latest read - the girl with the dragon tattoo

I now totally, totally understand the hype and buzz behind this book.

I simply could not put it down until I got to the end. And then, reaching the end sparks the need to start on the next book in this three-book series. Thank God I bought all three already.

The book starts by slowly building up the characters and the story line. So, you are always kept wondering and guessing what will happen next, which feeds to the can’t-put-it-down syndrome. There are also quite a few surprises in the plot that make you go "WTH?!" and of course that makes the syndrome even worse. I was reading one night and did not even realise that it was already 2.30 in the morning! I love a good book but man, it sure is not good for my health. But that's not stopping me from reading.

Anyway...

The mysterious disappearance of Harriet is the drive behind the story. We are introduced to the Vanger family which was once a powerful industrial family in Sweden, a Mikael Blomkvist - the journalist - and of course, the girl with the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth Salander - a master researcher. We learn that the Vanger family is a very troubled family shrouded with secrets and family feud. In particular, we discover the sick, disgusting and murderous acts of Gottfried and Martin Vanger.

There’s still quite a mystery behind Lisbeth Salander but three things we know about her by the end of this book:

1. She is a master hacker (Reading what she can do with hacking makes me worried about the security of my info on my PCs. Yikes!)
2. She has photographic memory
3. She had quite a rough childhood, though it was not described in detail in this book but hinted here and there, which made her very asocial and very mistrusting of people in general but mostly in man.

What will happen next?

Can't wait to dive into the next book!

latest read - never let me go

Apparently this story has been adapted to a movie. Surely I must have seen it on E! but it doesn’t ring a bell.

Anyway, I bought this book because it ran on a discount upon purchase of another item. I thought from the author's name that the book would be based in Japan. Well, it is not. Reading the first few pages, I was intrigued. What is this story about carers and donors?

Hmm…

The story is narrated by a character named Kathy H and the book is divided into three parts.



Part One –
At Hailsham until age 15-16.
It feel like a typical English boarding school for children where the focus was on arts and mainly on paintings;
A character known as Madame would come once a while and take away some paintings to be placed at the Gallery;
No one actually knows who Madame is and where or what the Gallery is;
Students are guided and taught by guardians;
Miss Emily was headmistress;
Miss Lucy was another guardian who was leaving hints here and there about what Hailsham really is and what the future of the students would be like;
No one noticed the hints except Kathy who noticed them but of course could not decipher them;
Here, she built a bond with Ruth and Tommy D.;
Yes, they learnt that they were brought into life to be donors for people outside of Hailsham;
It is a known and understood concept of life for the students of Hailsham that they we brought to life to donate their parts and then die.

Part Two –
At the Cottage (containing farmhouse, barns, outhouses, stables and other buildings);
You can leave to be carer at your own request;
Upkeep of cottage by those there but a grumpy old man named Keffer comes 2 to 3 time a week to look things over;
This is like a transition or stop-over- house before you become a carer or a donor.

Part Three –
Kathy has been a carer for quite a few people including Ruth and Tommy;
Eventually got together with Tommy;
Ruth passed away after two donations but before admitting that she was sorry for keeping Tommy away from Kath all these year and also, she managed to acquire and pass the address of Madame in order for Kath and Tommy to apply for several years of deferral from being a carer or a donor;
Discovery of Madame’s name i.e. Marie-Claude and that Miss Emily (the headmistress at Hailsham) who is now quite old and weakly, are actually working together with Madame;
At Miss Emily/Madame’s house they learned several things namely:
1. There were some quarters of the outside world who saw all clones existed only to supply medical science;
2. Hailsham was a place to bring up clones or students as they call them with much more dignity compared to other places;
3. It is Hailsham that was proof they these clones are human and the arts produced by students in Hailsham are proof that these clones/students in fact, do have souls;
4. But the maintenance of Hailsham failed when people who initially supported the ways of Hailsham now changed their minds and would rather prefer that these organ supplies are kept in the dark;

To complete means you’ve given all that you can give before you die; Tommy completed after 4 donations. Kathy lived on without the two closest people she knew.


