One of my goals this year is to actually complete Book Riot’s 2018 Read Harder challenge. It’s going pretty well so far — I’ve finished books that meet five of the 24 tasks — and have some good ideas for others. Today I’m sharing some thoughts on two books I’ve read for the challenge, a charming memoir about cows and India, and a challenging book about the role of beauty in nature.
The Milk Lady of Bangalore by Shoba Narayan
5. A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa)
After starting a family in Manhattan, Shoba Narayan and her husband decide it’s time to move back to Bangalore with their two daughters to be close to family and connect with their Indian heritage. Shortly after they return, Narayan meets the milk lady who lives across the street, Sarala, who she buys fresh milk from each day. Their business relationship develops into a friendship, and Narayan starts to dig deeper into the cultural, economic, and historic role that cows play.
On the whole, I thought The Milk Lady of Bangalore was a charming memoir. Narayan has a lovely sense of humor, and I loved the way her personal conversion to drinking fresh milk grew into a bigger exploration what cows mean in Indian life. I thought that her position as both an insider (growing up in India) and an outsider (spending much of her life in the United States) brought a unique perspective to the story. My only critique of the book is that I wished Narayan had spent a little more time interrogating the major wealth gap that exists between her family, her neighbors, and the other Indians in their orbit, but that’s a small critique in an otherwise charming book.
The Evolution of Beauty by Richard Prum
6. A book about nature
Last year I joined a book club that reads the New York Times top 10 books of the previous year, which is why I ended up picking up The Evolution of Beauty in the first place. The book is an extended argument in support of one of Darwin’s lesser-known theories, sexual selection. Prum, an ornithologist, uses his years of studying ornamentation and beauty in birds to ground his argument, then expands out to try and make some big statements about beauty and human evolution.
Unfortunately, I didn’t love this book, mostly because it felt like Prum couldn’t quite decide what kind of book he was trying to write – a serious scientific book that would be read by fellow scientists, or a more popular science book for a general audience. Although I was interested in the topic, I finished mostly wishing that Prum would have made his argument in fewer pages. There was a nice sense of humor in the book, the writing was fine, and I appreciated the light feminist angle Prum brought to his stories, but it was just much longer than I wanted to spend with the topic.
The other three books I’ve finished that meet challenge requirements are fiction, so I’m hoping to group them together in a set of reviews sometime soon. I’m also curious — are you taking on the Read Harder challenge? If so, have you picked books for either of these topics? Any recommendations to make?
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Hey Kim! Trisha – formerly of eclectic/eccentric – here. Your thoughts on Plum’s book remind me of a Greenblatt book I just read (The Swerve). I really enjoyed it, but I think Greenblatt was trying so hard to make it entertaining that he missed out on a lot of the historical details which would have fulfilled the promise of his very epic claim. If you are interested in reconnecting, I am starting over in the blogging world at https://unfinishedintellectual.com/ Hope to see you there.
Welcome back to blogging! Because I’m not much of an academic nonfiction person, I wish that Plum had lightened the book up a bit and made it more approachable for an average reader. I thought it was interesting, just too much!
The Milk Lady sounds like an interesting insight into Indian life. I love reading books from around the world so will look out for this one.
I just finished an Ethiopian biography, The Wife’s Tale, written by Aida Edemariam about her Grandmother’s life.
Ooo, that sounds interesting!
I especially like the sound of The Milk Lady but both sound like really good reads!
I’m not complaining! 🙂
This is the first I’ve heard of this reading challenge; it does seem to have a lot of tasks to complete! The Milk Lady has a nice title and ring to it, the other books sounds like it would make me glossy-eyed after a while.
It is a lot — 24 total over the entire year. I’ve never finished before, but I can usually get about 12-15 just in the way I naturally read through the year. I’m making a little more focused effort this time around, so we’ll see if it works!
Darwin’s work is incredibly full of insights for modern researchers. It’s too bad the work you reviewed didn’t turn out to be as good as you hoped. I might still check it out!
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
If you’re into Darwin, I think it’s definitely a book to consider! I didn’t know about this theory and liked reading about it, just not quite as in-depth as this book.