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REFLECTION

For the month of May, I am aware that I have had a much lower reading rate, but I am glad about the books that I have read this month. I am still happy with the fact that I was able to maintain a goal of twenty pages per day. For next month, I want to make sure that I read much more difficult novels, It’s hard for me to sometimes commit to harder novels, but I want this to be my goal to at least read one. I will read the book, Frankenstein, as my challenging novel, as for a play, I will continue to read The Mousetrap and other plays, I will also read A Catcher in the Rye, a book that I have been wanting to read, but never gotten the chance to.

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THE BOOKS THAT I HAVE READ THIS MONTH:

The Hero’s Walk( of 362 pages)-★★☆☆☆

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time(    of 239 pages)-★★★☆☆

The Mousetrap and Other Plays(  of 659 pages)-★★★☆☆

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The hero’s walk

The extraordinary story of a young girl who had been bereaved from her mother and father in a car accident, occurring in Vancouver, Canada. The young girl, Nadana, stripped of everything, now has to live a new life in a foreign place, known as India. The story is mainly focused on her grandfather, Sripathi, who has lost all contact with his daughter, also known as Nandana’s mother, Maya. Maya has lived all her life in India and attends university in Canada. At this time she has an engagement with a man in India, but it is later broken off to another man in Canada. This leads to Sripathi feeling a sense of anger and frustration for his daughter. He feels like he has given Maya everything, but she still decides to marry a foreign man on the other side of the globe. His grudge against Maya lasts for years. When the news of his daughter’s death arrives, he then decides to put the blame on himself, and when not on himself he decides to put it on others, such as his wife, Nirmala, and his son, Arun. My favourite part of this novel is when Nadana’s lost within the neighbourhood.  She had been playing the neighbourhood kids until she was dared to walk through the dark, eery, and dank tunnel. She had been walking through this tunnel until a woman was standing at the end of it and took her to the dimly lit house. Nadana had first refused to go, keeping the words of her parents to not talk to any strangers, but she felt betrayed by them because she could not understand why they had gone and left in India. She sits in the quarters of the lady’s home for hours, feeling scared and vowed that she would never stay silent like she had been for the whole time she had been in India. The reason why I chose this part of the book to be my favourite is that it gives me that feeling of satisfaction that she will finally speak to her grandparents and accept the death of her parents.

Overall, I rate this book at an ‘okay’ level. It felt like reading one of Khaled Hosseini’s novels, which left my standards really high for this book as soon as I started to read it. I felt that because this was not one of my favourite books, I often left it to the side, and began reading other books, and when I could not find anything else to read, I would come back to read it later. I felt like this book did not really stand out to me, but I did enjoy every bit of the plot. The imagery at the beginning of the novel left me feeling captivated giving me a short urge of wanting to read more. I somewhat disliked the main character, mainly because he blamed many things on his family when it had obviously been his fault and it never got resolved.

 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night-time

A captivating novel of a boy, Christopher Bloom, solving and discovering the mystery of the dog who had been stabbed with a fork. The owner of the dog is Mrs. Shears. Christopher writes his entire mystery within this book and it leaves readers hooked for hours. Christopher comes across the letters from his mother in his father’s room. As he reads these letters, he learns that his mother is alive and never died. Christopher does not do much digging until he comes to learn that his father had killed the dog because he had been frustrated by Mrs. Shears after they had a fight. With this information that lays imprinted on his mind, he runs away from his father, with his rat in his pocket, and boards a train to London. My favourite part of the novel, which is minor, is when Christopher is told by his father to not continue writing his book and looking for who had killed the dog. This builds on suspicion that the father could have possibly killed the dog, which turns out that he did. There is still a long way for me to go through in this novel, but so far, I’m excited to read more. There have been questions building up in my head, wondering if Christopher gets to his mother or he may be forced back to his father. Currently, cops go looking for him, but he stays hiding within a darkroom on the train.

Right now, I have rated this book as ‘entertaining’. I have always thought of mystery books as entertaining because it is most likely the person you would least suspect. An entertaining book leaves me reading for a long time, without leaving it or getting bored. I loved reading something different from other novels. The title was literal to the story, but it was also something that did not expect to happen. I’m excited to continue reading the plot twists that will continue to occur in this novel.

 

The Mousetrap and other plays

The Mousetrap and Other Plays by Agatha Christie, is an interesting play of several people who gather in a room. The servants in the room include Mr. and Mrs. Rogers who are their a few days before everyone else. The people who own the home of the gathering are called the Owens. The Owens are mysterious people because as readers we don’t get to see them immediately. During the gathering at night, we learn that everyone in the room has either murdered are has done something to cause murder. It felt like the Owens called them to recognize what they’ve done. It becomes a mystery because people slowly begin to die in the room. It becomes clear eventually that these are deliberate murders because the poison is found in their drinks. Mrs. Rogers dies in her sleep, everyone thought it was stress, but someone actually killed her in her sleep. I ‘m currently not very far into the novel as it has more than a thousand pages, but I’m loving an enjoying every moment of it. Right now, I’m at the part where they are trying to find the ships on the island, so they can escape and avoid any more murders. It leaves my heart beating fast because I don’t want any of the characters to die, but it is bound to inevitably happen because I am not too far in yet.

At this point, I currently rate this book as ‘entertaining’. There is still potential for the book to grow in its plot and because I am not too far in it yet, I have not really seen much yet. I am intrigued to find out why the book is called, The Mousetrap. I’m excited to also read more of the plays that are offered in the book.