The story is in same domain as the movie, The Island; same sort of things – human bred for parts.

I like the storytelling way of the author. Will definitely start a collection of his other novels.


Here's Wikipedia's overview of the plot of the story for the movie:

Kathy, Tommy and Ruth live in a world and a time that feel familiar to us, but are not quite like anything we know. They spend their childhood at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. When they leave the shelter of the school and the terrible truth of their fate is revealed to them, they must also confront their deep feelings of love, jealousy and betrayal that threaten to pull them apart.

The film is narrated by 28-year-old Kathy H. as she reminisces about her childhood at Hailsham, as well as her adult life after leaving the school. The story takes place in a dystopian Britain, in which human beings are cloned to provide donor organs for transplants. Kathy and her classmates have been created to be donors, though the adult Kathy is temporarily working as a "carer", someone who supports and comforts donors as they are made to give up their organs and, eventually, submit to death. As in Ishiguro’s other works, the truth of the matter is made clear only gradually, via veiled but suggestive language and situations.


The film is divided in multiple parts, chronicling phases in the lives of its main characters.

latest read - mini shopaholic

Becky + Luke = Minnie

Minnie is not the shopaholic as what you might think from the title of the book. Her mother, Rebecca aka Becky - the "star" of the Shopaholic series - is the one with the addiction and using her daughter as a means to divert her obsession with shopping since Becky has been banned from shopping by her husband, Luke.

It is quite a funny book - as all the other shopaholic books were - and very much in line with the shopaholic storyline.

The story centers Becky's secret birthday party for Luke which, as usual, goes haywire as it normally does when it comes to Becky's life. But in the end, all's well that ends well.

latest read - beatrice and virgil

What is the big hype about Yann Martel anyway?

Life of Pi – his first book – received such a big buzz that, although I was not taken in by the buzz, thought maybe I should try out his latest book.

USA Today quoted “Just might be a masterpiece” on the sleeve.
HUH?!
Seriously??!
What a load of garbage.
There’s nothing close to a masterpiece with this book.
Are we talking about the same book?
Sheesh!

The book is a feeble attempt to be cryptic in storytelling the horrors of Holocaust in a new way which to my opinion, really failed, miserably.
The story centres on Henry – a writer – and an old taxidermist who is in the midst of writing a play. The main characters in the play are a donkey – Beatrice – and a howler monkey – Virgil.
It is from this play that Yann is trying to impart some feeling of fear, sadness, violence and bloodshed related to the Holocaust.
Some of the scenes shared between Henry and the taxidermist are nice and sweet and do invoke some thoughts but many of them are just plain pointless.
The climax of book is like 12 pages away from the end of a 197-pages book where the taxidermist as it turns out is one psycho, murderous nut and ended up burning himself and his shop post stabbing Henry.
What the heck?!
Pointless, pointless, pointless.


I think many of the award-winning writers who obtained acclaim from an earlier book find that they have an upper hand in selling and publicizing future books (i.e. typically non-series books) without even trying hard to write a good book. That one sparkling moment in time sets them up for life.

latest read - a thousand splendid suns

A quick storyline of this book (obtained from http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/1000suns.htm)

This book is a powerful and enchanting novel by the intellegent author: Khaled Hosseni.


This book follows two women, Mariam and Laila who share and unbreakable bond. The novel is divided into four parts. The first part focuses on Mariam, the second and fourth parts focus on Laila, and the third part switches focus between Mariam and Laila with each chapter.


Mariam lives in a kolba on the outskirts of Herat with her mother. Jalil, her father, is a wealthy man who lives in town with three wives and several children. Because Mariam is his illegitimate daughter, she cannot live with them, but Jalil visits her every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam wants her father to take her to see Pinocchio at his movie theater. When he does not show up, she hikes into town and goes to his house. He refuses to see her, and she ends up sleeping on the porch. In the morning, Mariam returns home to find that her mother has hanged herself out of fear that her daughter has deserted her. Mariam is then taken to live in her father's house. Jalil arranges for her to be married to Rasheed, a shoemaker from Kabul who is thirty years her senior. In Kabul, Mariam becomes pregnant seven successive times, but is never able to carry a child to term, and Rasheed gradually becomes more abusive.


