![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
India and books
Dec. 27th, 2010 01:05 pmSo like I said, DH and I have all these relatives we haven't seen much of, as they are from Idaho and live here still, and we are both children of the people who moved away and never came back to live. We're like the Babylonian Jews--Idahoans born in exile, sort of bicultural. And now we're back, so we're getting acquainted with people we haven't seen in 20 years who are our close relatives. Yesterday was a case in point. Apparently I have a first cousin (who is probably at least 10 years older than me, so there are other reasons for not knowing her well) who lives in the area. Her son just returned from a mission in India, so she invited us to come hear his homecoming talk and then join them for dinner with the rest of their family (her siblings/my cousins, and their children, plus her kids and parents). It sounds like it was a really interesting two years. I bet India is just about as different from Idaho as it gets. !!! It was interesting to hear, not just his stories, but also the way he talked--like he was turning phrases in his mind and translating into Idahoan. I know they speak English in India as a sort of lingua franca, but it's not the same English as here for sure.
Afterwards we had dinner at their house--wow. They made this Indian chicken and rice thing that was to DIE for. We asked for a copy of the recipe--it was three pages long, and calls for things like raisins and cardamom and cilantro and whole cinnamon sticks and bay leaves and cashews and all kinds of stuff. They had a lot (because half the people were into it and half preferred the funeral potatoes and American-style sandwiches), so we got to take some home, too. We're definitely making this one!
Then we came home and I read Ally Condie's Matched, which I ended up really enjoying. I'm not particularly into love triangles, at least not where everyone is in the same setting (I was always a one at a time kind of girl, myself), but this was a lot more than just a love triangle. It might be the inciting incident, but it was really just the opening to a much bigger situation. Also, I appreciated the fact that even though it's a dystopian society in which the government controls everything in your life, it did not involve sending kids to kill other kids in gruesome ways. In fact, it was quite warm for dystopia. And I'm even looking forward to reading the next book.
Now I'm hoping to work on revising my recently-completed book, and then try to dig out the house. Two of my husband's sisters plus kids are hopefully showing up tomorrow--weather permitting, of course. I hope that you're all warm and that if you are in a blizzard, you have some good books to enjoy inside!
Afterwards we had dinner at their house--wow. They made this Indian chicken and rice thing that was to DIE for. We asked for a copy of the recipe--it was three pages long, and calls for things like raisins and cardamom and cilantro and whole cinnamon sticks and bay leaves and cashews and all kinds of stuff. They had a lot (because half the people were into it and half preferred the funeral potatoes and American-style sandwiches), so we got to take some home, too. We're definitely making this one!
Then we came home and I read Ally Condie's Matched, which I ended up really enjoying. I'm not particularly into love triangles, at least not where everyone is in the same setting (I was always a one at a time kind of girl, myself), but this was a lot more than just a love triangle. It might be the inciting incident, but it was really just the opening to a much bigger situation. Also, I appreciated the fact that even though it's a dystopian society in which the government controls everything in your life, it did not involve sending kids to kill other kids in gruesome ways. In fact, it was quite warm for dystopia. And I'm even looking forward to reading the next book.
Now I'm hoping to work on revising my recently-completed book, and then try to dig out the house. Two of my husband's sisters plus kids are hopefully showing up tomorrow--weather permitting, of course. I hope that you're all warm and that if you are in a blizzard, you have some good books to enjoy inside!
