The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

  Hello October! Hello Durga Pujo!  Hello Festivity!  &  Hello Spooky Season!  I am happy you are back!  :)  October is a little bit of magic.  The festive seasons in India kicks off in all it's glory and Durga Pujo lights up my Bengali heart.  This year, I am hopeful and excited to actually step outside and see some of the pandals and Maa Durga.  I even have a few new clothes all lined up for Pujo.  :)  My reading too is shaped by both Durga Puja and Halloween.  So for the first half of the month and certainly during Pujo, I read some Bengali books and then its time to bring all the thriller and horror reads and going allll out with the Spooks.  I am so excited.  To kickstart my reading this month I've already started reading a creepy horror book.  This one.  The Girls are Never Gone:   The Conjuring  meets  Sadie  when seventeen-year-old podcaster Dare takes an internship in a ...

Hello!  For today's edition of Friday Favourites I want to share all of my most loved Women Writers.  I've been reading only Female Writers all of this month for #femmemarch and honestly I could do it all year round. Not to say that stories that come from men are not worthy, of course not. But there is something about women telling stories, especially character driven and stories about our lives that just shine so much more.  OK, so here are my favourite Women Writers.  1. Agatha Christie . All hail the Queen of Crime.  2. Jane Austen. My first love.  3. JK Rowling . I will forever be grateful for the magic of Harry Potter and in awe of her genius.  4. Jhumpa Lahiri. Her words just warm my very soul.  5. Enid Blyton . The beginning of my reading journey starts with her.  6. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Her books are familiar and make me homesick for Bengal.  7. Shashi Deshpande . Melancholic ...

Book: The Woman on the Orient Express Author: Lindsay Jane Ashford  Pages: 332 Read on: Kindle {via Kindle Unlimited} Read in: 3-4 hours  Publisher: Lake Union Publishing  Plot Summary:  Hoping to make a clean break from a fractured marriage, Agatha Christie boards the Orient Express in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she can’t neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey. Agatha isn’t the only passenger on board with secrets. Her cabinmate Katharine Keeling’s first marriage ended in tragedy, propelling her toward a second relationship mired in deceit.  Nancy Nelson—newly married but carrying another man’s child—is desperate to conceal the pregnancy and teeters on the brink of utter despair.  Each woman hides her past from the others, ferociously guarding her secrets. But as the train bound for the Middle East speeds down the track, the parallel courses of their live...

Book: Norwegian Wood Author: Haruki Murakami Pages: 296 I Read: The paperback copy pictured above I Read It In: 6 hours (This was a re-read for me and I was savouring every line!) Plot Summary:  Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.  Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.  As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood  takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love. Everything I LOVE about Norwegian Wood:  Le...

  Book: Paper Town Author: John Green Pages: 305 pages How Long it took me to Read: 1-2 days.  Plot Summary: Quentin Jacobson has been in love with his next door nieghbour Margo Roth Spiegleman pretty much his own life. They have grown up next to each other and used to be close friends when they were kids, but an incident makes them drift apart. Now close to graduating high school the former friends live in different worlds. Quentin is set to attend college in a few months and Margo is the popular girl with a long time boyfriend. Things come to head when one night, dressed as a ninja Margo crawls in Quentin's bedroom and asks him to come along for a night of adventure and vengeance.  After the night of getting even is over, Q thinks he is about to rekindle his friendship with Margo, only to find out that Margo has gone missing...she has run away from home and has left behind clues. Q is determined to find her and in the process finds out more about the g...