Once upon a time, there was a good doctor and there was a bad doctor…..
What is good and what is bad? How do we assess that? By their nature? Work ethics? appearance? Their behaviour? Their lexicon?
Sometimes we lose our creativity and the yearning to do something. We get into a rut. A nudge from someone in the right direction prompts us toward something that we dreamt of. Years of experience do teach us something, so do we go by our experience, or do we try to do something different suddenly? As experienced people, can we just reject new innovative ideas?
The story has two protagonists, Frank, the everyman and Laurence, a symbolic character.
This book is set in a remote village in South Africa. A fresh medical Graduate, Laurence, keen on doing some community service, comes to an ill-equipped hospital, and with hardly any medical supplies. Where there is poverty, there is corruption, theft, and mismanagement. The lack of funds starkly shows.
Frank is a physician who has been at this hospital for many years. Laurence is full of life and is keen on improving the conditions of the hospital. The whole team at the hospital spends their time in utter dullness as there hardly are any patients.
A quote from the book that I loved: “Past a certain point, maybe, a person's character defines itself and stays fixed in your mind.” This is so true whether a person is good or bad, there are idiosyncrasies of people that get etched in us and we remember them for those traits.
A character I felt bad for was a local woman who sold handmade souvenirs. Although the author does not talk much about her or her life, the events that revolved around her made me want to know more about her.
Having read two other books by Damon Galgut, I now understand his style of writing. All the characters are compelling. All three books I read were based in South Africa and every book had a unique theme and plot. Though anyone can finish this book in a day, I took the time to devour the beautiful writing and the simple storyline.
Though it’s a small book, it kept me hooked till the end. The ending was a bit ambiguous, and I did not expect it. It has been left open to interpretation.
THE GOOD DOCTOR is the author’s fifth book and it was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2003 and won the Commonwealth writers' prize.

John Steinbeck said, “All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal”
People who wage wars can come up with innumerable reasons for the war and there might be people who support either side but, in the process, many innocent people lose their lives and the ones who are affected the most are ladies and children.
This book talks mainly about the Biafra war (Nigerian civil War, 1967-1970), the war fought between Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra. The Igbo people of Nigeria wanted a country of their own and called it BIAFRA. The novel depicts the effect of war on the lives of people, rendering them destitute and causing emotional turmoil. They run around trying to save their lives, looking for food, water and shelter.   
I do not like reading books based on war, not because I dislike it but because it is very disturbing to read about how many innocent lives are lost, how many ladies were raped and how children lie wailing for food. The camps provided for these refugees almost always lack sanitation and harbor lots of diseases. So, either people are killed or die at such camps.
Chimamanda creates all these scenes in this book, where in the name of war civilians lose their loved ones, and men on both sides are brutal and resort to heinous crimes and sexual violence.
The main character in this book is Ugwu, a manservant at Odenigbo’s house, who is a Mathematics professor and a revolutionary and who is in a relationship with Olanna, who has a twin sister Kainene.
I liked the character Olanna as she is shown as an unwavering, committed person who is helpful by nature and believes strongly in educating society. She even thinks of sending Ugwu to college. She protects him as much as she can during the war.
It’s the tale of people around them and how the war changes their lives drastically. The author beautifully depicts the dehumanization of the so-called ‘evolved species’, how under the influence of pressure, humans tend to make horrendous mistakes, and how humans can easily justify any crime under the pretext of war. Apart from war scenes, she portrays the thoughts of people, relationships, love, hatred, wealth, greed and life and death as such. An overall depiction of normal lives being rendered useless due to the war.
This book got much acclaim and won the Women’s prize for fiction 2020

Lush green fields, mountains in the backdrop, excitedly screaming when passing through long tunnels, chugging along a bridge over a huge river, watching birds flying across the vast expanse of sky, passing lakes, rivulets, and waterfalls. The sudden change in the landscape; suddenly from an expanse of barren land we are passing through rocky areas, it is only us; the train and its passengers between the rocky hills. When was the last time you stopped whatever you were doing and admired a beautiful flower? I strongly believe that the human beings’ tendency to observe quietly and admire the resplendent nature around us is diminishing.

If you are a nature lover and would love to read about it, I suggest you read Snow Country. The heart of the novel is set in North Japan, and the finely delineated sceneries in the novel will seem real to the reader. It felt as though I was near those snow-clad mountains and could imagine myself walking through thick snow.

Snow Country is a novel by NOBEL LAUREATE, Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata.

I finished reading Snow Country two days back. I first regurgitated the events in the book, then I sat ruminating about it for these two days.

It's no fun reading such books alone. I find buddy reading very enjoyable in such situations. What situations you may wonder?

I initially thought the story was quite simple. It is about this rich guy Shimamura who visits these hot springs to meet a geisha named Komako thrice and the whole story happens during these three visits. The story does not give a detailed description of the life of Shimamura or Komako, but the brief account of her life is poignant. Her dream of leading a good, happy life is rendered vague and left ambiguous. I hated Shimamura for being indifferent and lacking empathy.

