A Cup of Tea & Biscuits

Also adapted & published on Medium . For years on end, I have signed up for reading challenges. Ok, scratch that. A few years ago, probably when I started working in 2011, I realized that I was reading fewer books. News, editorials, and essays I continued to read online, but never really books even though I continuously bought them. It was about that same time that Goodreads first wandered into my general awareness and off I went - creating lists, finding books I owned, read, wanted to read, etc. This included books I owned, borrowed from the library, friends, picked from at the office share-a-book shelf, pilfered (didn't do that)... I liked it! Watching my lists grow, knowing that I still hadn't accounted for several hundreds of books that I've covered in all my years of reading - which, I have on good authority, is a good 20 years now! Anyway, around that same time is when I figured I ought to challenge myself if only to prove that I genuinely was consuming as...

Consider this book for what it is - the transcript of a play, based on one of the most popular fictional storylines to have ever been written. And yet, it does not live up to that expectation. Of a play. I'd like to think of myself as part of the generation that grew up with Harry Potter . Physically, I mean not just in terms of reading. The character itself is actually older than me, but I was only a few years older than Harry when I read the Philosopher's Stone, and 21 when the story ended. Supposedly. When the Cursed Child was announced, it not only took me by surprise but also filled me with a certain apprehension of how much to expect from rehashing a story that ended on a note of closure. I was in England the day the book was released and having pre-ordered and picked it up at Hatchard's (with the nerd in me doing cartwheels), I settled in - with cupcakes and wine - to read this much-awaited sequel to the series that was the means of introducing me to my now best frie...

"It feels like I'm experiencing someone else's dream. Like we're simultaneously sharing feelings. But I can't really grasp what it means to be simultaneous. Our feelings seem extremely close, but in reality there's a considerable gap between us." - Aomame Had I known, before I borrowed the book, that 1Q84 was approximately 920 pages, I might not have read it. I would have, in all honesty, picked up the Lord of the Rings again in preparation for The Hobbit. But I had already checked it out and I obviously could not put it away. [ Writing out a quick summary of this novel is going to be quite a task for me because there are so many details in it that I would love to include. I must, however, try and keep it short, so I will simply restrict myself to sharing my thoughts and opinions of the book ]. The plot of the novel is quite large though it essentially boils down to a love story that persists through 20 years of time and finds closure in the alternate real...

My mind, the part of it that appreciates a good book, was rather wary and numb of mainstream portrayal of vampires and their kin. It's too much glitter and falling into arms of an immortal one who will protect the helpless heroine for all eternity going on there. It may be what makes them read by all and produce a senseless fan gathering, but it has not allowed imagination grow. Therein lay my mindset when I picked up Vampire Empire by Clay and Susan Griffith. The blurb on the back of   book set my expectations - as simple as it seemed. I was so pleasantly taken in, hooked and surprised. This trilogy, titled Vampire Empire , written by Clay and Susan Griffith , begins with the premise that the Great Killing of 1870 pitted the entire world into a horrifying war. A plague, if you will, of vampires. Millions of humans died at the hands of the parasites while the aftermath ensured the death of more. Empires were brought down and humanity driven to the edge of despair. Vampires settled ...

I love my books and I like good adaptations of them as movies, plays, musicals, television series, etc. So, when my Deutschlehrerin casually told me that she was going to watch Pride & Prejudice I went, literally, berserk. How could I have not known about it?! A little theater company called the  Lifeline Theatre  was putting up a two month production of  Pride & Prejudice  - the third in its history. Naturally, I didn't care where it was (just a half-hour ride on the CTA Red Line, so that was good) or how much the tickets cost (a reasonably priced ticket actually), I looked for a weekend when I would be able to attend, not even bothering to consult the guests I was supposed to be hosting last evening, and got my tickets. I was excited, but a bit subdued. No use getting my hopes up only to be disappointed, I told myself. This is, after all, my most beloved book ever. Nothing else that I have read in the thirteen years since has compared to Miss Austen's writi...

