The Time Traveller's Wife

• by Audrey Niffenegger
• Amazon link

I bought this book out of desperation. I was at the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica and I was sure that the book that I had (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) would not last the entire flight. Given that the choice was limited and reading a Spanish book was out of the question, I settled for this "National Bestseller".

I am not a big fan of Time Travel as I find it hard to rationalize how one can travel back in time and not alter the course of history. So it was with mild trepidation that I set about reading this book. The fact that I was stuck in an airplane with no other valid choice definitely helped as well. Surprisingly the first challenge wasn't coming to grips with time travel, but rather the fact that there seemed to be no method to the madness of travelling through time. The hero Henry would move back and forth pretty randomly and it was really disorienting to the reader. As you moved from one section to the next, Henry would suddenly be much younger or older or sometimes both. I would say that it took me almost half the book to come to terms with this time travel and I feel the author intentionally wrote the book this way to heighten the mystery and suspense in the reader's mind.

Once I got past the challenge of time travel and was comfortable with it, I began to appreciate the characters and the challenges they faced. The book really made you think about the ramifications of time travel and the effect that it could have on the people around you. The author also made a feeble attempt at dealing with the temptation of the time traveler to benefit from his ability to know how things like the stock market or winning lottery numbers turn out to be.

Ultimately, this book is telling a simple love story that is complicated by a hero who has trouble in staying in the present time. The Chicago Tribune summed it up well in its review where it said the book is a "Soaring celebration of the victory of love over time".

My Aloo Gobi

Ingredients
1 lb. potatoes
1 whole cauliflower ( 1 lb )
1 lemon (or equivalent lemon juice)
2 teaspoons Garam Masala
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon chilly powder
1 teaspoon ginger/garlic paste
2 green chillies
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 bunch of coriander leaves
1 tablespoon salt

Wash the potatoes and microwave them for 4 minutes in a plastic bag and leave them to cool. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the corriander seeds for about a minute or until they pop. Add the finely sliced green chillies and fry for another minute. Now add the cauliflower florets and fry for about 7 minutes. Make sure you stir the cauliflower florets every minute so you don't burn them.

Peel the potatoes and dice them into 1 inch cubes. Add them to the pan along with all the spices, ginger/garlic paste and salt. Fry for about 5 more minutes or until vegetables are cooked.  The cauliflower should be crunchy, so take care not to overcook.  Add the lemon juice in the end and stir. Finally top with the chopped up coriander leaves and serve hot.

My Bookshelf

My resolution for this decade is to post a blog about the books I read. The first step is in selecting the book. While this may seem like a simple thing to most folks, to me it is the most arduous step. Given that time is quite precious and a single book takes tens of hours to complete, I spend a considerable amount of time in choosing the books I read.

My selection process starts with scouring Award winners like the Booker or Pulitzer prize winners and nominations. Once I run out of those, I look at the New York Times bestsellers, Amazon bestsellers and other popular lists. When I find a potential candidate, I move to the second step which is getting to know a little about the book and reading a whole bunch of reviews on Amazon to see what other folks are saying about the book. Anything less than 4 stars and 100 reviews is unlikely to make the cut. Sometimes I wonder if I spend more time reading the reviews than the actual book itself. To make matters worse, I mostly order the books from Amazon.com and to make the free shipping, I have to order two or three books. This doubles or triples the time it takes to place the order. After multiple hours, fatigue sets in and I finally pull the trigger for better or for worse.

In the past, I have circumvented the above process by simply asking my wife for recommendations. Her methods are opaque to me, but I have to admit that she has had a fairly good track record of book recommendations. On a few occasions, some of my friends lend me books that they recommend. These have been few and far between but have certainly helped diversify my selection of books and have for the most part been quite enjoyable to read.

So without further ado, let me launch into a reflection of the books that I have read. I intentionally use the word reflections as the term review somehow suggests that I am passing a judgement on the books. I am more interested in sharing my thoughts on the books that I read than on being critical. To me, the biggest advantage a book holds over a movie is that you can read it at your own pace and pause in-between pages and reflect on what you have read. You get to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist and live his or her life for a bit. A movie on the other hand, seems more like you are watching from the outside.

I will start with my most recent book and will attempt at recollecting some of the older ones that I read and still recall. The goal is that over the course of time, I would have collected a fair amount of reviews including some comments from friends and neighbors who have read the same titles. Maybe there will come a time when I will re-read some of the books and will be able to compare and contrast my thoughts through the passage of time.