Saturday, 23 April 2016

I Love My Mother

d April 23, 2016 0

i love my mother

you may love your mother you know
you cannot say how much you love
as she held you tight close to her breast
as you were little like a palm of hand
and now you are grown up to a man
never say to your mother
as she has shown you the right path
when you were in dark
she had shown you sunlight
watered you, feed you and made you a man
what is mother made of
what god had made it from
he didn't know what to name
but named it as mother finally to frame
there is always a woman hand behind every man success
we have mother with us as a supernatural power in the world......

Sunday, 27 March 2016

LIFE ITS NOT EASY POEM

d March 27, 2016 0

Poem

LIFE ITS NOT EASY

"Life is never made of roses, never made of thorns

A Person himself composes

How his or her life will be

We need Success at every step and happiness and every movement

what if success comes at hand cost and happiness as a cost of sleeve

but Life "its not easy"

If we had no failure, we would not able to taste what hard work is

and how you feel when you succeed

If we had not sad moments, we would not realize how happy the happiness is

Life never waits for everyone

we have to come up and get it

as after every dark night there is bright sunshine

and after every sad movement, there is a happy one

Life has never its straight path

it has its own tragedy...."

Thursday, 24 March 2016

LIFE 'ITS NOT EASY'

d March 24, 2016 0

Article

LIFE 'ITS NOT EASY'

Life is not the bed of roses neither it is the bed of thorns. A person is himself or herself responsible for making his or her life either the bed of roses or the bed of thorns. Success in every field of life never comes to you on its own. You have to strive hard to get to it. As the example of climbing the ladder says to reach to the top you have to climb every single step on the ladder, same is the case with the success of life. Success is not the ladder which can be climbed with your hands in the pocket.

Happy and sad moments are the part of life. If sad moments are not faced, one can never realize the worth of the happy moments. Adversity is that great part of life which leads you towards the successful future. Adversity makes you stronger and enough capable to bear the entire crisis you face traveling through the different stages of life in order to make you stronger both mentally and physically. Hard times are like washing machines, they twist, turn and knock us around but in the end we come out cleaner, brighter and better than before.

Life never waits for anyone, you have to come up and get it. Never think that if your facing pain or un-success than life becomes useless for you. As we say after every dark night there is a morning that comes up with full of light that brightens up your day. If you face crises than do think that the success is making its way to you. All you have to do is to urge harder to get through all the problems which surely will bring you closer to a better future. Never lose the hope as we say tomorrow never dies and always remember beautiful pictures are always developed from the negatives in the dark room.

"Life is never made of roses, never made of thorns

A Person himself composes

How his or her life will be

We need Success at every step and happiness and every movement

what if success comes at hand cost and happiness as a cost of sleeve

but Life "its not easy"

If we had no failure, we would not able to taste what hard work is

and how you feel when you succeed

If we had not sad moments, we would not realize how happy the happiness is

Life never waits for everyone

we have to come up and get it

as after every dark night there is bright sunshine

and after every sad movement, there is a happy one

Life has never its straight path

it has its own tragedy...."

Monday, 21 March 2016

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 by BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT

d March 21, 2016 0

Book Review

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 by BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT (Author,

Creator)

Synopsis:-

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 is a journey through an age of myth and legend, a time long before the Horde and the Alliance came to be. This definitive tome of Warcraft history reveals untold stories about the birth of the cosmos, the rise of ancient empires, and the forces that shaped the world of Azeroth and its people.

This beautiful hardcover features twenty-five full-page paintings by World of Warcraft artist Peter Lee, as well as a cosmology chart, half a dozen maps charting changes through time, and other line art illustrations by Joseph Lacroix, and marks the first in a multipart series exploring the Warcraft universe; from the distant past to the modern era.

Written by Chris Metzen, Matt Burns, and Robert Brooks, Chronicle Vol. 1 covers the history of the Warcraft universe from its creation all the way up to the cusp of the First War, and includes a metric ton of never-before-seen lore. Even if you’ve been following Warcraft lore all this time, you’re still going to get a mountain of lore reveals.

FOR MORE INFORMATION WATCH THIS:-

The Magnolia Story Hardcover by Chip Gaines , Joanna Gaine, Mark Dagostino

d March 21, 2016 0

Book Review

The Magnolia Story Hardcover by Chip Gaines , Joanna Gaine, Mark Dagostino

Synopsis:-

These famous words are now synonymous with the dynamic husband-and-wife team Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV’s Fixer Upper. As this question fills the airwaves with anticipation, their legions of fans continue to multiply and ask a different series of questions, like—Who are these people?What’s the secret to their success? And is Chip actually that funny in real life? By renovating homes in Waco, Texas, and changing lives in such a winsome and engaging way, Chip and Joanna have become more than just the stars of Fixer Upper, they have become America’s new best friends.

