Yes, that’s me! Covering Up for lost time..

After The Crash by Michel Bussi

Lyse-Rose or Emilie?

This is a question that readers will find themselves seeking an answer to throughout the journey of this book.

This is a novel that has been brilliantly conceived and put down in an even better manner. I loved how the suspense had been building up the whole time and kept me turning the pages to uncover another piece of truth or find myself going deeper into the mess.

I am vehemently suggesting this book to anyone who is looking to get their hands on a well-written and thought out mystery novel.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The Mahabharata is now laid out for the readers from the point of view of Draupadi. Now, who could ever think of coming up with such a masterpiece. Being an Indian, I have also been brought up with the various mythological stories that add values and lots of colour to our childhood.

Mahabharata is one such mythological story and everyone who narrates it has another version of it. The base story remains the same but a lot of things are speculated. It’s the same with this book. There were a few pointers that did not sit well with me and I thought that they could have been ignored. Apart from that, if I look at it in terms of fiction, it’s one heel of an interesting ride.

The Glass of Time by Michael Cox

The Glass of Time is a novel that takes us back to the times of Victorian England. It is second in the series of ‘The Meaning of Night’, which I haven’t read. I doubt I ever will because more or less the story has been narrated in the second part.

The book revolves around Esperanza Gorst, a 19-year old orphan who has been sent to carry out a task by her guardian. Vividly imagined and a knockout read, this book is a real page turner.

It’s a historical fiction that is laden with suspense and mystery till almost the end of the novel. The moment you realise that there is all to it, you’re wrong, because there’s still more to discover. If you find yourself reading this book, do let me know your thoughts.

The Perks of being a wallflower

There is no denying the fact that I read a lot. And, I do so proudly. I am also very glad that I started this blog. It has kept me reading even when I have been so busy trying to create a professional threshold for myself. I vehemently believe that reading is an art and I read it somewhere that if you  don’t like reading, you’re not doing it right. I can easily connect to statements like these.

I am blabbing so much about this because I never wanted to read ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. Frankly, I never knew anyone who read it and whoever watched the movie didn’t have much to say about it. I guessed the storyline was not that strong so I never came to that book. In fact, my younger sister (who is still on her way to becoming an avid reader), asked me if she should get a copy and I told her not to.

Anyway, last month, I ordered the book from Flipkart. I came back home for two months and didn’t want to read anything that was in my shelf (mostly because I had read everything that I wanted to and didn’t want to attempt reading the others). I went online and called for ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘The Assassin’s Apprentice’. I had never heard about the books by Robin Hobb so I was not that keen on starting that one first. Plus, ‘The Assassin’s Apprentice’ was supposed to be the first book in the Farseer Trilogy, so I opted for ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’.

The book is written very differently. It’s not the usual novel that you come across. I had good fun while reading it but then again, I was not a complete fan. I don’t know why but this kind of reading is not meant for people like me. I like it when the protagonist is more driven in life and likes to take his chances even when no one else supports him. And Charlie did that, I’m not saying he didn’t but the book is too sad for me. I was impatiently waiting to get done with it so I could move ahead to my next book.

A lot of people love ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and I totally respect that.  I would love to hear from you guys how you felt about it.

My September Story

 

The month of September has been quite busy for me. Apart from setting targets for myself in the reading department, I had a lot of other work just piling up. Anywho, I tried to read as much as I possibly could and I pretty much completed my target. I am going to share my experience and views of reading all the books that I ended up reading this month. I am going to talk about them in the order that I read them in.

1. Manuscripts Found in Accra by Paulo Coelho: This is the first book I’ve ever ready by this author. I gave The Alchemist a chance back in high school but never got through that one. I have been trying to pick up any other book by this author over the past few years and even if I have, I have never actually read them. So it was kind of a surprise when I ended up liking this particular one. It is basically a conversation that takes place between a group of people. There is one man who teaches the rest of them about life and how one can go on with it in the best possible manner. I was on a three hour flight and efficiently I started and finished the book just sitting there, waiting to reach my destination. Overall, it was a good read I would say.

2. The Girl Who Saved The King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson: Again, my first book by the author and might I say, it was a super fun read. After the Paulo Coelho, it was a good change to have opted for reading Jonas Jonasson. A funny book that constitutes of a few characters who make no sense at all. The fact that someone can think up such scenarios and put them together so beautifully makes me kinda jealous. I wish I had the potential to think so broad. Or maybe I do and I just don’t know. I had so much fun reading this one that I just couldn’t put it down. The name of the book is weirdly long and I had never heard of the author so I was pretty confused while picking it up but thank God I did. Not repenting reading it even a bit. If you are looking for a little pick-me-up and you want a quirky little book then I surely would suggest The Girl Who Saved The King Of Sweden.

