Reading beyond recipe books

Chavel, together with many others, were incarcerated in a German prison. One day, they were told to choose 3 among them to face the firing squad or face the wrath of the German soldiers. The men drew lots and Chavel took the marked straw. Rather than dying a rich, Parisian lawyer, he offers his entire fortune in exchange for his life. Janvier took up the offer. Now released from prison and destitute, Chavel adopted a new identity and went to the place he grew up in Brinac. The new owner og his childhood home, Therese and the sister of Janvier took him in and made him a hired hand in then rambling estate. Now called Charlot, Chavel went about with great familiarity managing the estate and struck up a good relationship with Therese. She had no idea who he was nor knew that her hired hand was the cause of her brother's death. Carosse, an impersonator who knew about Janvier dying in place of Chavel,  sought shelter shortly after Chavael's arrival at Brinac. He lied to Therese and p...

Betrand and Cary were to wed in Bournemouth but his boss had other plans for the big day.  So boss Dreuther got the couple to marry in Monte Carlo but for 9 days, he forgot his combined holiday. The couple were left high and dry with limited funds in Monte Carlo but Bertrand managed to have a windfall in the casino just when they were down and out. Cary was the romantic kind and didn't care for riches, though she was 21 years younger than Bertrand. In a fit of anger, she left him for another man, because her husband was spending too much time at the casino. Bertrand wanted to exact revenge on his boss who caused his misery and imminent divorce. With his winnings, he plotted to take over Dreuther's company. Boss Dreuther arrived 9 days later. He had completely forgotten his pact to witness the couple's wedding in Monte Carlo. To make amends, he taught Bertrand how to win his wife back. Cary went back to Bertrand and wanted Bertrand to reveal that Dreuther has been bought out...

Elizabeth Holmes is a Stanford Engineering dropout with a hare brain idea of a product that was touted to save the world. Though the theory of the blood test machine was flimsy, Theranos and the mini blood tester ignited the imagination of venture capitalists. Together with Balawi, her partner, she  cheated billions of dollars off billions in the product that was not. Theranos, the unicorn and Apple in healthcare, could neither take off and was rotten in business practices to the core. Holmes promise of many tests based on a pin prick sized blood did not materialized and she used commercial testers to do the job. The results were   passed   off as results from her miniLab. Many false positives in many diseases caused much harm to patients and Walmart's venture into healthcare a pipedream.  Why would a company whose board of directors are not from the industry or discipline able to be the unicorn in Simi Valley? The rich and powerful executive board attracte...

Brian Regan grew up in a underprivileged family. He did not do well in school due to his dyslexia and struggled with low self esteem. The only way out of his situation was to sign up for the military. There he found his strength in cybercrime related espionage support work. From it, he gained the respect from those who used to step on him, including his family. But his autism issues caught up with him at work and he no longer was respected among younger colleagues. He was forced to change his posting at NRO and eventual retirement which he opted. Unhappy with his lot and mounting debts due to his mismanagement of his money, he did what would be considered treason. Regan began a long period of collating the information that was freely available to him in the NRO for the purpose of selling them to the enemies of the country so that he could resolve his financial problems. However because of his lack of spy experience and poorly spelt extortion letter (due to dyslexia), he was never taken...

Mrs Osmond is a sequel to Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. Portrait was written in the late 1800s with a cliff hanger to the fate of the female protagonist, Isabel. Banville takes off from there, adopting the voice of James. The pace is languid, if one can even recall one. Right towards the end of the story, the reader is still clueless as to what Isabel's plot towards her cheating ex-husband, Gilbert Osmond, is. Isabel Archer, heiress to her cousin's fortune, is American. Her life in Europe spans from Italy where married life is based, to London where her dying cousin bids her. In between are her encounter with friends in London and high society contacts in Paris that has scant bearing to the direction of the plot. Despite the different locations where the story moves, the pace is glacial.  The reader enters Isabel's world in the first half of the story to see her world where she battles against vultures as a rich heiress. In the second half,  ...

This book is a short read. Murata did a good job maintaining the tempo of the story, mostly in the form of the thoughts of store worker, Keiko. Keiko does not think like the typical Japanese person and has her own interpretation of her role in society. But to fit in the mould of a rigid society, she found that she conformed best as a store worker in a convenience store. For 18 years, she was a cog in the human network and blended in. But when Shiraha, a good for nothing male, joins the store with his useless lofty ideas and Keiko's self worth is questioned, she made a decision to change so that she can be accepted by all. When she make the decision to 'house' the bum like a pet and quit her job, it was accepted by family and friends, thinking that she is finally 'one' of them. Life lost meaning and direction as she grapples with too much free time after she quit so that she could look for a 'proper' job. Meanwhile, Shiraha pressured her to l...