The Magnolia Story is the first book from Chip and Joanna, offering their fans a detailed look at their life together. From the very first renovation project they ever tackled together, to the project that nearly cost them everything; from the childhood memories that shaped them, to the twists and turns that led them to the life they share on the farm today.

They both attended Baylor University in Waco. However, their paths did not cross until Chip checked his car into the local Firestone tire shop where Joanna worked behind the counter. Even back then Chip was a serial entrepreneur who, among other things, ran a lawn care company, sold fireworks, and flipped houses. Soon they were married and living in their first fixer upper. Four children and countless renovations later, Joanna garners the attention of a television producer who notices her work on a blog one day.

In The Magnolia Story fans will finally get to join the Gaines behind the scenes and discover:

The time Chip ran to the grocery store and forgot to take their new, sleeping baby

Joanna’s agonizing decision to close her dream business to focus on raising their children

When Chip buys a houseboat, sight-unseen, and it turns out to be a leaky wreck

Joanna’s breakthrough moment of discovering the secret to creating a beautiful home

Harrowing stories of the financial ups and downs as an entrepreneurial couple

Memories and photos from Chip and Jo’s wedding
The significance of the word magnolia and why it permeates everything they do

The way the couple pays the popularity of Fixer Upper forward, sharing the success with others, and bolstering the city of Waco along the way

And yet there is still one lingering question for fans of the show: Is Chip really that funny? “Oh yeah,” says Joanna. “He was, and still is, my first fixer upper.”

This Book is not still published to pre-order it click buy now button and it will be published on 18th October 2016..

WHAT IS HUMANITY

d March 21, 2016 0

WHAT IS HUMANITY

WHAT IS HUMANITY ?

Humanity is a virtue associated with basic ethics of altruism derived from the human condition.

Humanity differs from mere justice in that there is a level of altruism towards individuals included in humanity more so than the fairness found in justice. That is, humanity, and the acts of love, altruism, and social intelligence are typically person to person strengths while fairness is generally expanded to all. Peterson & Selectman in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004) class humanity as one of six virtues that are consistent across all cultures.

What Stregthens Humanity

Love

Love has many different definitions ranging from a set of purely biological and chemical processes to a religious concept. As a character strength, love is a mutual feeling between two people characterized by attachment, comfort, and generally positive feelings. It can be broken down into 3 categories: love between a child and their parents, love for your friends, and romantic love. Having love as a strength is not about the capacity to love, as such, it is about being involved in a loving relationship.

Evidence in support of the benefits of love are seen in the negative affect states that result from lacking love. Orphaned children have been targeted in studies about negative attributes resulting from lack of attachment.
Love is also a main factor that can give strength to humanity and can bind people not only in a relationship but also by many factors and religion bases, in India there are many strikes on the religion and cast bases which affects the the bond of humanity and the belief of other people on it.
Love is also a thing which can solve out all the problems going on and it can come to an end with 'Equality and Humanity'.

Kindness

The strength kindness encompasses most related terms that evoke feelings of altruism, generosity, helpfulness and a general desire to help people.. That is, a disposition for helping humanity. The following statements are from the VIA aimed at determining people's strengths in kindness: others are just as important to me, giving is more important than receiving, I care for the ungrateful as well as the grateful.
Kindness, as a part of humanity, is deeply rooted in philosophical and religious traditions, each having words for the altruistic love aspect of kindness like agape in Greek, cheesed in Hebrew, and the Latin word philantropia, the root of the word philanthropy. Kindness is so valued as a strength beyond religious and theoretical concepts that it is advocated through school community service programs and national programs .

There are numerous benefits from kindness and altruism on both sides of the action. For some, the motivation to be kind comes from a place of egoistic motivation, and thus the benefit to them is the positive affect state they receive from the action. Another study found that the process of being kind develops pro-social skills in children, which positively effects their attachments and relationships
A good example of kindness is Bahadur Chand Gupta, who provides free airplane ride experience to the underprivileged and poor Indians for just 1 USD.

Social Intelligence

Social intelligence is the most modern of the three strengths associated with humanity. The CSV defines social intelligence as the ability to understand “relationships with other people, including the social relationships involved in intimacy and trust, persuasion, group membership, and political power.”

Intelligence has many psychological definitions from Weschler’s intelligence to the various theories of multiple intelligence. The CSV divides intelligence into hot and cold, hot intelligence being those intelligences related to active emotional processes. Individuals with high social intelligence are very self-aware, and effective organizers and leaders.

