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Showing posts from September, 2014

Book Haul: eBooks Lately.

Some of the eBooks I've acquired lately, most of them I am saving up for October, to read as part of my creepy books in October! I am so excited creepy/scary/thriller reads are some of my favourite types of books to read.  Rooms by Lauren  Oliver  Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld  Ruined by Paula Morris  Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Haley  Between the Spark and The Burn by April Genieve Tucholke  I am especially excited to read Rooms, which is a Gothic style horror story about a haunted house. Yay! Also Elizabeth is Missing sounds amazing. I read Between The Devil and The Deep Sea last year and I will eventually get to it's sequel, luckily this is a duology, so the story will wrap up in this book.  Happy Reading guys. 

Vignettes: Colours.

1. Crayons: I'll always love my colouring tools. Crayons are so fun and always a good is to be had when crayons are close by.  2. Red: A red book and Kit-Kat. Books and Candy are such a cute couple!  3. Painting: Some stripes and experiments with water colours.  4. I Choose To Be Happy!  5. Stickers: For ever and ever!  I am having a pretty chilled out Saturday, I made a yummy cup of Spiced Vanilla Latter and loved it. It will definitely be made numerous times during the winter time. Yay!  One of my mum's close friends passed way this evening, she had been ill for a long time but her death still came as surprise. Her death reminds me of how sudden life is, how nothing in this world is guaranteed. This family was planning for the festive season, buying new clothes and making plans, now all of that is just gone. It makes me want to do something that makes me happy every single day. Since tomorrow might never come arou...

Review: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Book: Wintergirls Author: Laurie Halse Anderson Pages: 278 How Long It Took Me To Read: 1 day Read on: My iPad Plot Summary:   “Dead girl walking”, the boys say in the halls. “Tell us your secret”, the girls whisper, one toilet to another. I am that girl. I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame. Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? When Cassie succumbs to the demons within, Lia feels she is being haunted by her friend’s restless spirit. In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the multiple-award-winning  Speak , Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia’s descent into the powerful vortex of anorexia, and her painful path toward recovery. General Thoughts: I have wanted to read a book by Halse Anderson for a while n...

Review: Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell.

Book: Rooftoppers Author: Katherine Rundell Pages: 276 How Long it Took Me To Read: 7 hours Read On: Paperback Plot Summary:   Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck which left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive, but that means still possible. You should never ignore a possible. So when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian threatening to send Sophie to an orphanage, she takes matters into her own hands and flees to Paris to look for her mother, starting with the only clue she has - the address of the cello maker. Evading the French authorities, she meets Matteo and his network of rooftoppers - urchins who live in the sky. Together they scour the city for Sophie's mother before she is caught and sent back to London, and most importa...

Book Haul: Books from Crossword Bookstore.

Two weeks ago, on a rainy evening, I found myself with an hour and a half at my disposal and a bookstore to browse through. :) Basically my idea of a perfect evening. Better still, I had a 200 rupee discount coupon sitting heavy in my wallet. :)  I bought these gorgeous books, some of them I had never heard of before but chanced upon them on the shelves and brought them home.  I am super excited about The Little Friend and of course the new Agatha Christie!  The Monogram Murders- Agatha Christie, Sophie Hannah  The Secret Children- Alison McQueen  The Little Friend- Donna Tartt  Collected Stories- Raja Rao  The Book of Fate- Parinoush Saniee Vivien's Heavenly Ice-Cream Shop- Abby Clements 

Vignettes: Mugs, Lights, Sky, Pages and Owls.

Pages of my sister's beautiful journal. Lined with gorgeous Washi tapes. My sister uses this journal as a daily planner and a place to jot down thoughts and draw doodles of our daily adventures.   A darling little pouch with darling little owls on it. It's from Accessorize, my sister had her eye on this baby for months and month and finally got it on sale. She uses it to keep her iPod and earphones in her handbag.   Two adorable mugs from Art n Light. They were a gift of love from one of my sister's BFF. We love, love, love them! So pretty!   Pretty lights in our living room.. and some art..    The gorgeous evening sky from my bedroom window. The colours of the evening sky are just brilliant.   Have a lovely Sunday, everyone! :)

Review: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Book: The Paying Guests Author: Sarah Waters Pages: 576 I Read: The Kindle version I Read it in: 7 hours (across two days) Plot Summary:  It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa — a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants — life is about to be transformed as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. With the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the “clerk class,” the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances’s life — or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. Things I Liked:  1. I liked the post-War (World War I) setting of this book. It ...

Book Haul: Books of September 2014, Part- II.

My second book haul of September.  I got all of these books on Flipkart. I got a nice mix of books. I finally treated myself to Why We Broke Up, a pretty book full of gorgeous illustrations and I stocked up on some Agatha Christie books. Plus the lovely new Murakami. All good things!  Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage- Haruki Murakami  Why We Broke Up- Daniel Handler and Moira Kelman  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society- Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows  Pippi Longstocking- Astrid Lindgreen  Death on the Nile- Agatha Christie  They Do It With Mirrors- Agatha Christie  I've already read 2/6 books and might read two more before the month is up. 

Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami.

Book: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Author: Haruki Murakami Translated By: Philip Gabriel Pages: 298 Read On: Hardback beauty pictures above. How Long It Took Me To Read: 2 days Plot Summary:  Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine', and Oumi, ‘blue sea', while the girls' names were Shirane, ‘white root', and Kurono, ‘black field'. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn’t want to see him, or talk to him, ever again. Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago. General Thoughts: I didn't pre-order this book, I thought I'd be sensible and wait for the paperbac...

Review: The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee (Man Booker Shortlist 2014)

Book: The Lives of Others Author: Neel Mukherjee Pages: 416 Read On: Hardback copy pictured above. How Long It Took Me To Read: 3 days. Plot Summary:   'Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It's time to find my own. Forgive me.' Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in extremist political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him, all he leaves behind before disappearing is this note . The ageing patriarch and matriarch of his family, the Ghoshes, preside over their large household, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. More than poisonous rivalries among siste...

Review: The Monogram Murders- A 'New' Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah (and Agatha Christie)

Book: The Monogram Murders Author: Sophie Hannah Pages: 373 I Read: The paperback pictured above (nice black and gold cover, right?) I Read It In: 5 hours (over 2 nights) Plot Summary:  Since the publication of her first novel in 1920, more than two billion copies of Agatha Christie’s books have been sold around the globe. Now, for the first time ever, the guardians of her legacy have approved a brand new novel featuring Dame Agatha’s most beloved creation, Hercule Poirot. ‘I’m a dead woman, or I shall be soon…’   Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered.  She is terrified – but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connecti...

Review: Dangerous Boys by Abigail Haas.

Book: Dangerous Boys Author: Abigail Haas Pages: 336 Read On: My Kindle How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 hours Plot Summary:   Three teens venture into the abandoned Monroe estate one night; hours later, only two emerge from the burning wreckage. Chloe drags one Reznick brother to safety, unconscious and bleeding; the other is left to burn, dead in the fire. But which brother survives? And is his death a tragic accident? Desperate self-defense? Or murder? Chloe is the only one with the answers. As the fire rages, and police and parents demand the truth, she struggles to piece together the story of how they got there-a story of jealousy, twisted passion, and the darkness that lurks behind even the most beautiful of faces.  General Thoughts: Last year, I read Dangerous Girls and absolutely loved it. Loved it. Read it in one sitting and adored it. It was deliciously twisted and dark and I loved that it drew upon some recent high-profile cases and made me ...