My usual Audible selections consist of self-help type books that I listen to before going to bed. But when this book popped up on my list, I was intrigued. Why would prisons ban this book? I HAD TO read it…rather, listen to it. A few minutes into the introduction and I was sitting up on my bed. This was not one of those books I could listen to or read at bedtime! I almost gave up on this non-fiction because it forayed into territories unknown to me – criminal justice and race history in America. But I persevered because Michelle Alexander’s claim that mass incarceration of African Americans had created a…

I had a difficult time reviewing this book. I struggled to keep the focus on the novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and not on the author, one of India’s best and Booker Prize winner, Arundhati Roy. The topics traversed in Roy’s long awaited second novel are numerous and loaded – India’s caste system, poverty, the taboo and treatment of transgenders in India, the rising Hindu nationalism and Azad Kashmir. Only a gifted writer like Arundhati could have managed to mix all these flavors together in a unique, one-pot meal, and still make her readers savor the experience simply for the love of literature and not for the cheap thrill…

While we were at the airport, waiting to go to Lake Tahoe during the winter holidays, my husband suggested that he buy a book for me. I accused him of being out of touch with my likes and dislikes (especially since I ended up returning his recent gift to me, a harmless cardigan, back to the store). On a dare, he bought me Lilac Girls. He was confident I would like it. I hesitated to read the book because I had not heard of the author. But as the pages unfolded, I was drawn into the semi-fictional world created by Martha Hall Kelly. I didn’t think her writing style was…