In the same neighborhood live a girl named Laila and a boy named Tariq, who are close friends, but careful of social boundaries. War comes to Afghanistan, and Kabul is bombarded by rocket attacks. Tariq's family decides to leave the city, and the emotional farewell between Laila and Tariq ends with them making love. Laila's family also decides to leave Kabul, but as they are packing a rocket destroys the house, kills her parents, and severely injures Laila. Laila is taken in by Rasheed and Mariam. After recovering from her injuries, Laila discovers that she is pregnant with Tariq's child. She arranges to marry Rasheed, who is eager to have a young and attractive second wife, and hopes to pass her unborn child off as his. Laila, who has been told that Tariq is dead, gives birth to Aziza, a daughter. Rasheed is unhappy and suspicious, and he soon becomes abusive toward Laila. Mariam and Laila eventually become confidants. They plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul, but they are caught at the bus station. Rasheed beats them and deprives them of water for several days, almost killing Aziza.


A few years later, Laila gives birth to Zalmai, Rasheed's son. The Taliban has risen to power, and there is a drought, and living conditions in Kabul become poor. Rasheed's workshop burns down, and he is forced to take jobs he is ill-suited for. The family sends Aziza to an orphanage. Then one day, Tariq appears outside the house. He and Laila are reunited, and their passions flare anew. When Rasheed returns home from work, Zalmai tells his father about the visitor. Rasheed starts to savagely beat Laila, so Mariam kills Rasheed with a shovel. Laila and Tariq leave for Pakistan with the children. Mariam confesses to killing her husband and is executed. After the fall of the Taliban, Laila and Tariq return to Afghanistan. They stop in the village where Mariam was raised, and discover a package that Mariam's father left behind for her: a videotape of Pinocchio, a small pile of money and a letter. Laila reads the letter and discovers that Jalil regretted sending Mariam away.


Laila and Tariq return to Kabul and fix up the orphanage, where Laila works as a teacher. Laila is pregnant with her third child, and if it is a girl, it is suggested she will be named Mariam.

The first award-winning novel by Khalid - The Kite Runner - was an enjoyable read and so it was without thinking that I grabbed this book. As predicted, this book is as good a read as his first novel. I sacrificed sleep. I couldn't put this book down. I needed to know the journey of Mariam and Laila, what the ending of this tale will be and in just two short days (which are technically working days), I'm done with the book. In reading this book, I could feel the suffering of both Mariam and Laila and at several points in the story, they brought tears to my eyes. Are what being described here do actually exist? Sad to say, I believe that the type of suffering they suffered actually happened to someone in real life. What a life...

latest read - men from the boys

men from the boys - Tony Parsons

This is a continuation of the story of Harry Silver.

It lacks the punch from his first award-winning book and the first of this three book series - Man and Boy.

This book tells the story of a much older Harry and his now teenage son from his first marriage, Pat. There are issues presented in this book that I can totally relate to, in particular those that question relationships and the reason why we love the people that we do and the wonder of restarting a new relationship and the complication that comes with it.

latest read - The Gift

The Gift – Cecelia Ahern

DANG!

Lou Suffern dies in the end.

He was given a little time to speak to his wife and tell her that he loves her.

It's a story about a man who takes his family for granted and puts them last. There’s a little magic involved where if you take a certain pill given by Gabe, then you can present yourself at more than one place. So that helped Lou to be available to handle work and also be there for his family for any family events which tend to clash all the time with his work schedule.

“The Gift” is actually having the extra time after and also before his ultimate passing to let his family know that he loves them.

latest read - something borrowed

This is the 2nd installment to the Brenda and Effie series.

I love British writers. Their use of the English language and the way they describe things and their injection of comedy or even horrors, are very classy and put intelligently.