3. The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly: We are three sisters. My elder sister read a lot from school, I was not that much into reading at that time. I started a little late. Anyway, my sister had a lot of books by the time I realised that I loved reading and we never really lived together after that because she was doing her own stuff and I mine. But after reading a book, we would always put in our bookshelf at home. So whenever any of us were back home, there were these variety of books that we needed to catch up on. Whilst my sister always read all the books that she bought and all that I did, I never quite got through her collection. So this time, I thought that I should pick up a book from the old collection. The Scarecrow was the one that was right in front of me and in a good condition so I picked it up. While reading, I realised that it is a second in the series after The Poet, which I had not read. It’s kind of a detective novel wherein a writer/journalist cracks open a case that everyone thought was an open and shut case. Anyways, I read the book and it was pretty interesting while I was at it. It’s not something that I would highly recommend but you could opt for it if you were running out of choices.

4. How Not to Make Money by Raj Kundra: Confession time- I never knew the Raj Kundra existed until I heard about him and Shilpa Shetty (a bollywood actress). He is this big time business man who has his hands in a lot of different industries. While at the bookstore, I see a book authored by him, I wondered to myself what it could possibly be about. The synopsis piqued my interest and I decided to give it a go. A good thing I did. A pretty fun book. It is a true story about a VAT scam that took place in London. I loved the way the book was written. Everything was described beautifully. Usually in such books, you hardly understand the scam but you get the story, but this was something else altogether. I would recommend it to anyone who does not mind putting their brain to work while reading.

5. Private India by Ashwin Sanghi & James Patterson: Never read even one James Patterson but in complete love with Ashwin Sanghi books. It was in the new arrivals section at the bookstore and when I saw his name, I had to get it. His books are very well searched and extremely interesting but this one was a little different than his usual books. Not saying that it isn’t good but not as good as his previous works. This is again a detective novel. You can totally opt for it if you are running out of options. And this book is one in its series. There are many other writers who James Patterson has co-authored with to write the others in this line.

September. for me, has been quite a lovely month. I got a lot of reading done and there are still a few more days to go. I had also decided to read Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and I did start it but I think I need to wait a little more for that. A lot of things have been happening in my life and it is going to be like that for quite some time. Reading such a book is going to require all my unwavering attention. I am going to hold on to this one for a while and read it when the time is right.

Currently, I am reading The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. It seems pretty interesting. Atleast, it’s different from other books so I am pretty thrilled about that. I’ll put it on my list for October because I am pretty sure I won’t get enough time to finish it this month (and I know, it’s pretty small and not at all time taking). Looking forward to hearing from the rest of you about the kind of books and reading that you prefer and whether this post has helped you at all.

Let me know if you guys want me to review a singe book. Will surely do that for ya 🙂

What I’ll be reading this september

Hi Guys,

So, for the past few days I’ve been thinking how I could talk to you about more books without having to reveal their plot. I came up with an idea. I have decided to post pictures of all the books that I plan to be reading this month and then do a follow up by rating these books. It will give you a clear idea as to which book you should opt for and what you could leave- according to your taste.

This September, I have decided to dedicate to six of these books:

1. How Not to Make Money by Raj Kundra

2. Manuscripts Found in Accra by Paulo Coelho

3. The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

4. Private India by Ashwin Sanghi & James Patterson

5. The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson

6. Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estès

I am not sure whether I will be able to finish the last one because I want to be going slow with it, as it has a lot to teach. I am currently reading The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly and Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estès

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The one with the blue clip shows that I’m more than hallway through The Scarecrow but I’m still trying to make some headway with Women who run with the wolves.

I’m quite excited to see how this month pans out for me. I have never set limitations for myself when it comes to books but I wanna know if I can live up to the goals I set for myself. There are a lot of crime fictions and thrillers here. I am not a big fan of theirs but hopefully I will be by the end of this month. I have already placed orders for my new books to arrive in time so that they can be ready in October. I am hoping I live up to my expectations.

So what’s your plan for this month?

The Silkworm

“Hard to remember these days that there was a time you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani.” – Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

J.K Rowling’s writing is the personification of beauty. Her books are so engaging that you can not put them down. It’s the same with The Silkworm. This has been her latest in the Cormoran Strike novels. Her first- The Cuckoo’s Calling- was her introducing us to a new detective on the block, Cormoran Strike. To know more about it, you could read about it in my previous post.

The Silkworm is the story of a writer, Owen Quine who is basically a manic. His behaviour towards his immediate family is not appealing and he genuinely believes that everyone is out to get him. There are a lot of people who have developed a growing animosity for Quine’s behaviour when they learn that he has written a book called Bombyx Mori, which if published, will result in the doom of all them all.

