Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Novel Destination: India

This month, one of your Community Library's NextReads e-newsletters (cardholders subscribe free here) spotlighted historical fiction about India. Here are their recommended titles, plus a few additional selections set in modern times. Get lost exploring this Novel Destination!

See early 20th century Cambridge University through the eyes of The Indian Clerk, an amazingly talented self-taught Indian mathematician. Read an uplifting Indian Cinderella story about the luckless secretary at The Marriage Bureau for Rich People. Experience a forbidden cross-cultural romance between a World War II-era Englishwoman and an English-educated Indian man in The Jewel in the Crown. Or go even further back in time to the Mughal Dynasty and meet the woman who will one day become the emperor's Twentieth Wife. Finally, find your way in modern India with Miss New India, a country girl who reinvents herself in the big city of Bangalore.

Have any other India-themed book suggestions? Please comment!

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

1 comment:

AnonymousJuly 30, 2011 at 3:44 PM
Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck is partly set in India. It's about an ancient Indian prince who is turned into an immortal tiger by an evil magician. Of course, a girl comes along and helps break his enchantment... Not very literary, more of a guilty pleasure read.