The Seaside Library

Author: Fredrik Backman Acquired in: July 2022 I'm a fan of Fredrik Backman's books. Subtle humour, a tear or two, Ikea meatball fanatics, police silently hating their jobs, grandparent-child dream teams, hostages rallying for their incarcerator - love it. To this hodgepodge pile I've happily added A Man Called Ove, a book about a sad old man who cares little for anybody's sympathy. Ove is a stickler for principles. He drives only a Saab, does his own house and car repairs, distrusts technology, hates bureaucrats and goes to work without fail, even on the day after his wife's funeral. Emotions confused him and he found work to help him understand or often, repress the intangible. Losing his job was the final straw that sent him into a depressed spiral leading him to decide to kill himself. To his eternal chagrin, a riotous Swedish-Iranian family who introduces themselves to the neighbourhood by mowing down Ove's mailbox have other plans. Being taciturn meant...

Author: RF Kuang Acquired in: September 2021 In a volatile world, if a girl, sick to the heart of the wrongs done to her, can channel her hurt into flames, will she give in to a dangerous deity who offers to make her pain disappear or rein in her anguish but burn herself?  As an orphan in the impoverished town of Tikany, Fang Runin or Rin doesn’t have many choices other than to work like a slave for her foster parents, the Fangs, and handle the running of the Fangs’ opium business. When the family decides to marry her off to a much older customs official in return for protection for their drug trade, Rin decides to take matters into her own hands. Her only hope, she decides, is Sinegard – the capital city of the Nikara Empire and the home of the pearl of military institutions. But the way leading to it isn’t easy, nor is what comes after. Sinegard may seem like salvation to Rin, but within those gilded walls are secrets which could be her doom or the key to saving a crumbling Nikan...

Author: Clare Pooley Acquired in: July 2021 courtesy Amazon.in Once a famous artist, Julian Jessop feels lonely and forgotten in his old age despite living in a paradoxically bustling London suburb. The drudgery of living in a house with only his memories and art for company compels him to write a brief chronicle of his life in a little green book. Hoping that his story would inspire someone else to live a better life, he leaves the book in a café, unaware of the owner's watchful eye. This story could have ended when the shop owner, Monica, knocks on Julian's door with good intentions, but fate ensures that the book is already affecting many other people. What could happen when these virtual strangers turn up in one place, guided only by the stories they wrote? Julian, Monica and the others are not purely fictional characters; they represent you and me! How often do you feel disconnected from your friends and loved ones, even in this era of enhanced connectivity? I experienced ...

Author: PG Wodehouse Acquired in: May 2019 If there is ever a strain of monotony in a Wodehouse book, check what you're reading again; you may have picked up something else. Trust Wodehouse to wring humour out of crusty old manors with equally crusty old men. Bertie and Jeeves, the aristocrat-butler duo are at odds at the beginning of the book. While Jeeves presses a disinterested Bertie to book a world cruise, trouble arrives in the form of a newt enthusiast, a cow-creamer and the usual menagerie of angsty lovers. What is a cow creamer? Well, that's a cow-shaped pitcher for holding cream or milk. As simple as such a utensil may seem, things get heated up between silver crockery collectors and arch-nemeses Sir Watkyn Bassett and Bertie's old Uncle Tom, both of whom are vying for the same antique pitcher. With Aunt Dahlia imploring him to secure the curios to preserve the Woosters' dignity, the family-proud Bertie sets off to Totleigh Towers, albeit not finding his mis...

Author: Margaret Atwood Acquired in: October 2020 Ah, the glee of finally reading a book you've wanted to for a long time is a feeling like no other. And yes, The Handmaid's Tale is like no other. Books like these belonging to speculative fiction have enormous potential for imagination. Margaret Atwood's work aims to show what a government led by a fundamentalist regime would pan out.  A radical quasi-Christian outfit overthrows the US government and establishes a totalitarian theocracy named the Republic of Gilead where women have no rights. They have no right over their bodies; only fertile women are considered useful. Women hold different positions on the social ladder according to their past roles in pre-coup America- the Wives, the Handmaids, the Marthas, the Econowives and the Unwomen. Due to the dangerously high levels of radioactive pollution, most Gileadians are sterile, including the new elite consisting of the Commanders and their Wives. To somehow salvage a chil...

Author: Joseph Heller Acquired in: 2020   If you are looking for a book that is as insane as the whole World Wars were, Catch-22 is what you need. This is not a conventional World-War-righteous-patriot novel or a World-War-untold-suffering memoir, it’s a macabre depiction of what went on in the heads of countless soldiers during the war. Captain John Yossarian is an aviator and he is paranoid. To elaborate, "As far as Yossarian could recall... somebody was always hatching a plot to kill him. There were people who cared for him and people who didn't, and those who didn't hated him and were out to get him." Yossarian even begs th e camp doctor, Doc Daneeka, to declare him unfit for combat on the ground s on insanity. And now, we meet The Paradox, Catch-22. It specifies that anybody who is mentally unstable can be grounded, he only has to ask. But the catch is that if the person does ask, it shows that he possesses a rational mind because he is concerned f...