The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

  Hello Loves!  Can you even believe November is here?  November always feels like it's time to wind down and rest and get ready for the slower and brighter months of the year. We prepare for Diwali and get our homes in order and then celebrate the festival of lights.  I am always happy when November rolls around. It's always a month for joy and love. It's my sister's birthday and we try to do little things we enjoy all month long.  Eat good food.  Go to her favourite places.  Watch her favourite films.  Read some good books.  I am so happy November is here again.  This November I am participating in NaNoWriMo. Which is a month long writing challenge, the goal is to write a novel in a month. Now it could be something you are already working on or it could be an entirely new thing. I do have some half-written projects that I could work on but I am choosing to focus something new and flesh out and work on an idea that I've had since 2021. ...

 Hello Loves!  How is this weekend treating you?  I hope you are home, safe and don't have a fever.  :(  It's awful starting this new year under the cloud of another wave coming at us.  I just want all this nonsense to be over and some version of our normal lives to come back, but till that magical days happens we got just hunker down and do what we can.  Me, I am journaling like no one's business and reading...not as much as I'd like you but enough.  Here are my current reads.  One is a re-read of a favourite author and the other is a beloved children's classic.  Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri: Needed some Lahiri magic in my life this month and begin the year with her words and writing. Picked this one up, I don't think I've read it more than twice in my life and some bits of it initially felt a little new but as I am reading it and making my way through the stories, so much of it is coming back. I am currently about 38% through a...

 Hello Loves!  Today let's look at some amazing literary fiction reads of mine from 2021. Some amazing books you need to read! And all of these books, in spite of being Literary Fiction they are all very, very accessible and very easy to read and love.  Let's just jump in shall we?  1. The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai: This book just...broke my heart and these people, these characters just held my heart and will always stay with me. So so good. Seriously this might be the best thing I read all year.  Set in Vietnam  for nearly a century this powerful novel is a family saga and a swift lesson in Vietnamese history and everything they've had to survive. I am so so so happy I read this book and  I implore you to pick it up if you haven't already. This is something I will definitely re-read in the future. Absolutely luminous and amazing! But go in knowing there will be tears involved.  2. Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri: I mean..of course Lahi...

  Book: Whereabouts  Author: Jhumpa Lahiri  Publisher: Penguin  Pages: 176  Read On: Kindle  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days  Plot Summary:   Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father's untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and "him," a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transforma...

  Hello April!  Hello Bengali New Year!  Hello Summer!  Hello Reading Bengali Books and Authors all month long!  I am so excited April is here.  A month of reading from my corner of the world. Doing my annual #AllBengaliBooksinApril where I celebrate all things Bangla and read books written originally in Bengali and the works of Bengali writers.  My goals for this month are simple:  Read good books.  Journal.  Be creative.  Hopefully writing a little bit. Finish a story I've been working on and getting it out in the world.  Maybe go for a little road trip.  :)  Oh and read Jhumpa Lahiri's new book. I am so excited for it.  To kickstart my reading of Bengali books, I have started with an old favourite.  The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri:   Join Ashima in her journey through complex Indian situations  Namesake is the brainchild of Jhumpa Lahiri. The story unfolds with Ashima’s grandmother coming to know ...

  Hello March!  Hello Spring!  Hello Holi!  Hello Flowers!  :)  I am hoping and praying and wishing that this March is leaps and oodles better than the last one.  I am hoping for good reads, slow days, maybe some outing (though I think I've forgotten what it's like to go out and meet people tbh).  Some Journaling.  Art Journaling.  Colouring.  Being.  & Reading More Women and Only Women writers for #FemmeMarch.  With that goal in mind, I have started my month with one of my favourites.  Re-reading one, if not my most loved books ever.  I have read and re-read this a whole bunch of times and each time I come back a little more moved and stirred and in awe of this world and Jhumpa Lahiri's magic.  You Will be Fine.  :)  I hope we are all fine and well this month.  Bookmark from Tanuka Draws.  Seemed apt for this month and this book. 

 Hello Loves!  Today I want to share my first book haul of 2021.  And it's a haul of some of my favourite books ever!  Re-purchases of my two favourite books.  Jhumpa Lahiri is one of my favourite writers in the whole wide world. Her books bring me joy and when I first read her books they changed my life. I read her books when I was a teenager and they took my breathe away. Her stories, her worlds and her people were deeply familiar and the kinds that I liked and love returning to.  I will always read anything she writes and then read it over again for good measure.  I have always hated the edition of Interpretor of Maladies that I have. LOVE the book, hate the edition. And I've always wanted to get a beautiful edition.  So this year I did just that.  Got two of my favourite books in beautiful editions.  I cannot wait to re-read these beauties.  The Namesake I have in a gorgeous American floppy edition, you know the ones that open u...