New Year, New Challenges !

I read 51 books in 2015 as per my Goodreads Challenge. That should make me feel accomplished. However on the contrary I didn't feel it's something to be proud of. I can read 50 books is a thing to say that sounds great. Borderline flouting. However, I am never challenging myself to something like that anymore for 2016.

Lots of lumpy books were acquired last year that sat on my bookshelf unloved. Due to the pressure of the challenge, I had to be cautious and try not to pick up anything more than 350 pages. Unnecessary pressure, no fun. Enjoying the stories became difficult as the plot lines got hazy,  I had to speeding past dialogues and characters and which caused my inability to a churn a well opinionated review. This is not how it should be.

Since 'Chill out and let it go' will be my newly adopted mantra for the year, the same will be applied to my reading. Thus I have set a reasonably realistic challenge of 20 books. That's it. Only 20. So I have liberty to read the massive books at my own leisure, take my time and genuinely get to enjoy the writing.  Not slacking but trying to re-instill my love for reading. I will also take this moment to mention that aside form my literary adventures, a few Islamic books too will be part of my reading stack due to obvious reasons.

It's amazing to see that over the two years my preference of reading material and choice of genre has changed so much that I feel proud of myself. From starting off my 'downtime' with Dystopia and Young Adult sci-fi and now going towards classic writers, literary authors and more matured content, I do feel it's become much more than just reading. It's evolving. My eyes crave to glaze through words that will stay with me. My kindle sleeps under my pillow will I cheat on it's ancestor of whispery pages, gorgeous prose and alluring covers.

I realize now the value of reading only 10 beautifully written books than just cramming in 50 or so. So without further adieu, here's to another fabulous year of wonderful books. Happy New Year and Happy Reading !

Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

Pages :  369

Read on : Kindle

Goodreads Rating : 4.38/5

Review:  At some point, I do feel should rename my blog as 'Unpopular Opinions'. I hate hype. It builds up such expectations that I unconsciously set a standard that most hyped things fail to meet. Miserably.

All right, so I picked up The Martian after all the fuss about how amazing the film was and I'm sure it was to non-readers but prejudice aside, I did follow that unspoken rule of 'Book before Movie' and I was left puzzled. 

I'm not a big sci-fi kinda gal. Outer space does excite the nerd in me and so I picked this book up hoping it would seriously please my space-loving soul. (No pun intended). First of all, let's start by saying, this book is way too science-y and I get a feeling that technically most of it aren't even the right calculations. 

Watney is annoying. Honestly, he sounds like a whiney geeky kid unfortunately left behind by his friends at lunch. Okay Okay, I get it, He's stuck on Mars but come on! I can't possibly be the only one having a problem with the way it was written. The language was way too casual for something as grave as leaving a man behind, the smart interjections were good, no doubt just the 'Yaay Me!' and other catch-phrases seem stupidly immature for an astronaut. His wit did come handy to him eventually we can see that and how.

Nonetheless, it was an engrossing book because it's this situation that you kind of give up hope on right from the very beginning. You want to know what will happen eventually and it's something you can't wait to reach the end just to know what happens. Since this is a spoiler-free review, I will not be in-depth with the details. 

A little over the top, too technical, slightly dramatic and a good unbelievable chunk thrown in - makes it quite Bollywood to me.

Final Rating : 3/5

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Book Review: Grimm's Fairy Tales

Pages :  518

Read on : Kindle

Goodreads Rating : 4.02/5

Review: Where do I begin. Let's start of by saying this would probably be the shortest review I have written or will ever write. Really, how much criticism can a classic get when it's already pretty well imbibed, churned,diluted, watered down, read, re-read, re-re-re-re-read over the years and people like me just got older. 

To think that this book is perfect for your children is probably one of the biggest disillusion you would have. The concept behind why these stories are so 'Grimm' (Ha! See what I did there :p) is to scare children into behaving. I see it contrary to that. The stories are terrifying to a child yes, but they are also quite sexist and anyone who knows that it's what really gets to me.One has to keep in mind the day and age they are residing in.  So to sift through all of that and look for the morales behind it, I had to literally take a magnifying glass and hunt for it. The book also has the usage of.......certain words.... which I don't like reading even in the grown-up novels. (I'm pure and pies). Don't get me wrong. Grimm's Fairy Tales are quick, snappy, witty and extremely clever. The question is, would I give it to my child to read it as it is? I wouldn't.

