The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

Book: Ring Author: Koji Suzuki Pages: 282 Plot Summary:   A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure.   Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic--haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late--for everyone--assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.  General Thoughts: The Ring is one of my absolute horror films and I always knew it was based on a book but I never thought of reading this book till now. I don't know why it took me so long to get to ...

Book : Roots of Evil Author: Sarah Rayne Pages: 552 How Long it Took Me to read : 1 day. Plot Summary: Lucy Trent is used to having the legend of her glamorous grandmother unearthed from time to time—the infamous silent-screen actress, Lucretia von Wolff, whose life ended abruptly in a bizarre double murder and suicide at the Ashwood film studios in 1952. But when a body is found in the now-derelict studios, brutalized in a macabre echo of the 50-year-old case, disturbing facts about the past begin to emerge—facts that point back to the eerie tale of the child known as Alraune. The child named after Lucretia’s most famous film. The child who may never have existed at all. In the ensuing murder investigation, Lucy is to discover the truth about her family’s dark history—a history that spans the glittering concert halls of 1920s Vienna to the bleak environs of wartime Auschwitz. General Thoughts and Review: It was 2010, I used to live in Bangalore the...

Book: Rebecca Author: Daphne Du Maurier Pages: 441 How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days. Plot Summary: Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamourous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs Danvers... Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity. General Thoughts and Review: Unless you’ve lived under a giant planet-sized rock...

Book: The Historian Author: Elizabeth Kostova Pages: 752 Plot Summary:  To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history… Late one night, exploring her father’s library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters addressed ominously to ‘My dear and unfortunate successor’. Her discovery plunges her into a world she never dreamed of – a labyrinth where the secrets of her father’s past and her mother’s mysterious fate connect to an evil hidden in the depths of history. General Thoughts: I read The Historian  in 2004-2005 or thereabouts, so I don't remember the exact  details, but I do remember LOVING this book! The Historian  is a mix of gothic, detective, adventure, travelogue and thriller genres and for me that was one of the reasons for loving it as much as I did. The other reason being the way the book moved effortlessly through time- events occur in the 1930s, 1950s and the 1970s and we also get to learn about Vlad Tepes, a 1...

Book: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Author: Ransom Riggs Pages: 368 How Long it Took Me to Read: 1 day (I was hooked from the word go!) Plot Summary: A mysterious island.

   An abandoned orphanage.

   A strange collection of very curious photographs.

   It all waits to be discovered in  Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children , an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.  General...

  Book: Help for the Haunted Author: John Searles Pages: 395 How Long it Took Me to Read: 3-4 hours Plot Summary: It begins with a call in the middle of snowy February evening. Lying in her bed, young Sylvie Mason overhears her parents on the phone across the hall. This is not the first late-night call they have received, since her mother and father have an uncommon occupation, helping "haunted souls" find peace. And yet, something in Sylvie senses that this call is different than the rest, especially when they are lured to the old church on the outskirts of town. Once there, her parents disappear, one after the other, behind the church's red door, leaving Sylvie alone in the car. Not long after, she drifts off to sleep only to wake to the sound of gunfire. Nearly a year later, we meet Sylvie again struggling with the loss of her parents, and living in the care of her older sister, who may be to blame for what happened the previous winter...

  Book: Night Film Author : Marisa Pessl Pages: 765 (I read an eBook and my version had these many pages! The hardback version has 602 pages I think.) How Long it Took Me to Read: 1 day- I was hooked and couldn't bear to put this book down! Plot Summary: On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova—a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years. For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himsel...

Book: The 13 Problems Author: Agatha Christie Pages: 315 How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 hours Plot Summary: A group of people gather for a post dinner chat and in order to pass the evening pleasantly, each member of the group tells a mystery story and the rest of the group has to guess the culprit. As each story is told, no matter how grisly or perplexing, it's the old biddy knitting quietly in the corner that guesses the perpetrator and his/motive accurately. This old lady is none other than Miss Jane Marple. General Thoughts and Review:  I have discovered Agatha Christie books with a vengeance this year. Prior to this year, my only exposure to Christie's work were the TV adaptations of her books. I LOVE the Poirot and the Marple TV shows and have watched and re-watched them over the years. And since these TV shows are extremely true-to-text it didn't make sense for me to read the books, or so I foolishly thought! Late l...