2011 summer reading program

I read these 20 books to Varsha as part of 2011 summer reading program initiated by Montgomery county public libraries, MD.



*** The pet dragon by Christoph Neimann. A boy loses his dragon eventually to find it grown up and realizes that a dragon needs to be free. We are introduced to a few characters from the chinese script - by creatively embedding the character in an illustration of what the character represents.

A sick day for Amos McGee


***** The illustrations are drawn beautifully with delicate and expressive lines. An empathetic story about a zoo keeper and his animals.

Seasons - blexbolex


**** Collage like illustrations in mellow colors on rough paper. A  great way to introduce concepts like seasons among other things. The book is fairly thick, may outlast the attention span of a 3 yr old.

Maisy Loves You



*** A simple book that teaches us to show our love to people who matter to us.


**** Varsha picked up this book 'all by herself', she loves ballerinas. Nice story that shows how if you change the way you look at something, the thing you are looking at changes.



*** Bright and beautiful illustrations using deep colours. One of the kittens naps while mama and her two siblings do various other things, but doesn't let them nap when it is their turn. very much like what the kids do to us.



***** Quaint looking illustrations, create an illusion of space - we feel like we are sitting in the green room, and we feel convinced that we can see the sky through the window, it is getting dark outside. We are introduced to various rhyming words representing objects in the room until we are ready to turn off the light. It gets dark in the room, we can still see the deep blue sky, the stars and the full moon lighting up the sky. A perfect bedtime companion.



**** Illustrations are funny and playful. If you are reading this to your child, you hit a couple of speed bumps where there isn't much to say, since the story is conveyed pictorially. I did different voices for the elephant, deep and the pig, squeaky which Varsha seemed to enjoy.


**** A nice story to evoke snowy days - snow men, snow angels and snow balls.


***** Varsha loves Max and Ruby - Rosemary Wells' illustrations are endearing. Ruby is baking an angel cake for grandma's birthday, Max is baking his own 'cake' with mud and caterpillars. Max as always gets in the way and is sent to the grocer's to replace items he breaks/spills, he keeps adding his own needs to the list but the grocer cannot make out his writing, eventually he decides to draw pictures and is able to get through.

**** playful banter between bunny and his little one about how much they love each other, until the little bunny falls asleep.


**** little gorilla is loved by all animals in the jungle as he grows up into a big gorilla.



***** We are told what it sounds like when a princess rides, a goatherd rides, a rajah rides his elephant and so on, it is fun to make the noises like 'ringle jingle' for the princess at varying tempo to simulate a horse getting closer or moving away, running fast or slowing down. Varsha loved this book.



***** an aesop's fable classic rendered in almost photo realistic water color illustrations, looks beautiful. I had to make up the words, varsha loved it.



*** Olivia tries on various outfits


***** Varsha tired me out with her endless encores - mother goose rhymes are fun, this is a nicely illustrated take by rose mary wells.



*** illustrations and text aspire to expand our view of the world and teach us to observe all that it contains.


**** An interesting format, what the sun sees and what the moon sees form two sides of the same book - day and night just like the sun side and the dark side of the earth.

***** Varsha loved this book so much that she didn't want me to return it to the library, I had to explain to her how the  library works and sneak it back without her knowledge. The illustrations are beautiful, has oil, pastel and water color like qualities to it - probably mixed media. Daisy, engrossed in play, chasing dragonflies and looking at frogs, wanders away from her mother. we are concerned for her safety when a big fish swims by beneath her, and an eagle soars above, Daisy is scared too. We begin to worry about the rustling noise in the reeds, luckily it turns out to be Daisy's Mommy, Daisy learns to be safe by not leaving her mother's side.



***** Colour schemes used in the illustrations are beautiful. Captivating story with nuanced emotions, varsha was raptly attentive, I was't sure if this was a little beyond her years.