Social Intelligence research is limited, however, there is much literature on the characteristics associated with social intelligence. Zaccaro et al. found social intelligence and perceptiveness to be integral to effective leadership; that is, leaders are “social experts.”emotional intelligence, too, plays a role in leadership. Another study found that emotional intelligence enables leaders to better understand their followers, thereby enhancing their ability to influence them.

If you love the article please share and like it....

INDIA AFTER GANDHI BY Ramchandra Guha

d March 21, 2016 0

Book Review

INDIA AFTER GANDHI BY Ramachandra Guha

SYNOPSIS:-

India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy focuses on the significant events in the history of India which highlight the core of its past and present, its politics, culture and society. The chapters in the book deal with the struggle which India faced post almost a century of colonization, the components of Indian culture, the return of caste and the revival of religion and the effects of war and globalization. The book is also concerned with providing insights into the life of India's first Prime Minister, the troubled times of emergency during Indira Gandhi's regime, the liberation of Bangladesh and the lives of farmers, musicians, tribals and workers. India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy meticulously describes how a country plagued by the evils of discrimination in terms of caste, creed, religion and language rose to form the world's largest democracy. A detailed account of events that shook the foundation of India and the events that helped in joining the broken pieces together is given in this thoroughly researched and well written book. The book was first published in the year 2007. It is available in paperback and the publisher is Picador. This Indian ed edition was published on 14th August, 2008.

Review:-

It's in the nature of nations to be addicted to their own histories. Older, pre- national communities, one imagines, occupied themselves with mythology. The secular nation, agog, rehearses its history, the very reasons and outcomes of its existence, to itself. What's common to both activities is the endless familiarity of the subject-matter to the audience. It's safe to assume that very few people in a group of devotees listening to, say, the Indian epic Ramayana being read out would not have heard it before. It's equally prudent to assume that almost all the Indian readers of Ramachandra Guha's capacious history of democratic India would be familiar with a great deal of the story. What is it, then, that gives myths and national histories their appeal?

In mythic retelling, it is repetition itself, accompanied by improvisatory flourishes, that transfixes the audience by returning it to known terrain. Historical narrative, too, depends on familiarity enlivened by interpretative freshness and the surprise of new archival research; but there's also, at times, something else. Guha reminds us, more than once, that it's the historian's job to tell us what happened, and not spend too much time speculating on what might have. Yet it is precisely the possibility of what might have happened but didn't that gives an immediate but inexhaustible magic to some of the 20th century's most triumphal historical narratives. Both the American film-maker embarking on the new second world war movie and the Englishwoman wearing a poppy are thinking, yet again, of events that took place many years ago, but also, in some hidden but urgent way, of the world that might have come into existence had the other side won.

Similarly, a "What if?" animates Guha's reconstruction of the past 60 years of Indian history. Since 1947, the possibility of disaster has taken the form of certain questions and crises: "What if India were to disintegrate; or to become a totalitarian society; or a military dictatorship; or a Hindu state?" All these are scenarios that appeared plausible, at one time or another, to both the Indian and foreign observer. Guha tells us what happened elegantly, sometimes doggedly: but it's by constantly implying what might have, while disavowing it with the professional historian's gesture, that he brings his copious material to life. Guha's book reminds us of what some other recent studies of India have been getting at, but without this civilised single-mindedness: that it's not just the story of independence that's worthy of being counted as one of the great triumphal stories of 20th-century world history; that the survival and perhaps the flourishing of free India counts legitimately as another. Once this fact is acknowledged, its political and cultural consequences, I'm sure Guha will agree, need to be viewed with suspicion.

There are reasons for that tenacious feelgood experience. Guha delineates them effectively: the establishment of the machinery and the miracle of the elections (there's an excellently orchestrated chapter on how the first one happened); the creation of provinces along linguistic lines (which should have led to conflict) by forgotten historical figures; the survival of democracy and free speech in spite of poverty, corruption, sectarian strife, Indira Gandhi and, more recently, the waning of power at the centre and the rise of an opportunistic federalism. Every dubious development has a positive outcome; it's a story of incorrigible resilience and charm. The first two-thirds of the book, where Guha is describing the consolidation of the shaky state, are, notwithstanding the deluge of facts, surprisingly absorbing; by quoting frequently and shrewdly, Guha allows us to eavesdrop on the multiplicity and richness of the conversation - between politicians, writers, civil servants, well-wishers, detractors - within which change took place.

