X-men is a misnomer. This is because this team has real fierce women too. I know that writing about characters is probably a cop out but I love the concept that Stan Lee has produced. The idea has been used in several books and of course in movies like District 9 and Avatar. 'Normal' people…

The Good Earth was not my first Pearl Buck novel. That was the Pavilion of Women. And that was another W. Wang Lung is a poor farmer, the protagonist of the Pulitzer prize winning book The Good Earth from Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck. His roots are deep in Chinese traditions and he believes in…

Its the period of Lent. A period of penance. Of contemplation. Of self flagellation for the parish members of Fr. Francis Reynaud in the little town of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. Into this little town arrives a Chocolatier with her little daughter and slowly turns the town around, one chocolate at a time. Vianne Rocher. The one with…

Uchida Kosaburo is an artist to whom Mameha, introduces her protégé Sayuri. Memoirs of a Geisha. An extremely well written book by Arthur Golden, you'll never guess that the author of the work is not a Japanese Geisha from the early twentieth century. Uchida-san is an angry artist, patron of geishas, with a mole on the corner…

Tara, the O'Haras' plantation in Margaret Mitchell's epic Gone with the Wind. The main reason for the protagonist being who she was and what she did. The thing that she cherished most, the thing that mattered most was Tara. Scarlett was loyal to the land, and the land, in turn, to her. She was not…

He was a not-the-front-page messiah who gave rides on a bi-plane across fields to people who are scared of flying, among others. The one who said, "You don't judge the quality of a master by the size of his crowds." This was a book that I read growing up, at an age when I was…

Tolkein's painting. Pic credit: Wikipedia [Frodo] walked along the terraces above the loud flowing Bruinen and watched the pale cool sun rise above the far mountains, and shine down, slanting through the thin silver mist; the dew upon the yellow leaves were glimmering, and the woven nets of gossamer twinkled on every bush. This is…

pic: from amazon.com The bell ringer of the Notre Dame Cathedral, the hunchback Quasimodo, was created in the story by Victor Hugo to emphasize injustice and superficiality of the bourgeois. Who invokes in the reader a deep and violent sense of sympathy, tragedy and social guilt. A foundling, Quasimodo who was one eyed with a…

What in the world makes a woman give up her entire life for her child, struggle and sacrifice for her offspring? This question I've asked over and over again. I have yet to find an explanation. This question popped into my head recently while reading M.T. Vasudevan Nair's novel,  Naalukettu. It was written in my…

I know this sounds a lot like a cop-out. And it is. I am not one who usually is at a loss for words but yesterday was one of those days when I couldn't write a syllable. Something to the effect of spirit being willing and all that. Anyway, at the heart of my favorite…