Tag: Amitav Ghosh

Just July

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July was a nutty month. Lots of music: Phish three times, Warren Haynes at Tanglewood, Dead and Company twice, and Coldplay. (August is only Pearl Jam and Mieka Pauley.) We made it up to Monhegan for a week and down to CT twice. And! And. And, I moved a lot of rocks (don’t ask). For the books it was:

  • Milk in my Coffee by Eric Jerome Dickey
  • Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill
  • Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (AB)
  • The Last Battle by Ryan Cornelius
  • Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
  • The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
  • 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames

I think, once I got used to Dickey’s style, I grew to like Milk but my favorite by far was The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. Is it a movie? Because if it isn’t, it should be. I said that in the review as well.

Full disclosure: I had Lost Upland on my list as well. I simply ran out of time and couldn’t get to it. I’m okay with seven books for the month.

Glass Palace

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Ghosh, Amitav. The Glass Palace. New York: Random House, 2001.

Reason read: Ghosh was born in July.

There is much love for Ghosh’s The Glass Palace. This was the right balance of historical fiction, love story, and political commentary within a sweeping saga. Dolly is a woman who has been in the service of the Queen for as long as she can remember. Rajkumar is an orphan boy taken in by a teak logger and taught the trade. Glass Palace follows them through childhood, their storybook romance, growing families and the inevitable, old age. Intertwined are the stories of their children, their children’s children, war, economics, society, politics, fashion, feminism, and life. The way it was written the story could have been without end.

Quote to quote, “This is how power is eclipsed” (p 36). Don’t hate me but I thought of a John Mayer line, “Power is made by power being taken.” Same thing.

Book trivia: This should have been a movie. It has all the right components: war, beautiful women, explosions, death, romance, cars…Speaking of the cars, Ghosh was especially detailed with the automobiles.

Author fact: Ghosh also wrote Sea of Poppies which is on my Challenge list.

BookLust Twist: Two twists – from Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction From Around the World” (p 47) and again in Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Burmese Days” (p 47).