One thing the book lacks, despite its comprehensiveness, is a sense of interiority. It's hardly alone among recent Indian histories in this regard. Guha's understanding of the secular basis for Indian democracy is a constitutional one; that is, the "secular" is a product, in India, of ideals, laws and institutions articulated and validated by the constitution. But the "secular" in India is not only a political construct; it is a cultural space. The domain of culture was inhabited and produced by writers and artists and their audience from the early 19th century onwards; it's a domain that comprises the interior life of Indian secularism. In this sense, independence and the Nehruvian era that followed are not really the beginning of a history, but the last phase in the story of Indian humanism. From the 1980s onwards, the secular middle class and its culture is completely redefined; the parameters for a new free-market understanding of "Indianness" are put in place. As it happens, the single chapter Guha devotes to culture, or "entertainment", as he calls it, is the weakest one in the book, with Wikipedia-like accounts of cultural achievements; it attempts to place culture in the constitutional idea of secularism - as providing instances of pluralism and fellow-feeling - but doesn't locate the constitutional in the interior life that culture represents.

The epilogue, "Why India Survives" (echoing RK Narayan's unflappable assurance to Naipaul in the 60s: "India will go on"), is a strangely moving coda, and clarifies the country's peculiar appeal. At one point, Guha mentions he's "speaking as a historian rather than as citizen"; but allowing the historian to be in commerce with citizenship is what provides the book with impetus, and gives it its most palpable strength. Guha, as a citizen, has been "exasperated" by India, but, in the light of historical evidence, has been won over by it. This mixture of distance and surrender is fairly emblematic of why many middle-class Indians continue to invest themselves, emotionally, in the country; it's quite distinct from patriotism. To suggest the ambiguity of his own relationship with the country of his birth, and also his utter investment in it, Guha has often in the past used some oddball Englishman of distinction who's lived in India or thought about it as a metaphor: Verrier Elwin, EP Thompson. In his epilogue, Guha invokes the biologist JBS Haldane, who, moved by the "wonderful experiment" India had embarked on, decided to become an "Indian citizen". Guha's book reminds us that the citizenly pride that permeates it is not incompatible with judgment, hindsight, intelligence and distance; that citizenship is not a natural thing, but that it is, in some cases, inevitable.

About the Author:-

Ramachandra Guha is a historian with major interests in the field of social, environmental, political and cricket history. Guha holds a B.A. degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College (1977) and is a post graduate from the Delhi School of Economics with a fellowship from the IIM- Calcutta. He has won the Padma Bhushan Award, R.K. Narayan Prize and the U.K. Cricket Society's Literary Award. Ramachandra Guha is an avid columnist along with being an author of books like the Picador Book of Cricket, Patriots and Partisans and the Wickets in the East.

Sunday, 20 March 2016

MY ONLY LOVE

d March 20, 2016 0

MY ONLY LOVE< POEM

MY ONLY LOVE

My only love

Just to say I love you

Never seems enough

I have said it many times

I am afraid you won’t understand

What I really mean what I say it

How can so much feeling

So much adoration fit into

Those three little words

But until I find some other

Way of saying what I feel then

I love you will have to do

So no matter how many times I say it

Never take it lightly for you my life

And my only love

I love you now more than ever before

I see even more than you know

About all you are

About observations not a theory but a simply fact….

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD BY JEFFERY ARCHER

d March 20, 2016 0

Book Review

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD BY JEFFERY ARCHER

SYNOPSIS:-

Mightier than the Sword opens with an IRA bomb exploding during the MV Buckingham's maiden voyage across the Atlantic - but how many passengers lose their lives? When Harry Clifton visits his publisher in New York, he learns that he has been elected as the new president of English PEN, and immediately launches a campaign for the release of a fellow author, Anatoly Babakov, who's imprisoned in Siberia. Babakov's crime? Writing a book called Uncle Joe, a devastating insight into what it was like to work for Stalin. So determined is Harry to see Babakov released and the book published, that he puts his own life in danger. His wife Emma, chairman of Barrington Shipping, is facing the repercussions of the IRA attack on the Buckingham. Some board members feel she should resign, and Lady Virginia Fenwick will stop at nothing to cause Emma's downfall. Sir Giles Barrington is now a minister of the Crown, and looks set for even higher office, until an official trip to Berlin does not end as a diplomatic success. Once again, Giles's political career is thrown off balance by none other than his old adversary, Major Alex Fisher, who once again stands against him at the election. But who wins this time? In London, Harry and Emma's son, Sebastian, is quickly making a name for himself at Farthing's Bank in London, and has proposed to the beautiful young American, Samantha. But the despicable Adrian Sloane, a man interested only in his own advancement and the ruin of Sebastian, will stop at nothing to remove his rival.

