The Review The Awakening is the story of Edna Pontellier, a terribly bored housewife. She has unquestioningly followed the path defined for her sex. She married young, had two beautiful children and at the ripe young age of twenty-eight, she discovered she has nothing to live for. That is until she meets Robert LeBraun, the handsome and kind son of their lodge owner at Grand Isle. She begins to feel the hints of infatuation which…
Book Reviews
Before I visit someplace I find reading something about it through travel guides, history books or simply novels really useful. You get a good sense of the historical and cultural context which deepens your travel experience. For a trip to Istanbul, my personal recommendations are- Fodor’s Istanbul’s 25 Best – A short travel guide that gives you the highlights on what to do Istanbul. Carry this along and you don’t really need your own itinerary.…
Winters are the perfect time to curl up in a stuffy chair and grab a glass of hot chocolate (or wine) and lose yourself in the pages of a good whodunnit. My personal favorite mystery novels are the ones with a closed room murder in a lavish country house somewhere, a fixed number of suspects and lots of motive! So basically, every other novel by Agatha Christie ? Since I am a big fan of…
As part of my Around the World in Books Reading Challenge, my pick for Albania was the Man Booker International Prize winning novel by Ismail Kadare. The General of the Dead Army is a dark and depressing work of fiction. It chronicles the journey of an Italian general who goes to Albania with an important mission. He and a priest travel across Albania exhuming bodies of dead Italian soldiers who died fighting in Albania during…
Spend this thanksgiving weekend cooking and binge watching the Harry Potter movies. At the end of the seventh movie, I decided to re-read the books. Although I have re-read all seven books several times, it really amazes me that these are still as engaging as when I first started with the series. In this post I will attempt to analyze the first book and why it works. After all, fantasy fiction genre has a lot…
Winter is here. As temperatures plummet across the northern hemisphere and people scurry inside warm houses, it is the perfect time to settle into that recliner, grab a cup of hot cocoa and read a book. What else are you going to do? (Yes, you can always binge watch Netflix, but is that what you really want to do with your life? What I read is determined by how my day was, what I am…
Marcus Didius Falco is a private informer and the protagonist of Lindsey Davis‘s mystery series set in Ancient Rome. Emperor Vespasian has come into power and good imperial agents are required to hide royal crimes, curb corruption and sniff out political scandals. This detective series starts with ‘The Silver Pigs‘ where Falco accidentally stumbles upon an imperial minting fraud. The investigation begins with the death of a Senator’s young and impressionable niece. Falco’s inquiry takes…
An inspired variation of the famous Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, Spinning Silver is a tale about a young, poor girl who learn to spin silver into gold and all the trouble of the world that brings her. There are fire demons and winter lords, not one but three strong female leads, dodgy romances and enough plot points to keep you interested.
