Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Books I Really Liked but Can’t Remember Much About

Image result for the namesake bookImage result for unaccustomed earth bookImage result for a place where the sea book
Image result for the blood of flowers bookImage result for a gesture life bookImage result for waiting bookImage result for things fall apart bookImage result for small island andrea levy


What is up with these books? I remember I liked them a lot; they are all five star reads for me. Why then can't I remember much about them? Maybe I will remember more by looking over the plot.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. 

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
These eight stories by beloved and bestselling author Jhumpa Lahiri take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. Here they enter the worlds of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. Rich with the signature gifts that have established Jhumpa Lahiri as one of our most essential writers, Unaccustomed Earth exquisitely renders the most intricate workings of the heart and mind.

A Place Where the Sea Remembers by Sandra Benetiz
This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. Chayo, the flower seller, and her husband Candelario, the salad maker, are finally blessed with the child they thought they would never have. Their cause for happiness, however, triggers a chain of events that impact the lives of everyone in their world. 

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvanni
In 17th-century Iran, a 14-year-old woman believes she will be married within the year. But when her beloved father dies, she and her mother find themselves alone and without a dowry. With nowhere else to go, they are forced to sell the brilliant turquoise rug the young woman has woven to pay for their journey to Isfahan, where they will work as servants for her uncle, a rich rug designer in the court of the legendary Shah Abbas the Great. Despite her lowly station, the young woman blossoms as a brilliant designer of carpets, a rarity in a craft dominated by men. But while her talent flourishes, her prospects for a happy marriage grow dim. Forced into a secret marriage to a wealthy man, the young woman finds herself faced with a daunting decision: forsake her own dignity, or risk everything she has in an effort to create a new life.

A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee
A Gesture Life is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II.

Waiting by Ha Jin
In Waiting, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village. Ha Jin profoundly understands the conflict between the individual and society, between the timeless universality of the human heart and constantly shifting politics of the moment. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, he vividly reveals the complexities and subtleties of a world and a people we desperately need to know.

Things Fall Apart by China Achebe
Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

Small Island by Andrea Levy
Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. 
Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant's life.




Is it just me? Do you have books you don't remember much about?



Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

17 comments:

  1. I made a goof and did next week's post, so naturally I now have to flip them around! Lol!

    Here's my Tuesday Post

    Have a GREAT day!

    Old Follower :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't remember these ones cause I never heard of them! I haven't read much though. See ya later

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Blood of Flowers has a such a beautiful cover. It's too bad you can't remember much about it. I may have to read it myself! :)

    Here is our Top Ten Tuesday.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I do love the cover of The Blood of Flowers, these look like great reads!! I might have to check them out!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm impressed that your list of books in this category is so short :-) I find that the more books I read the fewer details I remember, even of books I loved. But, oddly, I remember every detail of the 10 pages I've read of a particular book that I know I SHOULD read, but haven't.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've heard of every single one of these and not read any of them. I thought I might have read WAITING, but after looking at the summary - no. I probably thought about it. I do remember thinking I should read A GESTURE LIFE. Well, at least we remember that we liked them after we read them. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  7. I haven't actually heard of any of these books, but some of them look very intriguing - I'm going to have to check them out!

    ReplyDelete
  8. These all look really interesting and I'm not surprised they were 5 star reads. I wonder what it was that made them slip your mind? I've found when I've read too many similar books in a row they all kind of meld!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Things Fall Apart is seared into my brain, maybe because it was one of the books taught at my school so I was always helping students with it and checking it out with this admonition, "Keep up with your reading or...wait for it...or things will fall apart." I thought I was so clever.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I read Things Fall Apart in college, long, long ago. I don't remember a dang thing about it.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wow, this is bad, not only have I not read any of these, I've not even heard of them. Apparently I need to crawl out of my hole!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I read Small Island and thought it was very good, but I sure don't remember much about it.

    As I post my journal entries (Looking Back posts on Fridays) for the books I read 20 years ago, I find there are quite a few that I loved, but of which I have no recollection. Of course there are some that I loved that have stayed with me in great detail, so I wonder why others haven't.

    ReplyDelete

I hope you will leave a comment so I know you have visited. If you stop by my blog, I will always stop by yours.

Note: Disqus commenting is only available on the web version of the blog. Please switch to the web version if you are using a mobile device.