The book shows the journey of Owen Quine and how he moves through life by meeting people who’s only agenda in life is to put him down. It shows that he has to put up with a lot of drama at every phase. Once the rough copy of the book is introduced to all the people who are playing a role in it, they start to work to assure that this book never sees the light of day. Detective Cormoran Strike is hired by Quine’s wife, Leonora Quine to look for him when he goes missing (just after the copy has been received by quite a few of these people).

The title of the book has been derived from Bombyx Mori, when a silkworm is boiled alive so that it’s silken threads can be preserved. This is also the name of the infamous novel that Owen Quine has left in his wake. The central character is Quine himself who calls himself Bombyx.

J.K. Rowling marks a strong return for herself by making Cormoran Strike come to life. Just like every other detective, Cormoran Strike also works in his own mysterious ways. This is a novel that should not go unnoticed and I don’t think it will. After The Cuckoo’s Calling, it was well deserved that the story of this detective continues.

We are all here looking for a good story and who better than J.K. Rowling herself!

Excerpts from The Goldfinch

So, I’ve read this amazing book and I obviously need to share it with all you lovely people. I am talking about The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. This book has been a journey for me and an amazing one at that.

It comes with a power packed story that is beautifully narrated. I am writing this post to put together some of the best quotes of this book- the ones that have created a soulful impact on me at least. I hope that in some way you also find meaning in it, albeit in a different context but I hope it strikes a chord.

Here goes:

– Because-isn’t it drilled in us from constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture-? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rosseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it’s a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what’s right for us? Every shrink, every career counsellor, every Disney princess knows the answer: “Be yourself.” “Follow your heart.”

Only here’s what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted-? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one wilfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? 

– And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind trikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces might mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.

– Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time. And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life- whatever else it is- is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean that we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time- so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small bright immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

This is an amazing book people, beyond words. Go pick up a copy from your nearest store. I will be doing another post on this but I had to put this across. Maybe to archive it so I can go back and look at it in the future or to share it with you, well both but I don’t know which I feel for more strongly.

Read it and do tell me how spellbound you were because next on my list is to pick up the other novels by Donna Tartt.

The Cuckoo’s Calling

“How easy it was to capitalize on a person’s own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.”

The Harry Potter novels are a classic. All those people who have read these books- and many of us have- know that they had created a stir in all our lives’. After finishing the one at hand, our wait for the next novel was palpable. We could not stop talking about it for the longest time. So when a new novel hits the market and word on the street is that it’s by J.K. Rowling, under a pseudonym, I decided to take a trip down to the bookstore.

And voila, look who writes as Robert Galbraith. After finishing the last Harry Potter novel, I wondered whether I would ever be reading a J.K. Rowling again. Never knew I actually would. Exhilarated, I couldn’t wait to share the news with my sister as she played a big role in forcing Harry Potter down my throat.

The Cuckoo’s Calling is a novel that introduces us all to Detective Cormoran Strike. He loses his leg in Afghanistan due to a land mine and is now working as a detective. He can hardly make ends meet and dealing with his girlfriend (now ex), Charlotte is also taking a toll on him. Financial troubles have led him to live in his office. During this time, due to some confusion, he comes in contact with Robin, who he hires as a temp.

One fine day, a man named John Bristow walks in his office and explains that his sister was murdered. He explains how everyone thinks it’s a suicide but is sure that she was on the receiving end of someone’s bad behaviour that got her killed. Lula Landry, a famous supermodel, was known as Cuckoo by her friends. In search for her killer, Cormoran Strike visits a world quite opposite to his own. Coming in contact with multi millionaires, he realises that this world is glamorous only from the outside and is a dark book of evil on the inside.

I wouldn’t exactly say that this is a wow novel and a must-read. It’s okay if you get down to it and not at all a waste of time. Intriguing, it attempts to dazzle us by the detective work put in by Strike. The second in its series, The Silkworm has hit the market and I am currently reading it. Don’t forget to pick up your copy and tell me whether you like it or not.

Till then, happy reading 🙂

Also, I would love suggestions for various books that you guys may have read. My list is kinda running dry.

The fault in the why?

 

No quotes from the book because I haven’t read it.

Wondering why I’m writing this post then?

Okay, makes sense! But before I come to that let me narrate to you a little story.

My younger sister bought that book and fell in love with it. I was reading the Godfather series at that time so I asked her to put it in the shelf after she’s done. I had heard a lot about ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ and wanted to know what the fuss was all about.

Anyway, one day her friend came over and borrowed the book. So now when I did have the chance to read the book, I could not because her friend had left town for a few months. So I waited and waited and then the movie released. Went and watched it yesterday.

