Ash Talks Books

Yesterday I read “Of love and otherabandonments: Poems of heartbreaks, heartbeats and heartsprings” by Sunil Bhandari. I got to know of this book through a link pasted on the Senior Reading Raccoons Facebook Group. Out of the 93 pages of poems interspersed with a few photographs, my favourites were the following poems: Getting drenched Togetherness, of a kind Short stories Journeys Stories of a lonely heart Saga of wound Here Punctuation marks Her, his and theirs – a 3 by 5 triptych on words. These poems, as the subtitle of the book explains are poems on that emotion that grips most of us, has us wondering , spending sleepless nights up for..love and its myriad shades. I'd recommend it to anyone in love, anyone who has ever been in love and anyone who is a hopeless romantic:)

S Mari was my colleague at ITC, Expressions greeting cards, where I worked   for 5 months, at the start of my career as a trainee copywriter. She is the author of ‘Between Filter Coffee and Cappucino: The story of a confused Indian.’ She is on my Facebook list, and I saw her Facebook update saying she had come out with a book, so I was quick to go to Amazon and download it with my Kindle Unlimited Subscription, where the book is available for free. It is being sold for Rs. 250 on Kindle, otherwise. The book traces the journey of a simple homemaker Nandini, who is your typical traditional South Indian ‘filter kaapi’ drinking, ‘all-heart desi mom’ who moves to the US of A with her husband and child to work there and adapts to the cultural changes, which involve more than just the cappuccino and isolation. How she wins over her colleagues and decides home is where the heart is, forms the crux of this short tale, which has a lot of soul, to make up for its hasty writing and s...

I did a quiz this morning on which book I should read based on the 90s movie that I loved of the ones given.   So mine was 'Bridget Jones' Diary and the corresponding suggestion was 'Sofia Khan is not obliged by Ayisha Malik. I' 've downloaded a sample and will get to it once I'm done with my long list of books from juggernaut. In fact, I've got ' I'm big, so what' to read by Shuchi Singh Kalra and the Rekha book, which is partially read. I made some progress with the Rekha book today. But she seems to have rubbed all her boyfriends' mothers' the wrong way with her unconventional ways and with her illegitimate roots over which she, of course, had no control. It's quite a depressing story actually because when you see her go against society and not get accepted by society in India you just wonder if she should have been living in a country abroad where she might have found happiness. All she seems to have faced here is double stan...

The juggernaut.in sale is on and I've picked up Rekha - the untold story by Yasser Usman, Asura- Tale of the vanquished, The Caravan collection - the big book on Bollywood, Southern Spice, Lights, Camera, Melodrama, Once upon a crush by Kiran Manral, A sweet deal by Andaleeb Wajid, and Ludhiana to London by Vibha Batra. Started reading 'Rekha- the untold story' . Just finished reading about her marriage to Mukesh Agarwal, a businessman who was besotted with her but who was previously involved with someone else and hid it from her. He was also on medication and depressed. He ended up committing suicide and she was blamed for it, being called a black widow and worse by some of her contemporaries. The next chapter talks about her childhood when her mom was 'the other woman' of two men, one of them being Rekha's biological father, Gemini Ganesh. I've just finished 11% of the book but I'll come back to it and finish it to blog my thoughts about the re...

Ray Bradbury is a literary giant. I read one of his short stories recently. This prompted me to go looking for his book of short stories that I'd picked up years ago, which was languishing unread in my home library. The book cover tells me he is the winner of the 2007 Pulitzer prize special citation, winner of the 2004 National medal of arts, and a couple of other literary honours. This collection of stories is called ' We'll always have Paris'. But this title story is not my favourite. This one is about two men. A married man who leaves his sleeping wife in the room and goes out for a walk, following another man who leads him through the streets of Paris only to kiss him goodbye. They don't understand each other's language. The way the story was told, I took this to mean he was gay and was checking if the married man was, too. But the married man who was charmed with this man decided he wasn't and went back to his sleeping wife, forgetting all about t...

'A little journey' by Ray Bradbury is a 9-minute read on the Juggernaut app and is available there for free. It is a classic short story about a bunch of old women who are 'invited' to go to a relaxing spa in Mars. Mrs Bellowes is one among these women who is lured into going since she wants to meet the Maker, but how does this journey turn out exactly? For that, read the story on the app . When I read this story, I was reminded of a competition I took part in middle school. A few of us were chosen to take part in a contest that talked about life on Mars. I got through stage one of the competition. But stage two, I think, involved writing a story about life on Mars and going to Bangalore to attend the finals or some such thing. My dad had bought a book on Mars to help me with some of the background research. Then again, when I was a freelance journalist in '99, I remember interviewing a Chennai boy in school who had been invited by NASA for a tour of their prem...

