Review #705: My Old Faithful by Yang Huang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related for better or for worse...and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.”

----Rick Riordan

Yang Huang, an award winning Chinese writer, has penned a handful of short stories about a family in China in her new book called, My Old Faithful. The stories explore the lives of each family member and their secrets, desires, dreams and passion beyond the facade of a society stirred up due to China's one-child policy. Each family member opens up their heart about certain events of their lives that either affect the lives of their close ones mostly in an emotional way. The every day life and the struggles attached to it for a very simply family of five consisting of a mother, father, and three children, against the backdrop of China and America.

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Review #610: The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

----F. Scott Fitzgerald

Doris Lessing's, the Nobel Prize winning debut book, The Grass is Singing revolves around a youngish woman who after marrying a South African white farmer, and within a few years, looses herself and becomes a victim to immense loneliness as she realizes her husband's constant failure both in his farm as well as in their shared marital life, and that's how her remorse grabs her soul and makes her extremely critical towards her black servants treating them with distaste and hatred, ultimately paying a heavy price for her racial discrimination towards her servants.

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Review #338: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Human can surprise you sometimes. An unpredictable species, Homo sapiens”

----Katherine Applegate

Katherine Applegate, a multiple award-winning American author, has penned a deeply moving tale about an adult gorilla living inside a glass cage in a mall in America, in her book, The One and Only Ivan. Inspired from real-life events, the author pens a heart-breaking yet thoroughly entertaining story about a gorilla and his friends and his mission to find freedom, and mind it, this book is not only for the middle-grade children, but can be enjoyed irrespective of any age of the reader, from young to old.

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