Adding another perspective would be if like me, you too have a sickening and darkly sense of humor, you'd love this and that's exactly the lens I looked through.

IF your kid is as annoying as I was/am , please read a cherry-picked, milder version for these stories to them. There's enough misery in the world as it is.

Recommended to generally weird adults with an odd sense of humour such as myself.

Final Rating : 3/5

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Dye-Stained Hands And A Mid-Year Freak Out

If there was an award for slacking at blog posts, I swear I'd be sailing to it. My excuse this time would be shoddy internet connection , non cooperative service provider and my inability to juggle responsibilities.
Without further ado, let's look ( and laugh ) at my reading progress. (NOT!)

Best Book You've Read So Far in 2015 ?

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. Not a single flaw. I wanted to stand up and applaud. It's like that.
Other noteworthy reads this year were - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Flight of Pigeons by Ruskin Bond, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Best Sequel You've Read So Far in 2015 ?

Didn't read any sequels this year. Fortunately or unfortunately

New Release You Haven't Read Yet But Want To ?

Not one to follow new releases. I have a gypsy's soul when it comes to picking what to read when.

Most Anticipated Release For The 2nd Half of 2015 ?

Winter by Merissa Meyer. The 4th Instalment of the Lunar Chronicles

Biggest Disappointment ?

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie Mcguire. No idea what people loved so much about this book or may be I'm stupid.
The Girl in The Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. Just could not connect with any of the stories in this book.

Biggest Surprise ?

Brother Grimm's Fairytales was an unpleasant surprise.
The good surprises were - Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Favourite New Author ?

Authors more like. Haruki Murakami - absolutely love anything and everything by him. The consistently peculiar stories are perfect for my kind of reading. Amitav Ghosh because I finished the Sea of Poppies and fell in love with the characters. Marcus Zusak for The Book Thief because no amount of words will be enough to express this beauty of a book.

Newest Fictional Crush ?

Jamie McTavish from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Can you say guilty-pleasure :p

Book That Made Me Cry ?

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, Room by Emma Donoghue, Living Dead Girl

Book That Made Me Happy ?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Favourite Book to Movie Adaptation You Saw This Year ?

Not something I really watched but I found that Outlander and The Shawshank Redemption were way better than their original books.

Favourite Review You've Written This Year ?

Room by Emma Donoghue. The book made me feel emotions I didn't know one could ever feel.

Most Beautiful Book You Bought So Far in The Year ?

Necropolis by Avtar Singh which was a part of my JLF 2015 goodie bag. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh that was handed to me by a friend who's roommate had to move.

What books Do You Need To Read By The End of The Year ?

I'm 7 books away from my Goodreads Challenge and in order to successfully accomplish that, I'm gravitating more towards books that I might like for certain. Since there's really no time to dabble around and I'm amidst a panic attack. ( It's already NOVEMBER people !)

P.S. Apologies for being away for a month. I've already go a list of books I need to review and have gotten cracking with it. So stay tuned !

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Skinny Girls are Real People Too, You Know.

' Oh you can afford to have sugar in your tea with a figure like that !' came a remark from behind me at an event.
'How old are you?!' smirked the lady.
' 23 ' I spluttered.

I can safely say that I have never ever encountered such a retort from a total stranger and it completely caught me off guard. To think that after years of being called skinny or skeleton, adult life would focus more on responsibilities than just my size. Unfortunately I'm still waiting for that time to come and looks like I'm ageing to it.

'Eat something!' - a delightful greet I receive even from the most educated of people. Makes me really scratch my head and wonder if anyone has given that phrase a rational thought, a genuine thought and how absurd it sounds when you tell a petite person 'eat something!' . As if I'd been living on clean air ever since my existence.

While we are already amidst this wonderful movement to embrace plus sizes and curvaceous beauties, the idea behind it should be well implied to all the variant sizes. ALL THE VARIANT SIZES. By this I mean, the smaller sizes too; the really small, just small, extra small and whatever have you.  If 'fat-shaming' is not cool then 'skinny-shaming' is unacceptable too. ( Yes, skinny - shaming is a thing ). In order to wholly accept the idea of every body is a beautiful body,  I cannot stress enough on how imperative it is for people to stop picking on slender women because trust me when I say this and I say this for every girl like me, it hurts EXACTLY how it would hurt when you negatively remark about a plus-sized girl. No one deserves that either way.

