Versatile Blogger Award Nomination

Thanks a lot Nita for nominating me.I would request my readers to have a look at her book blog BOOK CHOOSE .It is very fresh and genuine.

Let us just peruse the rules of this competition :

• Thank the person who nominated you for this award and post a link to their blog.
• Select 15 blogs that you follow regularly
• Nominate those 15 blogs for VBA
• Let your readers know 7 unique facts about yourself.

Below is the list of blogs which I would like to nominate

1. Ashley                Marginalia: A Reading Log
2. Shomeret           Shomeret:The Masked Reviewer
3. Katerina            The Realm of Books 
4. Natalia               Book Cupid
5. Jennifer Blake   Heartland Reading
6. Jonel Bokyo       Pure Jonel
7. Simon Thomas  Stuck in a Book
8. AJ Strekel          Read all the things
9. Leanne               All write-y then 
10. Sophie Cordeo  Seameless Reader
11. Harvey               Bookmarked
12. Jullianne            Outlandish Lit 
13. Shanny               Shanny Reads
14. Allen Olu           Allen
15. Jerri Aubrey     As the page turns

Now comes the fun part.I have always found it difficult to write about myself but I am going to give it a shot

1. I recently took a break from my corporate job so that I could read as many books as I like and travel the world.
2. I am a fitness freak.
3. I love skateboarding.
4. Kill Bill is my comfort movie-I can watch it anytime,anywhere.
5. My favourite genre is Autobiographies and memoirs.
6. I can spend a whole week in my bed just watching FRIENDS marathon.
7. I try and keep away from romantic novels and movies.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

Some love stories are like wine which have a pleasant after taste,some others are chilled beer which soothes your soul and some are like a cheap booze which just reeks of mediocrity.The Museum of Innocence falls in the third category.The plot was weak to begin with and it became worse as the story progressed.

                         The protagonist,Kemal Bey is a lazy spineless son of a wealthy father whose only obsession in life is to sleep with this girl,Fusun,who by the way is his cousin.His idea of an ideal life consists of 3 things-

1-Making love to Fusun

2-Having dinners with his finance,Sibel.(And also sleeping with her)

3-Drinking raki(anise flavoured alcoholic drink).

Now let us come to the female lead ,Fusun who I honestly feel suffers from split personality disorder.Her thoughts and actions never seem to match.Then there are her parents who encourage their daughter’s ex lover to try and woo her in front of her husband.Understanding such dysfunctional characters is beyond my intellectual capacity.The first 250 pages are about Fusun’s body-her hair,her breasts,her neck.The next 250 pages are about the things which had some sort of skin contact with Fusun-her cigarette butts,her scale,her pen,etc.The last 250 pages are about Fusun’s seesawing life dreams-A movie star or a driver or a painter.(before she ultimately decides to be a trophy wife).One rarely comes across such a excruciatingly long and painful piece of narration.

                                The only thing worth reading in the book was the depiction of Turkey and its colourful culture.The author has been successful in giving each neighbourhood of Istanbul a character of its own.My personal favourites are Beyoglu and Cukurcuma and I wish i get to visit them someday.The lifestyle of the elite as well as the lower middle class is very well described.Just after the Valentine week ,I had promised myself that I will make a genuine effort to read more romantic novels this year but if the modern love stories are anything like this book then I guess I am better off without reading them.

Confessions of a Cynical Romantic

I have always loved book stores .I spend more time perusing books than browsing latest trendy outfits. My local book shop is like a second home to me; well at least most of the book shop. There is this one section which is completely alien to me-the romance section. I cannot recall a single instance where I have spent more than 5 minutes in the Romance alley of a book store. Like every other girl, I went through that “Mills and Boons” phase during my teen years but since then I have read very less love stories.

   So this Valentine's day, I was searching for an inspiration that awakens the comatose romance- lover in me. That is when I came across this list which is perfect for someone like me. My favorite romance novel is Erich Segal’s Love Story which I felt should have been included in this list. Do let me know which love story you read this Valentine's day.

My Favorite Harry Potter Memes

I just finished reading the Harry Potter series for the nth time and every time I complete the last book, the tears just start flowing. These hilarious memes did cheer me up though.

WOW!!!I did NOT know that.

Harry was always the “good boy”.

It gives me shivers to think of the havoc this pair would have wrecked, if they had the invisibility cloak.

