The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar : Book Review

This book is a memoir based primarily on the horrific events in the tenure of Qaddafi in Libya and how they effected the lives of the victims. It is about Hisham Matar's family and their times in Libya and Egypt in general and Hisham's own life focusing mostly around Hisham's father, a businessman of Libya, who was abducted from Egypt and confined to the Abu Salem prison in Tripoli. After a general massacre in the prison, his father was neither heard of nor was documented among the prisoners who were killed. This lead to Hisham's quest to establish his father's death to himself so that he can come to terms with it.

Splendidly written this memoir is a must read both as a document and as Hisham's style using catch phrases, flowing across time and places with perfect ease.

In a scale of 20 we give it a 19.

You are there always by Ramakant Pande

You are there always

Do I hear you singing, 
as I think I see you,
behind the rolling fog.

did I feel your touch
in the blowing breeze
in the fragrance of marigold
did I 
smell your presence
do I seek your warmth
in the dying amber
of a dimming Sun
in the growing Autumn
Oh! And did I hear you
in the fallen leaves.

Dawn break, like you,
dispels the dark and like you
the thousand birds in unison
in perfect pitch
singing orchestrating
and I know,
in the opening Sunflower
in the droplets of dew
sliding across the green
leaves of Geranium,
you are there
you will always be.

© Ramakant Pande     

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy is a very bold memoir of a family in particular and perhaps every family in general. It is a gripping description of the culture of Appalachian  whites in USA and what essentials the families lack and give into drug addiction and divorce and give up on anything even before beginning it. The memoir of J D Vance highlights the ills of irresponsible families and although it focuses around the working class in and around his hometown yet the story holds true across countries and continents as the family culture of yore is degrading all over the globe. It carries a very important message which people in the modernized and modernizing world must wake up to.

We give the passionate book an 19 in a scale of 20. A must read.

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis: Book Review

Michael Lewis has come up with yet another brilliant work,something that one may count on as being a biography of the marriage of two minds,that laid the foundations of behavioral economics.
The book is a very interesting account of the lives Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who were so unlike each other, opposite in all conceivable ways yet turned out to be 'fertile couple' and advanced theories that completely changed the human perception of Economics in general and our own study of ourselves in particular. The book is not as much about the results they came up with as much as it is about how they ended up in each others company.It also portrays the ups and downs in their relationship as they work their way through one brilliant concept after another,bringing out the best in each other while acting as the perfect foil to the other.By the end of the book one wonders even about the order  their name should be taken in.
Amos, with his quick wit, and his surgical  mind that could annihilate a potential foe, a people puller who was on the secret shortlist for the Nobel economic prize, died in 1996, estranged from Danny.
Kahneman, who won the Nobel in 2002 for economics, had a hard beginning and was the softer part of this alliance who chose to question his own convictions mercilessly, came into his own slowly after moving out of the penultimate umbra of this relationship.
Still, it was the marriage of these two ends which generated the heuristics and theories of smart thinking, well detailed in this amazing book.
Lewis shows us brilliantly how and why this couple demonstrated how human beings were  not really the ones to think smartly, and how by asking the right questions, one can aim at better decision making in all areas of life.
  Another of the best books of 2016 in the non-fiction category, this book is an essential read. Don't miss this one.

We give it a 19.25 in a scale of 20. 
P.S. Be prepared to feel a sense of loss at the end of the book, as you will never want it to end.Try analyze that, with Kahneman and Tversky as your guides.

Consonance: A poem by Ramakant Pande

Consonance

On waking up

I drift staggering

my way

to the dawn break.

I silence the questions

they have no bearing

as I totter about

in complete surrender

ignoring questions or answers

on what and why.

I look and see and

what I have I mix and fix.

The day beckons me

for reasons

I don't wish to know

have never known

why

I no longer think

and just wander

and do whatever 

it wants me to.

And I work and work

till it 

lays me off,

lets me go

and I 

from the falling dark

hide away to curl

into a cozy warmth

and want it to last

for ever and ever.

Yet when it ends

it all is

all over again

and again and again.

I have no questions, 

I seek no answers

I am and intend to be

in consonance

in resonance 

with it 

to be

just as it needs me to

in its own terms..

.......... Ramakant Pande

© -Consonance-by-Ramakant-Pande

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman : Book Review

Based in Australia of early 20th century, the plot begins with Tom fighting his dark and cold memories of war and unpleasant past he had with his father for having deprived him of his mother as Tom gets posted as a keeper of a lighthouse. On the way he meets Isabel, the love of his life. They get married and Isabel happily moves with him to live a shared life in the square mile island and things change for Tom. But having given birth to 3 still borns, Isabel is shattered till one day when a three month child is washed ashore on a boat with a dead man. Isabel forces Tom to keep the baby and tell the world that finally Isabel gave birth to a healthy daughter Lucy. The story from here on is a fight between conscience and wish, between promises and one will find it hard to pause reading.

The book is a very touching and will at times make you feel as if you are there with the characters.

On a scale of 20 we give it a 19.5. It's one of the best novels of 2016. Read it if you haven't already!

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren: Book Review

Lab Girl is an excellent memoir and one of the best books in non-fiction category. Hope Jahren has been very bold and brilliant with careful and impressive choice of the events of her life that she has narrated finding a parallel in her field of interest namely soil, seeds, roots, stems, branches and the bio chemicals of the plant growth and its struggle against all odds.

A must read in a scale of twenty we give it a 19.5.

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: Book Review

The Nest is a novel woven around a family and the description of all the people related to the two brothers and two sisters including the family itself is captured in deep detail and is engrossing till the end. The father of the family had set up a trust and had willed that a certain amount should be handed over to the four siblings when the youngest of them attains the age of 40. However, the eldest son gets engaged in a sexual scam and the mother had to salvage her own reputation as well as that of the son by blowing away the trust money in hushing up the incident. The younger siblings were, however, waiting for the trust money to mend their own lives and debts.

The remarkable point of the well knit plot is that very fine points of human psychology have been brought up all through the book with a plethora of characters, each of who is examined in detail.

In a scale of twenty we give it a 16.5. It is a must read.