When I was a child, my mom took my sister and me to Spanish lessons each week for something like a year or two (I honestly don’t remember). She was determined that we would grow up to be bilingual. Well, after Spanish lessons as a child, Spanish 1 and 2 in high school, and Intermediate Spanish in College, I’m still not bilingual. I’ve had trouble explaining to my mom why that is, especially since I spent a summer with my best friend’s family, who is […]
All That’s in a Name
This week I finished The Namesake, the first novel of Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. When I first picked it up I had no idea what it was about, and knew only that Lahiri’s second novel The Lowland had been nominated for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award in 2013. In my decision to diversify my reading list, her works made their way to the top of my TBR pile. Read the rest of the review here.
The Tiring of Popcultureboy 2: Tiring Harder
I don’t quite know why I’m doing the Booker Longlist Challenge, since it’s really become a forced march of books I haven’t really enjoyed reading that much. I had high hopes for The Lowland, since the synopsis sounds aces, but it just didn’t do it for me. I found it a mostly frustrating read, difficult characters and an odd blank style don’t really mesh for me. Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in Calcutta, born just fifteen months apart. It’s the politically tumultuous 1960s, and […]