REVIEW:-

In the fifth Clifton Chronicles novel, the epic family saga takes us from the mid-1960s into the 1970s. This isn't one of those series where the reader can just jump in with the latest book; the story of the Clifton and Barrington families began just after WWI, and there is a long and complicated backstory to this latest installment. For readers familiar with the saga, here's the gist: Harry Clifton, the best-selling mystery writer, is championing the cause of a Russian writer and political prisoner; Emma, Harry's wife, is embroiled in a battle for control of her family business, the Barrington Shipping Company; Emma's brother, Giles, is facing a bleak political future; and Giles' ex-wife, Virginia, is orchestrating the overthrow of Emma, the ruination of Barrington's, and the destruction of Giles' career. And that's just for starters. Like its predecessors, this is a rich, compelling, intricately structured story with plenty of intrigue and surprises.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR BY JEFFERY ARCHER

d March 20, 2016 0

Book Review

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR BY JEFFERY ARCHER

SYNOPSIS:-

Be Careful What You Wish For: 4 (Clifton Chronicles #4), available in paperback, is a novel which revolves around the Cliftons and the Barringtons. The book begins with Harry Clifton and his wife Emma Clifton who hurry to the hospital after they hear about the car accident that their son Sebastian has been a part of. Emma Clifton wishes to take up the post of the chairman at the Barrington Shipping Company, after Toss Buchanan was forced into resignation. With the company planning to build the new luxury liner called the MV Buckingham, there are people trying to destroy the family business. Don Pedro Martinez brings in his candidate, Major Alex Fisher, to fill in the chairman position. Be Careful What You Wish For: 4 further tells the story of how the adopted daughter of Harry and Emma falls in love with her fellow student, Clive Bingham in London, whom she intends to marry. The wedding is planned, but on the eventful day, Lady Virginia Fenwick who is visiting Priscilla Bingham, Clive's mother, poisons the wedding chalice. Amidst everything that is going on, Cedric Hardcastle becomes a board member of the Barringtons. He's a bluff Yorkshireman who was never in the picture until now. This creates an environment of confusion and tension amongst the families. Hardcastle finds himself trying to decide which candidate to support for the chairman's chair. Be Careful What You Wish For: 4 (Clifton Chronicles # 4) was published on 19th March, 2014. It presents the readers with a lot of unexpected twists and turns.

REVIEW:-

After a year long wait and pondering on various permutations and combinations about what will happen to the characters after finishing the third book (Best Kept Secret) in The Clifton Chronicles series, I laid my hands on 'Be Careful What You Wish For' as soon as it got released worldwide. I kept reading it whole day today just to find out what happens to the Cliftons and the Barringtons this time. And once again, Lord Archer, being a marvelous storyteller and a tease that he is, has managed to leave the story at a point where I just can't wait for the next book in the series.

The story begins with Harry Clifton receiving a call from Emma telling him that their son, Sebastian has been killed in a car accident. Harry, who is on a book tour for his latest William Warwick book is in New York, catches the first flight to London only to find out that it was not Sebastian who died in the car accident, but his companion for the journey, Bruno Martinez.Pedro Martinez, who is anyway mad at the Cliftons and the Barringtons for what they did to him in the previous book goes all out there to seek revenge for his son Bruno's death, among other reasons. This time his target becomes Barrington's more than 100 years old shipping company and he plays on the front foot to ensure that the company goes bankrupt. He somehow manages to place Major Alex Fisher on the board of directors of the company to keep a close watch on the inside happenings. Ross Buchanan, the chairman of the company had to resign from his post after a debacle that has been carefully operated by Pedro to bring the company down and Emma Barrington takes over as the new chairman of the board, which came as a shock for Pedro. Emma, being a strong-headed woman that she is, fights the adversities that the shipping company is facing along with tumultuous affairs on her personal front as well.

Meanwhile, Sebastian, after the accident, starts working for Cedric Hardcastle, Chairman of the Farthings Bank, as his assistant. Being an intelligent man himself, Sebastian manages to impress his boss, as he himself is a shrewd banker. Cedric Hardcastle plays an important role in the story and with an intelligent aide like Sebastian with him, manages to pull off an operation against Martinez that goes wrong time and again.

Some new characters and many old characters play an important role in taking the story forward. With his latest offering, Jeffrey Archer has again proved that there is no other storyteller like him. Just when you feel that the story is dragging a bit, he will bring in a twist that will make you sit straight and force you to turn pages to know what next and so on and so forth. For readers, who are keenly following The Clifton Chronicles series, some things in this book will take you by surprise and one particular happening in the book will leave you sad. And for those, who still haven't laid their hands on The Clifton Chronicles series, it is never too late, start with the first book right away. And those like me, who are an ardent fan of the series, Keep Calm & Wait For 2015 for the next book in the series.