The allegorical description of the making of Chijimi linen and the hard work involved is very brilliant. What is Beauty? - is it eternal or ephemeral?
There are so many descriptions in the book that I would like to read out to everybody. A passage at the beginning of the book describes how the reflection of the beautiful girl was very impressive and how Shimamura was staring at her reflection without her knowledge.

A few years ago, I read a book called the Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, which describes the life of a geisha from the beginning to the end.

The ending made me contemplate the meaning and its essence. Its relevance is profound!
The book is sensitive, haunting, impactful, lyrical, and a love story? It is allegorical and symbolic, and the author has taken pains to give vivid descriptions.  The writing is so fluid that I could visualise every scene described. Many parts of the book are dreamlike.

Have you read any books written by a Japanese author?

The opening lines: ‘Ragbone! Ragbone! Any rags! Pots for rags! Donkey stone!’
What is a Donkey stone? I googled it to find out that it was a scouring stone. The donkey stones were gradually disused by the 50s and 60s.
Though a short book, it felt like a 300-page book as every other word needed to be googled, at least I had to. Words like hurlothrumbo, lomperhomock, glamourie, clanjandering, tarradiddles, mirligoes etc. Even some of the phrases are unheard. The language is playful. It appears
Is it a dream or is it a rambling of the brain? Mythical, folklore, magical. Is it peculiar, poetic, metaphorical, or allegorical?
Treacle is sugar syrup but historically a medicine, something that cures.
Marble collection, comics, eggshells, the boy talks about dobber glass. I am clueless, only to learn later through an article about a brief history of marbles. It reads like looking through a glass but requires retrospection.
Did it bode well with me? To each their own. I couldn’t construe the deeper embedded meaning in it. Was it about death? About how we reflect upon various situations, about what we look at and we don’t see, hear but not listen. Sometimes it feels nice to think of oneself as a magician and more often we would want people to pop out of a book magically.
The story is about Joseph Coppock (Joe) who has Amblyopia (lazy eye) and Treacle Walker, a rag and bone man cum healer or mythical mystery man. Alan Garner himself was ill during his childhood and was declared terminal by the doctor and Joe could be a character reflective of that.
Why is this character called Thin Amren? Is it symbolic of something? Is he a link? Link to what? This character reminded me of Gollum from Lord of the rings/Hobbit. His disposition, his reaction, his scorn, all of it.
The book has a lot of Cheshire dialect words and Latin words. Even in the end, Joe says “Kosko gry! Kosko gry!” - which I had googled and found out what he meant. The treacle tangent, a website created by the author, was a good help in finding out the meanings of the phrases, words, and translations.
Axis Mundi: In astronomy, Axis Mundi is the Latin term for the axis of Earth between the celestial poles. (Source: Wikipedia). Why is it being mentioned in the book? Is the author doubting the connection between heaven and earth? Death is a very intriguing, phenomenal cessation of life. Mysterious yet scary, agonising, and real.
Corr Bolg: magical bag from Celtic mythological stories. Bag of magic, souls. Does that make Treacle Walker a Shaman?
The line ‘What’s out is in; what’s in is out’- sounds like Advaita philosophy wherein they talk about the universe or everything being within us and us being part of the whole.
Every line has a profound element of philosophy. For E.g. “This stone is small, of little price” can be interpreted in many ways, how we are only a microcosm in this infinite expanse of space.
There were many lines in the book that were funny and unique.
No one can read it just once!

My Second Read from the Booker2022 list.

“Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life.”-THE TREES

The book under the pretext of satire is a murder mystery and is a portrayal of the history of lynching and racial discrimination. The book has many racial slurs and graphic descriptions of the murders. The story starts with the murder of family members whose grandfather was involved in the lynching of Emmett Till (a real person in 1955). Emmett was a 14- year-old African American boy who was falsely accused of offending Carolyn Bryant, by Carolyn herself. He was abducted and lynched by her family members.
A grisly tale depicting many murders, elucidating vivid, gory details that is blood-curdling. Although there are funny dialogues the book per se isn’t funny. Murder after murder after murder cannot be funny. The whole book was macabre.
When the two special agents (MBI) arrived to investigate the gruesome murders, it felt like the movie ‘Bad boys’ for a few lines but then again it was back to horrific murders with mangled bodies. It is terribly disturbing.
I liked the character Granny Z who is portrayed as a 105-year- old woman who keeps a record of all the lynching that has ever happened. At 105, she is portrayed as a strong-minded person, who lives alone and is at ease with her life.
Though it’s a dark novel, it moves at a fast pace. It is not for the weak-hearted!
 

A FINE BALANCE BY ROHINTON MISTRY was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1996.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

It's very difficult to assess how happy families are. A strained relationship, a deep wound caused by memories, poverty-stricken life endured in childhood, abusive childhood, a cheating spouse, and a mother covering up for the father's mistakes- all of these and many more situations that just goes unknown to the outside world.