Welcome to Litsy!

Fantastic setting—informative, compelling, heartbreaking—with dynamic, engaging characters you can‘t help but love, an intriguing mystery as a young boy tries to find his missing classmate. And yet, while I appreciated the insight the book gave me into life in India, it‘s written by a former journalist whose experiences inform every aspect of the book, & found parts to be really good, overall the story didn‘t always hold my interest. Low pick.

Rain with a healthy dose of thunder and lightning makes for a perfect morning to linger over coffee with a book. Just started this one but I‘m enjoying it so far. ⛈️📖☕️

It was hard for me to get into this book and care about the characters. It was okay, and ended rather abruptly for my taste.

This was my #BookSpin. It's a mystery/thriller set in India. The author wrote it to highlight the fact that children go missing in India every day. And though I expected a fantasy element because of the title I was not disappointed.

@TheAromaofBooks

I feel like we‘re supposed to do one a day, but I want to be able to delete a bunch of screenshots off my phone on Jan. 1, so I‘m going to finish up the year by Friday. My #June pick for #12booksof2021 is the tagged book - sad, thought-provoking, and not at all what I expected. Honorable Mention to The Lost Village by Camilla Sten which was creepy and fabulous and kept me on the edge of my seat.

This was heartbreaking yet charming. I'm glad I read it.

Won a free copy of next month‘s book at bookclub!!

Children are being abducted from an a slum-neighborhood in India. When a classmate goes missing, 9-year old Jai, who is obsessed with detective TV shows, and two friends, decide to investigate. Beautifully written, this transports you into right into the heart of the neighborhood. There‘s humor and joy, but also terror and heartbreak. I highly recommend the audiobook-I switched back and forth with my print copy.

Audiobooks are a migraineur‘s godsend. I had nerve block injections Thursday and all of a sudden those injection site started hurting and an ice pick pain hit my left eye/temple. I switched to the audio version of this book and it is fabulous! I‘m going to reheat the heating pad for my neck and grab a fresh ice pack for my head, and slip back to India. 😍 Seriously-grab this audiobook y‘all.

Sad and tragic.

Reading now.

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.
Ok is the first sentence but I can't stop in the middle of it.
#FirstLineFridays

This was so visceral, it felt like you were really in India with these children. Told largely from the POV of children, this story is at times humorous but more often, heartbreaking - dealing with death, abuse, classism, bigotry, and so much more. Shortlisted for the JCB prize for Literature (India) in 2020 - its the type of book that should be discussed in classrooms worldwide. Highly recommend.

Doing some #audiowalking and spotted this fun mural on a local elementary school. The theme is “See Yourself in the Story”.

#12booksof2020 day 8:
Pic from the NYT review of this book, aptly titled "Who Cares About One Missing Child in an Indian Slum? Another Child." One boy decides to emulate his favorite detective show and discover what is happening to his disappearing school mates. This book and the setting it conjured has stuck with me more than any one other book read this year.

I gained a further appreciation of this after reading the author‘s afterward. I think she does an admirable job of telling the slum children‘s story and showing their resiliency.

We see, feel, almost smell the life in this basti where poverty, corruption, surviving are an everyday challenge through the eyes of the 9 years old narrator. The POV never varies. Not an easy read but a worthwhile one.
#12booksof2020

This book about a group of nine year olds in India that are trying to play detective and find some missing children. The story is interesting but it's really hard to connected with the characters.
#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks
#BBRC #YeahBaby #IndianAuthor @LibrarianRyan @Sarahreadstoomuch
#Booked2020 #SetInIndia @Cinfhen @BarbaraTheBibliophage @4thhouseontheleft
#ReadNoseReindeer @StayCurious

I bailed. There‘s a lot of great stuff in this book but I just couldn‘t get into a story with small children as the narrative protagonists. I realized I was avoiding reading it because I didn‘t want to spend a lot of time with a bunch of irritating kids. YMMV.

I always get 2-3 books from the NYT 100 Notable Books 📖 of the year to read on Christmas vacation. No vacation this year, but still traditions must be upheld.

Thankful for my partner Chris who is the best man I know, and our cat Riley who always makes me smile.

Reading the tagged book. I‘m not reading as much as I used to but I‘m enjoying the story.

+ thing: we had a fire in the fireplace two nights this week!

#thoughtfulthursday @MoonWitch94

Next ebook!

This book was hard to follow at times and I thought about stopping reading, but it was compelling enough to keep on and it was worth it. The ending was moving and I think it will stay with me a long time especially after reading the author's afterword. Books have a magical way of helping us experience others' lives that are so different from ours - either in time, place or situation and this novel certainly did that for me.

“That‘s the rule; our friends know the things we hide from our parents.”

Whoa! What a powerful opening! 🤤💕📚

Ready for some reading! 💕📚 #catsoflitsy #littenkitten #chaplin

This reminds me of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, the mystery is told through a child's eyes. Was a clear view into living in a “slum“ of India. I did feel distanced from the pain of the families and, like in the trouble with Goats and Sheep, it was the story being told through a child's perspective.
Well worth a read. 3.5 Stars

#BookReport

I read all of these books during the last week

🎧 I finished the seventh Department Q book and had started on the eighth

9-year-old Jai decides he can use his TV-learned detective skills to solve the mystery of missing children in his basti in India. Anappara, a former journalist, shows life in a slum in detail with concern & respect for those who live there. 180 children go missing in India every day. Though told from a child‘s point of view, this is not whimsical but it is honest. https://cannonballread.com/2020/07/djinn-patrol-on-the-purple-line-a-novel-elcic...

