Book 29 for 2026: “The God of Small Things”, Arundhati Roy

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The Booker Prize winner from decades ago, I decided to reread it (I read it when it was first published) after reading the author’s recent memoir. It is1969 in the southern Indian state of Kerala where a substantial proportion of the population belong to the Syrian Christian church. Does this keep them from adhering to the Indian caste system? No. Caste, wealth, social status, property–they all still matter.

The main characters are one family: Ammu and her twin children who love the wrong man according to their society, the blind grandmother who plays Handel on her violin, their uncle who was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and married and then divorced an English woman, their child, and an ex-nun grandaunt who is not a nice person and cannot get over her love for a priest. And then there are their servants and the man, an Untouchable, who is the brilliant carpenter, mechanic, fixer of everything. When the half English child and her mother come to visit after her new husband’s untimely death, everything changes in a day.

Even though written decades ago, the novel is definitely worth the read. Although the details and cultural representations are true to one particular area of India and its culture, the novel’s themes ring true for all cultures and countries, themes of Love, Joy, Hate, Prejudice, Hope.

Note: I also decided to research how much the caste system has changed life in the decades since it was written. In urban areas with new laws there is more leniency regarding rights especially for work and education, but people still usually marry those from the same caste. Rural areas have not changed much to the point that many villages still have a specific area where the Dalits (Untouchables) have to live.

Book 28 for 2026: “One Amazing Thing”, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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One afternoon nine people are in a passport and visa office in a US city–a teenager and her Chinese grandmother, an elderly white couple, an African American with a military past, a young Muslim still struggling with the aftermath of 9/11, a young Indian graduate student. Suddenly, an earthquake traps them together with two workers from this office. There is little water and little food. They argue about what is the best strategy to survive. The two young men almost come to blows. Finally, they agree on some strategies on how to share the meager supplies. After a bit they notice a water leak and that the water is slowly rising. They stack chairs on tables as the water rises higher and higher. As tensions increase, the graduate student suggests they tell one amazing thing from their lives to distract them as the water keeps rising.

The novel then relates each person’s story and the reactions of the others to the stories. Some stories are quite heart wrenching of cruel families, others endearing and joyful. The stories enable them to quit most of the bickering and work on their survival

Book 27 for 2026: “Mother Mary Comes To Me”, Arundhati Roy

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Although Roy has written numerous books including the Booker Prize winning “The God of Small Things”, this is her first memoir. While the prose is easy to read, the subject matter is often heart wrenching. Roy’s mother, a single parent (divorced) in India when this was totally unacceptable, accomplishes remarkable achievements including the founding of a very successful school while acting what often seems very cruel as a mother to her two children, Arundhati and her brother. The mother’s treatment of Arundhati is so disturbing that when she is just 18 and in her third year of architecture school in Delhi, she quits going home to Kerala to see her mother and quits communicating with her for seven years. Yet, she admits to loving her mother irrationally.

Arundhati becomes involved in documentary film making, sometimes as writer and sometimes as an actor in the films. In addition to her activities as a writer and film maker, she becomes an ardent political activist against rising Hindu nationalism. She provides details of spending time with hunted activists in the jungle, getting arrested, and even tried for writing a piece the judiciary considered insulting. This is an unusually honest and intimate memoir about her family, her mother, and life and politics in India.

Book 26 for 2026: “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny”, Kiran Desai

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By an author whose previous novel won the Booker Prize, this novel was long listed for the most recent Booker Prize. Although 670 pages long, it did not take me as long as I expected to read this because I found I kept going because I wanted to know what was going to occur. It is the tale of two families and two young people, both of whom have studied and lived in the United States. The background city for both families is the Indian city of Allahabad. The two, retired, family patriarchs get together frequently to play chess even though their families are sometimes rivals for status and influence.. The two do not live far apart and all the older family members know each other, including those who have moved away to Delhi and other places. The youngest members do not know each other and accidentally meet on an overnight train. At that point they do not know that their two grandparents had tried to match make them in an arranged marriage. Later, this becomes an embarrassment.

Sonia wants to become a novelist and is attending college at a small liberal arts college in New England where she becomes involved with a famous but cruel artist who becomes obsessed with her and whose influence she has become unable to escape, initially literally and later psychologically. Sunny lives and wants to stay in NYC to escape the overbearing influence of his mother and the violence between her and the two brothers of her deceased husband.

Not wanting to reveal all the complexities of the lives of these two young people who come to love each other but whose lives keep tearing them apart and the challenges they face as they try to make sense of their lives, I will simply say this is a novel I recommend. The reader learns a lot of about Indian culture and its variances, about the huge differences among different parts of India, e.g. Goa and Delhi, but also how universal family and personal struggles really are.

