Ghosh, Amitav "The Hungry Tide"

Ghosh, Amitav "The Hungry Tide" - 2004

I have read a few books by Amitav Ghosh (see here) and loved them all. So, I was looking forward to this one. It is also great, just not as great as the others.

Maybe there was too much biology in the book to my liking. 

I did like the history of the settlers in the Bay of Bengals and all the problems they encountered. And of the hospital that was started by an immigrant. I could have done without the whole dolpin story.

But that won't keep me from reading another book by Amitav Ghosh. If you have a favourite, please, let me know.

I also loved that they had a map in the book. However, it only shows the real life places, I would have loved an indication as to where the fictitious ones were.

From the back cover:

"From the author of the international bestseller The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide is a novel of adventure and romance set in the exotic Sundarbans -- treacherous islands in the Bay of Bengal where isolated inhabitants live in fear of drowning tides and man-eating tigers. A headstrong young American arrives in this lush landscape to study a rare species of river dolphin. She enlists the aid of a local fisherman and a translator, and soon their fates on the waterways will be determined by the forces of nature and human folly."

The 1949 Club

This book challenge takes place twice a year and concentrates on one year and one year only. I call it "Read the Year Club". This time, 1949 was picked. For more information, see Simon @ Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy @ Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings (here is Karen's invite with more suggestions, and here is Simon's). If you are looking for inspiration, there are a few books from that year that I read already:

Böll, Heinrich "The Silent Angel" (GE: Der Engel schwieg) - 1949/50

Buck, Pearl S. "Kinfolk" - 1949

Camus, Albert "The Just Assassins" (aka The Just) (F: Les Justes) - 1949

Kästner, Erich "Lisa and Lottie" (aka The Parent Trap) (GE: Das doppelte Lottchen) - 1949

Miller, Arthur "Death of a Salesman" - 1949

Orwell, George "Nineteen Eighty Four" - 1949

If you need more ideas, there are other books that I found but have not read:

Beauvoir, Simone de "The Second Sex" (Le Deuxième Sexe)

Blyton, Enid "The Secret Seven" and "Five Get into Trouble"

Christie, Agatha "Crooked House"

Mahfouz, Naguib "The Beginning and the End" (داية ونهاية/Bidaya wa Nihaya)

Miller, Henry "Sexus"

Moberg, Vilhelm "The Emigrates" (Utvandrarna)

This challenge takes place from 12 to 18 October 2026.

I have chosen the book by Naguib Mahfouz.

See my other reads for this challenge here.

Buddy read ~ The Accursed

As already announced in my Hello September post, Lisa @Capitvated Reader and myself are planning a buddy read for October:

Oates, Joyce Carol "The Accursed" - 2013.

Here is Lisa's detailed description including questions:

And this is the book description:

"This eerie tale of psychological horror sees the real inhabitants of turn-of-the-century Princeton fall under the influence of a supernatural power. New Jersey, 1905: soon-to-be commander-in-chief Woodrow Wilson is president of Princeton University. On a nearby farm, Socialist author Upton Sinclair, enjoying the success of his novel 'The Jungle', has taken up residence with his family. This is a quiet, bookish community - elite, intellectual and indisputably privileged. But when a savage lynching in a nearby town is hushed up, a horrifying chain of events is initiated - until it becomes apparent that the families of Princeton have been beset by a powerful curse. The Devil has come to this little town and not a soul will be spared. 'The Accursed' marks new territory for the masterful Joyce Carol Oates - narrated with her unmistakable psychological insight, it combines beautifully transporting historical detail with chilling fantastical elements to stunning effect."

Our schedule is as follows (more details in Lisa's post).

Week 1 (Oct 1–Oct 8)  Author's note, Prologue, + Part 1 The curse descends on the Slade    wedding; Woodrow Wilson's strain
Week 2 (Oct 9–Oct 16) Part 2 Historical cameos; the eerie Bog Kingdom; social satire
Week 3 (Oct 17–Oct 24) Part 3 Hysteria spreads; moral decay of the Princeton elite
Week 4 (Oct 25–Oct 31) Part 4 to End Climax, resolution, and unpacking the narrator’s reliability

And this is for the audio book:
Week 1 (Oct 1–Oct 8) Book 1 (Chapters 1–4)
Week 2 (Oct 9–Oct 16) Book 2 & Book 3
Week 3 (Oct 17–Oct 24) Book 4 & Book 5
Week 4 (Oct 25–Oct 31) Book 6 to End

We also will write  a new post every Friday in October (Oct 9, 16, 23, and 30) with discussion prompts, character trackers, and space to share your thoughts.

