Climbing the Mango Trees (A memoir of a childhood in India) - Madhur Jaffrey

I love good food - cooking, not so much.  I do love collecting cookbooks, though, and Madhur Jaffrey is one of my favorites.

Climbing the Mango Trees, though, is not primarily a cookbook.  It has some recipes at the end of the book, but for the most part of the book deals with Madhur Jaffrey's early life, her joint family, her memories while growing up, and the food that links it all together.  I have always loved the little write-ups that accompany most of her recipes, so I would obviously love the extended version that this book is, but I think anybody who has spent life with a large family, remembers family gatherings and a fun-filled childhood with a million cousins would really love this book.  And for all those who haven't lived that life, well then, pick this book up, and take a dive into what is a quintessential Indian family's story, told in by Ms. Jaffrey in her usual charming way.

There are some recipes at the end of the book, family recipes, and there a mix of vegetarian and nonvegetarian, so there is something for everyone.

Paths of Glory - Jeffrey Archer

On May 29, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary became the first to touch the summit of Mt. Everest - that is something most of us would remember from our school days.  Paths of Glory traces the story of another climber, George Mallory, who was the first person to have climbed Mt. Everest but no records exist as to whether or not he did touch the summit.

Paths of Glory is Jeffrey Archer's version of what happened, a novel that derives it's authenticity from George Mallory's letters to his wife, Ruth.

The son of a clergyman, George Mallory, had a talent for mountain climbing that was very obvious from a very young age.  He met Mr. Irving, who organized groups for mountain climbing on the Alps, while studying at Winchester College and that started off his moutain climbing experience in earnest.  While his heart lay in the mountains, he had to take up a teaching job to help with the finances.  He got married in 1914 to Ruth Turner and joined the war in 1915.  From 1910, Mallory participated in a lot of mountain climbing expeditions, but his final try at climbing the Mt. Everest was in 1924 from which he never returned.

When I picked up this book, I did not know that this was inspired by a true story, and neither did I know about George Mallory.  Generally, as a rule, I do not like to read detailed accounts of real-life happenings - I find them just too boring.  This book though was quite an exception.  Whether George Mallory really did touch the summit of Mt. Everest or not is a matter of speculation, but this book is more than just that.  It traces his life story, his struggles with financial difficulties while trying to carry on with his passion and his principles.  It shares the fears and the anguish of Ruth Turner and George Mallory in the letters they wrote to each other.  If he did touch the summit, there is no record to prove it, and the title stays with Sir Edmund Hillary.  The feeling I got after reading the book was that, though, he never did climb the mountains for the glory, and he never would care about his name being there in any book or record.

A well-written book, I would absolutely recommend giving this a try the next time you are wondering what to pick up at a library or a bookstore.

Wikipedia info on George Mallory here.

Other books by Jeffrey Archer:
Only Time Will Tell
False Impression

A Very Simple Crime - Grant Jerkins

Adam and Rachel Lee have been married for a long time.  They have a mentally disturbed and violent son, Albert, who had to be locked away in a special institution after he smashed a heavy crystal ashtray on his mother's head.  Rachel has a drinking problem and is possessive about Adam with a passion that borders on insanity.  Adam meets a girl, Violet, at his son's treatment facility and has an affair with her.  Desperate to get out of his relationship with Rachel but unable to get a divorce, he is left with hardly any options.  One day he gets Albert home, because Rachel had been insisting on it for many days, and then leaves on a supposed business trip with Violet.  He retuns home to find his wife dead, murdered with a blow to her head with an expensive crystal ashtray.   Did the son finally kill the mother?  And what about the handsome elder Lee brother, Monty Lee, who is a lawyer and represents Adam in the subsequent murder trial?  The obvious suspect is Albert, the kid with the violent disturbed past, but a disgraced junior deputy prosecutor, Leo Hewitt, digs a little deeper and discovers that this crime seems just too simple.

