Ptolemy’s Gate by Jonathan Stroud
This review was first published on June 30, 2016 Rupert Devereaux (let’s think, a Mr David Cameron) is the Prime Minister of Britain, governing it with mediocre talent, lots of dinner parties and his much-conflicted Council. Britain is fighting a war with America, which desperately wants the Brits out (you know who else wants out?) […]
The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud
Three things This is what broadly happens New characters are introduced; a certain feisty Miss Kitty Jones, part of the Resistance and their leader, Mr Pennyfeather, along with a few other members like Anne, Nick, Fred and Stanley. They make up The Resistance and after having been in the periphery for long, are planning to […]
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
Reading fantasy at 22 while pursuing a Master’s in Art — English Literature, is a test in itself. How you react to a largely ‘childish’ book after hammering for two semesters about literary criticism and theory is the best judge of whether the story-seeker, the artist, and the reader in you has survived. Check. Jonathan Stroud’s The […]
A Man’s Head by Georges Simenon
Here’s something about me: I love philosophy, and believe firmly that it needs to be made more mainstream. Philosophy helps root your beliefs into a concrete base. Professor Michael Sandel in his Justice series asked a very interesting question which went something like this: “You are in a mine, in one of those trucks and […]
Fools and Other Stories by Njabulo S. Ndebele
The Test For a long time, I wanted to write about the streets of my childhood, our games of summer and rain, my poverty and my perception of it. I have still not been able to pen down anything without it sounding like a chip on my shoulder I need to get rid of very […]
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
I’ll be honest — I am not (yet) a science fiction aficionado. I have a very limited, can-count-on-my-fingers number of the genre, some short stories and currently only two novels I can think of. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the second one. (“What can I say? I only read science-fiction books I fall in love […]
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Writers and authors, storytellers and what Neil Gaiman calls, ‘those trade-in fictions’, I believe, have a hidden agenda to glorify, not unjustly, our own kind. We love to write and we love to read but above both, we love to write extensively about books, libraries, voracious readers and brilliant story-weavers. It is our way of […]
Tales from the Border by Blackwood
Last month, I acquired a membership to a library in Mumbai; an old, dilapidated building that has volumes and volumes of old books in English, Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati. There were a dozen people sitting there and studying, the lights above the bookshelves had not even been switched on and the dust covered volumes bookshelves […]
The Wedding by Julie Garwood
Romance sections at popular bookstores are smaller than Cinderella’s foot! I found this gem on the dusty shelf of a rent-a-book place after a long day of searching. Let me start off by saying that reading this book was like preparing tea: an infusion, starting on a low flame at first, taking its time to […]
#FDD017 (Golden) by Rishika Aggarwal
Greek mythology seems to rule the world. There are those who like it, and then there is the author of #FDD017, Rishika Aggarwal, who has reached its depths and abyss and come out with questions to Greek Gods themselves, in delicate yet deft handling of large themes, united by one common tenet – the suffering […]
