A Marriage At Sea by Sophie Elmhurst

I read this when it was on Obama's reading list, and it is now also on the New York Times 100 Notable books for 2025. This is a story that is almost unbelievable yet true. ​​On June 28, 1972, 40-year-old Maurice and 32-year-old Maralyn Bailey, newly married but with this long held plan, set sail aboard a 30-foot sailboat they named Auralyn on what they hoped would be a yearslong voyage from England to New Zealand. Their plan was to travel across the Bay of Biscay to Spain, then to Madeira and the Canary Islands, then 2,700 miles across the Atlantic Ocean through the Caribbean, Panama Canal, across the Pacific Ocean to the Galapagos. After that, they’d sail to the Marquesas Islands, the Tuamotu Islands and Fiji, and then their final destination. But on March 4, 1973, eight months into their expedition, a disaster happened: a 40-foot sperm whale slammed into their boat, creating a gash in its side. Within minutes — just enough time for the Baileys to grab their passports, a log book, a compass, Maralyn’s diary and a few other essentials, before jumping into their 4.5-foot-in-diameter life boat and attached dinghy — their boat sank about 300 miles from the Galapagos. Of note, they did not have a radio on board, so there was no way for anyone outside them to know where they were. They survived for 4 months and several ships passing by that did not see them before they were rescued. They were emaciated, ill, and in need of long term nursing back to health, he more than she--but then what happened? They set out to do it all over again. It is very reminiscent of the Shackleton story--not only was their marooning of note, their inability to survive on land was also quite impressive and for me, incomprehensible.

The New India by Rahul Bhatia

This book is on the New York Times 100 Notable Books list for 2024, and so I snagged it to put on my Kindle and read it while on a recent trip to Southern India. When Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata party to victory in 2014 – the first Indian election in 30 years in which a single party secured a majority – many in India pinned their hopes on him. He had promised to usher in development, citing his performance in Gujarat, where he had been chief minister for just over a decade. Even sceptics, appalled by his handling in 2002 of communal violence that left more than a thousand dead, the vast majority of them Muslims, were willing to hold their noses. They were swayed by his development rhetoric and jaded after 10 years of coalition rule led by India’s grand old party, Congress. But within days of his election, a Muslim engineer was murdered by goons, and other similar incidents began to occur. Modi stayed largely silent, making only feeble statements in response to truly grotesque attacks. His singular economic achievement – if it can be called that – was the 2016 withdrawal from circulation of high-value currency notes equating to 86% of India’s money supply. Liquidity was drained from the system and millions of small businesses folded. The short answer for this review is that whether Modi is a good choice for all of India is still an open question--the author would contend that he is not, and in his Northern India, Hindi centric policy making, there are winners and losers, and the economic powerhouse that is Southern India, more religiously diverse, and Tamil speaking will likely be less satisfied.