Who really killed Rachel Lee?  Pick up the book to find the answer to that one.  Yes, it is an interesting read but would not really be appropriate for all ages because of the sexual content sprinkled throughout the dark storyline.

False Impression - Jeffrey Archer

The perfect Jeffrey Archer novel, First Impression is the kind of book that keeps you turning pages even if there isn't much of a suspense in it. It starts with the murder of Lady Victoria Wentworth, and the person who gets it done is an unscrupulous banker who has his eye on the Van Gogh masterpiece in the family's collection. With Lady Wentworth's murder, it is left to a couple of people to pick up the clues, nail the murderer, and save the family home and paintings from being auctioned off by the banker.

The key characters:

Dr. Anna Petrescu - An arts expert, she was hired by Mr. Fenston to work for his banking firm. Her work would be to evaluate the worth of the paintings that the clients pledge as security to get loans from his bank. She turns out too honest for the bank.

Agent Delaney - FBI agent who started with investigating Anna for the murders but increasingly gets protective of her as he finds out she is not only innocent but perhaps also next on the list of the murderer.

Krantz - An ex-gymnast from the Soviet Union, now a paid assasin whose weapon of choice is kitchen knives - easiest to slit throats with.

Bryce Fenston - The chairman of Fenston Finance. His company gave loans to people in need, provided they had enough art collection on the walls to keep him interested. The moment they tried to sell something and settle his debt, they would be found murdered, their throat slit, and their property would be auctioned off by the finance company to settle their loan and a few pieces of their art unaccounted for.

Lady Arabella Wentworth - The younger sister of Lady Victoria Wentworth, she inherits the family home and the debts after the murder of her sister, and she is more than willing to take the law in her own hands when it comes to setting things right.

Set in the backdrop of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the story goes from New York to Bucharest to Tokyo, following a self-potrait by Van Gogh, leaving quite a few people dead, and many more lives in danger. This is the ideal Archer book, pick it up whenever you are bored :)

The Secret of Chanel No. 5

The perfume that every woman knows of - Chanel No. 5 is more than just a smell.  It is an icon, a sign perhaps to yourself that you have reached somewhere, but what makes this perfume so sought after.  Personally, I donn't find the scent too alluring, but Chanel No. 5 was my first Chanel buy, so this book was quite an interesting read.

The story starts with Gabrielle Chanel's humble beginnings, growing up as an orphan in a monastery in Aubazine where she picked up the skills as a seamstress, and perhaps also her penchant for simple clean lines.  She also picked up a keen sense of appreciation for smells.  The story then meanders through her life as she tries her hand at the stage, her life as a mistress to a series of men, from each of whom she picks up something for her signature perfume, though never really having thought of a perfume then.  She also picked up the name "Coco" and the interlocking Cs - the Chanel log.  The scent was born much later, when she meets her perfumer, Ernest Beaux, who brings with him the long-gone smells from the Russian czars that mixed with the perfumes from the Medici queens and the modern smells of aldehydes that gives the daring new Chanel No. 5 its provocative smell.  The bitter rivalries and the fights behind the scenes, the German occupation, the secret deals, the story behind the perfume is quite an intriguing one right up to this very day.  An interesting read for just about anyone, it is of course, most fascinating for the Chanel lover, or just about any perfume lover.

Only Time Will Tell

The story deals with the life of Harry Clifton from when he was a small boy to a much older teenager preparing to join the war against Hitler.  There is nothing much different about this book, especially if you have read most of the earlier Jeffrey Archer books.  The poor guy gets to go to school and college thanks to a hardworking mother and a lot of well-wishers who give up time and money to help him out without him ever knowing about it.  He has loyal friends and meets a pretty girl he wants to get married to.  Only hitch, her dad hates him for more reasons than one - because he was responsible for Harry's dad's death or perhaps because he knows he might be Harry's dad.  No more spoilers, but almost from the beginning you know where the story is going. The end is supposed to be a twist in the tale, but it seemed very unfinished to me.  This book is the first of a 3-part series, so that would probably account for the story being left unfinished.

Also posted here.