The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

 Trying to find a moment of peace and ways to soothe myself on a stressful day.  Read a bit.  Sipped my coffee.  A cute/fave corner of home.  A good book.  An old beloved bookmark.  ///Things that bring me comfort. ///

 There's nothing quite like a slow and sloth-like Saturday.  Here's what my day looked like:  Currently Reading: A memoir about love, war and marriage. I am a little bit in and quite intrigued.  New month.  New mug.  Also reading this very interesting book about overthinking and magical thinking. 

  Book: Spare  Author: Prince Harry  Ghostwriter: J. R. Moehringer  Publisher: Random House  Pages: 518 Read On: iPad  How Long it Took Me To Read: 8 hours or so, I read this in a day.  Review: I want to start this off by saying clearly that I am not a fan of Harry and Meghan. Not at all. I am also no Royal fan. Them and their shenanigans make no difference to my life. Yet for the last five or so years all of this noise about H and M and their mistreatment at the hands of the Windsors and of course the very problematic and cruel media and tabloids is something I couldn't tune out. Especially since 2020 and the infamous split in the Royal family, every single statement and conversation made by these two has somehow made it's way to me and I am sure a lot of others who weren't even seeking this info out.  It's like the damn Kardashians, I don't follow any of them, yet through IG I often know what they're up to. This whole Royal scandal is so...

 I am a fiction girl, through and through. Always have been and it's safe to say I always will be.  I do however try to read a little more non-fiction every year. Just to try something a little different and venture out of my comfort zone.  This year I did very good on said resolution to read more non-fiction here and there, I read more non-fiction than I normally do and I have really enjoyed mixing it up.  So here's my FAVOURITE NON-FICTION READS OF 2022:  Here we go in no particular order:  1. Sapiens, A Graphic History Vol. I by Yuval Noah Harari: I read this back in January and this is the book that everyone has read but I never got around to reading the..non-graphic version, so I figured I'd pick up the graphic novel version and I am glad I did and I loved this book and this style of story telling so much. Can't wait to read Vol. II at some point and if you haven't read this condensed lesson in human history and our beginnings, you absolutely must pic...

  Book: Normal Family  Author: Chrysta Bilton  Publisher: Little Brown & Co.  Pages:  336   Read On: iPad  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days  Plot Summary:   For most of her life, Chrysta Bilton was one member of a small, if dysfunctional, family of four. There was her sister, Kaitlyn, her hedonistic, glamorous, gay mum Debra, and Jeffrey, who Debra hand-picked, in an LA hairdressers, to be the father of her children. During Chrysta's unstable childhood, Debra struggled to keep the family afloat and Jeffrey wandered in and out of their lives. Then, in her twenties, Chrysta discovered that her father had secretly donated his sperm over 500 times - and that she had at least 35 other siblings. A Normal Family  is a captivating coming-of-age memoir about Chrysta's reckoning with the secrets both parents had carefully kept from her. Heartfelt, warm and funny, it's a story of embracing the family we have, in all the forms we fi...

 Hello Loves!  I have been soooo good about getting my wrap-ups  up on the last day of the month all of this year.  But June rolled around and threw my carefully maintained schedule for a toss. I had just come back home after being away for nearly two years and cleaning and sorting and organizing took over my life.  In fact, all of June was one thing after the other. Packing, planning and sending off boxes full of stuff to Bombay. I spent most of June anxious and on edge.  Ugh! Not my favourite.  I don't think I read a whole lot, most of my reading was done in a blur and in a bid to distract myself. There was one week when I was resting and I read one thriller after the other, because we had a rainy June back in the hometown. And rainy days are just meant for staying in bed and reading thrillers. I hoped to include some Pride Reads since it was Pride Month. And I wanted to read the books I was going to leave behind in the hometown.. June was an OK read...

  Book: Listen to Your Heart  Author: Ruskin Bond  Illustrator: Mihir Joglekar  Pages: 104 Publisher: Puffin India  How Long it Took Me to Read: A couple of hours  Plot Summary:   Shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Ruskin embarks on a literary journey and reaches England after charting unknown waters. Greeted by the uncertainties of a new city, he muses over his loneliness, switches jobs, falls in love, befriends the ocean and relentlessly chases a big dream! What follows next is the metamorphosis of a journal entry into a novel as we time-travel to the fascinating events that led to the making of his iconic book,  The Room on the Roof . Capturing memorable experiences from young Ruskin's life,  Listen to Your Heart  is an inspiration for aspiring young writers, a meditation on embracing fears, seizing every opportunity but most importantly living one's dreams. Things I Loved:   1. Reading Ruskin Bond feels like coming ho...