ONLY TIME WILL TELL BY JEFFERY ARCHER

d March 20, 2016 0

Book Review

ONLY TIME WILL TELL BY JEFFERY ARCHER

SYNOPSIS:-

The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1919, in the backstreets of Bristol. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father. Only Time Will Tell takes a cast of memorable characters from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take his place at Oxford, or join the fight against Hitler's Germany. In Jeffrey Archer's masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won't want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you will be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton, could ever have anticipated.

REVIEW:-

Only Time Will Tell, Jeffrey Archer’s 16th novel, is the first in a new three-volume cycle the master is calling The Clifton Chronicles.

The sequence will chart the life of one Harry Clifton, whom we first meet as the orphaned son of a Bristol stevedore at the start of the 20th century, and where it will leave him – oh, Lord – only time will tell.
Harry is Archer’s stock character: the unassuming chap from a modest background in whom predatory well-wishers divine some grand potential they conspire to make him fulfil. In this case it’s – well – it’s pretty vague actually but it hardly matters. He could be a gifted frogman.
Harry is plucked from obscurity and put up for a scholarship to a fancy prep school. Will he be bullied? Will he see off the bully? Will he make various lifelong friends? Will he get a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School? Will he meet a pig-tailed girl with her nose in a book? Will his mother’s tea shop succeed so that she can pay the fees?
Harry’s path is inevitably barred by those who have reason to be jealous of him or to fear him, but each reversal is met with fortitude and overcome with selfless grind and a dash of talent.
For long stretches Only Time Will Tell reads like a misery memoir, albeit one written by an accomplished narcissistic fantasist with a penchant for genealogical mysteries. Because at its heart, you see, there is a conundrum: is Harry his father’s son? Or is he the illegitimate son of a shipping magnate?
There are one or two surprises along the way: a couple of legal niggles and a curious wrinkle in the plotting. Instead of a cracking showdown as the baddie is unmasked there is only a letter of apology and promise to be better in future.
As ever a little too much of the author creeps in, to sometimes comical result.
Here is a housemaster talking to a 12-year-old boy: “‘By the way Harry… I’ve just read your essay on Jane Austen, and I was fascinated by your suggestion that if Miss Austen had been able to go to university, she might never have written a novel, and even if she had, her work probably wouldn’t have been so insightful.’
‘Sometimes it’s an advantage to be disadvantaged,’ said Harry.
‘That doesn’t sound like Jane Austen,’ said Mr Frobisher.
‘It wasn’t,’ replied Harry. ‘But it was said by someone else who didn’t go to university,’ he added without explanation.”

Archer is on top form elsewhere, too. It is as if the laws that bind ordinary novelists don’t apply to him, and he performs his signature trick – the oily glissade past the twin imperatives of plausibility and verisimilitude – with ease, so that despite the better part of you knowing this is an over-egged farrago of corny nonsense, he pins you down like an ultimate fighter.

Saturday, 19 March 2016

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

d March 19, 2016 0

Book Review

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

SYNOPSIS:-

A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war – that great fall of Man from grace – and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction.

Those who loved the bestselling Life After Life will recognise Teddy as Ursula Todd’s adored younger brother – but for those who have not read it, A God in Ruins stands fully on its own. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age.

'Better than most fiction you’ll read this year' The Times

'Witty and compassionate' Marian Keyes

'Brilliant…a major writer' David Mitchell

'Magnificent' Washington Post

'Extraordinarily affecting' Telegraph

'Devastating' New York Times

'Engrossing' Irish Independent

'Inexhaustibly ingenious' Hilary Mantel

'A marvel' Gillian Flynn

'Bleakly funny' Financial Times

Extract:-

30th March, 1944

The Last Flight

Naseby

He walked as far as the hedge that signalled the end of the airfield.

The beating of the bounds. The men referred to it as his 'daily constitutional' and fretted when he didn’t take it. They were superstitious. Everyone was superstitious.

Beyond the hedge there were bare fields, ploughed over last autumn. He didn’t expect to see the alchemy of spring, to see the dull brown earth change to bright green and then pale gold. A man could count his life in harvests reaped. He had seen enough.

They were surrounded by flat farmland. The farmhouse itself stood square and immoveable over to the left. At night a red light shone from its roof to stop them crashing into it. If they flew over it when they were coming into land they knew they had overshot and were in trouble.

