People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you've loved The Shadow of the Wind, The Book Thief, The Reader, 84 Charing Cross Road here's another book you will enjoy.

Before I begin my review of the Book about a Book, let me talk about how it came to me. Much like the Sarajevo Haggadah, my copy of People of the Book, too, travelled all the way from Montana, USA, to Solan, India: the most wonderful birthday gift from my dear fellow Oxon, Natalia Kolnik, to whom the book originally belonged and who was kind enough to send me her copy.

Reading it was, therefore, doubly fun because Natalia had marked her favourite bits in the book and so, when I marked mine, the book began to carry a bit of our own history, a part of our souls. (Talk about The Shadow of the Wind nostalgia!)

I think, after a very long time, I have fallen so much in love with a book. To start with, this book is a perfect part of myself: a bit of history and a bit of literature, love for the past and a passion for stories. No book could summarise the half archaeologist, half literature nerd that I am, as well as this one.

No book has brought back to me Daniel Sempere, Liesl Meminger or Shosanna from Inglourious Basterds and reminded me what I love best about Natalie Dormer, especially her role as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors as this one. Trust me, Lola, Ruti, Zahra, Nura are all fabulous reminders of these other characters
and personally, I am going to treasure them as my fictional friends forever!

Why, then, did I dock off one star, you ask?
Because of Hanna Heath herself! Hanna, the one charcter who could have been me in the book, considering that she's a conservator who loves books, was a sheer disappointment. She's amazingly whiney, self pitying, self doubting charcter whose parts are the most BORING to read. As a result, I dragged through what I had originally expected to enjoy, sometimes even fell asleep or skipped entire bits, only to re-read them later. If the bits about Lola, Ruti and Zahra leave you wanting for more, the bits about Hanna make you wish they had never been written. Add the third rate 'Da Vinci Code'-esque end to Hanna's bit and you're almost tempted to rip the last few pages apart.

However, the merit of the subplots is way too high to judge the whole thing by Hanna Heath and her moping, miserable, maddening nonsense. Hence four stars and lots of good memories taken home from this beautiful book!

View all my reviews

Candide Or Optimism by Voltaire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are two ways to rate and read Candide:

Rating for the plot: 3
Rating for the the satire it was: 5

I guess the best way to describe this book is calling it a fairytale for the adults. Through Candide and Pangloss's rose tinted glasses everything happens for the greater good and everything is really, truly fine.

However, through the misfortunes of Candide and his friends, Voltaire presents a brilliant satire on the world he saw around him and which, to quite an extent, we see even today.

Read Candide to understand the world around us. Don't go by the plot. Read between the lines.

And most importantly, read a good translation! I had two versions on me: the one I marked, which is absolutely brilliant besides being fabulously illustrated; the other was a Kindle edition, which literally murdered the story!

So, yes, read Candide! Don't go by the friend's reviews (if I had, I'd never have bought it!). If you're lucky, you will love it!

View all my reviews

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh God! How do you describe Italo Calvino? However can you describe how he writes? His words are like the dreams that we sometimes have in mid-morning, the perfect ones, where everything is going exactly as planned, where a surprise, and a pleasant one is about to come to fore, where you've almost touched, felt, said what you've wanted to and then-snap! You wake up!

Invisible Cities is like a dream within a dream ( Mr Edgar Allen Poe, the analogy is unintended and I am proud of it actually!). The story starts with Marco Polo in the court of Kublai Khan, narrating stories of cities he has visited. The best bit is, though, it isn't about the cities! It's about every man being a city of sort himself, or every city, rather, being a man, a living, breathing, social organism that thinks, plans, manipulates, lies, deceives, loves and laughs.

Through his descriptions, Calvino makes you think, "Am I someone who is the product of places (s)he has lived in? Or are the places I have lived in a product of who I am?"

I sound like Confucius to you? Well, read this book and you'll find out why? This one's a book to read and remember!

View all my reviews

Let Them Call It Jazz and Other Stories by Jean Rhys
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jean Rhys, like Margaret Atwood, is one of those rare authors who make sense when the story seems to be making none at all. "However," I ask myself, "Does life really make sense?"

This is the keynote of these three short stories by Jean Rhys. Told with a shifting narrative, the stories in this book are about three women, two of them are foreigners in a strange land while one of them is not sure whether the world she has lived in for so many years is really her own. Stories of alienation and belonging, of silent fears and self-consciousness, of how notions of beauty, of being different from others and growing old affect the confidence and individuality of women are told beautifully in this little book.

Let Them Call it Jazz is a book by a woman who was way ahead of her time with stories that will always remain applicable universally for women around the globe!

View all my reviews

More of Poetry and Less Sleep

All You Who Sleep Tonight by Vikram Seth

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Dear Mr. Seth,
I am compelled to compose
A review in verse
And have forgotten all about the prose!

I'm afraid, some day soon,
I am going to be
A girl who even
talks in poetry!

Your poems have made me laugh,
Your poems have made me cry,
And God help me!
They've even made me sigh!

I have started thinking in verse,
And my words haven't been quite right,
Thanks to 'Beastly Tales From Here And There'
And now, 'All You Who Sleep Tonight'!



View all my reviews

Vastly Beastly Beastie Tales

Beastly Tales From Here and There by Vikram Seth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


DISCLAIMER: By the time she finished the book, the reviewer was so deeply influenced by the rhymes in this little book of tales that she couldn't keep the wannabe poet inside her from casting forth the following lines.




In world of beasts and that of men,
There have been a few occasions when
Such good books have been created
Which can be read and appreciated
By both the old and the young
And which leave a musical note on one's tongue
Whose rhythmic pattern tends to stay
With the Reader day after day
Yes, such a book is seldom read
That makes one travel through one's head
To shores of Greece, lands of Ukraine
And feel the Chinese wind and Indian rain
And then again, very rarely
Does one stumble upon such poetry
That gives the animals a voice
And leaves the Reader with no choice
But to admire the versatility
Of the person who so effortlessly
Turns Aesop's fables into rhymes
And revives the good old times
Of Grandma's winter Fairy-tales
Stories of doves and parrots, ducks and quails
Indeed much like a box of sweets
Anyone can enjoy the rhythmic beats
Of these poems where Mr Seth
Turned tales into poems much like 'The Golden Gate'.





View all my reviews