Top Reads

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets is one of those books that does really well on the book blogger circuit. It’s literary enough to catch a more discerning reader and sufficiently romantic to appeal to a more casual purveyor of books. The Plot Based in post-war Britain, this is a story of the friendship of three twenty-somethings – Penelope, Charlotte, and Henry. And that is just one layer of the story. Eva Rice transports the…

British murder mystery novels are my go-to comfort reads. There is something very genteel about them. There is no gore or loud action or twists and turns. The plot peels off in oniony layers. There is suspense but it’s never scary. As a reader, you can sip a cup of tea and breeze through a novel and engage your mind pleasantly for a few hours. Michael Innes’s Death at President’s lodging is the quintessential ‘closed…

I know what you are thinking, “Yet another mediocre fantasy-fiction trilogy? Do we really need more magical worlds?”! No, we don’t need more mediocre trilogies (this is anything but that). And yes, we always need more magical worlds! The City of Brass was one of my top reads in 2018. The 2019 sequel The Kingdom of Copper cemented my love for The Daevabad Trilogy. And I can’t wait for the third book – Empire of…

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…

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…

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…