  Book: The Beauty of all my Days Author: Ruskin Bond  Publisher: Penguin India Pages: 200 pages Read: The hardback copy pictured above  Read in: 3 hours  Plot Summary:  So here I am, delving into the past like Monsieur Poirot, not to solve a mystery, but to try to understand some of the events that have helped define the sort of person I have become. Some of it, naturally, is in the genes; but much of it is in the environment, in the circumstances in which we grow up, in the people who come into our lives, even in the air we breathe. Had I grown up in London or Timbuktu, I would have been a different sort of person, I'm sure. My parents (and those before them) made me. But India made me too. The soil, the air, the wind, the rain, the trees, the grass, the proximity of people-all these things made me . . . Different things at different times helped to make the individual that is me, just as different things at different times helped to make you, just as they we...

 Hello Loves!  Saturday means talking about our weekend reads and watching. This weekend we are doing a bit of both and so let's just jump into it shall we?  First let me tell you what my sister has already read..she started her book first thing in the morning and as as of two hours ago has already finished it. She is a bit of a reading machine. She will go a whole week with no reading and read three books in one weekend. Today was a little bit like that for her. She finished her book in pretty much two sittings.  Here is the book she read.  Nine Lives by Peter Swanson:   Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke—until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine....

 Hello Loves!  I treated myself to some books back in June to celebrate my Blog turning Eight.  I got some books I've meant to read for a while and out of these five books I'v already read four, so this is both a haul and my thoughts on these reads.  Let's jump in.  1. The Heart Asks Pleasure First by Karuna Ezara Parikh: First up we have this gorgeous book that I had wanted to read since it came out last year. It sounded like everything I normally enjoy in a book, plus I have on occasional read some of the author's work and have really enjoyed her way with words.  Also I caved in and bought the tote designed to accompany this book by the folks over at The Burlap People (the author is a co-owner of the brand, fyi I love The Burlap People). Here is the tote.  Isn't it pretty?  OK, back to the book.  This book is essentially a tale of star crossed lovers. An Indian Girl and a Pakistani Boy meet in the UK and fall in love, knowing fairly well t...

 Hello Loves!  This weekend both my reading choice and my watching choices take me to Kerala.  I am neck deep in all things Malayalam Crime and I couldn't be happier. My sister and I both reading the same book right now, i.e. we are buddy reading.  A true crime book, a memoir of a Police Surgeon.  Dead Men Tell Tales by Dr. B. Umadathan: This book was on my radar for a while, it sounds amazing. A retired Police Surgeon talks of his glorious career and the many interesting cases he encountered. I am a little bit in at this point, around 33% and I am quite happy with the writing and the cases and his personal reminiscing.  Will talk more about it once I am done. I should hopefully be able to finish it this weekend.  As for what I am watching, I am strictly in the same-ish league.  Forensic:   This is streaming on Netflix and is a film full of twists and turns and follows a cop and her team trying to nab a serial killer on the loose. I watched ...

  Hello May!  May This Month Help and Heal All of Us.  We could all do with some goodness, kindness and hope in this horrible world.  Be Good May. Be Kind.  Work some magic and make things better again.  :)  I am happy you are here May.  I am hoping for better days.  I am starting this month with hope in my heart and some unexpected good weather.  We had a surprise hailstorm last night.  This morning we were left with remnants of the storm.  Our poor bougainvillea got rather battered.  :(  I am also making a TBR for May. I haven't made a TBR in ages and I felt like I needed to make one this month to give my reading a little bit more structure.   I finally caught up in my Book Journal after months and it felt good to look back on my reading of 2021 so far.  Main mood for May. Read.  Read.  Read. Tomorrow is Satyajit Ray's 100th birth anniversary.  I plan on reading his memoir on this happy...

Hello Loves!  Today I want to talk about my favourite non-fiction reads of 2020.  If you know me or have followed me for any amount of time, you'd probably have noticed that I am not a big non-fiction reader.  I would much rather read a work of fiction.  But ever now and then I read a bit of non-fiction and find myself very, very taken by it.  Here are my favourite Non-Fiction Reads for 2020. 1. Remnants of a Separation by Aanchal Malhotra: This book should be an essential read for people in our subcontinent. Seriously, everyone should read this book. It's brilliant and fantastic and I loved it so much. It is definitely something I'll re-read over and and over again and one that I will always recommend.   A full review can be found HERE.  2. Good Talk by Mira Jacob: A graphic memoir of what it means to be brown or black in today's America. It's a book about race, racism- both overt and micro-aggressions and identity. A mother's conversations with her...