This is not exactly a review - because I don't know the language well enough to write a German review, but I will, in due time. Reviewing the Harry Potter books would take its toll on me because of the details in it - the same goes for the Lord of the Rings. Maybe if I'd  reviewed them as I read them it would've made it easier but... Anyway. Harry Potter in Deutsch . I'm re-learning the language - signed up for the A1 level once again because I haven't retained what I learned three years ago. I can understand random words and simple sentences and make wild guesses at what the more complex sentences convey, but I would like to know the grammar, the structure and the foundation of the language so that I may indulge in German literature. These being my baby steps towards reading Goethe's Faust in German. I thought I'd start with something simple. Fairy tales, not so much, so I picked up a book that I know very well - Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen - wh...

If I recall rightly, one of Guy de Maupassant 's short stories, I forget which, that led me  W. Somerset Maugham 's writing, his short stories in particular - Footprints in the Jungle, Rain and several others that appeared in his collective works. I never went back to reading either of their novels until now. I've known the story of The Painted Veil for a long time, having read excerpts of it here and there and watched the trailer to the movie adaptation starring Edward Norton (sigh) and Naomi Watts , and finally bought the book just last week on a whim - I haven't yet watched the movie. It is the story of a young, silly girl named Kitty who marries Walter Fane, a bacteriologist working in Hong-Kong, soon after her younger sister announces her engagement to a man with a title. While in Hong-Kong, Kitty has an affair with assistant colonial secretary Charles Townsend, a selfish man who believes Walter would rather forgive his wife and continue to live in assumed igno...

I will never get bored of claiming that, to me, one of the greatest love stories ever written is Pride & Prejudice. So far every companion novel, and the so called prequels and sequels, I've read, all recount the love story from different perspectives, hence, I was rather curious to see what a mystery novelist would make of it! Death Comes to Pemberley  written by  P. D. James , author of the Adam Dalgliesh  mysteries, was published in 2011 - I mention this because her first novel Cover Her Face  came out in 1962 and she, the author - Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, is 91 years of age! Why is this significant to me? Personally, she is the oldest living author that I've read. Anyway, the book. The book is about the murder of Captain Denny, whom we know to be George Wickham's comrade-in-arms and, quite possibly, only male friend. Set primarily in Pemberley and the surrounding woods, the story begins with a recap of the events in Pride & P...

I don't normally read things off the 'best-seller's' list. If I do, then it's either by recommendation or I'm so completely bored with everything else that I need to indulge myself in the commercial world of writing. But I'm still uncertain as to what possessed me to pick up Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James . My excuse, which is the whole honest truth, is that I saw it on Amazon's 'Top 10 List', didn't read the reviews, barely skimmed through the book cover summary before I read it. So, in all honesty, I didn't know what I was in for. Quite like the female protagonist, Anastasia Steele, a twenty-one year old soon-to-be college graduate who stumbles into the office of a mega-rich modern day Adonis named Christian Grey. She is instantly attracted to him, what with all his to-die for looks and secret-hiding smiles. She doesn't know it, but he becomes just as, or much more, smitten by her. Quite soon he makes an 'indecent proposal...

I haven't read too many American historical novels, only because there are so many more European historical novels that took up most of my time and not because I'm geographically biased or anything :) A colleague, who mostly reads crime, mystery and thrillers, recommended this book telling me that she never expected to like it, but did. I must say I concur with her opinion. I didn't expect to like it, but I did. Water for Elephants , written by Sara Gruen , is written in the first person by Jacob Jankowski, a ninety or ninety-three year old resident of a nursing home. The story drifts between the ninety or ninety three year old and the twenty three year old. Jacob, a veterinary student at Cornell, loses his parents in a car accident just before his final exams. Shocked and taken over by this intense loss, which also costs him his family house and his father's practice, Jacob wanders about and in a moment of, what I term, insanity, climbs aboard a train hoping to get bac...