From here he could see the farmer’s daughter in the yard, feeding the geese. Wasn't there a nursery rhyme in there somewhere? No, he was thinking of the farmer’s wife, wasn’t he – cutting off tales with a carving knife. A horrid image. Poor mice, he had thought when he was a boy. Still thought the same now that he was a man. Nursery rhymes were brutal affairs.

He had never met the farmer’s daughter nor did he know her name, but he was disproportionally fond of her. She always waved them off. Sometimes she was joined by her father, once or twice by her mother, but the girl’s presence in the farmyard was a constant for every raid.

She caught sight of him now and waved. Rather than return the wave, he saluted her. He imagined she would like that. Of course, from this distance he was just a uniform. She had no idea who he was. Teddy was just one of the many.

He whistled for the dog.

1925

Alouette

‘See!’ he said, ‘there - a lark. A skylark.’ He glanced up at her and saw that she was looking in the wrong place. ‘No, over there,’ he said, pointing. She was completely hopeless.

‘Oh,’ she said at last. ‘There, I see it! How queer - what’s it doing?’

‘Hovering, and then it’ll go up again probably.’ The skylark soared on its transcendental thread of song. The quivering flight of the bird and the beauty of its music triggered an unexpectedly deep emotion in him. ‘Can you hear it?’

His aunt cupped a hand to an ear in a theatrical way. She was as out of place as a peacock, wearing an odd hat, red like a pillar-box and stuck with two large pheasant tail-feathers that bobbed around with the slightest movement of her head. He wouldn’t be surprised if someone took a shot at her. ‘If only,’ he thought. Teddy was allowed – allowed himself - barbaric thoughts as long as they remained unvoiced. (‘Good manners,’ his mother, counselled, was ‘the armour that one must don anew every morning.’)

‘Hear what?’ his aunt said eventually.

‘The song,’ he said, mustering patience. ‘The skylark’s song. It’s stopped now,’ he added as she continued to make a show of listening.

‘It might begin again.’

‘No, it won’t, it can’t, it’s gone. Flown away.’ He flapped his arms to demonstrate. Despite the feathers in her hat she clearly knew nothing about birds. Or any animals for that matter. She didn’t even possess a cat. She was indifferent to Trixie, their Lurcher, currently nosing her way enthusiastically through the dried-up ditch at the side of the road. Trixie was his most stalwart companion and had been by his side since she was a puppy when she had been so small that she could squeeze through the front door of his sisters’ dollhouse.

Was he supposed to be educating his aunt, he wondered? Was that why they were here? ‘The lark’s known for its song,’ he said instructively. ‘It’s beautiful.’ It was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was. You were either moved by it or you weren’t. His sisters, Pamela and Ursula, were, his elder brother, Maurice, wasn’t. His brother, Jimmy, was too young for beauty, his father possibly too old. His father, Hugh, had a gramophone recording of The Lark Ascending which they sometimes listened to on wet Sunday afternoons. It was lovely but not as lovely as the lark itself. ‘The purpose of art,’ his mother, Sylvie, said – instructed even - ‘is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself.’ Her own father, Teddy’s grandfather, had been a famous artist, dead long ago, a relationship that gave his mother authority on the subject of art. And beauty too, Teddy supposed. All these things – Art, Truth, Beauty – had capital letters when his mother spoke about them.

‘When the skylark flies high,’ he continued, rather hopelessly to Izzie, ‘it means it’s fine weather.’

‘Well, one doesn’t need a bird to tell one if it’s good weather or not, one simply looks about,’ Izzie said. ‘And this afternoon is glorious. I adore the sun,’ she added, closing her eyes and raising her painted face to the skies.

Who didn’t, Teddy thought? Not his grandmother perhaps, who led a gloomy drawing-room life in Hampstead, with heavy cotton nets drawn to prevent the light entering the house. Or perhaps to stop the dark escaping.

‘The Knights’ Code’, which he had learned by heart from Scouting for Boys, a book he frequently turned to in times of uncertainty, even now in his self-exile from the movement, demanded that ‘Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace.’ He supposed entertaining Izzie was one of those occasions. It was certainly laborious.

He shaded his eyes against the sun and scanned the skies for the skylark. It failed to make a reappearance and he had to make do with the aerial manoeuvres of the swallows. He thought of Icarus and wondered what he would have looked like from the ground. Quite big, he supposed. But Icarus was a myth, wasn’t he? He was going to boarding school after the summer holidays and he really must start getting his facts in order. ‘You will need to be a stoic, old chap,’ his father advised. ‘It will be a trial, that’s the point of it really, I suppose. Best to keep your head below the parapet,’ he added. ‘Neither sink nor float, just sort of paddle about in the middle.’