I don't diet or practise any kind of portion control. I eat as I like, when I like, whatever I like. I would openly encourage any woman to live as they like, wear as they like regardless of body shape. Considering my situation as a hereditary process, the body image bullying has been dealt with since the last 3 generations, therefore, by default I too ended up facing the same comments my mother or grandmother would have heard in their youth. I can't say for the previous generations, however this decade is much more logical and sensible enough to understand that everyone is different. Even when you categorised women in pear-shaped, almond shaped, boy-shaped, apple-shaped, plum-shaped, diamond-shaped,chair-shaped, table-shaped and any other absurd shape, everyone will still have unique features to them that they will sit and scrutinise, 'If it doesn't fit a category/stereotype, ITS A FLAW' as we have this policy very finely drilled into our heads.

People. Stop.

Stop overanalysing yourselves and others around you. Learn to accept people for who they are or what they are. May be the overweight girl can't shed kilos due to a hormonal issue or may be the skinny girl has great metabolism, it could be anything. We have to be sensitive before we let words just roll out of our tongue.

There's nothing wrong in being thin, What's wrong is the attitude that surround the word 'skinny' and the constant need to make a petite person feel guilty about their frame even when its entirely natural. In a parallel sense, there's no shame nor anything wrong in being plump either. It's just a disgusting effort to kill one's esteem and will do more harm than good if women themselves with go on criticising body image. ( SENSE OF SISTERHOOD! ) Yet, we still fall for this everyday.
The concept of accepting all shapes and sizes would be the greatest irony if 'Skinny b*tch has it easy' still flouts around with no end.

Be healthy and be happy, refrain from using unkind words like 'Real men love curves only dogs love bones' because we don't particularly exist to impress any man. If you have a problem with mine or any one else's figure, it's really your problem and is best advised to keep it to yourself. Also, vague exclamations like ' skinny women hangout only with skinny women' will only make an abysmally low impression of yourself. Everyone has an opinion, I get it.

On a side note, I am fully aware of how ridiculously rant-y this post is, nonetheless the sad issue had to be expressed since limits have not been clearly vindicated. From experience, it is known that at times you have to be blunt to shut the unnecessary running criticism and this instance is one of them.


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Book Review: Room by Emma Donoghue

Pages :  321

Read on : Kindle

Goodreads Rating : 3.96/5

Review: As if there was less misery in the world that I had to review such a book. The trigger, of course, was Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. Soon after I finish a book, I scan through Goodreads to see what the fellow bibliophiles have to say. All because I'm curious and also just to pick up points that I might have overlooked/missed.

When it comes to child abuse, Room by Emma Donoghue was a title tossed around by a bunch of people. Stated to be loosely inspired by the Fritzl case, Emma Donoghue's 'Room' was a book that made everyone sit up and notice the risk she had taken in publishing this work, which eventually lined up quite a few accolades and appraisals for her.

It didn't take me long to finish the novel. The story is about 5 year old, Jack who lives with his Ma in a room ever since his birth. From the bird's eye view, Room is where they are held captive for the last 7 years by Old Nick ever since she was abducted by him when she was 19 years old.

Caution: for all those who are familiar with my style of book reviews would know that spoiler-free is the way to be (Ha! Rhyme!). In this particular review, I'm afraid it will be hard to refrain (another rhyme!) from getting into the story in detail. You see, the plot is such that a discussion post-reading is quite impossible. It's a very strange case to us but when you look at it from a 5 year old's point of view, it makes complete sense.

Back to the story; Right, so after being held captive in a Room, a small shed in the backyard equipped with minimal facilities for their basic survival, Old Nick sexually abuses Ma regularly to the point where she got pregnant. Her one successful pregnancy is when she gave birth Jack and the only thing that she could offer to this child was herself in a Room that is the only world he would ever experience. So she thought.

Ma does everything in her power to protect Jack from Old Nick and has made him sleep in the wardrobe everyday. The only way she could shield him from Old Nick. Little does she know, that Jack has been counting the 'creaks of the bed' every single night. Heartbreaking to know that a child who knows no meaning of the occurrence is forced to endure that. 