After Dark

Haruki Murakami's After Dark is set in the nocturnal wee hours of Tokyo.Our characters move through Cafes and Diners lit with fluorescent lamps that evoke Edward Hopper paintings, music in the background, Duke Ellington, Pet Shop Boys and others. I didn't expect Tokyo to be so replete with Americana. The central characters Mari and her sister Eri the Snow White like delicate beauty. Eri is the older of the two, and has lived a life in the limelight, literally, modelling and starring in TV shows. Her life feels hollowed out, in an effort to meet others expectations. Mari on the other hand, lives life on her own terms, though she is insecure and has to work hard to build her self confidence, she seems like the kind who will get it together eventually.  We are offered a birds-eye-view of Tokyo, which from our view point is compared to an organic being with arteries carrying life sustaining matter to its various parts and returning used up remnants. The clock starts ticking at about 11:30 P.M and moves forward with every chapter, we participate in conversations between Mari and Takahashi, Eri's classmate who practices trombone with a band at nights. Takahashi has had a difficult childhood, his Father was jailed when he was still a child,  and is scared about how precariously close to evil we all are.The tough but kind manager of the love house 'Alphaville', Kira who takes an immediate liking to Mari, after Mari helps her with a Chinese prostitute who has been badly beaten up by her customer. Going through the security camera tapes, Kira identifies the culprit as an engineer working for VERITECH, presumably a software company. The tale switches between Mari's world of reality and Eri's world of sleep which is described in terms of the metaphysical merged with television, this is a story about two sisters unlike each other, estranged, one is asleep for two months, the other cannot sleep because of that, and how Mari eventually finds a way to connect with her sister. We never learn about what happens to the VERITECH employee. An interesting read, if one is willing to accept the open-endedness.

08/23/2011

Logicomix

Gifted to me by my friend Kisha, who sees science, especially physics in everything around him. A valiant attempt at exploring the scientific and human aspects of logic. A deep study of logic causes one to expect logic in human actions and emotions which are prone to be not so, more often than not. This will eventually drive any logician insane, it is only a matter of time. It charts the course of Bertrand Russell's life starting with a repressive religious upbringing, moving on to finding release in the rationality of Mathematics. But alas, the sense of liberation is short lived when Russel finds out that the seeming rationality of mathematics rests upon shaky not very rigorous foundation, Russel's paradox being a case in point. This frustrates him to no end and he takes it upon himself along with his mentor Whitehead to firm the basis for mathematical thought by writing the Principia Mathematica. The final word on the subject is not said until the brilliant Kurt Godel proves the incompleteness theorem. Meanwhile Russell starts taking a more compassionate view of life embracing life for what it is, not always logical, thereby redeeming his sanity. Sometimes we are left wanting more details about the underlying mathematics, but that might be only the mathematically inclined among us. In short, a nice read that succeeds in humanizing logic and logicians.
Aug 2011

Don't Look Back

 
Karin Fossum's 'Don't Look Back' kept me interested through the end. The book moves at  a pace mirroring life itself. We are told about the disappearance of a little girl, having us assume that the book is going to be a denouement of the mystery of her disappearance. We are soon relieved of the worry about the little girl and plunged into another mystery surrounding the naked female dead body of an athletic teenager. The story is set in a small norwegian town, it could have been anywhere in the world because the writing doesn't give off a striking  sense of  place or culture, which I wish it did a little.The town is little enough for the residents to know each other. The well seasoned detective inspector Sejer and his much junior partner are tasked with solving the crime, we do not find out a whole lot about Sejer other than the fact that he lives alone with his German Shepherd, listens to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, in an apartment that he once shared with his Grace Kelly like beautiful wife who was consumed by disease. There seem to be no apparent motives to the crime in question. The evidences are mostly witness accounts that Sejer and his partner collect patiently by interviewing people directly linked to the victim like her family and her boyfriend. Other characters get involved and are interviewed in turn as plausible theories begin to evolve, eventually as in any crime novel we are made aware of what happened in reality. Karin Fossum's criminals in this book do not mete out violence out of malice, rather they are forced by circumstances or lapse into moments of irrationality when they do not realize the full import of the meaning of their actions or are just not themselves. Good story telling from a unique voice.

Read: 08/19/2011

Books

Boris Akunin books


The White Bulldog - politics of Zavolshk Russia,
The Black Monk
The Red Cockerel

Winter Queen
Turkish Gambit
Murder on the Leviathan
Death of Achilles
Special Assignments


The Archivist - Travis Holland