The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

  1. Colours to brighten things up.  2. Some Instax Magic and Memories.  3. Bookmarks.  4. Books and Brooches.  5. Sunkissed Terrace Reading and Bookmarks that Spark Joy. 

Hello!  Do weekends even count anymore?  Most days I wake up not knowing what day it is, it is only when I am journaling or using my planner do I even glance at dates.  Well!  I guess we are all in the same boat.  Even though everyday is now like the weekend, we like to do a little something special to commemorate the weekends.  A break from washing clothes.  Cooking something special.  Afternoon naps.  &  Reading something good.  This is what my sister and I have been reading this weekend...well mostly today, yesterday was a bit of a TV and film day. Today has been a day full of reading.  My Mother's Lover and Other Stories by Sumana Roy: I bought this book and two other yesterday since Bloomsbury India is having a weekend long sale on select titles. This one was on my wish-list since it cam out a couple of months ago. A collection of short stories, some set in my corner of the world ...

Book: The Yellow Birds Author: Kevin Powers Pages: 226   (around 125 pages on my iPad) I Read It On: My iPad I Read It In: 3 hours Plot Summary:  A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq,  The Yellow Birds  is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay alive. "The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightma...

Book: A Tale for the Time Being Author: Ruth Ozeki Pages: 432 I Read: The paperback I read it in: 8-9 hours, across 2 days Plot Summary:  In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.   Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum ph...

Book: Burial Rites Author: Hannah Kent Pages: 322 I read it on: My Kindle I read it in: 8-9 hours across 2 days Plot Summary:  Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.   Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.  Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others? What I Liked: I loved the setting of this novel. Early 19th century Iceland- stark, bleak an...

Book: The Butterfly Sister Author: Amy Gail Hansen Pages: 360 Time taken to read: 6 hours over a couple of days Plot Summary:  Eight months after dropping out of Tarble, an all-women's college, twenty-two-year-old Ruby Rousseau is still haunted by the memories of her senior year-a year marred by an affair with her English professor and a deep depression that not only caused her to question her own sanity but prompted a failed suicide attempt. And then a mysterious paisley print suitcase arrives, bearing Ruby's name and address on the tag. When Ruby tries to return the luggage to its rightful owner, Beth Richards, her dorm mate at Tarble, she learns that Beth disappeared two days earlier, and the suitcase is the only tangible evidence as to her whereabouts. Consumed by the mystery of the missing girl and the contents of the luggage-a tattered copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, the book on which Ruby based her senior thesis, and which she believes...

Book: The Language of Flowers Author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh Pages: 322 Time It Took Me To Read: 3 hours   Plot Summary:  The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. Soon a local florist discovers her talents, and Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But a mysterious vendor at the flower market has her questioning what’s been missing in her life, and when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, s...

Book: I Capture the Castle Author: Dodie Smith Pages: 566 Time Taken to Read: 9 hours across two days Plot Summary:  ' I write this sitting in the kitchen sink...' This is the diary of Cassandra Mortmain, which tells of her extraordinary family and their crumbling castle home. Cassandra's father was once a famous writer, but now he mainly reads detective novels while his family slide into genteel poverty. Her sister Rose is bored and beautiful, and desperate to marry riches. Their step-mother Topaz has habit of striding through the countryside wearing only her wellington boots. But all their lives will be soon be transformed by the arrival of new neighbours from America, and Cassandra finds herself falling in love... What I Liked: I loved the Mortmain family and their crazy, slightly off-beat life in the giant, falling-apart castle. The Mortmains don't have any money- in fact, things are so bad that they take money from their maid's son- Stephen- to ...

Book: The Light Between Oceans Author: M.L. Stedman Pages: 343 Plot Summary:   After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.   Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgement, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded tha...

Book: I am the Messenger Author: Markus Zusak Pages: 360 Time it took me to read: 3 hours   Plot Summary:  Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first ace arrives in the mail with what looks like three addresses. What does Ed need to do with them? Does he need to go check out those addresses? But then what? So, Ed goes and looks at each of the addresses mentioned in the card.   That's when Ed becomes the messenger. Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission? Characters: There is Ed, of course. 19, laid back, lost and confused. He spends his days, illegally, driving a cab and spe...