#WeeklyForcast

📚 Finish Flights
📚 Start Djinn Patrol
📚 Start on the book about Kjell Aukrust‘s fictional world

🎧 Continue the seventh Department Q book

#BookSpin and #Doublespin = mischief managed 😃Loved Dissolution. Djinn Patrol may have broken my heart 💔

The horror of the destitute Indian basti, shown in Behind the Beautiful Forever, is here captured through the fictional eyes of a 9 yr old trying to investigate as children start going missing. Anappara reported on these neighborhoods, and she captures the contrast between our hopeless view and that of children growing up in the Basti. I thought it was a little slow, and plain, but had some terrific elements, especially the opening section.

"?? ????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ??? ???????? ?? ??????? ?????? ????? ????? ?????? ???."⁣
⁣
Told from the point of view of children, this fictional story highlights a harsh reality in India's slums where poverty, religious discrimination, & lack of local police funding create a helpless situation for the parents of missing children. Anappara writes a tragic & eye-opening debut.

Started this yesterday on audio, partially because it‘s on the Women‘s Prize Long List and partially because the audio sample was fantastic. The opening section _is_ fantastic. It changes afterward, becoming now a look poorest of children trying to understand why their friend disappeared. It‘s early and fun, but I‘m hoping I don‘t spend the whole book thinking about Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

I found it a bit hard to get into the groove of this book. It's told from multiple points of view and largely from a child's perspective but the subject matter is very serious and not childlike at all. Great that the author is shining a light on the issues highlighted in this book, but I found it hard to read.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line #doublespin
This book was good and the children tried to help each other even when no one else would. In the afterward, the author told her story about how this book came to be and that made it all the more interesting.
#bookspinbonanza #nutsinmay

This book honestly shocked me. I was expecting a light hearted romp where a kid solves a mystery. It‘s not light - as it tackles what life is like in Indian slums (from the POV of a 9 year old boy) and the very real, very underreported reality of children that vanish. It‘s not exactly bleak, there is lots of hope and resilience on display. Recommended, but not an easy read.

This book is brilliant. And choosing to tell the story predominantly from the POV of 9-year-old aspiring detective Jai was a masterful move. It allowed the author to touch on some pretty weighty topics (socioeconomic disparity, poverty, corruption, sexism, religious tensions) without relegating the characters to mere statistics, as so often happens with stories including these themes. The author‘s afterword is wonderful as well.

So this was my #bookhaul for April. All books #womensprizeforfiction long list. Does anyone has read any of these books? A favorite?

My home office. 😉 Today I blogged about listening to audiobooks in the pandemic.

https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2020/04/cant-focus-on-print-during-pandemic.htm...

A pick with reservation.
Writing 4/5 it was so well done.
Characters 3/5. I don't normally read adult books with children protagonists, and I found myself annoyed by this child - but that is a personal preference the child itself is written well but I struggled.
Relevance 4/5 I think it very important to have books that describe the "lower class" peoples of India in a true, humane way, we do not often get books like this without an agenda.

1. Djinn Patrol and the Purple Line (hoping to finish today)
2. The Magnificent Ambersons
4. Emma.

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

Anappara notes in her Afterward that, as a journalist, what is often left out of tragic stories are the personalities of the people involved and she made a point of showing those here. In the midst of unspeakable tragedy and fear, the children of this Basti are alive with humor, talent, and compassion that never came off as overly cute or out of place.

The background is one of my new Mourning Dove friends. She is sitting on two adorable babies!

This was a good book set in India, told from the perspective of an 8 year old boy who wants to become a detective (inspired by the tv shows he watches). The grim reality that inspires this story is the disappearance of nearly 200 children in India on a daily basis. I liked that it had a non-stereotypical representation of poverty in India, but it was a bit repetitive which made it an imperfect 4 star read.

Papa's words scatter on the ground for hens to peck and goats to chew, because K-'s ears are shut and they can't get in.

Up to 180 children go missing every day in India, which inspired this immersive novel told from the viewpoint of kids. They are full of life, jokes, hopes & worries. The story starts with one child missing, getting darker as more disappear amid sectarian violence, dire poverty & police unwillingness. What really resonated is the way these people live with uncertainty. Plus, stories we craft to make sense of our lives can comfort us & also fail us.

#audiowalking earlier today (keeping adequate distance from other walkers) — nice to come across this message

Wow, this one was beautifully written, captured the voice of a child so well, and tackled a devastating topic around children from the slums who go missing in India. Read it in a weekend, which does not happen very often for me any more. Highly recommend.

Thanks for the tag, @NeedsMoreBooks

- How I'm feeling: honestly, pretty anxious about a global pandemic and whether the US is doing enough to stop the spread (pretty sure it is not). Also really sad that it seems to be every country for itself vs a coordinated effort by all.

What do I read: just the act of reading helps :) about to start the tagged book

Best thing: hanging out with my niece and nephew! 🥰

@MoonWitch94 #thoughtfulthursday

New book on the epidemic of children disappearing in India and the hopelessness of the poor to get help finding them. Really great writing.