To Kill A MockingBird By Harper Lee

                                                                                                    

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

To Kill A MockingBird: Atticus Finch to Jem

                                                                            

To kill a mockingbird takes place during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The story revolves around Scout Finch her brother Jem and their father Atticus Finch. Atticus is a widower and he raises his children with the help of a housekeeper named Calpurnia.

The book is all about growing up. The story takes place betweenn1933 and 1935 in Maycomb a small town in Alabama. Atticus Finch who is a lawyer takes in the case of a black man who is charged with raping a white woman. For Scout and Jim, things change during the trial and after. They learned things they could never have imagined otherwise. In a nutshell, the book is against Prejudice and Racism. The reader can feel the character in many situations. The book is an easy read even though it has deep, underlying messages. It teaches you to stand up for what is right. The book is a great read for anyone who has empathy regardless of age, gender or culture

The book withstood the test of time and was passed down the generations. Pick up the book and the words will speak to you. This book should be read at least once by every single person in their lives.

Posted by Sreevidya Devanand

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance

"You have got to live right, too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you are a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidance, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together...The real cycle you're working in is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together."

Robert M Pirsig.

Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance is considered as one of the best works of philosophical non-fiction, published first in 1974. It wanders through the Western concept of rational thoughts, interspersed with musings of Eastern spiritualism. The narrative is in first person-perhaps Robert Pirsig himself, though he never identified as such. The narrator and his son undertake a 17-day motorcycle trip from Minnesota to California. In this trip, there are the narrator's own musings, and those of Phaedrus, whose real connection with the narrator is established towards the end of the book, The musings, philosophical dialogues, that he terms as Chautauquas, deals with experiencing, understanding and defining Quality. He also talks about the two ways of looking at life the romantic way and the classical way, and the balance between the dichotomy that makes modern life and inner peace co-habitable. It is a thought provoking book, that seems timeless in retrospect. It evolves with the reader and develops layers of depth, keeping along with the layers of understanding that one gain with time.

Posted by Sreevidya Devanand