Wanna know what I think?

After the movie, I’ve been ever so thankful to her friend. If she would have given me that book I would have super efficiently wasted my time.

The movie was sad, like really really sad. There were some happy parts but the sad just trumped the happy. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t go to a movie to escape reality (I don’t even read for that purpose). But if I’m giving you that much time, the least I expect is to get something out of it. Even if it did not have a happy ending, it conveniently failed to impart any teachings or some kind of a moral.

I don’t know who to blame but I really want to blame someone. The book has been over hyped. I mean there are better painful love stories out there already (ever read Nicholas Sparks?).

Anyway, so now I’ve decided that I don’t care if her friend is keeping the book. I know for a fact that I’m not gonna read it, at least not now. Can’t promise anything about the future.

But I really wanna know who liked it and why? Maybe there’s a factor that I have missed..

I am malala

 

“Some people only ask others to do something. I believe that, why should I wait for someone else? Why don’t I take a step and move forward.” – Malala Yousafzai

None of us realise that we take a lot of things for granted. If we have a house, we want a mansion, if we have one pair of shoes, we want another. The comforts of yesterday have become the necessities of today. Man was created to be loved and things were created to be used. The exact opposite is happening in our world and hardly anyone is taking note of that or involving themselves in taking the right action to prevent this from happening.

Amidst this narcissistic hassle, one girl decided that enough was enough. A girl by the name of Malala stood up for education and her birth rights.  A 16 year old girl decides that she wants to be educated and pursues her dream like there’s no tomorrow. Having a pillar for a father who supports her in all her decisions and helps her with her choices, she decided what was right and went for it.

Growing up in a country that does not believe in gender equality is anyway tough. But when people are following the rules that are laid out for you without ever realising that it makes no sense at all, you need to get up and speak for yourself. A country with a large population failed and a teenager realised that it was not the time to sit back and relax.

Education is a birthright and no government has the right to take that away from anyone. Gender inequality is something that becomes really tough for me to understand. If you are giving more preference to a male do you realise that he has entered this world because of his mother, a female? This is a topic that I can rant about for days without even taking a pause. And trust me, you will never be able to sway me the other way.

Many of us are of the opinion that men and women are equal but how many of us fight for it. I, for one, have done nothing yet. Don’t get me wrong, I really wish to. So I decided to take up this opportunity and inform you all about this amazing book that sheds light on the conditions that people are still going through.

It’s the 21st century, it’s sad how women still need to fight for education. The Taliban decided that they would bomb schools where women were getting educated and implemented their plan. This is not a world where anyone can shove what they think is right down other people’s throats. There is a difference between what is right and what is wrong and we must all work towards making that clear to those who don’t realise it.

If a girl of 16 could do something so enormous in her own way, then what are we doing?

This book has been written beautifully and we must all admire her courage for going through so much and still having it in herself to write about it with the hope that maybe one day she can go back to her country, her home.

A highlighter, coffee and freakonomics

 

“The conventional wisdom is often wrong.” – Steven D. Levitt

So at last I got the time to finish the book and let me tell you that it’s amazing..

Freakonomics is the product of two economists coming together to create history. The authors of this book have explored areas that would have otherwise gone unexplored.

The following questions aroused the curiosity of the authors and they used facts and figures to answer them. These are not regular questions that people ask on an everyday basis. These questions can only arise in someone’s mind when they think out of the box.

1. If drug dealers make so much money, why do they live with their mothers?

2. Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?

3.  What really led to the plunge in crime rates in the late 90s and early 2000s?

4. Do real estate agents have their clients’ best interests at heart?

5. Why do black parents give their children names that may hurt their career prospects?

6. Do schoolteachers cheat to meet high-stakes testing standards?

7. Is sumo wrestling corrupt?

8. How does a homeless man afford $50 headphones?

These are questions that have remained unanswered. Exploring the depths of these areas by looking at different areas that may have led to variations in these has given rise to Freakonomics.

For me the book was a major positive change. I think I needed a break from reading all the books that I had been reading, not that I realised that I did but yeah.

This book effectively teaches you that if the correct incentives aren’t offered then strategies formed on the basis of economics can be counter-productive. The book shows how parents do not have much of an impact on how their child turns out. This may seem like a so-not-true-because-they-do kind of a situation but read the book and you can find out why it is true.

Apart from this, there are many other things that Freakonomics sheds light on. Reading this book will be a change from the regular books that most of us read. Especially if you are into non-fiction, you’re going to love this one.

Super-Freakonomics is next in line but I’m going to wait a little before I dig into that one.

Tell me what you guys think of it once you’re done x