Recent Reads

54. Playing with Stencils: Exploring Repetition, Pattern, and Personal Designs
I'm on a stencil making jag, so my nightstand currently has several books on the topic. This one has some good tips if you are a complete beginner, but the projects in this book are simply not my thing. I did enjoy the gallery section where other artist's work is showcased. Rating: 2 stars.

55. Pure
The final book of this Young Adult dystopian trilogy was recently released, so I decided it was time to jump in and see what all the rave reviews were talking about.

I like dystopian stories, and this one has an interesting premise. Nuclear bombs destroyed the world and there are two groups of survivors: those who experienced the blast and radiation and were burned and disfigured, and the other group who were lucky enough to be pre-selected and escaped to "The Dome", where they are unharmed but not necessarily happy. The ones on the outside have things fused to them - birds, kids, metal, etc, while those inside the dome are blemish free, hence "Pure". 

Told from different perspectives, this novel starts out well, but quickly gets boring. There are too many examples of the horrible ways that the people on the outside fused with stuff, and while this will be a fun CGI problem to solve for the movie (the rights have been optioned), it makes for tedious reading. The story has little plot or spark, the characters are one dimensional with unclear motivations, and I almost quit it several times. It gets a generous two stars for some of the fun world creation. Here is what I know for sure though, I have absolutely no interest in reading the other books in this trilogy. Rating: 2 stars.

56. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
This was my book club selection this month, and I listened to the audio-book wonderfully narrated by Sunil Malhotra.

The author spent four years following and interviewing residents of Annawadi, a slum outside Mumbai, and in a narrative non-fiction style writes about their lives. Poverty is awful no matter where you find it.

This book won many awards, including the National Book Award, and I have to ask why. Is it because it is sanitized version of Indian slums for a Western audience? There are so many wonderful books by Indian authors who cover this topic masterfully to much less acclaim. Why is that? 

There is an afterword with the author that describes some of her interviewing/immersion process, but I question how much of what she wrote about was personally witnessed versus hearsay. The entire time I read the book, I kept wondering where she was: was she at the birthday party for Asha? Was she at the hotel party to witness the waitstaff? I agree with her choice to write in the third person, but it raised questions for me.

Overall, I felt disconnected from the people I was reading about, and other than some of the particular stories, there was not much new material covered for me. If however, one has never been to, or read about India, and is unaware of the misery of poverty there, or even here in the US, then this might be a really good introduction to the topic. On a positive note, I really liked how the author writes, and plan to read her other reportage. Rating: 2 stars.