Best Reads of 2015

The year has been tumultuous for various reasons. And yet, sailing through turdy waves, I managed to read 50 books through the year. Few have been good, most have been lukewarm, and some have been great. A little glimpse of the best 5 (in no order) to usher in the new year. Hope you have a great bookish one!

Paper Towns by John Green – The tale of Margo and Quentin was quite gripping, getting predictable towards the end, but nonetheless it was chilling in some parts. Wouldn’t rate it higher than The Fault In Our Stars, though both are very different in nature. Paper Towns lacked a little something, I couldn’t figure out what it was exactly, but somehow Margo’s story disappointed me a little. It met my expectations but didn’t exceed them. Still, one of the best I’ve read this year. Hope to read all John Greens and David Levithans in 2016.

The Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – By far the best read this year. I love both her stories and the way she narrates them. There’s pain and love, all mixed up, and that’s what happens when both ends meet. The story about an orphaned girl and her search for destiny in a faraway land touches many chords. Korobi is a delicate yet strong girl, named after the Oleander flower, which is poisonous too. She isn’t, but her destiny is, in the story. Do read if you like complex human relationships.

The Guardians of the Halahala by Shatrujeet Nath – The fact I don’t read mythology or fantasy got nullified this year with the #1 Vikramaditya Trilogy. A very engaging read, taut storyline executed wonderfully. Kudos to the author for bringing back Vikramaditya in style. Just to know what happened next to the characters, many of us are waiting eagerly for the sequel.

The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan – Let’s say I like reading cross-cultural stories. Amy Tan is a hugely successful writer and she made her debut in my bookshelf this year. It was such an enriching experience to read about America and rural China in parallel plots, exploring various relationships. The story is laced with rural beliefs, superstitions, folklore, all but relevant in a later life too. Relationships between a Chinese immigrant mother and her her America raised daughter was heartwarming to say the least. I loved the book and next in line is The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan.

Noronari Katha by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay – I perhaps read more Bangla than any other books at any point of time. Can’t shy away from the vast and rich literature my language boasts of. One of my favourite writers is Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. Even though he’s an octogenarian, the stories he writes are relevant forever. Again a complex web of human relationships, mostly between a pair of man and woman, the most primitive relationship. It’s an endearing read that will leave you introspecting on your relationships.

Do tell me how many books you read this year and the ones you loved. Happy 2016.

Book Review : The Bestseller She Wrote

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Image Courtesy: BlogAdda

He was a bestseller… She wanted him to make her one.

Paperback king, Aditya Kapoor’s life is straight out of a modern man’s fantasy. His literary stardom is perfectly balanced by a loving wife and a spectacular career. With everything he touches turning to gold, Aditya is on a winning streak.

Shreya Kaushik is a student with a heart full of ambition. Young, beautiful, and reckless, Shreya speaks her mind and obsessively chases after what she wants. And what she wants is to be a bestselling author.

What happens when their worlds collide? Is it possible to love two people at the same time? Can real ambition come in the way of blind passion? Can trust once broken, be regained?

Master storyteller Ravi Subramanian, delves into the glitzy world of bestsellers and uncovers a risky dalliance between a superstar novelist and his alluring protégé.

The Bestseller She Wrote is a combustible cocktail of love, betrayal and redemption.

Review:

What do you expect when you pick up an overtly hyped book for review? Obviously, the best. When a bestseller author like Ravi Subramanian shifts gear from banking/finance/gaming to supposedly romance as a genre, readers have to be eager to know how he fares. With that much anticipation, I too wanted to know how differently or similarly he wrote this book. Romance-thrillers are picking up pace slowly in India and it’s not darn easy to balance both.

As I’m sure most of the readers are acquainted with the plot or blurb, the story is about an author (and a banker, there’s no respite from those jargon here too) and a fan who plots a diabolical scheme. Let me not get into spoilers, rather try the character sketch of the main characters. ‘Aditya Kapoor’ has drawn inspiration from a certain bestseller author, whom everyone loves. There are very blatant bits taken from his life to build the character, either with his permission or in plain humour. Shreya Kaushik is the one who probably gets more attention in the book as the ‘fan’ who becomes much more than that. I liked the way her character is shown evolving from her IIM days and the plot she schemes.

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Book Review : HiFi in Bollywood

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Image Courtesy: Amazon

An aspiring filmmaker. The dizzying heights of Bollywood and a strained father-son relationship.

Rayhan Arora’s long cherished dream is to be a filmmaker in the Hindi Film Industry but his formidable father has other plans a successful financial career in Corporate America and a marriage of convenience with Vanita, a medical student in the US.

In a final act of desperation, Rayhan abandons his promising life in California and secretly returns to Mumbai to work as an Assistant Director in Bollywood. The characters he encounters along the way become part of his journey of self-discovery – a self-proclaimed local goon with a penchant for acting; a powerful local politician who wants to marry Rayhan’s part-time domestic help, who in turn covets stardom; an angst-ridden, homosexual film director; ego-ridden film stars with twisted agendas; and the mysterious Viola who captures his heart.

HiFi in Bollywood takes the reader from the streets of Berkeley to the film studios of Mumbai; from red-light areas to police stations and from reality to dreams and back to reality again!

Review:

Being a lover of Bollywood, I hadn’t much choice but to read the book. As I’d grown up on a staple of Hindi movies, ‘Bollywood’ as we call it, seemed very alluring from a distance. Most of the audience looks only at the glamour and glitz of it, ever aspiring to be on big screen, rather than acknowledging the gruelling work that goes behind a film. Rishi Vohra, being an insider in Bollywood, decided to write this book, fictionalising parts of it, blending with some of his own experiences.

The story is of Rayhaan, it’s all about him actually. He struggles between his dreams of being a director of movies in Bollywood, but ends up with a Berkeley degree in Finance, due to his father. It is a struggle of father and son’s aspirations, not too uncommon in our country. Innumerable readers will instantly identify with Rayhaan, as they go through the same turmoil. I’ve met Graduate students in the USA, who perhaps wanted to be something else, but had to toil in a wrong choice of industry. Rayhaan is also set up with a girl of his father’s choice in California, and he ditches meeting her, instead landing up in Mumbai to pursue his dreams.

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