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Musing Mondays asks you to muse about something related to reading/books each week…
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It's a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.
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| One of my students with her Certificate in 100 m races |
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| My pretty, pretty students!! Posting for Saturday Snapshot, hosted by Melinda of West Metro Mommy |
“Francesca…there was an accident. You need to get dressed.”
“Who, Daph?”
“Your mom and dad need to tell you,” she said, her eyes welling in tears.
“Daphne,” I demanded, my eyes pleading with hers.
Her face scrunched as the tears fell freely. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. Something happened to my sister. I hugged the pillow tighter. “Is Josie going to be ok?”
She looked at me pitifully, and I knew in my heart that my sister was gone. I had to hear it, though. I stared at her, my heart thumping against my chest.
“I don’t think so,” she barely choked out.
Posted for The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice. 
I still see her, our Liz, sitting on a plank, dangling over that well. She held on to the rope that hung from the pulley, her bare feet pressed together so tight that the points on her ankle bones were nearly white. She was six. She had on her brother's cast-off pants, and earlier, when I'd given them to her, she'd asked if wearing pants made her a boy. I'd told her we'd wait and see see, and that had made her giggle.
Title: The Personal History of Rachel DuPREE
Author: Ann Weisgarber
ISBN: 9780143119487
Publisher: Penguin Books/2011
Pages: 321
1917. Badlands in South Dakota. It has been struck by a severe drought. Rachel DuPREE and husband Isaac are trying hard to survive. Rachel is pregnant with her eighth child. She has five surviving children and does not wish to bury the one she is carrying. Isaac is resolute. He will not give up the land but Rachel has misgivings now. When Isaac lowers Liz, their six year old daughter, into the well to get water, Rachel cannot bear to look into Liz's accusing eyes. She starts reminiscing her life and starts questioning.
Looking back, we learn that, Isaac and Rachel acquired 360 acres of land from the Homestead Act, as a black man - or even a woman - was entitled to stake a claim. Rachel married Isaac because she was in love with him but Isaac married her for acquiring land.
Twelve years later, Rachel is not so sure about her choices in life. She wants better for her children, not this struggle. They do not have small pleasures of life. She knows she has to take a decision for the sake of her children.
Told in the voice of Rachel, the prose is not flowery but spare and beautiful. We are with Rachel all the way. We learn about "agency Indians" and the black settlers and it makes us think, who land is it in the first place.
I will quote Rachel here: "I admired the feel of a book. I opened the book and held it to each girl's nose. I alwasy believed that smelling the pages of a book took a person into the story."
That is the way I felt about this novel.
All that I have I carry on me.
Or: All that is mine I carry with me.
I carried all I had, but it wasn't mine. Everything either came from someone else or wasn't what it was supposed to be. The gramophone box served as a pigskin suitcase. The light overcoat came from my father. The fancy coat with the velvet collar from my grandfather. The knickers from Uncle Edwin. The leather gaiters came from our neighbor Herr Carp, the green woolen gloves from Aunt Fini. Only the burgundy silk scarf and the toilet kit belonged to me, present from the previous Christmas.
I must mention here that Herta Müller is a German-Romanian novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1987, she immigrated to Berlin after suffering repeated threats for refusing to cooperate with Ceaușescu's secret police.
MY REVIEW:
Title: The Hunger Angel
Author: Herta Müller
ISBN: 97808505093018
Publisher: Metropolita Books/2014
Pages: 285
The novel is narrated in the voice of Leo Auberg, a 17-year-old. He is discovering the "forbidding pleasure" of being a gay. He meets men in park pavilions and in the Neptune Baths. If discovered it would land him in prison or a penal colony. But he is sent to a labour camp because his name is in the list as he is of German origin. He is almost glad to be in the list. Before they come to take him away, Leo turns a gramophone case into a suitcase and fills it with after shave, socks, burgundy silk scarf, a poetry book and a book by Faust. What he gets from his grandmother are five words: "I know you'll come back."
Survival is not easy when all one can think about hunger, all the time. The equation is 1 shovel load=1 gram of bread. The anger, anguish and dejection takes over him. He dreams of escape but that is only an illusion. Even when he is free after five years, he is still trapped in the labour camp. One is with Leo yet cannot fathom the depth of despair.
Kati, another inmate of the labour camp is of feeble mind. She does not understand authority or punishment. She is happy in her own world because she does not understand this world. Her portrayal is so touching. Her presence in the camp shouldn't have happened but someone substituted her name for another.
Reading The Hunger Angel, I learnt much about forced-labour camps. I wasn't aware of the fact that Romanians with a German origin were deported to Soviet labour camps. Thousands died in those camps. Herta Müller says in the afterword that “the deportations were a taboo subject because they recalled Romania’s fascist past.” But she refused to keep quiet about it. She spoke with former deportees and connected with the poet Oskar Pastior who had spent years in a Soviet forced-labour camp. He died but Müller continued with her work from the notes she had made and The Hunger Angel happened. A must read for those who want a slice of history and aren't into easy read.
Filled with impassioned logic and musicality, John Sibley Williams’ debut collection strives to reconnect language to the things they describe, to control the uncontrollable by redefining the method of approach. In these compact poems, so edged in dark corners and the strenuous songs of beauty and identity, Williams establishes a unique
Why Photographers Commit Suicide explores, in small narratives and lyrical poems, the American idea of Manifest Destiny, particularly as it relates to the next frontier—space exploration. Mary McCray examines the scientific, psychological and spiritual frontiers enmeshed in our very human longing for space, including our dream of a space station on Mars. These poems survey what we gain and what we lose as we progress towards tomorrow, and how we can begin to understand the universal melancholy we seem to cherish for what we leave behind, the lives we have already lived. McCray unearths our feelings about what it means to move ahead and stake out new territory, and what it means to be home.Musing Mondays asks you to muse about something related to reading/books each week… Last Sunday I vented about longer working hours. Our Union negotiated and the timings have been reverted back for some more time. The reason given out was vague to the least. I can say that it is not going to happen anytime soon. We are all happy.
This week we will celebrate our Annual Day in school. We are busy preparing for that. In the midst of all this, my reading is going great. I finished 19 books in Jan 2014. (18 novels+1 poetry book). Not bad, eh? My goal is to read 150+ book in 2014. Let's see if I get to that.
Listing below what I finished reading, the best part being, I have reviewed 15 out of 19, I read:
Photo taken in the last 10 days. First photo: The Sun came out after 4 days to bless us. I and mom went out to have fun. Second photo: It was a cold, cloudy day after one day of Sun....
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| Mom waiting for the Metro |
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| Watching the Republic day celebrations with HOS (Extreme Left) |