Why so serious, Sirius?

Oh Leo!! First the Oscars and now this L

Every nook and corner of the internet world is full of Harry Potter memes.Do let me know which ones are your favorite.

Review:A Town Called Dehra by Ruskin Bond

I absolutely adore Ruskin Bond and have been doing so since my childhood. He does not write about world wars or bank heists or long forgotten heroes .Instead, he writes about the most magical place on this earth-Dehradun and that’s what makes him my favorite. I would like to believe that this book is Bond’s love letter to the Doon valley.

                            A town called Dehra is a collection of short stories revolving around the day to day events of the author’s early life in the city. Few of the stories are excerpts taken from his debut novel-The room on the roof. These tales are about the people in Bond’s life who influenced him the most-his Tonga fearing grandmother, poor but proud Bibiji,young and carefree Somi.My favorite story is the one where the author talks about the heart and soul of Dehradun –The trees. Bond is totally correct when he says that Doon is one of the few places in the world where trees are a match for man.My family shifted to Dehradun in the late '90s and the moment I got off the train, I was left awestruck by the huge Banyan tree in the middle of the railway platform. Over the next few months I discovered that almost every house in the city (including mine) had an orchard in the backyard. Papaya, mango, guava and litchi trees were in abundance and still are. Even now, whenever I visit the valley, the majestic sal and shisham trees are always there to welcome me.

                                 For me, reading a Ruskin Bond book is like swimming in a sea of nostalgia. I am transported to a time where life used to be much simpler-the Parade ground was still green, the forests of Rajpur road were not converted to shopping malls, the roads had lesser number of vehicles. I sometimes feel sad that Dehradun is no longer the quaint, sleepy town that I grew up in but the fact that Ruskin Bond has immortalized it cheers me up.

Review : Song of the Sea by Jade Varden

 I am not a big fan of the young adult fantasy genre because most of the YA fiction books that I have read in the past year or so have had very immature content. Therefore, when Jade asked me to review her latest work, I was a bit skeptical but the blurb looked interesting enough and I was in mood for some light reading, so I decided to give it a shot and I am so glad I did.

                           Reading this book was like reading a Disney movie screenplay but unlike most of the Disney movies I watched during my childhood, this story had depth to it. The story of Brenna‘s search for her mother is inspiring and relatable.The writing is fresh and crisp. As a reader, I just fell in love with the female protagonist-she is smart, hardworking and has an undying passion for sailing.She is also silly when it comes to the matters of heart, but then which teenager isn't. I believe the target audience for this book is the school going younger generation and Brenna is the ideal heroine for them. She is not some love struck teenager who believes in dancing to the tunes of her prince charming. She is a mature, determined girl who is ready to face the challenges of life. In an era where media is dominated by shallow female portrayals, strong characters like Brenna are needed. The author has also been successful in portraying the futility of war. The youth of the world need to realize that we do not own land water and air and therefore fighting over these resources will ultimately lead to the destruction of mankind.

                          The only thing missing from this book was the lack of focus on the other characters. I would have loved to read more about Nixie and Kyle. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The YA fantasy genre needs more books of this kind.

Review : Man's search for Meaning by V.E.Frankl

There are innumerable literary works based on holocaust and I have read quite a few of them, the latest being Maus.In my opinion, reading multiple accounts of any tragedy desensitizes the reader and the book loses its purpose.Therefore,I was quite skeptical about reading this one but went ahead anyway as it had such raving reviews.                                                                      According to the author, a prison is the best place to study humanity because inside a jail, one can closely observe the 3 shades of life-white, black and grey. The first half of the book is Frankl’s account of his experience in a concentration camp. It has all the common elements of a holocaust story-the gas chambers, the Capos, shaved heads, bony skeletons and all other cruelties that make you lose faith in humanity. The author narrates the experiences of the prisoners who found hope amid all the hardships and hence made it till the end. He also writes about the prisoners who failed to find a dream that could give them a purpose in life and therefore lost the game of survival. The second half of the book is about “logotherapy” which is a psychology theory stating that suffering and survival go hand in hand and only through suffering can one find the true meaning of life.   
              The great thing about the book is that it provides a scientific perspective to the survival stories of holocaust. The not-so-great thing about the book is that the whole chapter on “logotherapy” is like a medical journal filled with technical jargon.It was good read but I do not think that this is one of those books which will totally transform one's outlook towards life.