Book: The House of Silk Author: Anthony Horowitz Pages: 389 Time it took me read: 2 days Plot Summary: Sherlock and Dr. Watson are back! And this time they face one of their toughest challenges ever. The book blurb says- It is November 1890 and London is gripped by a merciless winter. Holmes and Watson are enjoying tea by the fireplace when an agitated gentleman arrives unannounced at 221B Baker Street. He begs Holmes for help, telling the unnerving story of a scar-faced man with piercing eyes who has stalked him in recent weeks. Intrigued, Holmes and Watson find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events, stretching from the gas-lit streets of London to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston and the mysterious 'House of Silk'.. The story starts with an art dealer- Edward Carstairs- who comes asking for help as he is being stalked by a supposed member of the Boston (Irish) mob. 'The Flat Cap' case is what Watson refe...

Book: The Cuckoo's Calling Author: J.K. Rowling written under the pen name of Robert Galbraith Pages: 509 How Long It Took Me to Read: 2 days. Plot Summary:  On a cold, snowy London winter night, beautiful and successful supermodel, Lula Landry, dives off her penthouse balcony to a sticky end. Her closest friends cannot believe that Lula, who sounded excited and happy earlier that evening, could ever take her own life even though she had battled drug abuse in the past and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. More than anyone else, Lula's brother- John Bristow- simply cannot believe that his sister would take her own life just when she had signed a multi-million dollar modelling contract with a top designer that could jettison her career to even greater heights. It is armed with this conviction that John reaches out to a down-on-his luck private detective- Cormoran Strike. Cormoran Strike is an ex-military man, who had served with the Royal Military Police and ...

Book: The Round House Author: Louise Erdrich Pages: 321 How long it took me to read: 2 days Plot Summary: The Round House is a story based in a North Dakota Native American Reservation in the late 1980s. The voice of the book is a 13-year old boy called Joe, who lives with his parents on the Reservation. His father is a Native American judge and his mother works with the Reservation's genealogy department. The story starts with Joe and his father pulling out seedlings out of the foundation of their house during Joe's summer break. While father and son are de-weeding their home's foundation, Joe's mother gets brutally raped near the Reservation's, now defunct, ceremonial structure, called The Round House. What is also interesting about the Round House is that it falls smack in the middle of Native, State and Federal land, basically, making it a no-man's land legislation-wise. This presents challenges in the investigative process as everyone and no one...

Book: Gone Girl Author: Gillian Flynn Pages: 432 How long it took me to read: 2 days Plot Summary: Amy and Nick Dunne, both out-of-work journalists/writers, who used to live in New York, are making a fresh go of their marriage in Nick's hometown of North Carthage, Missouri.  Things seem alright in their marriage- to an outsider- but then one summer morning- on the day of Nick and Amy's fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne vanishes. As the cops and the media start hounding Nick and suspecting him of doing away with Amy, the true story of their marriage unfolds via Amy's diary and Nick's recollections. So, basically, this book has all the makings of a great psychological thriller- evasive husband who is having an affair with a younger woman, beautiful, rich and intelligent wife who is missing under suspicious circumstances and a small town that is agog with curiosity and excitement and are all but openly blaming Nick for doing away with Amy. But is Amy really...

Hello, hello! This is Debs- the sister- back with a Sunday feature called 'Sister Sundays' where I talk about some of the recent books that I enjoyed reading. :) Hope you enjoy and find a new book/author to read! :) Book: The Sense of an Ending Author: Julian Barnes Pages: 150 How long it took me to read: 2-3 hours. Would have taken me even less time but this book makes you think and so, I set it down a few times to do just that. Plot Summary: Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at high school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, the boys navigated the final year at high school together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Adrian Finn was a little too serious compared to the rest of them, but they were close friends nevertheless. At the end of high school, the boys decided to stay friends for life... The book is set several years later, when Tony is almost retired, divorced and leads a relatively quiet and peaceful life. He is at peace with ...