I love Paul Magrs because of all of this and a little bit more. He has put into our imagination the possibility of living forever with the introduction of organ and body parts replacement. He has also managed to mix well Gothic horror with situation comedy in his writing which I find very amusing and also refreshing.

Brenda, who is the Bride of Frankenstein, should be a monster but somehow, maybe due to her mix of parts is the most human and humane character/monster that ever walked Whitby's streets, confronted by demons and ghouls of all descriptions. But in the midst of all the horrors in Whitby, she has found a good friend with her neighbour, Effie, who is all human, and also another friend in Robert, a young man living in Whitby. I suppose the 1st instalment of this series would have explained how she became friends with Robert. I still don't have to 1st book! Argh!

Anyway, in this installment, we meet characters like Henry Cleavis - who becomes a close friend to Brenda only to leave her when the mystery of Goomba is solved; he may have also left because he was freaked out by Brenda's spare body parts making their way to help Brenda solve a mystery-, Count Alucard, Sheila Manchu, Mu Mu Manchu - departed husband to Shiela - and Jessie the Zombie Womanzee, not to mention Goomba and the evil Mrs Claus.

This story revolves in trying to solve the mystery of the poison pen letters and the release of Goomba.

from March & April (concerts, birthdays and F1 2010)

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Friday, 5th March 2010

Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds Live in KL

Plenary Hall, KLCC

I remember being obsessed with the song "Everytime I Close My Eyes". Totally obsessed; having it run on repeat for days on end.

I believe after the album with this hit song, he mellowed down to being more of the person in the background rather than the lead.

I was surprised that he was such a tiny man, as in, rather short and slim.

His voice, however, is something wonderful.

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Saturday, 13th March 2010

Disney on Ice "

Stadium Putra, Bukit Jalil

I know, I know - it's the same thing over and over, year in and year out.

But I really can't help but go to this every year.

I use it to unleash the child in me that just loves to come out every now and then.

It is always nice to see Mickey and his gang. It's about the only American thing I cannot let go of.

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Wednesday, 24th March 2010

Hana's 2nd Birthday!

It has been two year since this little angel entered our lives. What absolute joy and jubilation having her. She is truly a gift from God. I am eternally grateful.

She's about to attack that cake! Adorable...

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Wednesday 31 March 2010

It was my parents 37th wedding anniversary and we planned to go out for dinner with everyone but what happened instead is a true testament to the saying

"We plan but God decides".

31 March will now hold double meaning - anniversary of my parents and the birth of my first nephew, Hud Hakim Harris, born at 11.17pm, Tawakal Hospital.

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Friday, 2 April 2010 - Sunday, 4 April 2010

2010 Formula 1 Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix

Sepang International Circuit

This year marks the return of the legend Michael Schumacher after he left the sport some three years ago. I was never a fan of his and even less of a fan of Ferrari. There's just something about their arrogance that irks me. 

With the withdrawal of BMW from F1, I was completely lost on who to root for this year.

Malaysia now has two teams:

1. Mercedes GP (Petronas being its title sponsor), and

2. Lotus Racing (Team Principle being Tony Fernandes of AirAsia).

Well, ok, number 1 would have better prospects but who are their drivers, you ask?

Sighh...

Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg (son of Keke Rosberg, an F1 champion in the 80s)

Anyway, this year's tickets are a bit different from the other years.

I love the back of the tickets. Nice!

Every year, I buy driver specific caps and well, this year was a gamble. I made my way to the merchandise booth, tried both drivers' cap, and decided, ok, I'll get Nico's!

My first non-BMW cap. It's now hung on my office wall and it's the odd one out.

The race was pretty average in terms of excitement but no matter what, every year, when I see the five red lights light up one by one and then they go off, the race start, I always get chills!! This year is no exception. I looove....

It's Nico having a tyre change but  Michael's name on the pits.

Well, Michael's car broke down early in the race but Nico managed to get 3rd and on to the podium.

