The Nature of Things

This is the first in a proposed trilogy of books, set in India, mostly in Delhi. It is centered around the Wadia family, but we see things mostly through the eyes of Ajay who works for Sonny, the scion of that family.  When he was a young boy, Ajay was sold by his impoverished mother. It was under those circumstances that the boy grew up and eventually came to work for Sonny.  The Wadia family essentially rules Delhi. Nothing can get done there without their consent. This creates an atmosphere that is rife with all manner of vice, including gangsters, kidnappers, murderers, drug addicts, and violent thugs of every stripe. The story is a blend of family saga and crime drama and the writer takes her time in telling it. The book is over 500 pages long and yet it reads quickly. The action never drags and the reader feels compelled to keep turning those pages to find out what will happen next. The book begins with a tragedy, a fatal car crash that killed five people including a pre...

Winter is winding down, both the season and the winter of our lives. Robert Frost understood such times.  He knew, for example, about entering a room and not being able to remember why you came there and he expressed it well in this poem: "What kept him from remembering what it was that brought him to that creaking room was age." Yes. That.  Well, there's not much we can do about age. It is inexorable, so it's best to simply accept it and move on, keep on "filling the house" and our lives as best we can.  An Old Man's Winter Night by Robert Frost All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels round him—at a loss. And having scared the cellar under him In clomping there, he ...

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : A favorite winter visitor - the Chipping Sparrow . *~*~*~* Our ancestors were very hairy creatures and we still carry with us those genes for hairiness, so why don't we look like Australopithecus afarensis?         Depiction of  Australopithecus afarensis .   *~*~*~* Seven states rely on the shrinking Colorado River for water. Since they seem unable to come to an agreement for sharing the water, it seems that the federal government may have to impose such an agreement .  *~*~*~* Prescribed burns, a long-time Indigenous practice , can help to restore depleted lands.  *~*~*~* Inuit communities are calling for mandatory measures to reduce underwater noise pollution which they blame for the disappearance of narwhals and ringed seals from areas where they used to hunt them. *~*~*~* Why do the newts cross the road and why are there volunteers out there helping them to do it? *~*~*~* W...

This op-ed piece in the Times reminded me of my own take on American Dirt which I read and reviewed three years ago. Apparently, the book is still stirring up feelings. Here were my thoughts on it at the time. *~*~*~* American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins: A review February 11, 2020 Mexico is my next-door neighbor. I live in an area that is made immeasurably richer culturally by Mexican immigrants and people of Mexican heritage. My neighbors, friends, and, yes, employees are some of those people. For those reasons, I was particularly interested to hear about this book. And then shortly after I first heard of it, it seemed the book world exploded along a strict dichotomy of opinions; either it was a "new American classic" or it was a rank example of cultural appropriation and whitewashing. At that point, I tried to distance myself from all the hoopla about the book. I wanted to read it myself and make up my own mind. By now it seems that the plot of the novel is perhaps too well...

I had read a couple of the later entries in this series and decided that perhaps I should go back to the beginning. This book was the first in the Red River mysteries series. The events of the book take place in 1964 in East Texas, a time and place when racial tensions were a prominent part of everyday life. We meet Constable Ned Parker who is White and a Black deputy sheriff named John Washington. The two work together to deliver justice and to protect their community from evil. In this case, this evil is exemplified by an individual who takes pleasure in torturing and killing animals. Of course, he doesn't stop there. He soon moves on to humans and the killer seems to be targeting the constable's family which includes his ten-year-old grandson Top who is now living with him after the death of his parents in a car crash. The story of the investigation is told mostly through the perspective of Top and his slightly older cousin, Pepper. This is very different from the kinds of c...

I finished reading this book a few days ago and, at the time, gave it a three-star rating. But when I sat down at my keyboard tonight to try to review it, I found I was completely blank. I couldn't remember the book. Maybe that three-star rating was a bit generous???  In the end, I had to refer to the Goodreads synopsis of the book to jog my memory and to try to recall why I had awarded it three stars. Not a very auspicious beginning for a book review. I think the problem may have been not so much the book or the writing but simply that I was distracted by other things while I was reading. Sometimes a book can take one out of his/her distraction and focus attention but that proved to be difficult for me in this instance. Anyway, bearing that caveat in mind, these are my best recollections of and reactions to Hernan Diaz's book. The book is set primarily in the Roaring '20s in New York with some side trips to Europe. It is the story of a prominent financier Benjamin Rask an...

Thomas Hardy is probably most well-known for his novels, but he wrote poetry also and it is still fresh after a hundred years. This one seems especially appropriate for late winter. I particularly like the image of the aged thrush, with his song, flinging his soul upon the growing gloom. He refuses to let the gloom defeat him.  The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy I leant upon a coppice gate       When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate       The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky       Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh       Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be       The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy,       The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth ...