March was very uneventful in terms of reading. I was jumping from one book to another like a wild monkey and was running out of time for my book club read. It was The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz which was due to be discussed in the first week of April. In the end I joined the discussion without having read it fully. I was also reading and rereading Paula, marking pages and making notes and browsing through a lot of other books but couldn’t focus on one long enough to finish it. Then I found this audiobook The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune on hoopla. I have been meaning to read it for sometime now and couldn’t have come across it at a better time. It was a very predictable story but with an interesting set of characters, each bringing their own dimension to the story. The story is set on this island in the cerulean sea, where an orphanage for the magical children is located. Six magical children live together under the care of a fiercely loyal master who took it upon himself to educate them and prepare them for the world and also to protect the orphanage from being shut down, no matter what. The future of this orphanage would be decided by one Linus Baker, who abides by the rules given to him and tries to evaluate the place on his visit. It is a good tale of mischief, fun, innocence and angst woven together. I enjoyed listening to the book. But the experience was somewhat spoiled by the backstory I gleaned from some Goodreads reviews about what the story was inspired from. So as of now, I haven’t got an opinion on the book. I just don’t know how to judge it in light of the new information. It was an enjoyable book with a good number of funny and lovable moments.
The other book was Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren. I found this as a ‘skip the line’ ebook from my library. Apparently it was a very popular book and usually has huge waiting times to borrow. But sometimes the library offers such books for 7 days as ‘skip the line’ collection and we can borrow many popular books there. So this one intrigued me and I jumped right into it. This was a faster read for me, couldn’t put it down at all. This is a well-structured and well-paced story of a woman who thought she moved on from her past, her first love. She gets engaged to an older guy. But when she chances upon her first love, eleven years after they had to part their ways, she wonders if she still loves him. He, on the other hand, reaffirms that he has never stopped loving her. Alternating between the current and past timelines, this was a beautiful story of two hearts growing to love each other without even realizing it and then parting ways, only to meet years later. I really enjoyed the teenage Macy and Elliott’s conversations among the bookshelves, particularly their usual question for each other, ‘Favorite word?’. They both share a lot of words over the many weekends they meet and the words relate to the ongoing story in someway or the other. I liked how the story develops. It was a beautiful weekend read.
Then I started Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman. It is an interesting collection of anecdotes and experiences from the life of the Nobel-prize winning Physicist. Feynman is an inspiring personality. His life and story is as much about the little things he enjoyed as it is about the important contributions he made to the world. He inspires us to not lose the child in us, and stop having fun, ever. That little voice that wants us to go poke about and fiddle with things that escape our understanding and solve those little puzzles around us – we’d pay attention to that voice after reading this book. Absolutely loved the book.
So that was March and April, or rather, April readings for me. I will be back soon with more books and detailed reviews. So long!
Snippets and Vignettes 