Reading on a Rainy Day

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Showing posts from September, 2010

Month in Review - September 2010

Wow! We're near the end of 2010, and I still remember celebrating the X'mas of 2009! Before I know it, I will be sitting in the front yard of some antique house, with white hair and a wrinkled face. *shudder* I wish time slowed down! September has been the most diverse potpourri for me in all senses. It was my first month back at work, my first time ever in my own apartment, got my first car and my new dashing Droid X! Lots of new things, and that pretty much dried up my monetary resources. While I'm still enjoying my new life, I'm also trying to come to terms with my reduced reading time. And that's funny, because grad school is supposed to be busier. I was terribly worried about this, but for the last few days, I've been reading like crazy! I've realized that I just had to give myself time to adjust - after all, I literally moved a mountain over the past month. So, all I read this month was four books, of which one was a WOW read! Click on the i

Review: Stealing Lumby by Gail Fraser

Dana Porter is a famous painter whose most famous work, The Barns of Lumby , is stolen en route to a London museum. The owner of the painting, Norris Fiddler, is raising a lot of hue and cry, while at the same time, milking the theft for all its worth. Back in Lumby, home to the barns in the painting, the residents are thrust into a limelight they do not want, as reporters from across have set camp in town to glean more news. While the FBI and several detectives try to crack the global case of a stolen painting, Lumby has its own quirky mysteries. Town's octogenarian, Charlotte Ross, seems to have a strange connection to the barn and the painting. The flourishing rum sauce business of the monks of Saint Cross Abbey is the victim of a hostile takeover. Katie is puzzled by her missing goats and low goat milk yield on one end, and by her growing feelings for a reporter. Stealing Lumby is the second book in the Lumby series by Gail Fraser. (Read my review of the first book, The L

Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

I don't remember exactly what inspired me to pick the first Hunger Games book, who recommended it to me, or how come I chose to read it when I knew nothing about it. I read The Hunger Games last year, well before I even discovered book blogs, so I know it's not any book blog that introduced me to this series, although that can't be said for most of the books I read nowadays. After I read The Hunger Games , I was left with an odd sense of weirdness and worry, because I didn't like the book right away. How could I, when the book had so much violence and gory death descriptions? How could I say I loved a book where kids killed each other - some without any sense of guilt? How could I love a book with one of the most horrifying deaths ever (those who read this book will remember how the last tribute died)? I felt horribly nauseated and remember closing the book many times. But after thinking about the book for a few days, I understood the message of the book and what Su

It's Monday! What are you reading? -- September 27, 2010

This is a weekly event initially hosted by J. Kaye at J. Kaye's Book Blog , now by Sheila @ One Persons Journey through a world of Books , to celebrate what you are reading for the week as well as books completed the previous week. Books completed Zilch! And it's so funny because I joined a readathon just to finish my current reads. I mostly got bogged with The Passage , because I couldn't put it down. Then I got house-cleaning (you won't believe how messy I had been, and that always interferes with my concentration). Then my best friend, Piyush , came for the weekend, and we watched two movies - Wall Street (big nod for that!) and Eat, Pray, Love (ugh, I yawned through this movie). I spent most of second half of Sunday cleaning up my reader, so I feel much better about this week because I did take care of everything that had been keeping me from reading. Big Phew for that! News from over here Book n Movie review: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue M

Friday Finds -- September 24, 2010

Hosted by MizB at Should be reading , this meme asks you what great books did you hear about/discover this past week? Every week, I post three selections, and choose one among them as my pick to read, should I choose among the three books. I had three really tough choices this week. All three are books I really want to read, and it's not easy selecting one. I had to think about this all day, assume that I was at a bookstore with enough money to buy only one book, or that it's Christmas and Santa's asking me to choose one among the three. My, you shouldn't have to choose between books. Eventually, I had a decision. The Report by Jessica Francis Kane I am obsessed with books on tragedies and calamities. I know it's odd. I hate it that I like to read about humanity's darkest moments. And yet, it's not for the dark tone that I read them, because then I should enjoy horror too, which I don't. I think the dark moments are when people are r

Book ban's violent face

I started writing this post in a totally different direction from where it ended up. So I split it up into two posts and decided to go with the one that was raging in my head at the moment of writing. Honestly, the very idea that there are banned books seems so ridiculous to me. Fine, there are books you wouldn't want your 10-year old child to read or see included in the curriculum, but how long does one hope to keep the blindfolds on the child's eyes? That's not to say that they will not get the book one way or the other. Remember Dolores Umbridge and The Quibbler edition that she banned? Banning something doesn't really meet the eventual goal for controlling access, instead it usually has the opposite effect. What's needed is a healthy discussion of the offending topic. What if there is no avenue for that healthy discussion? In countries like the US, we have one side favoring the ban of a book and another side protesting it strongly. The book eith

Review: Animal Farm by George Orwell

Manor Farm is home to a bunch of downtrodden animals, who one day gather together to hear the speech of an esteemed colleague, Old Major, a boar, who calls them for a meeting in the barn. He tells them of a dream he had in which animals live together with no humans to rule over them. He then teaches them the song, The Beasts of England , which feature many times throughout the book. Inspired by his speech, three pigs, Snowball, Napoleon and Squealor make a plan to overthrow their master, Mr. Jones, which they manage to do. Then follows what usually follows a revolution - a means to reconstruct their lives, with plans to be self-sustaining and strong. Several rules are laid out and an order maintained. And of course, the bad decisions, power-control and political bad-mouthing also follow. I've heard so much about George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 , but both sounded very academic to me, which made me not want to pick them while I was doing my Masters. And I was kind

Book n Movie Review: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd/Gina Prince-Bythewood

Fourteen year old Lily Owens has been tormented by the same memory since she was four - the events of the afternoon her mother died. She stays with her harsh father, T. Ray, in a peach farm in South Carolina - a father who never acknowledges her birthday, doesn't buy her anything, and is nothing like a father should be. When he wants to punish her, he makes her kneel on grits for an hour. Her only real companion is the fierce, sometimes-outspoken, black woman, Rosaleen. Then something happens that prompts Lily to leave her father and her home to a place called Tiburon along with Rosaleen. There, she stays with three black beekeeping sisters, August, June and May, who provide such delightful company and eventually helps Lily get answers to the questions with which she arrived there. I had been putting off reading this book for so long because I knew nothing about it, and the bee-word was honestly a little repulsive. (I have serious issues with any kind of small creepy crawly

Kicking off the Fall Catch-Up Readathon

Just got back at home, and I'm itching to read for a change. During this time, I usually pick my laptop and spend hours browsing, and before I know it, *chime, chime*, it's time to sleep! I already have my posts for tomorrow ready. So the only distraction I'm going to have today and the rest of this week is my busy Google Reader, which is fine by me. I need a distraction anyways. If you want to join in, you can still do, as this runs all week. Just go to The True Book Addict here to sign up or here to put up your starting post. Since I'll be getting just around 4 hours each day, I'm not going to get too ambitious. I'll just read what suits me. I'm going to pick The Passage by Justin Cronin and alternate it with Stealing Lumby by Gail Fraser. Some time this week, I'll probably start Ulysses by James Joyce and Moloka'i by Alan Brennert. So there!