the everlasting delights of reading amazing books

My thoughts have been all over the place these past few days, and it has been a little difficult to sit down and weave them all together in a coherent post.

But I've read a number of outstandingly amazing books recently, and I couldn't bear to not capture those experiences.

I read an Elly Griffiths novel after a long time. Bleeding Heart Yard features Detective Inspector Harbinder Kaur, a British woman of Punjabi origin. Kaur's voice is distinct, she has a wry sense of humour, she's not afraid to call a spade a spade, and she also comes across as genuinely compassionate to her subordinates and colleagues.

Kaur is investigating a death at a school reunion at which one of her subordinates is also in attendance. There are two crimes unraveling here — one that happened more than two decades ago, and the other in the present day.

Bleeding Heart Yard differs from other Kaur novels in the sense that there are multiple points of view, which presented a different reading experience in that we get to see what other characters think of Kaur. It also made me look forward to and enjoy even more the chapters presented from Kaur's perspective.

'Chris Foster?' says Harbinder, more for form's sake than anything.

'That's right.'

He's very friendly, waving them to the sofas, offering tea or cold drinks. They both ask for water. Harbinder is pretty sure that this is just so that they can say that Chris Foster waited on them. Fame is an awfully infantilizing thing, she thinks. Chris Foster is just an ordinary man, fortyish, a witness to a crime. Yet just because he's an average guitar player with an above-average voice, two adult police professionals are slightly breathless after two minutes in his presence.

~ An excerpt from Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths

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'... But, about a year ago, they must have got in contact again. Maybe at one of those bloody reunions. I've never known a school have so many reunions. In Italy, you leave school, that's it. Over. But in England, it seems, you keep reliving your schooldays for ever.'

~ An excerpt from Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths

These lines are spoken by the widow of the murder victim in the story. I love these lines because they completely capture my own sentiment about past friendships.

Many of my batch mates from university days take great pleasure and pride in staying in touch with each other, whereas for the past (more than) two decades, I've wanted nothing but to leave those days behind and move on with my life.

But truthfully, for the first few years after graduating, I couldn't seem to move forward. I missed college days as though I were missing a phantom limb. Once I got past that stage, I didn't want to look back again.

It was hard enough getting away from a place I loved with all my heart, and once I was able to move on, I couldn't bear going back to drown in that nostalgia all over again.

In our bedtime reading of the Wings Of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland, D and I finished Book #10 - Darkness Of Dragons. This marks the end of the Jade Mountain Prophecy series of books (#6—10), and I needed to take a couple of nights off after that to feel the grief of Darkstalker's and Qibli's story coming to an end.

Told from the point of view of Qibli, the courageous SandWing dragon who's had a loveless childhood but found much love and affection under the wing of Thorn, now Queen of the SandWings, this book presents an immensely satisfying conclusion to the Jade Mountain Prophecy arc.

Towards the end of the book, Darkstalker tempts Qibli by offering to make him an animus. Qibli has always longed to have the power to magic to wield, trusting that he'd do so only for the greater good.

But he is smart enough to understand that Darkstalker's offerings don't come with no strings attached. At one point, Darkstalker suggests that he and Qibli could be friends, with Qibli reigning him in every time he's tempted to misuse his powers of magic.

"The fact that you can't be good on your own," said Qibli. "That's part of the problem. You shouldn't need a dragon on your shoulder telling you that killing all the IceWings is wrong, or that taking over your father's mind was an awful thing to do."

~ An excerpt from Darkness Of Dragons, Book #10, Wings Of Fire, by Tui T. Sutherland

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"You didn't lose your soul because magic ate it away slowly," Qibli said. "You lost it because you chose to do terrible things, over and over again. Each terrible thing, each murder, added to this mountain." He tapped the white sand side. "That's not the magic's fault. That's you. That's who you chose to be."

~ An excerpt from Darkness Of Dragons, Book #10, Wings Of Fire, by Tui T. Sutherland

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Moon shook her head. "The future of Pyrrhia is not your own personal scroll, waiting for you to write it, Darkstalker. The only future you control is yours. And you have not brought happiness to the dragon tribes. We don't want that future you see if we have to travel your dark path to get there."