Ok, this is not another of Atwood's dystopic fiction. Rather, it is a book on debts, its meaning and famous examples of debts. Peppered throughout the book are references on the historical facts of famous debts and creditors, the Christian take on debts. Of note and special mention is Faustus and Scrooge,  each an anti example of each other. Millers, mills and miller's daughters mentioned in the Canterbury tales, Don Quixote and many other classics opens our eyes in how society sees industrialists as conniving thieves. One thing that keeps coming up,"Without memory, there is no debt" and so a clean slate with outstanding debts is forgotten. Most uprising will include the burning of the accounts book so that debts need not be repaid. Payback simply opens up into another world of classics. A good read!

This book was long listed for the 2019 Booker Prize, which makes it a must-read for me. The story is set in Lagos, Nigeria. It is a story of a family of 2 girls from an upper class family. Koreda, the narrator of the story, is a nurse in a famous hospital. Her younger sister, Ayoola, is beautiful beyond description but beneath the beauty lies a dark character. The story commences with the murder of Ayoola's 3rd boyfriend and Koreda was called up to clean up the aftermath of the deed. The reader does not know exactly the childhood horrors experienced by the angel murderess and her sister except that behind the facade of a gracious family lived an abusive father until he died. The insinuation is that the murders of Ayoola's boyfriends is a psychological retaliation to her past abuses by powerful and lustful men. Sisterly relationship  made the two partners in crime until the affable Dr Tade becomes attracted to his Ayoola, his head nurse our narrator, who als...

This is a heavy weight, by the size of the book and the technical contents. Despite this, it is a page turner. The book tackles the history of the discovery of cancer and how it was treated or interpreted from ages past to the current times. The approach of treating cancer has also changed with the times, from total aggressive excision to a measured approach aimed at maintaining the quality of life of the patient.  From the technical front, it explains how clinician scientists pursue the rogue cell with the relentless determination of detectives and  how there is no one standard reason to its origin. A very interesting read. The author has made medical investigation palatable for the medically uninformed.  I read it on a ebook because the book was too much of a 'heavyweight' to be read in bed.

Atwood is at it again, coming up with another Booker Award Book. This book is a 35 year follow up to The Handmaid Tale for those who wanted to know what happened to Gilead. The narrative in Testaments was made by Aunt Lydia, a captive judge turned powerful Aunt in Gilead, Agnes, a girl who barely escaped an arranged marriage to the most powerful Commander Judd by becoming an Aunt, Agnes' sidekick, Becka who joined the order of the Aunts to get away from men in general and Baby Nicole, Agnes' half sister and living in free Canada as a adoptive refugee. Religion was exploited for power and control in Gilead ,with men changing wives and having babies through Handmaids. Households among elites were dysfunctional as parents were merely custodians of children through surrogate births. By a twist of fate and willful manipulation of Lydia, 2 half sisters on both sides of the border met. They were sent to free Canada to expose the hypocrisy of those in power in Gilead. The downf...

This is a trilogy of fruitless love in the twilight of China's 'new era' from the feudal lords. Different groups of people, mostly academics and students, wanted to make a brand new world where traditions are abolished and socialism is feted. The only problem is the activists forget that their basic needs some sorting out before spear heading a new social order; the need for love. Love interests continues as old comrades in arms die for the cause and love becomes a stumbling stone between ideology and practical needs. There is a lot of dying from consumption, declaration of lofty ideals (immitating the west) and a headless stoic struggle for new freedom. Reading in today's context and seeing how the world Bajin envision it to be, I would think most activists in his time could have died for nothing.

Moriguchi sensei was a teacher in a middle school. She had just suffered a loss; her young daughter died in the school pool while waiting for her. Moriguchi knew that the 2 boys in her class was responsible for her death. On the last day at school before her retirement, she gave a parting story to her class and insinuated that she knew who the culprits are. To avenge her daughter’s death, she injected HIV+ tainted milk into the free milk packs which the boys drank. After her departure, the class meted out their own form of revenge on the teacher's behalf. One of the boys spiraled into fear and isolated himself, convinced that he had contracted Aids and would die soon. A new zealous teacher took over Moriguchi and unaware of what happened earlier and manipulated by Moriguchi, triggered a series of events that caused the boy’s mother to commit suicide. The other culprit figured out that he had remained HIV – and continued to live his life. He continued to ...

This novel is a translated work from Kaneo Minato, which is said to be written in between housework. The story spans more than a decade, starting from the time a 10 year old city girl from Tokyo came to live in a rural countryside because of her father’s transfer. There, Emily befriends 4 girls of the same age as her. Emily was a victim of rape and murder, under the eyes of her 4 young friends, by a man who who had more motive to kill than covering up his lust. Emily’s mother, Asaki,   threatened the young witnesses with revenge and asked that they do penance because none was able to identify the perpetrator. The 4 girls never completely emerged from their trauma. Sae married a boy who had eyes on her since the time of the murder and was in constant contact with Emily’s bereaved mother. Sadly Sae ended up killing the new husband when he turned violent in their new home overseas. Maki, the girl who felt neglected all her life, was never offe...