Book 25 for 2026: “Atlas of Borders: Walls, Migrations, and Conflicts in 70 Maps”, Delphine Papin and Bruno Tertrais

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This book is way more than the maps. It starts with Borders Throughout History going back to ancient times when borders were not clearly defined. Modern borders emerged with modern cartography. The “more detailed the map, the more accurately boundaries can be drawn.” Cultural borders based on religion, language and such rarely align with actual modern borders. Think about places you know and who lives there and the cultural and religious differences. The first maps show Borders in Six Stages delineating the changing borders before 1800 to current borders.

The next set shows Borders and Civilizations–what we often refer to as Western Civilization, Latin American, Orthodox Christian, Islamic, African, Hindu, Sinic, Buddhist, Japanese. This view started with the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (1996). In many ways this Atlas is also a history book on how various agreements and treaties affect boundary changes. An example is the map of the results of The Sykes-Picot Agreement. It also includes the legacy of the British Empire and how this affected borders over time.

I had not thought much about how even after colonialism, Europe still has some over seas territories, mostly islands over which wars have been fought even though many have never heard of them. The book includes maps and discussion on border disputes in Latin America as well as other parts of the world. There is another section on sea borders and those disputes continue today, e.g. the Arctic which many countries try to claim. And then there is the Persian Gulf with detailed illustrations of the Strait of Hormuz and all the islands there. I had forgotten that Bahrain is an island until I read this book.

There are too many sections to detail here, but the maps of the South China Sea and the disputes involving China there are very illustrative of just how complex claims by countries can be.

When I think of walls, I think of Berlin Wall and its fall and the disputes in US over walls between US and Mexico, but there are others in the world–Morocco, the Koreas. There is a map illustrating all the places where walls exist today. There are more than 70 closed borders protected by a wall or fence. The number of barriers is rising. The book not only lists them but how high they are in meters. Then so many disputed borders still exist that the maps and lists take up two pages of lists.

There is so much interesting information in this book that I cannot recommend it enough for anyone interested in history and current affairs.

Book 24 for 2026: “Glory Be”, Danielle Arceneaux

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This is a murder mystery set in Lafayette, Louisiana. The main character is an older Black lady who spends Sunday afternoons after church at the local coffee shop helping gamblers with their sports betting. While there, she learns that her best friend, a nun, has been found dead in her apartment. The police insist it is a suicide, but Glory knows that cannot be and sets out to find out what really occurred and who the murderer is. Her daughter, a classy NYC attorney, is visiting. She is very reluctant to join her mother’s quest but eventually agrees to help. Together they begin to investigate. After Glory is bitten by a pit bull under scary circumstances. receives a package full of bees which sting her and send her to the hospital, and other unexpected occurrences, Glory’s daughter realizes her mother may be correct about this being a murder, not a suicide. Their investigation leads them to the trailer house of a priestess, the grounds of a notorious drug dealer, etc.

Glory has grown up during segregation and is used to being overlooked and dismissed. Although she is in many ways a very traditional woman with traditional values, she is determined to do right by her friend. This leads her to places she would never n normally go and encounter people she would normally avoid.

I rarely read murder mysteries but since this is a book in a book club to which I belong, I read it anyway. It was an enjoyable read, sometimes funny, and certainly a glimpse into bayou culture about which I know little. I think there is a sequel so might look for it since I enjoyed Glory’s spunk and determination.

Book 23 for 2026: “The House of Islam: A Global History”, Ed Husain

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While waiting for a requested book to arrive at the library, I found this one and decided to read it. Because of personal interest I already knew quite a lot of about different types of Islam and some of the history, but this book goes into great detail explaining the founding and history of different groups, e.g. Sunni including different groups within Sunni Islam, Sufi, Shia. Sunni groups vary greatly from more mainstream to the very strict fundamentalism of the Salafis/Wahhabis which is the group controlling Saudi Arabia. The Shia are predominantly in Iran, Iraq, some of Syria, and are minorities in most of the Gulf States as well as Saudi Arabia. Sufis can be found all over the Muslim world, and in the West people often equate them with the whirling dervishes.