 :-) Good choice on my part :-)

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Sunday 25th April 2010

Kelly Clarkson All I Ever Wanted Tour

Live in Malaysia 2010

National Stadium, Bukit Jalil

My first time in the open-air stadium in Bukit Jalil. It's quite a nice stadium actually.

Didn't bother with coming early since concerts always start at least half hour later than the scheduled time.

Anyway, it's no wonder this girl won American Idol and is the best selling AI alum worldwide.

Her voice live is like listening to her recorded CD but better! Live is always better!

I love that she's comfortable with herself and she exudes that on stage.

 

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Woah... pretty eventful two months!...

latest read - remember me?

Cute cute story!

Aah... I now get why the illustration on the cover of the book is a convertible Mercedes and sunflowers... Nice...

Review from http://www.curledup.com/skrememb.htm,

 What happens if you wake up one morning and realize that all of your dreams have magically come true overnight? That’s what happens to Lexi Smart. She wakes up in a hospital one to find that she doesn’t recognize herself – literally. The frizzy hair is gone, replaced by a sleek, shiny mane, and the lifelong nickname “Snaggletooth” just doesn’t apply anymore…and why do her lips look suspiciously plumper? She doesn’t even believe the Louis Vuitton handbag that the nurse hands her is actually hers. Why? Because Lexi has no memory of the past three years. In her mind, she’s a struggling assistant manager at a flooring company who just had a typical crazy night out with her girlfriends in 2004. In reality, she’s actually a member of the Board of Directors of that flooring company and is waking up from a minor car accident in 2007.

Lexi finds that she has everything she has ever wanted: she is beautiful, married to a ridiculously good-looking guy, makes a lot of money, and lives in the most beautiful loft she has ever seen. So what if everyone at the office not-so-secretly wishes she hadn’t recovered from the car accident? And so what if her oldest friends don’t want anything to do with her anymore? And does it really matter if her new husband scolds her like a child for not putting her shoes away properly? Remember Me? is the tale of Lexi’s quest to discover what happened to her during those three years to turn her into a person whom she doesn’t physically or emotionally recognize, and what she does when she finds out that her new life may not be as picture perfect as it seems.
Remember Me? is funny, witty, and absolutely charming; it is perhaps Kinsella’s best work yet. The characters are extremely well written and appealing. Like all of Kinsella’s protagonists, Lexi is quirky and a bit off-center. What makes this book fresh and unique, however, is that when she wakes, Lexi is the woman that every chick lit heroine loves to hate: sleek and polished, beautiful, refined, and very unpleasant in the workplace. It’s interesting to see what Kinsella does with that role reversal, how the reader sympathizes with the snooty boss in charge instead of condemning her. The most interesting parts of the book come when Lexi is trying to discover what drove her to this complete personality change. She looks at what her husband and friends demonstrate that her life has become and searches for some fragment of the Lexi she knows within it.

Ironically, it is not with her husband that Lexi finds remnants of the woman she used to be, but with his architect partner, Jon. Jon delivers startling news to her soon after their first meeting and, unsure of whether to trust him, she holds him at arm’s length while trying to decipher the puzzle of the last three years.Remember Me? is a fresh look at what might happen if that fairy-tale wish comes true: “I wish I could wake up to find a new me, someone completely different than I am now.” Its hilarious situations and witty humor make it a real force to be reckoned with in the chick-lit genre. The fact that it comes with some definite introspection makes it that much better. It is an absolutely enjoyable experience; readers will race through the pages to find out what happens to Lexi as they try to discover the secrets of her past together. Kinsella has really outdone herself with this work. Any fan of chick lit should pick this up immediately.

latest read - the family way

A story about three sister and how each of them end up with babies of their own.

The three sisters - Cat (oldest, tall, lanky), Jessica (second, the beauty) and Megan (youngest, the smartest) - were abandoned by their mothers when they were young but later were forced to live with her when their dad was too busy with work to care for all three of them. In the end, it was Cat who was the mother figure to her sisters since her mother wasn't interested at all to be a  mother.

