3 Books Recommended
"Once there was a tree...and she loved a little boy."So begins a story of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein.Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave.This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. Shel Silverstein has created a moving parable for readers of all ages that offers an affecting interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another's capacity to love in return.
Recently separated Toby Fleishman is suddenly, somehow – and at age forty-one, short as ever – surrounded by women who want him: women who are self-actualized, women who are smart and interesting, women who don't mind his height, women who are eager to take him for a test drive with just the swipe of an app. Toby doesn't mind being used in this way; it's a welcome change from the thirteen years he spent as a married man, the thirteen years of emotional neglect and contempt he's just endured. Anthropologically speaking, it's like nothing he ever experienced before, particularly back in the 1990s, when he first began dating and became used to swimming in the murky waters of rejection.But Toby's new life – liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night – is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn't know – she won't answer his texts or calls.Is Toby's ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.
Simi was eager to share the story of her lion-hearted eighteen-year-old friend Chamor with her Aunt Jency. But when she returned to her home in Majuri to continue her studies at the old school, she realized that things were not the same. Where was Jency? Where, indeed, were her parents?This nerve-wracking novel is set in a verdant village of Central Travancore in Kerala, which, though unique in many ways, is no exception to the daily truths of life in India. The characters in this story are at the mercy of their universe, which, unfortunately, does not discriminate between the good, the bad and the ugly. In the end, they have nobody but themselves, and their relationships with each other, to fall back on.Poignant and perceptive, the story of Chamor will haunt you for a long time.