~ An excerpt from Darkness Of Dragons, Book #10, Wings Of Fire, by Tui T. Sutherland

Starting with a birthday gift of four of the graphic novels of the series from a dear friend, D has built up his collection of Wings Of Fire books.

And now a book I picked up on a whim because of its premise — featuring the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle programme.

But Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is so much more! It's a love story. It's a story of friendship and survival in a competitive environment. It's a story of motherhood and parenting and choosing to do what's right even when it is really, really hard.

There were so many lines and passages that made me want to re-read them until I was sure that my subconscious had deeply and thoroughly absorbed the messages and meanings in those words.

It is a thing of sheer beauty, this book. What a blessing that we live in a time where we get to read a book like Atmosphere!

Here are a few excerpts to delight in.

Astronomy was history. Because space was time. And that was the thing she loved most about the universe itself. When you look at the red star Antares in the southern sky, you are looking over thirty-three hundred trillion miles away. But you are also looking more than five hundred and fifty years into the past. Antares is so far away that its light takes five hundred and fifty years to reach your eye on Earth. Five hundred and fifty light-years away. So when you look out at the sky, the farther you can see, the further back you are looking in time. The space between you and the star is time.

And yet, most of the stars have been there for so long, burning so bright, that every human generation could have looked up and seen them. When you gaze up at the sky and you see Antares, with its reddish hue, in the middle of the constellation Scorpius, you are looking at the same star the Babylonians catalogued as early as 1100 B.C.E.

To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at that same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding.

~ An excerpt from Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Joan's bright, sharp brain—her most beautiful muscle—turned to mush from too little sleep. Sometimes, unsure what else to do, Joan would take Frances out of the apartment, stare up at the night sky, and talk to her about the phases of the moon. Frances often cooed then. It was probably just the cool night air, but Joan also suspected that Frances was starting to focus, perhaps even taking in Joan's finger, bright against a dark sky. Maybe this was what she could be to Frances. Maybe this was their language.

But that clarity was fleeting. The rest of the time, caring for Frances felt like trudging through mud up to the knees.

~ An excerpt from Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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People say opposites attract, but Joan had found this to almost never be true. People just couldn't see the ways they were drawn to exactly who they feared—or hoped—they might be.

~ An excerpt from Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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It was late January, and they had been together for almost six months, but Joan didn't want to mention it. She didn't want to feel like she was counting the days, even though she was. And she didn't want to feel like this could ever end, even though she understood that some love affairs did. Or, rather, that all of them did, eventually. Just the act of falling in love was to agree to a broken heart.

~ An excerpt from Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Joan felt, so acutely, that the incurable problem with life was that nothing was ever in balance. That she could not have toddler Frances and fifth-grade Frances at the same time. She could not meet adult Frances and have a moment to hold baby Frances all at once. You could not have a little of everything you wanted.

~ An excerpt from Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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"Choices like this are dictated by what is best for the mission, not the individual. And if you're asking my advice, I think that's where you sometimes go wrong. You're not smarter or harder working than anyone here. Yes, you're brilliant and driven, but you're surrounded by people who are just as brilliant and just as driven. You're not better than anyone on this crew. You cannot be. And you cannot want to be. If you are, you won't be prepared to do the hard stuff, if you're too worried about whether you're winning some imaginary race. It's about the collective, not the individual."

~ An excerpt from Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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And I have to include a few lines from the Acknowledgements section!

Reid writes: For the past few years, I've been joking with my family that I should dedicate this book to "artistic license". It was incredibly challenging to get close to historically accurate in order to create Joan and Vanessa's world. So much of my growth as a writer was in accepting that my work cannot and will never be flawless. I am flawed; my scope of understanding the world is limited. And thus, so is this book. But, with any luck, within the flaws there is something that can mean something to somebody.

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I cried while reading the last few pages of this book. I cried after this book ended, because I felt lost without the company of the strong characters in the story. Joan. Vanessa. Donna. Lydia. Griff. Hank.

And then Darkness Of Dragons came to an end at around the same time, and I felt the grief of that too.

The greatest joy is that there are always more books to read, more characters to fall in love with, and more stories to find comfort and courage in.