In case you somehow missed the news
Oct. 3rd, 2005 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhAll the Fishes Come Home to Roost, by Rachel Manija Brown, is a memoir about growing up on a bizarre ashram in India.
It's not a book to read in public, unless you like bursting into laughter and then trying to muffle it and ending up with that weird coughing sound and contorted face. Or maybe that only happens to me. Yes, the book is funny. It's often hilarious. It's also interesting and entertaining and thought-provoking: one scene made me wonder around campus for the next few hours considering life, the universe and all those fun questions. I read the entire thing in about a day and a half, because it's just so captivating; it's a book you don't want to put down. It has crazy librarians and poisonous snakes and evil nuns and pretty much every other imaginable ingredient required for good reading.
It can also be extremely sad. It was strange for me to read a book by someone I know; stranger still because it was a memoir instead of fiction. Each time something yet more horrible happened, I wanted to run to the computer and write an email consisting mainly of cooing, but I figured that'd just embarrass myself rather than do any good.
It's a good book. It's an excellent book, actually. The author is, of course,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachelmanija, so go buy your own copy! I want to see her next book out, too. *grins*
It's not a book to read in public, unless you like bursting into laughter and then trying to muffle it and ending up with that weird coughing sound and contorted face. Or maybe that only happens to me. Yes, the book is funny. It's often hilarious. It's also interesting and entertaining and thought-provoking: one scene made me wonder around campus for the next few hours considering life, the universe and all those fun questions. I read the entire thing in about a day and a half, because it's just so captivating; it's a book you don't want to put down. It has crazy librarians and poisonous snakes and evil nuns and pretty much every other imaginable ingredient required for good reading.
It can also be extremely sad. It was strange for me to read a book by someone I know; stranger still because it was a memoir instead of fiction. Each time something yet more horrible happened, I wanted to run to the computer and write an email consisting mainly of cooing, but I figured that'd just embarrass myself rather than do any good.
It's a good book. It's an excellent book, actually. The author is, of course,
rachelmanija, so go buy your own copy! I want to see her next book out, too. *grins*
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Date: 2005-10-04 05:21 am (UTC)Actually, a number of people have said that they read it in public (in the case of my UK editor, on a bus in London) and got funny looks when they suddenly burst out laughing.
My next book is at least two years away from publication, I'm afraid, since I've barely even started it. But Project Blue Rose (aka Gay Mutant Black Ops), my manga with
Now: what the heck was the scene that made you wander around campus contemplating the universe?
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Date: 2005-10-04 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 09:56 pm (UTC)Oh, I know. Doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to it, though. :) And is PBR coming out so soon? I hadn't realized (I feel like I'm still catching up to everything I missed while I was away). I'll have to look for that, then.
Now: what the heck was the scene that made you wander around campus contemplating the universe?
The one where you'd returned to India, later, and drove past a crash on a highway but couldn't stop to help. I was thinking about what I would have done in the same situation, naturally enough, but then it turned into what was the right thing to do, and if there is such a thing as the "right" thing, and what the choices we make say about us as people, and what responsibilities we do and don't have to the people around us, and from there it got even more abstract and esoteric.
Possibly it just stuck in my mind because that was where I'd had to stop reading to run off to class.