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From the Bookshelf of Bound Together…
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What Members Thought
The premise of this short book is so poignant and thought-provoking. What does it really mean to live in the present?
The professor’s memory only lasts for 80 minutes since his head injury years ago. His primary love is math and numbers while he has very little interest or ease with people. His conversations always start the same way – “what’s your birthday or what’s your shoe size?” It’s his gateway to talking to a person by using what he knows best – numbers. Mostly he spends his time staring ...more
The professor’s memory only lasts for 80 minutes since his head injury years ago. His primary love is math and numbers while he has very little interest or ease with people. His conversations always start the same way – “what’s your birthday or what’s your shoe size?” It’s his gateway to talking to a person by using what he knows best – numbers. Mostly he spends his time staring ...more
This was such a charming and heart-warming read: there was so much beauty in the writing, on the surface simple yet at the same time filled with hidden meanings and complexities, just like the intricate lace the housekeeper imagines, with awe, that the mathematician professor is able to glimpse. I liked how, in keeping with the professor having to be reintroduced to the housekeeper and her son throughout her special time with him, the reader too was kept in the dark about the names of the charac
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An unusual book. unusual characters unusual plot . Of all the things Mathematics is the hero here or rather a Professor who loves maths and whose lyrical ways of presenting the subject makes one fall in love with maths too. And that is coming from someone like me who hates Maths. I loved the way he talked about numbers with a loving caress and there were many things new to me the amicable numbers the twin numbers .
The story does not follow the usual plot line of a beginning a middle and an end ...more
The story does not follow the usual plot line of a beginning a middle and an end ...more
May 05, 2013
Karin
rated it
it was amazing
Shelves:
kapk,
pbt-5,
novels,
fiction,
authors-of-colour,
novel,
drama,
friendship,
japan,
japanese-literature
This is a marvellous book even if, as I wrote years ago, it wasn't perfect. I wonder if I liked it even better this time, but either way, it's still 5 stars. I personally loved the math parts, but you don't have to like numbers to love this book since there is a lot more to it than that. It's about an unlikely friendship formed by a 30 year old housekeeper and a retired professor who, after an accident 17 years prior, has a short term memory that lasts exactly 80 minutes--all of his other memori
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This was a beautiful and heart warming little story. I really enjoyed the progression in this. It was a wonderful journey of an elderly man who, after an accident, only remembers things that happened in the last hour or so. His housekeeper doesn't just keep his house, but becomes a true friend. That was touching. He was big on mathematics, so this book spoke to my inner math geek.
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Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 3.5
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Emotional impact: 4.5
Overall rating: 4
Writing: 3.5
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Emotional impact: 4.5
Overall rating: 4
There were times when listening to a recitation of numbers became mind-numbing (probably went much faster when actually reading the book). However, the narrator, Cassandra Campbell, is quite skilled at presenting each character with a different voice. Her "Is that so?" in the professor's voice was always the same, and it added depth to that character. I did get bored a few times, and really fed up the housekeeper snooping through the professor's things, but in the end the snooping had a good out
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A truly touching book about the friendship that forms between an elderly professor, his housekeeper, and her child. The professor was in an accident that left him with no memory past 1975, and as a note clipped to his suit indicates, his memory only lasts 80 minutes. Despite these challenges, the professor develops a fatherly or grand-fatherly love for his housekeeper’s ten-year old son, who he had affectionately nicknamed Root. He teaches Root and his mother about some of the beautiful things t
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Very good book about a beautiful relationship between a Professor his housekeeper and her son! The big complication is that his memory only lasts 80 minutes because of a car accident! A truely moving book I loved every page!
Oct 07, 2012
Brandy
marked it as to-read
Mar 06, 2013
Linda
marked it as to-read
Jun 18, 2013
Jess
marked it as to-read
Aug 02, 2013
Fairlee Corkran
marked it as to-read
Jan 04, 2014
Martha
marked it as to-read-dont-own
May 30, 2014
Lisa
marked it as to-read
Oct 19, 2014
Chrisw
marked it as to-read
Oct 19, 2015
Olivia Meredith
marked it as to-read
Jul 26, 2016
Rose
marked it as to-read
Oct 12, 2016
Manju P
marked it as to-read
Mar 20, 2017
Casey Coghill
marked it as to-read
Sep 21, 2018
Rhonda Lawrence
marked it as to-read
Apr 05, 2020
Elizabeth Chapman
marked it as to-read
Jan 12, 2022
Jessica
marked it as to-read
