Goodreads of January 2022

I have set up a goal of 50 books this year in Goodreads. Other than our Glamping at Kimberly Creek retreat, we pretty much stayed at home. I completed 3 books, first one popped up in my Kindle as part of Kindle’s First Read program, the second one was lent to me by my friend, and the third one I borrowed for free through Kindle Unlimited.

The Taste of Ginger is a debut novel by Mansi Shah in which she beautifully portrayed the price of being an immigrant. The plot is from her own experiences. The author has been away from her birth country since early childhood and is working as a successful lawyer in the USA, she is quite disconnected from her roots. Her elder brother is the only one who understands her while her mother sort of despises her for being too American. Things change when she has to travel to India for an emergency and has to extend her stay there. The country and the people she always avoided, the environment she never wanted to be in, all become part of her life for some time. Soon she starts understanding the culture and tries to re-discover herself and actually realizes how much they (she and her brother) tried since childhood to mix up in American culture and even then she will always be an immigrant. She is in-between, neither an American nor an Indian. That’s the actual turmoil of an immigrant. As soon as she accepts her truth, her relationship with her mother also improves. It’s a very nice book and completely worth your time.

Where the Crawdads Sing is a very unique fiction that has everything from mystery, ethology, love, romance, murder to courtroom drama. The novel has already been planned for a movie adaptation. The story is about an outcast girl named Kya who is known to locals as a Marsh girl. Her childhood was full of troubling memories, being part of a dysfunctional family was tough and when everyone left her, firstly mother then siblings, and at the very end, her father, now she had the whole marsh to her. It was so difficult for her to survive alone in the marsh, but necessity is the mother of knowledge. Once naive, now she knows everything about the Marsh including various paths and its ethology. Things get worse when she becomes the prime suspect of a murder. The suspense is good and keeps the reader hooked up. One thing I really loved about this book is the information provided by the author about various insects and plants. The story points out how living alone outdoor may cut us from civilization, but also makes us closer to nature and well equipped with survival skills. This would be the book of the month.

S. No.	Title	Author	Format	Genre	Rating
1	The Taste of Ginger	Shah, Mansi *	Kindle	Literary Fiction	4/5
2	Where the Crawdads Sing	Owens, Delia	Book	Fiction	4/5
3	Operation Blue Star Ka Sach	Brar, K.S.	Kindle	Non-Fiction	3/5

Operation Blue Star Ka Sach (Truth of Operation Blue Star) is a recounting of events that happened during the infamous operation blue in which the Indian Army had to enter inside the premises of the holy Sikh shrine – Golden Temple to remove the Bhindranwale and his followers. The author K.S. Brar was the in-charge of the operation, so he presented his side of the story in this book. The book is written in Hindi and covers all minor details of the operation. This operation was very controversial and the Indian army got too much bashing from the Sikh community. The author tries to clear the image of his team and raises some valid questions. This book should be read by anyone interested in Indian history and politics. This operation resulted in the assassination of then Prime minister Indira Gandhi, which ignited the riots between Hindus and Sikhs across the nation. It was a black chapter in the history of the nation which we should be aware of.

Have you set up a reading goal for this year? How many books you have read so far?

Happy Reading! Keep Traveling !!!