Looking forward to sharing this with you.

Book Quotes

  

"Think not of the books you’ve bought as a 'to be read' pile. Instead, think of your bookcase as a wine cellar. You collect books to be read at the right time, the right place, and the right mood." Luc van Donkersgoed

I don't drink wine but I love the comparison. Nobody looks at someone who has a huge wine cellar and thinks it's useless to have them all. But buy more than two books and you have a problem.

"Nothing scares away bad dreams faster than the rustle of printed paper." Cornelia Funke

Totally true. Books can be so calming.

"The kindred joy of having discovered someone who read the same book was immediate, a friend whose mind had resided once in the same fictional world." Madeline Martin, The Secret Book Society

I think that is the secret of our blogging society. We are all readers and that's why we get on so well.

Find more book quotes here. 

Brooks, Geraldine "Memorial Days

Brooks, Geraldine "Memorial Days: A Memoir" - 2025

I love Geraldine Brooks. She writes great books, both novels and non-fiction. However, I am not sure I should have read this book now. My (younger) brother died after three years of battling a brain tumor. As soon as he was buried, his wife was diagnosed with liver cancer and she died nine weeks and a day after him. It wasn't a good time to read about someone else's grief.

Or was it? Geraldine Brooks has a great way of trying to come to terms with the sudden death of her husband and she gives a lot of tips along the way. Not necessarily all practical one though there is one toward the end. She recommends to make a list and call it "Your Life: How It Works" and write down all the little things you do without anyone noticing. Where are certain keys kept? Where do you find passwords? Insurance documents? Etc. etc. 

The book is both sad and devastating as well as comforting. At least I thought so. The author does give us hope, though.

Some books she recommends on the same topic, I have read one of them:
Alexander, Elizabeth "The Light of the World"
Didion, Joan "The Year of Magical Thinking"
Oates, Joyce Carol "A Widow's Story" - 2011

From the back cover:

"It was Memorial Day, 2019, when Geraldine Brooks received news that her husband, Tony Horwitz, had collapsed and died, far from home, in the middle of his own book tour. The complex tasks required in the face of such a sudden death left her no time to properly grieve for him.

Three years later, still feeling broken and bereft, she booked a flight to remote Flinders island off the coast of Tasmania. There, she pondered the ways other cultures deal with mourning and finally seized the time and space she needed for her own grief. Alone on a rugged stretch of coast, she revisited a 35-year marriage filled with risk, adventure, humour and love.

A spare and moving memoir that join sthe classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life love affair and a reckoning with the inevitability of loss."

Blogger Problems

If you haven't received any comments from me lately, it's because Blogger has had problems for more than a week. I don't get any notifications of posts from the blogs I follow. I hope you get some about me but if not, I am very sorry. I cannot believe that Blogger cannot fix this kind of problem within a day or two. Let's hope they get on their feet soon.

Némirovsky, Irène "All Our Wordly Goods"

Némirovsky, Irène "All Our Wordly Goods" (French: Les Biens de ce monde) - 1941

The Classicics Spin chose #18 from our list this month. This was my book.

I have read two books by Irène Némirovsky before (Suite Française and The Prey) which I both quite liked. So, I was looking forward to this one.

And I was not disappointed. "All Our Wordly Goods" was even better than the two others, probably because she finished it before she was killed.

The story starts in WWI and lasts until 1940. We live through two words, well, at least the beginning of the second one. But we see them as the ordinary people had to live them, not the soldiers. Yes, the men get taken away to fight at the front but their stories are only secondary. We see what the old people, the women and children have to go through.

A fascinating, captivating story. The characters are all very vivid.

From the back cover:

"In haunting ways, this gorgeous novel prefigures Irène Némirovsky’s masterpiece Suite Française.

Set in France between 1910 and 1940 and first published in France in 1947, five years after the author’s death, All Our Worldly Goods is a gripping story of war, family life and star-crossed lovers. Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and his grandfather, the tyrannical family patriarch. Their marriage provokes a family feud that cascades down the generations. This brilliant novel is full of drama, heartbreak, and the telling observations that have made Némirovsky’s work so beloved and admired."

Here are all the books on my original Classics Club list.
And here is a list of all the books I read with the Classics Spin.