“Sooner or later…one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.” ― Graham Greene, The Quiet American Brighton Rock was my first exposure to Graham Greene, and it wasn’t pleasant. I found it quite morbid, but the writing appealed to me. I chanced upon ‘The Quiet American’ while staying at a friend’s place and picked it up because it was a slim book and I could get through it in a few days.…
Vipula
Vipula
Vipula is a culture and travel blogger from Los Angeles, California. She completed her MBA and currently works full time in a Fortune 10 company. She is a avid reader and loves traveling around the Globe. You will find her tips and reviews on best travel destinations, books and movie/tv shows on Shades of Words.
As a reader, I stay away from the most recent bestsellers cause I am not always the biggest fan of modern prose. Once in a while, though, a book calls out to me, as did Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I saw it recommended on all my online reading apps, propped up on the local library shelves, and finally on my Netflix feed. I don’t know if this was a cross-platform marketing conspiracy,…
Shannon Chakraborty, the Hugo-nominated author of The Daevabad Trilogy, returns with a new fantasy series set in the pirate-infested waters of the 12th-century Arabian Sea. When the novel opens, Amina, a middle-aged woman, a sea captain in retirement (or hiding, if you prefer)is attempting a quiet staid life with her aged mother and young daughter. However, she can’t escape her fearsome reputation and adventure comes knocking on her door in the form of a rich,…
I am not entirely sure how I stumbled upon Who Rules The World (WRTW) except Netflix kept pushing this up on my recommendations list. Additionally, the male lead is extremely good looking (honestly have you seen how symmetrical Yang Yang’s face is?!). Since I’ve never watched a Chinese drama before and costume period fantasy is a favorite genre of mine, I decided to give it a try. So, what’s it about? The curtain opens on…
Having found the first season of The Witcher forgettable and generic fantasy fare (yes, even with Henry Cavill, I wasn’t planning to read the series. However, Season 2 came around and I was totally drawn into the lives of Geralt, Ciri & Yennefer. I felt invested in the myths, the relationships and this weird, monstrous world and wanted to know more. I started my Witcher journey with The Last Wish, the first novel of this…
Join us as we dive into this multi-award winning 2023 Korean drama on our podcast. With MCU in its phase 4, doling out content like its nobody’s business, it can be safe to say that we don’t need more superhero themed content. But then comes along Moving, and I find myself invested in this brilliantly scripted, produced and executed Korean drama about a bunch of reluctant superheroes. Based on the webtooon ‘Moving’, the show is…
Shannon Chakraborty returns to the world of Daevabad with The River of Silver, an anthology of about 15 stories, which continue to add layers and meaning to this political-magical-fantasy series. This is really for the fans of the trilogy, which I highly recommend. With these extra scenes, Shannon gives voice to characters which did not have their own POV in the main series. My personal favorites are the POVs for the Qahtani siblings, Muntadhir and…
Meet Gary, a child soldier. A policy spy in the Khalistan movement who single highhandedly gets dozens killed with his information. But he is not a patriot. The insurgents killed his parents and he is here for revenge. Meet Sehtab Singh, Gary’s self-appointed savior. He is the local police officer, who takes Gary under his wing and mentors him in spycraft as a CAT agent. A Ghalib quoting middle-aged, mild-mannered man, one doesn’t know what…