caffeinedependentbookworm

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The absolute joy of diving into a grand adventure in a new fantasy world.

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How I wish we all lived in Charlie's world. A world where it's all about love, friendship and kindness.

The illustrations are just beautiful and that writing in paintbrush is everything!

A beautiful book as a year winds down and a new year begins. 🙏

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Lungs full of fresh air, speckled sunshine on my face, belly full of laughter and coffee, a good first 21 pages of a promising book and a very happy heart.

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Finally gave in to the hype and cracked open THE SONG OF ACHILLES.

Based on the tragic epic of Troy, this book describes the story of of Achilles and Patroclus, two young boys, one a legend and one merely his lover, caught in the whirlwind and tragedy of their times through a journal from Patroclus’s perspective.

Many of history’s greatest thinkers, writers and artists including Plato and Aristotle thought of Achilles and Patroclus as romantically involved. And it shows that Madeline Miller has done everything to be true to Homer’s ancient source material.

Madeline Miller’s writing is sensational. But for me personally, TSOA left me unmoved. Maybe because ODESSEY and the horrible but memorable whitewashing attempt that was the movie TROY.

A couple of years ago when I finished CIRCE, I couldn’t move on for a while. Going to listen to CIRCE once again.

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Been on such a splendid reading streak lately.

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The joy of picking the perfect vacation read. This book was my companion through a week spent in Singapore.

Someone wise said "Good books make you cry; amazing books make you weep."

This, was an amazing book.

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This was the only book I packed for a lovely trip to read in the time shuttling between spending time with friends and family lasting a fortnight. Meaning, a book I could not spend all of my time reading while ignoring my loved ones and skipping itineraries.

I started off this book at the beginning of a long 24 hour flight. And for the first time, came back to India without having made much progress on the book.

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ATMOSPHERIC! The first term that comes to mind while describing “WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING”. And I couldn’t have chosen a better day than this gloomy rainy day in late September to read this book.

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The most fun book ever!

To celebrate someone’s FARTy Forty’s

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Re-reading WUTGERING HEIGHTS after 18 years!

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Define JOY: the feeling of returning home with a box full of books from a book fair.

Yayyyyy!!!

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Oh how I wanted to like this one, but sadly, this book was such a waste. Especially when it held so much promise.

The century old coffee shop unchanged for decades, the patrons of the cafe, the lady in the dress sitting in ‘that’ chair, the rules, —— such brilliant ingredients for the most fantastic of stories, which were all sadly wasted.

The writing is disjointed. The flow disruptive. The two stories in the middle had some redeeming qualities about them, but the first and the last stories left me enraged. For the sheer portrayal of women described for much of their sceentime by the most wonderful adjectives, only to have them behave like spineless martyrs.

Even with my non artistic brain I could see all the missed possibilities. The origin story, the cafés history, the story of the lady in that chair and who sat in it earlier, how does the cafe change hands over the generations, ……..

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Been missing that “I AM NOT ABLE TO PUT THIS BOOK DOWN” feeling.

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Mrs Funnybones.

A quick breezy read comprising of 26 blogposts arranged according to the 26 alphabets of the English language.

Used to follow Twinkle Khanna’s column in the papers and used to love her tongue in cheek humour and long suffering wife/mother/daughter/dil satirical posts.

Needed a respite from much heavier books that require attention and effort. And this book provided that respite.

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ANCIENT EGYPT LITHOGRAPHS by David Roberts.

A gift for any person fascinated by Ancient Egypt.

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Whyyyy?!!! Why did I wait this long to listen to this book when I had already made a choice to buy it more than a year ago! 🤷🏻‍♀️

Circe is a part literary fantasy and part divine Greek soap opera. This strange combination makes this an extremely quotable, rich in description, and a gripping pageturner. It moves seamlessly between the broader scope of the world and its many gods and monsters, to the more narrow focus of the nymph-turned-witch, Circe, and her daily life before and after she is exiled to the island Aeaea.

Circe becomes a powerful witch, but the strength of her story is in all her relatable flaws and weaknesses. We follow her as a naive lesser nymph, longing to be accepted and loved. We stay with her as she believes the lies of others and, later, becomes hardened against such deceivers. Her compassion constantly battles with her rage. Understandably.

There is some grim satisfaction to be gained as this woman who has been bullied, belittled and trod on her entire life slowly claws out some vengeance for herself.

The pain she endures along the way means that her successes are bittersweet. In the end, Circe might be full of fantasy, backstabbing and murder, but it is first and foremost the story of one woman's life - through pain, love, desire, heartache and motherhood.

Other Greek myths play out in the background - that of the Minotaur, and of Icarus, as well as many others - but it is Circe's personal tale that hits the hardest. I just hope we don't have to wait another seven years for Miller to write another novel like this.

Listening to this in audio was a purely joyful experience.