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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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The joy 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.

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The 2022 World Book Day was spent reading this fabulous book all over a gorgeous English cottage with mountain views during a mini getaway.

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Dipping my toes back into this digital space after more than a year. My reading choices in the beginning of 2022 seem to be suddenly looking a lot more serious.

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A good “management” book after ages.

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Seema’s 8 year old cutie is currently going through an intense “Famous Five” phase. And I thought he had to read the first ever novel from the series that I owned and completely fell in love with. Hope he finds the same joy I did between the pages. Loved seeing the juxtaposition between the cover art of the books.

After all these years, this is still a very cool story!!

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I wonder if I’ll ever hit the number on my Goodreads challenge. But the wonderful part remains that with the pressures of work and home, there is still time to read and it still brings me immense joy.

I guess that’s all a bookworm could hope for.

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I can’t believe I sat my jaded millennial ass down to listen to Jake Abel read this book to me for a total of 25 hours!! This is all so so sooooo weird.

Edward sounds so bloody angst-y. And creepy. And oh so cringe-y. But there’s a part of me that liked the expansion of everyone’s back story. And clarity about a few major timeline blanks in Twilight. Like, ofcourse Edward spoke with his family before he took Bella home. And ofcourse there was some heavy duty stalking before he saved her in Port Angeles. And the entire hunt of James was so much better from the Cullens point of view. And Alice! My God I love her.

Why can’t I stop listening to this?!!! Also, Jake Abel sounds sooo freaking good!!!

I sound like one of the Twihards (gasp!)

Having typed all this, I still have to admit the book is loaded with the cringe.

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Thanks to N, I have a new fantasy world to get lost in. And what better place than my balcony to launch myself into a new world. I can already tell that is going to be epic!

Update: I can’t be the only person reading about Kaz picturing Cillian Murphy (specifically from his Tommy Shelby avatar). I know Kaz is just 18, but that’s irrelevant in my imagination at this point.

Another update: Will finish the series today and I want to stretch out these last 120 pages as much as possible. It’s ridiculous that I go through this every time I get engaged in a fantasy world.

Final update:

To quote Inej “I’m not done with Ketterdam”.

Duologies are too short a time to spend in a fantasy world. Especially, when you read both the books with bated breath, at breakneck speed and back to back.

Side note: Sturmhond was so entertaining and cool!! I want to follow his ship and Nina right back to Ravka. Maybe I’ll accompany Inej and go check in on them. I should read the “Shadow and Bone Trilogy”. And start off on the Nikolai duology.

But like Inej, my heart will remain back in Ketterdam.

Apparently Netflix is shooting a series dedicated to the Grishaverse.