Book Review: Secret Daughter

I read Shilpi Somaya Gowda's Secret Daughter last week/end for my November book club. As usual, I like to save my thoughts for my book club selections for my meet ups but I can't say NOTHING...

I loved this book!!! At first I wasn't really in the mood to read another book set in India because I feel like I've read quite a few lately but this was fantastic. The story is set partially in the US and partially in India and follows the lives of an American couple trying to conceive that ends up adopting a little girl from India, the husband homeland, and the woman who gave her up. It was fantastic and I HIGHLY recommend Secret Daughter!!

One last thing to share with you is a passage from Secret Daughter that I thought was just perfect:

"But her mother always said the key to a successful marriage was for each spouse to give as much as they thought they could. And then, to give a little more. Somewhere in that extra giving, in the space created by generosity without score keeping, was the difference between marriages that thrived and those that didn't." (p. 270)

Living life

"It was not a perfect way to live one's life, but it would have to do."

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
p. 191
Alan Bradley

Quotes: Crow Lake

I am writing a separate post for 3 quotes I loved in Crow Lake because I find that when I read other blogs and there are posts that go on forever I tend to stop reading. So hopefully you'll read two posts instead!!

Page 5: "Tomorrow is forever, and years pass in no time at all."

Page 213: "I hope she knew we were grateful to her. No---I'll rephrase that. I hope we were grateful to her. I have an uneasy feeling we weren't, at the time. But maybe it didn't matter. She wasn't doing it only for u."

Page 289: "...I have become familiar with books and ideas you never even imagined, and somehow, in the process of acquiring all that knowledge, I have managed to learn nothing at all."

Book Review: The Cellist of Sarajevo

I just finished Steven Galloway's Cellist of Sarajevo for book club next week. A bunch of people said they couldn't get into it-but I thought it was fantastic!! It has been described as "gripping" and I couldn't agree more. I actually had a pen out the entire time I was reading-in bed, on the subway, in the bath!! I don't often underline or highlight passages, but I couldn't help myself! Here are a few that spoke to me:

"It's a rare gift to understand your life is wondrous, and that it won't last forever" (p.12)

"It's said they took these new names no their families wouldn't be in danger...Arrow believes they took these names so they could separate themselves from what they had to do, so the person who fought and killed could someday be put away." (p. 13)

"He suspects that what the world wants most is not to think of it at all." (p. 61)

" I don't think any of us will be going back to the life we had before, however it ends. Even those who keep their hands clean." (p.71)

"It's just something you do because life is a series of tiny, unavoidable decisions." (p.95)

"Does she think she is good because she kills bad men?" (p. 190)

"...she'd just as soon sleep in her own bed. If she's going to die, that's where she'd like it to happen. It's a small measure of control over an uncontrollable situation." (p192)

This last quote reminds me of some of the patients I've seen. They are elderly, previously fiercely independent and now, because of a stroke, may not be able to live safely on their own. When these people say they'd rather die at home with dignity than go to a nursing home, what I think they might also be saying is that they want to maintain the "small measure of control over an uncontrollable situation." Just a thought.