First Chapter: Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

 

First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros are hosted by Socrates Book Reviews. Teaser Tuesdays by The Purple Booker

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara, February 4, 2020, Random House. Award winning novel based on a true story, a mystery set in the slums of India. 

CHAPTER I

This Story Will Save Your Life

 

When Mental was alive, he was a boss-man with eighteen or twenty children working for him, and he almost never raised his hand against any of them. Every week he gave them 5Stars to split between themselves, or packs of Gems, and he made them invisible to the police or evangelist-types who wanted to salvage them from the streets, and the men who watched them with hungry eyes as the children hurtled down railway tracks, gathering up plastic water bottles before a train could ram in to them.  

 

Publisher description: Nine-year-old Jai ... decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from episodes of Police Patrol to find a missing schoolmate,...ventures into some of the most dangerous parts of the city. But kids continue to vanish, and Jai and two friends must confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and soul-snatching djinns in order to uncover the truth.

My review on goodreads:

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Realistic, eye-opening, heart breaking. Life and survival in the slums through the eyes of a ten year-old boy who decides with two classmates to become detectives and find out why and how children in their settlement have begun to disappear. Good character development that allows you into the hearts and minds of the people in the slums.

View all my reviews

Sunday Salon: A New Book and an Old

 A new book and an old: 

Words to Make a Friend: A Story in Japanese and English, November 9, 2021, Random House Studio

This delightful bilingual picture book for children shows a Japanese girl and an American girl communicating in both languages while playing outdoors in the snow. Simple words and phrases by one girl in English are repeated in Japanese by the other girl. Lovely illustrations. 

Lovers at the Chameleon Club by Francine Prose was published in 2014 by Harper. I found the book again while paring down my home library, and because of the stunning cover and the topic, Paris in 1932, I now mean to read it!

The lives of selected athletes, socialites, writers, photographers in Paris from 1920 to the beginning of the war, 1932, have been researched and reimagined for fiction, their names changed in the book.

"Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom. It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves." (book description)

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon  

Book Beginning: The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shah

 The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shah, January 1, 2022, Lake Union Publishing

Genre: multi-cultural, contemporary fiction, family drama, romance

Description: a family tragedy beckons Preeti Desai, a first-generation immigrant in the U.S., back to the city of her birth in India. There, she has to navigate her way through a cultural and generational minefield as she tries to maintain her personal independence and a carefully nurtured Western outlook. 

Book beginning:

A gaggle of women, all speaking over each other in loud, animated voices, filled my parents' small living room. It was like watching a National Geographic special about social dominance, where pitch and decibel level determined the leader. They wandered around the room, grazing on homemade samosas and pakoras, careful not to get oily crumbs on the delicate fabric of their brightly colored saris. 

 Page 56: 

Until yesterday, we hadn't spoken in months. Not since she found out that my boyfriend - now ex-boyfriend - and I had been living together in Los Angeles. 

Would you read on?

The Friday 56. Find any sentence that grabs you on page 56 of your book. Post it, and add your URL to Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.

Sunday Salon: Home, Fate, Drama, Learning Japanese

New ebooks: 

How to Find your Way Home by Katy Regan, February 15, 2022, Berkley

 Emily and her older brother Stephen have been separated for many years. Something catastrophic tore them apart and sent Stephen first to jail, and then to years of abject poverty and homelessness on the streets. I'm waiting to read the full story of what had happened to the brother and sister and their family so much earlier.

The Red Thread of Fate by Lyn Liao Butler, February 8, 2022, Berkley

Book description: Two days before Tam and Tony Kwan receive their letter of acceptance for the son they are adopting from China, Tony and his estranged cousin Mia are killed unexpectedly in an accident. A shell-shocked Tam learns she is named the guardian to Mia’s five-year-old daughter, Angela.  

Overwhelmed..., Tam must also decide if she will complete the adoption and bring home the son waiting for her in a Chinese orphanage. 

Watching on Netflix: 

A French-comedy drama series caught my attention. Call My Agent won an International Emmy Award for Best Comedy. A talent firm in Paris works hard to keep their clients working and their company in business. The agency characters are amusing in their handling of capricious actors, their clients. 

 The series in French is called Dix Pour Cent, or ten percent, the amount the company keeps of the earnings of their clients. I'm almost finished with Season 1, and there are at least four more seasons to go! I think the original version in French is best, with English subtitles! 

This Learn Japanese audio teaches you Japanese words, not phrases. Has anyone tried learning a language by listening to tapes while you're asleep?

These are my other books. You can see I've been trying!  

How are you keeping your winter days busy, and What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon   

Sunday Salon: Film, TV Show, Books

 Watching on Netflix :

I seem to be watching more films, TV shows on Netflix now that the cold weather (and Covid) is keeping us indoors. Someone predicted on TV that 2022 will be a year for "going interior," and I assume that means, staying in and away from crowds.

Seasons 1 and 2 of Emily in Paris are dubbed a romantic TV comedy. The gorgeous filming of places in Paris made me more than interested in the show. I'll have to wait till next year for Season 3. (Photo from Netflix)

 

(Photo from Netflix)

The Lost Daughter is another film on Netflix, an award winner. It's described by the NY Times as a "dreamy thriller," and is set on an island, presumably in Greece. Based on a novel, it's the story of a literature professor vacationing alone, who observes the other vacationers, especially a young woman having difficulty coping with her young child. The professor is reminded of herself raising her two daughters years ago while building a career. The ending didn't bother me as it did some critics. You just have to fill in the blanks as to what comes next. 

Two other films set in Paris I'll be watching slowly, as they're in French, though I have the option of switching to the English version!

Now reading from Netgalley:

 Evil under the Tuscan Sun by Stephanie Cole is the 3rd in the Tuscan Cooking School mystery series, to be published February 1, 2020 by Berkley.

I enjoyed her first book, Al Dente's Inferno, when Nelli Valenti is enticed from America to Tuscany to turn a villa into a cooking school. In Evil under the Tuscan Sun, a philanthropher brings his aging mother and her companion from the U.S. to enjoy the Tuscan sun and a four-day workshop making ziti. Of course, death follows, but I haven't reached that part as yet, and can't tell you who got killed. 

Ebook bought:

This is a romance set in Paris, that I've not yet started, but see it's easy to read in French, happily for me. Un Appartement a Paris by Guillaume Musso, is described by French critics as a thriller and a romance, imaginative and intriguing. How could one resist that? It was published March 2018.  

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon   

Haiga Poetry Challenge

The poetry challenge at Fake Flamenco is hosted monthly by Rebecca.

This month, use the photo provided or a photo of your own to write a haiga - a haiku (5-7-5) with an image. I joined in for the first time, finding this challenge in a post by Margaret at From Pyrenees to Pennines. Here's mine.

Haiga

Cold my heart and room,
Green leaves against a blue sky
Waft in warm breezes 

 - Harvee Lau, January 8, 2022

The challenge provides a different theme and poetry form each month. 

Book Beginning: The Perfect Family by Teresa Driscoll

Her Perfect Family by Teresa Driscoll, November 1, 2021, Thomas & Mercer

Genre: psychological thriller

Book beginning:

PROLOGUE

Pink

The daughter looks at her outfit. And suddenly, at the eleventh hour, she realizes the colour is all wrong. 

 

Page 56:

"Don't you test his clothing or something? For residue. I've seen that on the television -'

Book description: The perfect family? Or the perfect lie?

Would you read on?

The Friday 56. Find any sentence that grabs you on page 56 of your book. Post it, and add your URL to Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.