754165
Publisher: Zebra Books/1996
Pages: 416


Book Cover Description:

Torn apart by her second husband's betrayal, thirty-five-year-old Cassandra Gratham, a financially strapped widow, seeks refuge on Georgia's St. Simon's Island, where she encounters a man whose tenderness and passion prompt her to risk her heart one moretime.

My views:

Frankly I wouldn't call Cassandra cash strapped. She got lot more than she really deserved. And with Jason, it was more of sex than passion. This book has nothing much to rave about. I say, leave it well alone. Or read if you like pages and pages of sex scenes. That's how I felt about it. I skipped most of the middle, well all of it!

Booking Through Worst Books

How about, “What’s the worst ‘best’ book you’ve ever read — the one everyone says is so great, but you can’t figure out why?”

Not an easy one to answer. I simply leave books after few pages if I can't go on. When I was a teenager, one book I plodded despite not liking it was Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I just did not get it, at that time. The stream of consciousness somehow left me cold. Now I do read such books and love those too. Maybe I should give Mrs Dalloway another chance.

Three years back, I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I found it too simplistic. I would rate it as the worst book I have read till date.

The Murder Stone by Louise Penny

Title: The Murder Stone
Author: Louise Penny
ISBN: 9780755341016
Publisher: Headline/2008
Pages: 312
Rating: 3.5/5


This novel is set in an exclusive hotel, The Manoir Bellechasse, which is situated deep in the Canadian wilderness. It is peak of summer and the place is a escape from the mundane world. Homicide Chief Inspector Gamache along with his wife, is there for their annual visit. Stinking rich, snobbish Finney family is there too, for a family reunion. All the members of the family are weird and quirky in their own ways. They have gathered here in this particular place to pay a tribute to their father, Charles. It seems they don't like him at all but are here only for their mother's sake.

Tensions are running high, old jealousy come into surface and escalates into a murder being committed. The big question is who is the murderer and what is the motive. Most important is, how could it have been committed? All of the family is a suspect. And then there are a few hotel employees who are not above suspicion either.

Chief Inspector Gamache has lot of questions with no answers and he too has his own demons to slay. In the course of the book, many interesting things are revealed about the family members. The book managed to hold interest. Louise Penny has a good style of writing. I liked to learn about the place it is set in.

Musing about books to strangers

We were all warned as children to ‘never talk to strangers’, but how do you feel about book-talk with random people? When you see people reading, do you ask what it is? Do you talk to people in the bookstore or the library? Why or why not? What do you do if people talk to you?

I can talk about books to just about anyone who shows the slightest interest. It does not matter where or when. I have even recommended books in bookstores and in the library. I too don't mind if someone suggest authors or books. It is a different matter that I might not take to it. As I read very different kind of books, I don't take in kindly to the popular reads. However, books make great conversations, at least for me. In many a cases, books have helped break the ice. Any book lover will identify with that feeling.

When We Meet Again by Victoria Alexander

Title: When We Meet Again
Author: Victoria Alexander
ISBN: 0060593199
Publisher: Avon Books/2005
Pages: 371

In a masked ball, Pamela seduces Alexie, Prince of Avalonia. After a night of passion, she disappears from his life. A few years later, their path cross again. Pamela recognises him instantly but Alexie, although knowing she seems so familiar, is unable to place her. As both land of living in the same house, the only solution is to go for an false engagement. None is ready for it but there isn't any other choice. By this time the prince has lost his kingdom. In her heart, Pamela wishes for permancy with him, but Alexie has not much to offer.

Like any other romance, the lovers are star-crossed many a times. This book is set in the 1880s and has a few interesting characters. It moves forward in a good pace with wit and humor. Pamela is fiesty and Alexie is dashing. Nothing unusual fpr a romance novel.

Not bad for one time read and to pass it on.

Sunday Book Coveting

The Cradle by Patrick Somerville

Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again. Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not know-does not want to know-where her mother lives, but Matt has an address for Caroline's sister near by and with any luck, he will be home in time for dinner.

Only as Matt tries to track down his wife's mother, he discovers that Caroline, upon leaving Marissa, has led a life increasingly plagued by impulse and irrationality, a mysterious life that grows more inexplicable with each new lead Matt gains, and door he enters. As hours turn into days and Caroline's trail takes Matt from Wisconsin to Minnesota, Illinois, and beyond in search of the cradle, Matt makes a discovery that will forever change Marissa's life, and faces a decision that will challenge everything he has ever known.

Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjis

Tatiana, the narrator, is one of five children whose parents run a Jewish deli in Mexico City. For several years now, this woman in her 20s has been living in Berlin, having minimal contact with her family, getting by on low-paying jobs and seeing almost no one. Her Sundays are a wasteland of loneliness during which she takes long walks through the city; her weekdays, when she is not freezing in her unheated apartment, are spent transcribing the never-to-be-published notes of an elderly German-Jewish historian.


Both these books are coveted courtesy of the http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html