The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

 Here’s what today has looked and felt like:  Setting up my journal for April.  Putting pen to paper.  Reading this incredible book, Stroke of Death by Shampa Roy. It’s a murder mystery set in Bengal in 1904 and in a small village in soon to he East Bengal. A Rajbari and its many inhabitants and a mystery that has me hooked. My weekend reading looks allll sorted!  Painted my nails 💅 with a touch of sparkle.  And this bookmark has my whole heart! 

 Today I woke up feeling a little sick.  So I just read, lay down and felt a little better. It's this darn weather, cold one day and hot the next.  Ugh.  Here are some glimmers from my day..  Coffee. Always bringing me comfort.  &  Finishing up my current read: Thorns in the Crown by Tanushree Poddar, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It's historical fiction set in India starting off in the 1920s till the 70s. Three people from very different backgrounds and how their lives and destinies are shaped in this tumultuous time.  I am planning on eating a simple salad for dinner and watching a spooky film.  Here's hoping tomorrow is better ♥

 Hello Loves!  Happy Makar Sankranti, Pongal and Bihu to everyone who celebrates.  We made ourselves some Puli Payesh and I ate some chikki to eat gud and speak sweetly for the rest of the year.  Hope you had a lovely festive day.  Here's what my day looked like:  I love chikki so much.  Need to remember that and eat more of it.  My planner sits cozy in this sleeve.  Sunkissed journals of mine.  A happy mess.  A corner of my bedroom.  My current read, which I am hoping to read more of tonight.  Cute little friends. 

 Hello Loves!  2024 is nearly over and I read some incredible books from around the world.  Truly, one of the best things about reading is the ability is to read, learn and spend time with people from a different culture than mine and walk a mile or two in their shoes see a whole other side of the world.  So here's my Top 10 Books from around the World. We have books from Argentina,Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Iran and Palestine.  So let's jump into it.  1. Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh: Set in Nigeria, this is a coming of age story of a young queer boy. We see his life unfold in the changing landscape of his country. Him being outed and the repercussions and pain and healing and finding himself and love in a world were the odds are stacked against him. I loved this book, even the parts that broke my heart. An incredibly well-written and stirring debut.  2. This Motherless Land by Nikki May: Set partially in Nigeria and in par...

  Book: The God of the Woods  Author: Liz Moore  Pages: 478  Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~5 hours  Plot Summary:  Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet. Things I Liked:  1. This book is full of retro summer vibes! It is set in a summer camp in 1975 and ha...

 Hello Loves!  This weekend finds me reading two pretty amazing books.  One a young adult coming of age story, set in two time periods. The other a collection of beautiful short stories set in New York City and LA.  I am enjoying both my reads very much and all I want to is read my books and hope for rain 🌧 this weekend.  Zen by Shabnam Minwalla is a mix of history, revolution, love and Mumbai ❤ I adore this world and it's people and a story set in my lovely city.  Table for Two by Amor Towles, I cannot believe it's taken me this long to read this author. His writing style is truly beautiful and simple and deep all at once. I especially love the stories set in New York. I am just starting off on the LA stories and looking forward to it. 

 Hello Loves!  It's Friday and it's time to share some random favourites from the week 😍 Let's gooooo...  My current read is making me all kinds of happy.  Shakchunni by Arnab Ray is a historical fiction horror novel, set in 1940s Bengal. The famine is sweeping across the land and people are suffering and dying. In a small village, the resident zamindar is thriving. But the threat of the terrifying Shakchunni looms large.  I am a 100 pages in and so far loving this mildly spooky book.  Hoping to read it over the weekend.  My TBR for April.  A host of books from my corner of the world, Bengal.  I am always excited for All Bengali Books in April and this line up makes excited for the rest of the month.  A favourite mug from this week, an old, favourite from Chumbak.  Holds the perfect amount of cold coffee for these hot days we've been having 🙃 Watched this movie this week and it's gory and scary and disturbing.  Pearl was unse...

Hello Loves!  Long time no book haul, but don't for a moment be thinking that I haven't been buying books, because Book Buying has been going quite well, especially in June. June is my Blog's Birthday Month. And this year my Blog turned 10 and I tend to celebrate by buying books. And this June I did buy myself a few books across the month, so more hauls are coming, I've just been slacking off. Let's start with this lot.  I went to The Crosswords Bookstore at Kemp's Corner one rainy evening. I went here after ages. I used to go here quite often a couple of years ago but with time, mainly owing to the lack of parking options and how congested this area gets, I stopped going there. But I meant to go here since they did this whole redesign and rejig and the shop looks so good. All giant windows and even their curation is so much better. There are so many kinds of books and so many different sorts of books apart from the regular bestsellers. I was so happy with how t...

Using the Holocaust as a metaphor for relationship/ marital problems is just wrong. No excuses can be made for the blatant insensitivity and cruelty of the makers of Bawaal in using one of the most brutal, despicable, horrible genocides in modern history as a metaphor for relationship troubles. No. Nope. This is not how you incorporate any traumatic historical event into a "love story."  If you want to learn more about the Holocaust and read the heart wrenching accounts of those who survived it and also some sensitive works of fiction inspired by the real events that took place in the German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka etc., then these 10 books are an absolute must-read.  1. Maus by Art Spielgelman is an absolute must-read if you want to know a survivor's account of what it was really like in Auschwitz. Spoiler alert, it wasn't at all like matrimonial troubles. If there is only one book that you'd like to read out of all our 10 recommendations, the...

  Book: The Mistress of Bhatia House Author: Sujata Massey  Pages: 420 Read: The paperback edition pictured above Read in: ~5 hours  Plot Summary:  Bombay, 1920s. At a lavish fundraiser party for the launch of a new women’s hospital, the grandson of Lord Bhatia, an influential aristocrat, is badly burned in an accident—but a young servant, Sunanda, rushes to save him. Instead of being lauded as a hero, Sunanda is dismissed from the household, and simultaneously, suspiciously charged with “child murder”—also known as abortion. Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female solicitor, cannot stand by while this heroine is mistreated and takes her on as a client. Perveen goes as far as inviting Sunanda to live with the Mistrys, as Sunanda’s family has put her out of the house in shame at her supposed crime. The Mistry home is full of tension, as Perveen’s sister-in-law, who has just given birth, is struggling with new motherhood, and Perveen’s father is less than happy to have a ...

Book: The Covenant of Water  Author: Abraham Verghese  Pages: 736  Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~8-9 hours, over two days  Plot Summary:  Spanning the years 1900 to 1977,  The Covenant of Water  follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere.  At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch - known as Big Ammachi - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself,  The Covenant of Water  is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human unde...

  Book: Homecoming  Author: Kate Morton  Pages: 558 Read on: Kindle  Read in: 5 hours  Plot Summary:  Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia.   Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for two decades, she now finds herself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in the hospital.  At Nora's house, Jess discovers a true crime book chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. It is only ...

Book: Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? Author: Crystal Smith Paul  Pages: 416   Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4.5 hours  Plot Summary:  When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions. A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could—and between a cheating fiancé and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty. The truth behind Kitty's ascent to stardom from her beginnings in the segregated South threatens to expose a web of unexpected family ties, debts owed, and debatable crimes that could, with one pull, unravel the all-American fabric of the St. John sisters and those closest to them. As Elise digs deeper...