The story revolved around the sisters getting babies and the story ended when all three of them got one:-

Cat, who had to care for her sister from age 12, was sure all she ever wanted was freedom. But at the age of 39, decided that, yes, she does one a baby of her own. She "made" her boyfriend at the time, Rory, to do a reverse vasectomy, which he did. One IVF later, Cat was pregnant. However, in his heart, Rory was not too keen to have another child but bent to the wishes of Cat. Cat felt this and left Rory. But of course, when Cat delivered, they found a connection. God, know what will happen with them since the story ended there.

Jessica was in a loving marriage with Paulo but no matter how hard they try, they were not able to conceive. A vacation to Hong Kong and China brought about adoption of a Chinese orphan - Wei - whom they managed to bring home to London. Of course, like a lot of life stories, a couple who have a hard time conceiving, turn to adoption only to find that they get pregnant after the adoption.

Megan is a doctor. A one-night stand left her pregnant. Her baby girl, Poppy, was pre-mature due to pre-eclampsia. Kirk, the father, wanted to be part of her life but in the end, men, lacking sexual pleasure, turned to another woman. He was ditched, of course.

There's really nothing to the story. It was just dragging and dragging the relationships of the sisters, relationship with men around them, with their weird mother, and with their father. The author threw in some adventures here and there but they fell flat. A pretty boring book, to be honest.

No where near the wittiness and standard of Man and Wife.

latest read - Eat, Pray, Love

Another book bought after seeing it on Oprah.

Here's a quick review of what this book is all about from http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm?book_number=1921:

Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.

My take of it:

Italy – Eat: I loved this part of the book of which I can relate very well too. It made me want to visit Italy and Rome in particular.  I thoroughly enjoyed her anecdotes of her hiatus in Italy and how the pleasure of eating healed her somewhat. Well, it could also be because I love Italian food – the cheese, the pastas, and the pizzas – GAH! What’s not to love?

India – Pray: Some of what she experienced and learned I can relate but much of it is lost on me presumably because I have my own strong faith and ideologies on what faith is and what faith means to me. Lots of what she wrote in this part is so repetitive. 

Love – Indonesia: By the time I got to this part, well, I was losing interest in the whole experience. The author was "lucky" - or it might be God's work - to find herself a person to love. Well, Bali is visited a lot my Westerners and practically littered with them. Being in "holiday" somewhat, it's nice to meet someone during a holiday and feelings can easily grow when you are in that environment and in that state of mind.

 

latest read - The Bonesetter's Daughter

I better record what books I've read and give a little synopsis because the moment I start another book, I'd forgotten what the last one is all about.

Since I'm too lazy to come up with my own words, I'll just paste a review obtained online from http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/0804114986.asp:

"For nine hundred years, Precious Auntie's family had been bonesetters. That was the tradition. Her father's customers were mostly men and boys who were crushed in the coal mines and limestone quarries. He treated other maladies when necessary, but bonesetting was his specialty. He did not have to go to a special school to be a bone doctor. He learned from watching his father, and his father learned from his father before him. That was their inheritance. They also passed along the secret location for finding the best dragon bones, a place called the Monkey's Jaw. An ancestor from the time of the Sung Dynasty had found the cave in the deepest ravines of the dry riverbed. Each generation dug deeper and deeper, with one soft crack in the cave leading to another farther in. And the secret of the exact location was also a family heirloom, passed from generation to generation, father to son, and in Precious Auntie's time, father to daughter to me."

Like Amy Tan's previous three novels, THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER traverses time and geography, spanning China and America with a complex bridge of generational secrets. The fact that this is common to all her fiction in no way lessens the impact here. Tan's latest offering is her best yet, surpassing even THE JOY LUCK CLUB in its insight into both the painful intricacies of mother/daughter relationships and the tender, awkward dance between women and men.

THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER opens with a flashback of a young girl in China and her nursemaid, Precious Auntie, who communicates in eloquent sign language understood only by her charge. It soon becomes apparent that the young girl is LuLing, now a mature woman who has lived for many years in San Francisco and who has a grown daughter named Ruth.