Cut to the chase, Ma and Jack device an escape plan that works perfectly and takes them to safety. This where everything goes topsy turvy. Jack is born and raised in a Room with no experience of the real world. To him 'Outside' is almost as alien as a new planet is to a layman. So when Jack is taken to a safe facility with his mother where he meets new people, gets to eat as much as he likes and just be a child, it frightens him. His mother is grasping hungrily at the freedom that she could once only dream of and the fear of losing her is a constant worry for little Jack. 
Even though they do find an escape and are trying to have a better life, it's extremely difficult for Ma, Jack and the family around them. The understanding of the real world and it's functioning only makes Jack more withdrawn from people. Information overload for a child that lived all his life in a room which was his only world and for it to be snatched away seems cruel to him but absurd to us outsiders. Ma gets no better either. After enduring that ordeal in such a young age and her family considering her dead for all those years, her mental healthy begins to swing. 
Now look at it this way, life doesn't really get better for the two even after they leave the Room and that's what hurts us readers the most. We pray so hard that they escape and get the happily ever after they deserve but things gets more complicated than that. Life outside has moved on while they lived in a box and the changes aren't all a warm welcome. That's the real tragedy in this book. Even after the torture and confinement, Ma and Jack go back once again to visit Room before it gets demolished just for memories sake. Emma Donoghue is a genius for nailing every nook, every corner, every detail, every dust bunny, every piece of dirt, furniture, cloth, toy and much more in this book. 

What I was not a big fan of, was the narration. The entire book is written from 5 year old Jack's perspective which I felt was not well formulated. Five year olds don't talk that way nor can they make complete sense of body functions in the way the book describes it - The biggest flaw in the book. It's not just me who noticed this but other Goodreads Reviewers have expressed their concerns over the same. That's the risk Emma Donoghue tookas mentioned earlier.  This 'voice' that it was narrated in, also made the story a bit sleepy in certain areas. Not uninteresting but 'lets fast-forward a bit' kind of slow. 

In terms of recommendations, I wouldn't suggest this to everyone  since this is more of a book that presents a fictional case study instead of a leisurely read and knowing the fact that 'Room', is by no means, a happy book. If you have the courage to read more about child abuse or the possible threats that could be surrounding the young minds, then you can definitely put this in your TBR list somewhere.

Final Rating : 4/5

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Book Review: Carrie by Stephen King

Pages :  198

Read on : Kindle

Goodreads Rating : 3.88/5

Review:  I was recently mocked by a good friend for reading this book (playfully, of course). Stephen King has no shortage of fans globally and a good majority of people begin their reading journey with his works. Carrie being a turning point in his writing career. I do admit, that after hearing so much about Carrie as a popular fictional character in the literary world and watching the really cool trailers and viral prank videos (the cafe one in particular) curiosity got the better of me. 
Pretty much everyone existing on Earth will know what Carrie is all about (unless you're living on another planet) and I will not repeat the mundane. The devices that Stephen King uses to narrate her story is quite clever. Some from people who knew her, victims, towns folk and news stories. Despite being one of the most mentioned books in the 'Horror' genre, It didn't really terrify me due to the lack of details, I personally felt. I'm downloading the movie as we speak and am half expecting the visuals to do all the talking. 
However, what did terrify me was Carrie's overtly religious and insanely cray-cray momma who.... I'm just going to say it..... is completely batshit mental. I'd probably run away if I was Carrie. Perhaps this was the entire trigger in the film that explains Carrie White's budding telekinetic powers. What I don't understand is, there wasn't a whole of scenes depicting her exercising this power. She has to do a mental flex and objects can be manipulated to move as her will. I wanted to see more of that. To a point where her skills did seem borderline terrifying instead of going all out with a surge of power. 
Why was Carrie White mocked at school so miserably? Was it just because of her awkward introvert nature or was it the fact that her mother was mad into religion? I wish there was a little bit more depth to that or the characters around her. When I say depth, I mean I would love to have a closer look at how evil Chris and the girls were, than seeing just a mean prank and the revenge that followed.
May be I have really grown out of this phase and it's quite likely that adolescent me would have been frightened enough. I have read other books by Stephen King and somewhere somehow he does fall short in his storytelling.
I did draw one conclusion that those who do commit heinous crimes actually might come from a background of bullying or ill-treatment or deep misunderstandings that leads to a build up of angst and anger. That's just a thought I had.

Final Rating : 2/5

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