My brother, ten years my junior, literally bullied me into reading Suzanne Collins ' The Hunger Games trilogy. He ranted and raved about how good the books were and I was convinced that they should be, to have caught his attention! He who doesn't read unless it is for school work or only if he is truly impressed by the novel. I've read my fair share of young adult novels as an adult that occasionally dabbles in a quick read just to keep myself occupied (and the count of books going), so I wasn't skeptical about this book (as I had been about ' The Host '). I read it in two days and was, I must admit, thoroughly taken by it. As gruesome as the summary might sound, this is definitely one of the nicer, better written young-adult books currently in the market. No stupid vampire love triangles or supernatural presences. Just a nice story of adventure, loyalty, love, and survival. ( Since I've read only the first book, as of February, 2012, I shall base this post...

It was my grandfather's interest in the Lady Chatterley trial  that first brought my attention to  Lady Chatterley's Lover  by D. H. Lawrence . I was, at the time, too young to even consider reading the novel (I must've been fourteen or fifteen), but, after a bit of research, I was able to ascertain the story and why it was so controversial. The novel concerns the notorious relationship between a lady of the aristocracy and the game-keeper of her invalid husband's grounds. Says it all? Most of the novel explores the necessity/desire for a physical relationship that Lady Chatterley, a young woman, longs for, now that her husband has been paralysed waist down in the First World War. Truth is, he is the one that pushes her towards it because he wants an heir, a boy, to carry on the Chatterley name and take care of Wragby, the family seat. There is the tone of class distinction, how Lady Chatterley, Connie, is rather sympathetic towards the lower classes but her husband, Si...

I have loved libraries for as long as I can remember. I have loved books even longer than that. There's just something about the way a library is structured - architecturally and internally - that draws me to them, the sights and smell. Ah! The smell of a thousand books waiting to be read… I've been to my fair share of new cities, and the first place I seek out is the local library (or, God forbid, if there isn't one close enough, the closest bookstore). I’ve carried a library card far more often than I have an ID card! It’s FREE  - You join for free and you get to take books out for free! You pay nothing - well, perhaps you do, by way of tax, but that's different. You have access to a multitude of books and they exist solely for your pleasure! They are just sitting on shelves, waiting to be picked up!! All they want is some indulgence from you, and your time to enjoy what they have to offer :) The collection  – Where else would you find a physical collection of the wri...

Written by Khaled Hosseini  and spanning over a period of thirty years, A Thousand Splendid Suns , is about two women, whose lives begin to entwine in the most unrelenting circumstances. Mariam, an illegitimate child of a wealthy man, lives with her rather bitter mother near the city of Herat, Afghanistan. Despite her mother's repeated warnings and insistence that her father, Jalil, will never accept her as his daughter, as he does the children of his three wives, Mariam grows up believing in him. He visits every week, tells her stories, talks to her about the city and the country. He is Mariam's only connection to the rest of the world. But her faith in him is misplaced as he proves to be everything her mother said he was. The simple act of not showing up on her birthday to take her to watch Pinnochio and then refusing to see her when she goes to his house destroys Mariam's life. Essentially. She is married off to a much older shoe maker who takes her away to Kabul where M...

One of the earliest works of detective fiction, The Woman in White is an epistolary novel set in the late mid-19th century, written by Wilkie Collins , a man who is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. This is definitely literature, the sleuthing and legal mind at its best. The foreword/preamble to the book sets the tone and pace of the novel, which essentially is a collection of statements of the various important people that figure in it. Much like a trial scene where each witness provides his side of the story, in facts. Walter Hartright, a twenty-something drawing master, receives an offer of employment, to teach drawing to two young ladies that reside in Limmeridge House. As he bids his family farewell and sets off to fulfill his commission, he meets a lady dressed in white. He doesn't realize until later that she was an escapee from a private asylum but thinks nothing of it as he settles in to his role as tutor. His employer, Mr. Fredrick Fairlie, is a middle aged man w...