Ruth's story, set in the present, is told over the next 150 pages. A ghostwriter of self-help books, Ruth reflects on her struggles with Art, a linguistics consultant with two difficult teenage daughters, as she waits out her latest bout of annual psychological laryngitis.

Life for Ruth is made infinitely more complicated by her thorny relationship with her mother LuLing. As far back as they can remember, "they were two people caught in a sandstorm, blasted by pain and each blaming the other as the origin of the wind." Remembering is now at the crux of Ruth's problems. She comes across pages handwritten in Chinese that LuLing entrusted to her ages ago just as LuLing is beginning to lose her grasp on the present.

This novel has had an extraordinary history. Tan turned the finished manuscript into her publishers and then confiscated it after her mother's death and rewrote it entirely. For much of the five years between publication of THE HUNDRED SECRET SENSES and her new novel, Amy Tan was dealing with her mother's progressive Alzheimer's, and it's obvious that this is a very personal book for her: "On the last day that my mother spent on earth, I learned her real name, as well as that of my grandmother. This book is dedicated to them."

Amy Tan has turned what must have been an emotional bombshell into a beautifully nuanced tale, not only of the complicated relationships between loved ones but also of the constantly evolving relationships between history and truth, language and memory.

Ruth is a strong, intelligent woman who spent her childhood embarrassed and angered by her Chinese mother and much of her adult life exhausted by the struggle that has become second nature to them both. It is only as she reads LuLing's story that she becomes aware of the child her mother was and the forces that molded that child into the woman Ruth is finally, truly, beginning to know and accept.

The middle of the novel is a first-person telling of LuLing's childhood and how she came to America. Tan's talent is taking one person's life and weaving through it a historical context that enriches the individual one. THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER travels through China past and present, a journey that includes ink making, archaeology, world war, and communism. Yet, whether Tan is describing a mission school, the Peking Man furor, the Nanking massacre, or the cultural revolution, there is never the sense of being spoon fed facts; we are conscious only of the characters and their diverse reactions to the historical maelstroms that sweep them along and the everyday occurrences that alter their lives in small but profound ways.

Nestled one within another like hollow wooden dolls, the secrets of LuLing come slowly to light under Amy Tan's deft pen. As Ruth's life is forever changed by her mother's revelations, we are subtly reminded of the pitifully short time each of us has with our loved ones and how often we take for granted their memories and experiences. A poignant and often humorous book, THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER is an example of the best in writing and storytelling, a novel that transcends culture and history to strike at the heart of what makes us human."

--- Reviewed by Jami Edwards

My 1st Anya Hindmarch

Super-happy to get an Anya Hindmarch for my birthday.
My 1st Anya! (Model: Cassie)

Woohoo!!

latest read - Six Suspects

It took me awhile to get through this book. Family and work occupied my time thus little was left for book reading.



Anyway, this is the same author that wrote the book Q & A or more famously known as Slumdog Millionaire. That was the reason I bought this book since I was amazed by the tale of Slumdog Millionaire.


I enjoyed his writing flare and comedic relief story-telling in what is a serious and criminal event - murder.

From HarperCollins Canada:
"Seven years ago, Vivek ‘Vicky’ Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi simply because she refused to serve him a drink. Now Vicky Rai is dead, killed at his farmhouse at a party he had thrown to celebrate his acquittal.

The police cordon off the venue and search each and every guest. six of them are discovered with guns in their possession and are taken in for questioning. Who are these six suspects? And what were they doing in the farmhouse that night?

In this elaborate murder mystery we join Arun Advani, India’s best-known investigative journalist, as the lives of these six suspects unravel before our eyes:
a corrupt bureaucrat;
an American tourist;
a stone-age tribesman;
a Bollywood sex symbol;
a mobile phone thief; and
an ambitious politician;
each is equally likely to have pulled the trigger.

Inspired by actual events, Vikas Swarup’s eagerly awaited second novel is both a riveting page-turner and an insightful peek into the heart and soul of contemporary India."


The ending is a surprise -

The person who actually murdered Vicky was not one of the six suspects!