Month: August 2018

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind – A Book Review

by Simran Jayasinghe

William Kamkwamba lives in a starving, dry, village in Malawi. Crops fail, food runs out, and electricity is sparse. His family is struggling, unable to adequately provide for 9 people. William and his family have to make sacrifices in order to live.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba

His family go down to having one meal a day, and then down to four handfuls of food a day. William is unable to go on with his schooling due to the fact that his family doesn’t have enough money to pay his school fees.  This is a real let down for William. He loves learning, but suddenly, he can’t. He worries that he won’t be able to be anything other than a poor farmer if he can’t get an education. This is important to him because his biggest fear is being stuck working fields like his father. William and his friend go to the library constantly, learning about different concepts through books. One day, William learns about converting kinetic energy in to electricity and is immediately drawn to the idea of making a windmill. William and his friends work together, collecting scrap metal and other odds and ends to make his windmill. He doesn’t give up, even when everyone he knows says he is crazy to try. Read the book to find out more about his story!

This book is a true story. The main character, and author, went on to study at Regents Language Institute in Cambridge UK, and got accepted to Dartmouth college (from which he graduated in 2014), gave a TED talk appearance, and, eventually, became the author of this book. Even though this is a challenging book, I really enjoyed it. Fiction books are usually what I read more, but I really enjoyed this book even though it was nonfiction. I thought it was interesting to follow the author’s story and I really recommend checking this book out if you get the chance!

The Life of Pi – A Book Review

By Kiran Jayasinghe

The Life of Pi takes us through a young boy’s thoughts as he becomes stranded on the ocean. It’s centered around a boy named Piscine Patel. Piscine (also known as Pi) is intrigued by religion and God and disturbed by his father’s way of taking care of his animals. Pi’s father decides to sell their belongings and move his family to America for a fresh start. Traveling in a Japanese cargo ship alongside several cargo animals, Pi enjoys his first time on a cargo ship, let alone any vessel capable of floating on water.

During the journey, however, Pi’s excitement is drowned as the cargo ship takes on water. The cause is unknown, but the ship sinks,  and Pi is thrown overboard by the crew onto a lifeboat. Pi must leave behind his family, instead accompanied by a hyena, zebra, and a tiger. The story follows Pi for 227 days on the ocean, as he survives with limited food and water. Pi goes blind from the sun, tames a tiger, experiences delirium, meets another stranded sailor, and kills a living animal – a fish – for the first time. As Pi continues to face hardships on the sea, he turns to religion as a source of stability. Pi prays to God to keep himself from going mad, as Pi starts losing hope in finding land.

This work of fiction is definitely worth reading! I was surprised at how unusually normal Pi was, and yet how surreal and impossible the books contents really were. I would rate it a 10/10 because of it’s funny but hopelessly depressing journey. The storyline explores Pi’s mental stability and shows us a hilarious version of events through Pi’s mind.