‘All the men in the family’ went to the school, his Hampstead grandmother said (his only grandmother, Sylvie’s mother having died long ago), as if it were a law, written down in ancient times. Teddy supposed his own son would have to go there too, although this boy existed in a future that Teddy couldn’t even begin to imagine. He didn’t need to, of course, for in that future he had no sons, only a daughter, Viola, something which would be a sadness for him although he never spoke of it, certainly not to Viola who would have been volubly affronted.

Teddy was taken aback when Izzie unexpectedly started to sing and – more startling – do a little dance. ‘Alouette, Alouette, gentille Alouette.’ He knew no French to speak of yet and thought she was singing not ‘gentille’ but ‘jaunty’, a word he rather liked. ‘Do you know that song?’ she asked him.

‘No.’

‘It’s from the war. The French soldiers sang it.’ The fleeting shadow of something – sorrow, perhaps – passed across her features, but then just as suddenly she said gleefully, ‘The lyrics are quite horrible. All about plucking the poor swallow. Its eyes and feathers and legs and so on.’

In that inconceivable yet inevitable war still to come - Teddy’s war - Alouette was the name of 425 Squadron, the French Canadians. In the February of ’44, not long before his last flight, Teddy made a an emergency landing at their base at Tholthorpe, two engines on fire, shot up as they crossed the Channel. The French boys gave his crew brandy, rough stuff that they were nonetheless grateful for. Their squadron badges, something Teddy hadn’t known before he met them, showed a swallow above the motto Je te plumerai and he had thought about this day with Izzie. It was a memory that seemed to belong to someone else.

Izzie did a pirouette. ‘What larks!’ she said, laughing. Is this, he wondered, what his father meant when he said Izzie was ‘ludicrously unstable’?

‘Pardon me?’

‘What larks,’ Izzie repeated. ‘Great Expectations. Haven’t you read it?’ For a surprising moment she sounded like his mother. ‘But, of course, I was making a joke. Because there isn’t one any longer. The lark, I mean. Flown orf. Gorn,’ she said in a silly Cockney accent. ‘I’ve eaten lark,’ she added in an offhand way. ‘In Italy. They’re considered a delicacy over there. There’s not much eating on a lark, of course. No more than a mouthful really.’

Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him.

Many, many years later, in the early Seventies, Viola, discovered Emily Dickinson on an American Studies course that was part of her degree. In her scrawly, untamed hand she copied down the first verse of a poem she thought her father would like (too lazy to transcribe the whole of the short poem). ‘Split the lark – and you’ll find the Music, bulb after bulb in silver rolled’. He was surprised she had thought of him, she rarely did. He supposed literature was one of the few things they held in common even though they rarely, if ever, discussed it. He considered sending her something in return, a poem, even a few choice lines – a means of communicating with her – ‘Hail to thee, blythe spirit! Bird though never wert’ or ‘Hark how the cheerfull birds do chaunt their lays and carol of love’s praise’ or ‘Ethereal Minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?’ (Was there a poet who hadn’t written about skylarks?) He supposed his daughter would think he was patronizing her in some way. She had an aversion to learning anything from him, possibly from everyone, and so in the end he simply wrote back, ‘Thank you, very thoughtful of you.’

Before he could stop himself - the armour of good manners falling away - he said, ‘It’s disgusting to eat a lark, Aunt Izzie.’

‘Why is it disgusting? You eat chicken and so on, don’t you? What’s the difference, after all?’ Izzie had driven an ambulance in the Great War, dead poultry could do little to ruffle her emotions.

A world of difference, Teddy thought, although he couldn’t help but wonder what a lark would taste like. Thankfully, he was distracted from this thought by Trixie barking extravagantly at something. He bent down to investigate. ‘A slow worm,’ he said appreciatively to himself, the lark temporarily forgotten. He picked it up gently in both hands and displayed it to Izzie.

‘A snake?’ she said, grimacing, snakes apparently having no charms for her.

‘No, a slow worm,’ Teddy said. ‘Not a snake. Not a worm either. It’s a lizard actually.’ Its bronze-gold lustred scales gleamed in the sun. This was beauty too. Was there anything in nature that wasn’t? Even a slug demanded a certain salutation, although not from his mother.

‘What a funny little boy you are,’ Izzie said.

Tags

Search This Blog

I Recommend

Translate

About Me

Saturday, 23 April 2016

Sunday, 27 March 2016

Thursday, 24 March 2016

Monday, 21 March 2016

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 by BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT (Author,

Creator)

What Stregthens Humanity

Love

Kindness

Social Intelligence

Sunday, 20 March 2016

Saturday, 19 March 2016

Recent

Popular

Comments

Archive

Trending

Tags

Labels

Categories

Contact Form