I picked up the e-version of Mrs. Funnybones by Twinkle Khanna when I saw a former colleague from Ogilvy had praised it on Facebook. It was a super-quick read and by super quick, I'd recommend it on a Bangalore- Chennai flight! I found it light and entertaining once I got past Twinkle's constant need to refer to her husband as 'the man of the house'. Every. Single. Time. It got old. Really fast. And she did mention that her IQ was 145 and she got 97 percent in her high-school math and that she reads sci-fi, which seems to be a first for someone from Bollywood. She also spoke about her weight problems as a child and the rest of it was a slice of life from her current life as mom/career woman. She was quite refreshingly candid in referring to herself as a terrible actress. All in all worth the 118 bucks I shelled out for the Kindle version at that time( in 2016) Now her latest book The legend of Laxmi Prasad is also doing well, but I haven't read it yet. So lon...

I read  'Me before you' by Jojo Moyes and found it a beautifully written book. (Plot spoilers ahead) However, a huge part of me remains disappointed with the plot. I'm not sure what kind of a message it sends to the differently abled when the protagonist goes ahead with euthanasia after being paralysed neck downward! Maybe I don't know enough about the severity of his disability but I do know someone in real life who is leading a full, productive, marvellous life in a wheelchair, serving as an inspiration to all. When I read the book, I felt hopeless, helpless and trapped. To top it, some article about how euthanasia was just being legalised in Sweden popped up on my timeline. It was all very disturbing and bleak. Anyway, since the movie was a runaway hit, I guess it depends on who is watching it or reading the book. If you are feeling low, steer clear of the book. It will pull you further down. If you are happy-clappy and the type that is not moved much by what ...

I've written about Andaleeb Wajid before.   Yesterday, I had a chance to interact with her on Blogchatter again. Her talk was about The Writing Process. I tuned in and she spoke about how she wasn't a very methodical writer during her first couple of novels, but now after 13 novels, it has all changed. Initially she had an idea about how her book would end and then worked backward. She used to let her characters 'control' the manuscript. She said she couldn't let all her characters 'surprise' her all the time. She said she couldn't 'wing it' all the time.  Now she makes a lot of notes about her characters and their motivations. She plans her books. She gives herself the freedom to change the story from her synopsis although the synopsis becomes the blueprint. She says she doesn't believe in writer's block and that she'd rather say she is stuck. If you are unable to write a particular chapter, you should just let it be and come...

I used to read for pleasure as a child. When I was in class 4, I read my first Enid Blyton. It was the Mystery of the Burnt Cottage. Then I remember reading different series, the Five Find Outers and Buster the Dog, the Magic Faraway Tree, the Famous Five, Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, one series where there was Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, the Secret Seven, the Three Investigators, Archie comics,  Kiss and Photoromance and Darling series of romance books. I was a member of three different libraries and finished the kids' section in all three turn by turn, completely. This went on till I was in class 8. Then I didn't have access to good libraries. There were some Sidney  Sheldons, some Graham Greenes that I tried at the age of 12 and hated. I remember The Sands of Time by Sidney Sheldon at age 12, which left a nasty mark on me. It was too adult, too filled with cynicism and depravity for a young child. I then luckily found books like 'The old fashioned girl' by Loui...

This book Glitter and Gloss has been written by Vibha Batra who sent me a Facebook request that I’d accepted despite not knowing her personally because I saw that she was an author and I was interested in her work. I used to do this a lot in Bangalore. I frequented this place called Urban Solace especially to meet authors and get to know them and their work. That activity had to be curtailed because I’m now in a remote village and find it hard to stir out. So I was quite delighted when she reached out to me. Even more delighted when I found out that we had two or three mutual friends (according to FB, one of whom is an author from Bangalore) Of course, she saved the best for last – when she asked me to review her book, ‘Glitter and Gloss’ and sent me a copy of the same. I was delighted since I’m a huge fan of chick lit as I’ve stated on another blog that I own. So I started reviewing it and I was thrilled that it sparkled with wit and humour.   It’s desi chick lit a...

I have three books to review in the next few days. Two of them were sent to me by authors and I've been asked to review the third by an author on KindleUnlimited. Apart from that, I have my own To Be Read pile of books and it's growing by the minute! Just now, I saw a book that I've added to that pile. It's called 'An atlas of impossible longing', by Anuradha Roy. What immediately drew me to the book was its comparison to 'Sophie's choice',  by The Washington Post. I don't have the slightest clue what the plot is about but I'm sure it's the kind of stuff that great literature is made of, going by the review. This is an assumption I've made. Let me see if I'm right or wrong when I read the book. Of course, on a side note most great literature is depressing, so one has to be prepared for that. That's one of the reasons I don't read too much great literature. There's only so much of miserable stuff you can take...