Tea & Dark Chocolate

  [ Note - This review will not contain names of any of the characters, because I don't trust myself to not reveal the plot of the story, and I want anyone who reads this review to actually read this book ] A tale of passionate love, till the end of time friendship, ruthless hatred and extreme sorrow, the words in Shadow of the Wind wove a beautiful world of the early nineties in my mind in Barcelona. What entirely captured my attention in the first few pages and let me read the first 20% of the book was the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The concept. The place. Its description. How little Daniel feels as he enters it. His transformation as he reads. This is what kept me going, and am glad I did. I can call this a love story and go on to talk about the love friends feel for each other, or what a father feels for his offspring, or what a boy will feel for a girl and how passionate each of these facets of love are, in this book. I can also call it an almost-horror story, with its

  After having finished the maximum number of books I’ve ever read in one year in 2011, I am all excited to see what 2012 will bring in. So this GoodReads challenge piqued my interest and opened up a world of books for me. These are the books I plan to read in 2012, as a part of this challenge. The hope is that they will also broaden my view on these countries and teach me a thing or two about their histories. So what if I cannot visit them, I can atleast be there in spirit! :) 1. Afghanistan : In the Sea there are Crocodiles 2. Albania : The Palace of Dreams 3. Algeria : The Lovers of Algeria 4. Argentina : Kiss of the Spider Woman The Aleph and Other Stories 5. Belize : Wanderlove 6. Bhutan : Married to Bhutan 7. Bosnia : Twice Born 8. Bostwana : Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide 9. Brazil : Gabriela Clove and Cinnamon 10. Bulgaria : The Making of June 11. Chile : Of Love and Shadows 12. China : The Good Earth Ten Gr

  Oh, what fun! Reading the second part of the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire in just around 5 hours... Super fun. Though not as good as the first book itself, and starting on a sloppy love story theme filled with sentimentality and all such emotional stuff, this book did good for itself. Its anyone's guess that Katniss will be safe, but I was dying to know if Peeta will live too, and if so, what would be the twist in the plot that will ensure this. Also, by the time I was done reading 60% of the book, I was also hoping that Finnick lives too, for himself, and for some drama between him and the audience in the third book. By now, Gale is beginning to be a little of a wimp with not much meat in his character, so I am guessing his is going to be a better role in the third book. I like how these books are progressing. Some drama including romance and family sentiment at the beginning, some meat about the fights and television program related stuff at about 30%, the real games

Suzanne Collins is no JK Rowling and Hunger games is no Harry potter, but it is close. Very close. In the way it holds it excitement to the story, Collins has used many details to build a believable  Panem with the arena akin to the Pandora of Avatar, at least in my imagination. As Collins said, this book is a true mix of a reality show and a war movie, both clubbed into one. All the flavours of a reality show like drama, adventure, romance, fights are explored, some staged and some real, and I felt like I was seeing an entire season of Bigg Boss :) Right from reading about Katniss's struggle to keep her family fed do the point when she only thinks about whether they got something to eat or not when she is fighting death in the arena I felt that Katniss's character is well etched. So is Peeta's. It evolves from being just the boy who gave the bread to the boy who has a crush on Katniss to the boy who camouflages himself so well that  he wards off death till he is rescued

  One of the best books I've read this year for sure. This has been in my To-Read list for days but when Vaish got me the hard copy of this book as a gift, and spoke highly of it,  I immediately picked it up. I was facing a kind of a reader’s block, and this book for sure jolted me out of it. This book is a portrayal of three strong characters, all women, who do not have anything significant to look forward to in their lives, except to bring a change to the circumstances they live in. Three strong characters who looked out for each other, and had a non-conformist attitude. Three women who were the definition of girlfriends. I’ve read Gone with the Wind and To kill a MockingBird, and have a fair idea on how bad it could have been for the African Americans to be living in a white man’s world, I’ve even compared it a bit to the Untouchability practised in India (even now in some remote areas), but what I read in this book made me think about the whole issue all over again. My hea

I’ve posted the recipe here and the pic itself here , but I am not able to get over the fact that am now making my favourite liqueur at home. :-D And the pic itself stole my heart. The Jug is right now my most favourite item in the kitchen, and I hold it in my hands atleast once a day to feel it. That’s how much I like it. :-D Doesn’t this pic in particular look like its ambrosia in a jug? With all that soft lighting in the background bokeh-ed out? And the shape of the jug itself ? Well… now you know why I love this!

  Hehehe… I know , he is no friend of mine in real life, but the way he writes the books makes one feel like they’ve known him for years… Love the way he has written this book. And when I was fiddling around with the 50 mm lens, the book was on the table and it was in such a perfect position that it had to be clicked…

  I was chatting with this friend, and telling her how its been 6 yrs that I’ve been married, and how the husband used to be a poet back then. Also that he is still a poet, just that the poetry has always been confined to one set of women – Anyone who is not a wife. In fact , he has been exercising all forms of art that I married him for, for this same set of women. Great, no? :) During this chat session, I remembered a blog post I wrote on the eve of my first anniversary, almost 5 yrs back. I read it, and chuckled at how I wrote all that I wrote, and how that is all true. Well, there is tonnes of mush in that post which I will cut back for your benefit, but then, well… even that mush part also is still true… ;-). Now that you’ve barfed enough, here is what I wrote 5 yrs back… Long ago, someone wrote a nice poem to woo me, something which no one did for me ever. Though I understood that the poet is obsessed with tans and tanned beauties, which I am obviously not, I obliged to his w

There is something about reading old journals or dairies and nostalgia, isn’t it? While they all take us on a good nostalgic trip, the journals also remind us of what we were back when we wrote them… Like how I am feeling right now as I am reading my journal (blog) which I wrote when I was 25…. All the songs I liked back then which I don’t like anymore, my opinions on many important things around which have obviously changed in all these  years, the things I was attached to and which do not mean a thing to me anymore, the kind of problems I had in life back then which look like child’s play now, the things that hurt me and made me cry don’t mean the same anymore… The 25-yr-old-me thought that - JKR would keep writing Harry Potter novels I would be valuing the colour-wire-bracelet that the best friend made for me in the Basic Electronics Lab when I was in college The transistor I stole from the Electronics lab would be with me forever, for all the great conversations I had with frien