Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I Picked Up On A Whim

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic: books you picked up on a whim. This is actually going to be a hard one for me...I tend to buy based on recommendations. I haven't really gone to a bookstore just to browse in a looooong time, I've always got a list of what I'm looking to add to my shelf lately. But where I do browse a little more is my Kindle, where I look through the monthly and daily sales to see what I might want to read. I've gone back through my stacks and tried to remember what I picked up without doing more than reading the back cover (or the Kindle equivalent):

The Virgin Suicides: I picked this up when I was in high school...the movie had just come out and it was on the display table at the front of the Borders. My mom would usually buy my sister and I a book or two when we went to the store so I grabbed it and it became one of my very favorites.

The Twentieth Wife: On the other hand, I remember snagging this one in college at some point on a bookstore trip, When I recently got around to reading it, I was unimpressed. So high-risk/high-reward with whim books for me.

The Creation of Anne Boleyn: This was a whim Kindle buy...I saw it during a monthly sale, thought it looked like it was up my alley, and bought it. That was a good choice, I loved this book.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: This was a "thrift store impulse" kind of buy. It was there, it was cheap, and I figured it was probably worth a read. And it was worth that, anyways, but it wasn't life-changing or anything. Neither miss nor hit, really.

The Remains of The Day: This was pretty similar to the above...I've left books I saw because they got turned into movies off this list for the most part, but I was only somewhat aware that this had been made into a movie when I bought it. I'd read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go a few years previous, but wasn't on any special mission to read more of his work or anything. It turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read.

Devil In The Grove: This was a Kindle purchase...I'd never heard of it, but once I found out it had won a Pulitzer and was about Thurgood Marshall before he went to the Supreme Court, I spent the 2 or 3 dollars and it was well worth it. This is an incredible book that makes the Jim Crow era really come terrifyingly alive.

Methland: Despite the fact that the place I was from (rural-ish Midwest) seems like exactly the kind of place that should have had a meth problem, I'd never really known anyone who did meth. I mean, I probably knew someone who did, but I didn't know they did. But anyways, I was certainly aware of the meth epidemic, and I this book (a Kindle deal) really helps lay out the root of the issue and how it tears families and communities apart.

Katharine of Aragon: I'm partial to Tudor-era history, so this seemed like a worthwhile Kindle score to pick up. It's a compilation of three books about Henry the Eighth's first queen, and it was just okay honestly. Not bad, but it dragged and if I hadn't been stuck on an airplane while I was reading it I probably would have been pretty bored by it.

She's Come Undone: I actually remembered having seen this book at the library when I was a kid, so when I found it for cheap secondhand, I figured I might as well read it even though I had no idea what it was about. I've also read Wally Lamb's other well-regarded work, I Know This Much Is True, and for both of them I have to say that while Lamb is a talented writer and these are the kinds of books I tend to enjoy, I didn't really click with either of these. Worth a read though.

The Piano Teacher: Janice Lee's recent The Expatriates has been praised by lots of bloggers whose opinions I respect and the reason I'm reluctant to pick it up is this book right here. I found the cover striking and the summary on the back intriguing enough, but I found the book itself wanting. All the characters behaved so strangely and were so hard to connect with. I didn't care for it.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I Picked Up On A Whim

Book 23: The Twentieth Wife

"These last two months had been slow and uncomfortable. They were all waiting for something. Waiting for Akbar's death. Waiting to see who would win the throne. Waiting- yet not wanting the Emperor to die, for either possibility seemed frightening."

Dates read: February 22-25, 2016

Rating: 4/10

Sometimes I wonder how much the liking of a book is tied to the time when you first read it. I wonder if I would still love some of the novels I first read in high school as much as I do if I'd been older and had a more developed critical eye than I did then. I started reading the Twilight series in the wake of a bad breakup, and I remain fond of the series (especially the breakup arc in New Moon) despite knowing full well that they're not high-quality literature. It would stand to reason, I think, that some books I've read right after something wonderful seem particularly lesser-than in comparison, and sometimes books that followed a dull and plodding one seem even better than they might actually be.

So I wondered if The Twentieth Wife following the double punch of two brilliant novels in a row might have been contributing to my disappointment with it. Was I being entirely fair to the novel on its own merits? If I'd read it, say, after one of the Masks of God books would I have liked it more? Ultimately, I feel like the answer is that no, I'm not being harsh because it doesn't measure up to the two amazing books I just read, it's honestly not very good.

To start on a positive note, it did introduce me to an era of world history I know precious little about: the Mughal Empire of India. I'd only really known two things about it previously: the rulers of the Mughal Empire were Muslim, and that the Taj Mahal was built as a memorial for a Mughal empress, Mumtaz Mahal. That's pretty much it. So the details that this novel provided about the empire and its courtly life were new, interesting information, and I particularly enjoyed the way each chapter opened with a quote from a historical source about the characters and events to be presented.

What didn't quite work, though, was most of the rest of it. The writing quality isn't particularly high...it was difficult to find a highlight quote because there were few bright spots. That's not to say it's especially poorly-written either, because it isn't...it's just mediocre. The novel tells the story of Mehrunissa, the daughter of a court official under the rule of Emperor Akbar. Although she is married to a soldier as a young woman, she and Akbar's heir apparent, Prince Salim, fall in love and eventually marry after her first husband's death. He becomes the the Emperor Jahangir, and she becomes his twentieth but most important wife, Nur Jahan, one of the most powerful women in the history of the Muslim world. She must be quite the interesting woman, eh?

Not really, as author Indu Sundaresan paints her. According to Sundaresan, when an eight year-old Mehrunissa catches a glimpse of Salim's first wedding at court, she decides right then and there that she will one day marry Salim. For no reason made particularly apparent, she attracts the interest of Akbar's most powerful wife, Ruqayya, as a companion, and spends her time at the palace thinking about how to attract Salim's attention so she can one day become an empress herself. Indeed, she spends her time at home thinking about the exact same thing. Even after she is married to another man, she keeps dreaming of a future with Salim. Mehrunissa is given no other real characterization besides "beautiful, educated woman completely obsessed with Salim". There's no depth or interest to her character. She has no close friends. Her first husband is presented as a one-dimensional brute who does not appreciate her or treat her very well. When the narrative shifts, as it does at times, to present Salim's story, he's presented as a weak-minded but ambitious man, easily manipulated, who is just as obsessed with Mehrunissa at first sight as she is with him. Neither of these people is given much of an inner life, nor are they at all compelling.

Which is disappointing, because from the Wikipedia-ing I was inspired to do, she led a very interesting life and a book about her should be fascinating. But a complete lack of character development and clunky writing have doomed this one to the donate pile.

Tell me, blog friends...what's one area of world history that you wish you would have learned more about in school?

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

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Book 23: The Twentieth Wife