A bit of history many in the West do not know is how Mohamed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, joined with the ancestor of the current Saudi rulers to conquer and control all of Saudi Arabia in the 1700s. This extreme conservative part of Islam is still the rule and law in Saudi Arabia. It is such a potent force in the world today because Saudi Arabia has spent billions to export their preferred form of Islam across the world. Osama bin Laden belonged to this group of Muslims. They have built mosques and training schools all over the world. Some adherents feel it is their obligation to kill others who do not agree with them including other Muslims. al-Wahab’s book, Kitab al-Tawhid, The Book of Oneness, dominates the global market and promotes this strict form of Islam. It is from this form of Islam that ISIS and other groups have arisen. Most Sunni Muslims in the world do not adhere to this form of Islam. Many people do not realize that the majority of Muslims are not Arabs.

The author also explains the rise in jihadism with recommendations on how to deal with Islamic extremism. Part of this goes into the history of early Islam when for hundreds of years much of the progress in a lot of the world was via Muslim science, mathematics, literature, etc. Part Three details The Rise of the West and the Loss of Muslim Confidence which has led to anger and frustration and a strong sense of humiliation which has lead to much of the extremism occurring now and recently.

Although I do not agree with some of the author’s statements and claims because of what I know from Muslims I do know, I highly recommend this book. I think many people in the West have little to no knowledge regarding Muslims, the history, etc. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world currently and it behooves people to gain understanding.

Book 22 for 2026: “A Guardian and a Thief”, Megha Majumdar

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In the not too distant future the city of Kolkata in India is besieged with floods and famine. Ma, her elderly father, and two year old daughter are preparing to emigrate to the US where her husband has a good professional job. This is one of the families in the story. The other is a poor family from the Sundarban struggling to stay alive while the oldest son, Boomba, has gone to Kolkata to try to earn enough to save his family.

In the two weeks time of this novel, Boomba, driven to desperation and holding a secret about Ma, breaks into Ma’s house and steals her purse which contains the passports for her, her father, and her child. Both her actions previous to his, her current actions, and Boomba’s lead both down paths they could never have previously dreamed with dire consequences for all.

Due to the flooding and famine, everyone in the city is desperate except for the one billionaire who has stayed. Their desperation leads some to behave in undesirable ways, but the main “lesson” of this novel illustrates how just one action by one person can lead to dire consequences for two entire families and possibly others as well–actions have consequences you can never begin to imagine. Be careful.

Book 21 for 2026: “Hurricane Season”, Fernanda Melchor

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The inside of the front cover informs the potential reader that this is a novel about a world steeped in mythology and violence, set in a small town in rural southeastern Mexico. The violence part is extreme, the kind of violence that only sometimes pervades a lot of small, rural, poverty ridden towns everywhere in the world. Written in a style reminiscent of Faulkner (I read a translation from the Spanish), each chapter tells the main story from a different perspective, the story leading up to and the death of the Witch who is found floating in the water of a canal. She is called the Witch but no one for sure seems to know her gender, where she attained the money to build such a huge house, and how she manages to entertain with lavish abandon. People both avoid her and are drawn to her.

There is the grandmother who thinks her wayward grandson can do no wrong while blaming her daughter ( the child’s mother) for everything and anything, there is his friend whom he both loves and hates, their is the poor girl he aids and loves who has been groomed and impregnated by her stepfather and has run away because of it, the engineer who loves boys and men, the woman who makes her living as a fancy prostitute to support her disabled husband and on and on it goes–people harming each other out of anger and frustration with their dire circumstances. For some of the characters, the writing is first person so the reader learns the interworkings of those mentally harmed by their life’s poverty and environment from which there appears to be no escape.

This is not a novel for the faint of heart.

Book 20 for 2026: “Ransom”, David Malouf

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When I was in the eighth grade, I asked my parents for two books for Christmas, “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”. I am sure even then there was a more modern version but they chose Dryden’s translation which was basically 17th century British. It took me a while, but I read them both even though I often had to resort to using the dictionary to learn all the words I had never seen before. My favorite then and now is “The Iliad”, the story of Achilles and the Trojan War. Since then, I have read more books than I can count about Achilles and the war, including this one and three recently by Pat Barker, which I wrote about on this blog.

David Malouf focuses on two characters, Achilles and Priam and one singular event, Priam’s decision to disguise himself as an ordinary person, hire an ordinary man with an ordinary cart, and go to the Greek camp and beg Achilles for Hector’s body. The only other main character in the book is the cart driver who likes to talk and share. From him Priam sees another view of life and experiences some new simple things, like cooling your feet in a stream, eating ordinary food. Priam suddenly realizes he has missed much of life’s meaning since, as king, he has been shielded from the lives of most people. The book includes Priam’s thoughts, those of the cart driver, and Achilles’. This is not an action thriller novel. It is the story of three people and their thoughts and reactions to this one event.