December 4- Book

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What book - fiction or non - touched you? Where were you when you read it?

I've read a lot of good books this year but I don't think anything sucked me in quite like The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. I took this along on a weekend beach trip in the hopes that I'd enjoy it as much as The Glass Palace which was the Ghosh novel I'd taken to read over spring break. I wasI caught up in this story within the first few pages and its characters stayed with me long after the last pages. I don't read a great deal of fiction anymore but this is exactly the kind of thing I want when I pick up a novel--to be completely transported to another world and caught up in the lives of the characters.

Fallow

While I know that the last thing one is supposed to blog about is one's lack of blog posts, I just wanted to acknowledge how quiet it's been here.

If you are also a reader of Magpie Eats, you know there's been lots of activity there this summer. I've spent nearly every day in the kitchen, making jam, preparing fruit for the freezer or the dehydrator, or slow cooking tomato sauce for the coming winter. I am regularly making yogurt, cheese, and kombucha and have even given roasting my own coffee beans a go. You may or may not be interested in the details of my kitchen life but what really interests me is how that part of my life seems to be gaining in importance.

I haven't done much else in recent months. There's been surprisingly little knitting and I don't think I've touched the sewing machine since the rickrack sundress back in late June. My garden pretty much runs itself now and was doing beautifully until the evil heat wave struck. My once-thriving tomatoes are just sulking now.

What I am doing is reading, lots of reading, and I thought I'd share a couple of titles with you. I just finished Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of my Stuff by Fred Pearce in which the author traces his stuff (food, clothing, electronics, and more) back to its origins which are always far from home. It's rarely a pretty picture which is exactly why I am grateful Pearce did the digging and shared his findings. From the gold mines of South Africa to the prawn fisheries in the Bay of Bengal, our need for cheap stuff is filled by exploited workers and decimated ecosystems. I am sure we have all had our suspicions, but Pearce rips the lid off a host of social, environmental, and economic disasters and encourages us to take a good hard look. This book was a huge eye-opener for me, but surprisingly not all gloom and doom which made it that much more powerful.

I first learned about Sharon Astyk's Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front from Chris at Lost Arts Kitchen. I have tried to read other books on peak oil, the climate crisis, and economic meltdown but never finished. Usually I start out with the best of intentions and quickly end up putting the book aside and looking for something that will calm my racing heart and allow me to sleep. I have a pretty low threshold for confronting the coming disasters but Astyk's book, read in small bits, kept me reading and, more importantly, thinking. Somehow, even though she is unflinching in addressing the numerous enormous challenges ahead, she manages to present her information in a non-hysterical manner, making it possible for me to read and learn and not fling the book to the floor in a panic. That is no small thing, and I am grateful for her skill. For a taste of her writing, you can visit her blog.

I'll just add one more book, a work of fiction that sucked me in at page one and held me in its richly detailed world for days after I finished it. The Hungry Tide was my second Amitav Ghosh novel and it captivated me even more than the first. Ghosh describes the fascinating world of people who live by the tides in the Sundarbans. Politics, natural history, caste and identity, plus dolphins and tigers made this novel a page turner for me.

A Very Long Novel

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here but in and around the knitting and the sewing and the cooking and the parenting I have been reading A Suitable Boy, a novel I’ve tried to read numerous times over the years.

The first attempts involved library copies but at nearly 1500 pages, I simply ran out of time before the due date. Also—nearly 1500 pages—kind of large. While pregnant with The Princess, my belly made a good giant-hardback-novel-holder but after her arrival I decided to try again with a purchased paperback. Also not so easy to hold. And as a sleep deprived, constantly nursing mother, I had a hard time paying attention to the numerous characters, main plot lines, lesser plot lines, and hundreds of minor characters. Did I mention that this is a long book?

After a couple of years of watching Bollywood movies, I thought I might give it another try. Complex 3 hour sagas are not bad training for a book like this. I started reading again in August have been reading (albeit with numerous side reads) ever since. It turns out that it’s a wonderful book. Complex, yes, but beautifully written, skillfully paced, and almost never dull. I confess to skimming a couple of the courtroom scenes but otherwise I really enjoyed the book and loved immersing myself in the story for hours at a time.

Even so, I am delighted to report that my 4+month reading marathon is over. No more sore wrists. No more backtracking to figure out what was going on when I nodded off the night before. No more smartass comments from the man who sleeps in my bed. No more feeling guilty about my little trysts with other authors. I have finished what appears to be either the longest novel ever written in English or the longest novel in the English language published in a single volume depending on who you believe. I expected heavenly choirs and flashes of golden light. No such luck, unfortunately. Still it seems like some kind of celebration is in order. Ideas?

Mumbai

The AP photo is by Ajit Solanki with the caption Indian Muslims release pigeons during a protest against terrorist attacks in Mumbai, as a placard reads " Kill terror not terrorist " in Ahmadabad, India, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008.

I've spent much of the last few days glued to the computer reading news of the ghastly attacks in Mumbai along with much of the rest of the world. This event has had a hold on me second only, I suppose, to 9/11. I kept wondering why.

Yes, terrorist attacks are horrifying, but I can tune out horrifying news pretty well. In this age of non-stop news, I have to or I think I'd go mad. But this time I just kept reading and watching and, frankly, obsessing. It isn't that I have friends there. Nor have I ever been to Mumbai, much as I would love to.

But here's the thing. Not only do I love my Bollywood movies (many of which take place in wildly idealized versions of Mumbai), I have read more novels than I can count which take place there. I've read about so many of the places mentioned in the news: the Chatrapathi Shivaji Railway Terminus (known by its older name Victoria Terminus in my novels) where dozens were gunned down, Chowpatty Beach where one terrorist was captured and another one killed by police, and Cafe Leopold where the nightmare started. I realize that my armchair travels fail to make me any kind of expert, but they have made a connection and seeing those places I've imagined many times flashed across the news in the most awful way possible just makes my heart break.

I haven't even allowed myself to think much about the killings at Mubai's Chabad House. Even though it's had a Jewish population for centuries, India has historically been one of the few places in the world pretty much free of antisemitism. But now we know that there's yet another place where it's dangerous to be a Jew.

Such appalling news and yet I if someone handed me plane ticket, I'd visit Mumbai in a heartbeat to see for myself all the places I've read and even dreamed about. Because how can we respond to senseless death but to keep on living?

In his November 28 New York Times op-ed piece, Suketu Mehta urges us to do exactly that, to fight the terrorists by visiting Mumbai but, sadly, this isn't in my immediate future. However, if you're interested in a bit of armchair travel to Bombay (for they all use the old name) take a look at some of these:

Such a Long Journey, Family Matters, and (possibly my favorite novel of all time) A Fine Balance, all by Rohinton Mistry.

The Death of Vishnu and The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

The Last Song of Dusk by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

Book Recommendation

I recently finished a book that I found very moving. Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail is a beautifully written book about undocumented workers and why they make the risky journey to work in the US. I've worked with lots of these folks over the years, but getting the insight into why they leave and how they get here has really deepened my understanding of their lives. The author is a fine writer and doesn't attempt to hide his sympathies as he speaks with people on both sides of the border. This book is important for anyone who wants to understand the human side of immigration from Mexico (and points south). It's also a really good read.