Heyer’s flawed yet deeply engaging regency romances are my personal palette cleanser. They are my go-to novels as I take a break from intense books or when trying to change genres. Language and character development satisfies the literary snob in me, while the plot line is fluffy enough to entertain over-worked, hassled mom who doesn’t have the time for complex storylines. About Frederica Frederica does not differ from her other works – predictable yet fun. …
Book Reviews
Like much of USA, I have been glued to the television and phone over the last few days. Afraid that this might become an unhealthy habit, I determined that a good distraction was in order. So here I am attempting to do a round-up of all the books I read in the last two months, with the hope I might pick another shortly. Kiddo started school and work picked up pace, so reading was SLOW. …
September is here, and we are heading towards the last quarter of this very strange year. I have never more adhered to the ‘one-day-at-a-time’ philosophy as I have in the last six months. And there appears to be no end in sight. The only upside (and I use that word extremely cautiously, as the world is literally dying from COVID), is that all this staying at home is forced us to lean into habits and …
Not entirely sure if this post qualifies for a ’round-up’ as I read only two books in October. I was travelling half-way across the world to India, busy visiting family and friends, and was jet-lagged for half that time – I could only squeeze in very limited reading. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan This one has made all major award circuits this year and it’s not hard to see why. Spanning several years and continent, …
As I was just a few weeks away from my trip to India and Istanbul, I was itching to read something to get me into the spirit of things. I started with Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, but the book wasn’t it. His Istanbul is black and white, always cold, and inhabited by jinns. I don’t know what it is with Pamuk and me. I love his writing; the prose is poetic, but I can never …
“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” ― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair Isn’t that a beautiful start? I fell head over heels in love with the novel the minute I read that opening sentence. However, as it often happens, it was easier to fall in love than to stay in love. So, What’s It About? …
Over the past one year, there are some mystery novels that I read and meant to blog about. However, they made so little an impression on me, either good or bad, that I never got around to reviewing them. I thought I would just mention them in a single blog post. Death At the Bar by Ngaio Marsh Marsh was a New Zealand writer, heavily inspired by Agatha Christie. I have read reviews of her …
Someone at a Distance is a heartbreaking story of an ordinary upper middle class British family is so gripping. I have read no other work by Dorothy Whipple, so am not aware of her style of narrative. I enjoyed this from a literary point of view, but I found the book oddly regressive to feminism. Let me start with the plot, which, as the blurb shows, is ‘deceptively simple’. The Norths are a happy, self-contained family …
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