The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

Book: The Shadows Author: Alex North Publisher: MacMillan Pages: 359 Read On: Kindle How Long it Took Me To Read: 6 hours (I could not, would not put it down.) Plot Summary:   Twenty-five years ago, troubled teenager Charlie Crabtree murdered his friend and classmate. For Paul Adams, it's a day he'll never forget. He's never forgiven himself for his part in what happened. He's never gone back home. But when his elderly mother has a fall, it's finally time to stop running. It's not long before things start to go wrong. A copycat killer has struck. Paul's mother insists there's something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds Paul of the most unsettling part of what awful day. The fact that afterwards, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again . . . Things I Liked: 1. I read The Whisper Man by Alex North last year and loved it. It was everything I expect in the thriller and then some. I can't believe I ...

Book: The Patient Author: Jasper Dewitt Pages: 225 Read On: Kindle How Long it Took Me Read: 6 hours with a couple of breaks. Plot Summary:   Parker, a young, overconfident psychiatrist new to his job at a mental asylum, miscalculates catastrophically when he undertakes curing a mysterious and profoundly dangerous patient. In a series of online posts, Parker H., a young psychiatrist, chronicles the harrowing account of his time working at a dreary mental hospital in New England. Through this internet message board, Parker hopes to communicate with the world his effort to cure one bewildering patient. We learn, as Parker did on his first day at the hospital, of the facility’s most difficult, profoundly dangerous case—a forty-year-old man who was originally admitted to the hospital at age six. This patient has no known diagnosis. His symptoms seem to evolve over time. Every person who has attempted to treat him has been driven to madness or suicide. Desperate and ...

Hello!  October was a long and lovely month.  It was full of festivity and joy and good tidings.  You were super lovely October.  And I read 12 books! Not bad at all!  :)  Hope your October was good too.  Let's see some of my favourites from October. Oh..I completely skipped listing my faves from August and September on the blog. I guess it completely skipped my mind and I didn't have that many things I loved in those months.  But now on to October... 1. Durga Pujo/// Of course this is my No. 1 favourite in the month of October. A Bengali's biggest festival. This year I went to some 12 pandals. Ate delicious food and spent some quality time with my family.  2. Favourite Book/// This was my favourite book bought and read in October. It made me delightfully happy.  3. Diwali/// The Festival of Lights neatly wrapped up the end of the month. Sparklers. Sweets. Rangoli. The best part...

Book: The House of Lost Souls Author: F.G. Cottam Pages: 343 I Read: The paperback copy pictured above I Read It In: 7 hours (across two days) Plot Summary: Just weeks after four students cross the threshold of the derelict Fischer House, one of them has committed suicide and three are descending into madness. To save his sister, one of the three, ex-soldier Nick Mason must join ranks with Paul Seaton- who visited the house a decade earlier and survived. But Paul is a troubled man, haunted by visions of an ordeal that even now threaten his own sanity. Desperate, Nick forces Paul to go back into the past, to the secret journal of beautiful photographer Pandora Gibson-Hoare, to a decadent gathering in the 1920s and to Klaus Fischer- master of the debauched proceedings and an unspeakable crime. What I Liked: Quick bullet points: The premise of the story was very interesting. Paul's mysterious encounter at the Fischer House, why his life was the way it was now, u...

Book: Sharp Objects Author: Gillian Flynn Pages: 349 Read On: Paperback How Long It Took Me To Read: 2 days Plot Summary:   Libby Day was just seven years old when her evidence put her fifteen-year-old brother behind bars. Since then, she had been drifting. But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared to before. Was the voice she heard her brother's? Ben was a misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm or is Libby deluding herself because she wants her brother back? She begins to realise that everyone in her family had something to hide that day... especially Ben. Now, twenty-four years later, the truth is going to be even harder to find. Who did massacre the Day family? General Thoughts: I read this book some two-three years ago, around the time Gone Girl came out and there was all this insane buzz about the author. I...

Book: Lamplight Author: Kankana Basu Pages: 200 Read On: Paperback How Long It Took Me To Read: 1 day Plot Summary:   The year is 1934. The picturesque town of Monghyr, in Bihar, lies devastated after a massive earthquake. The mansion of the Chattopadhyays an old aristocratic family continues to stand upright though a wall is cracking right down the middle. The members of the big joint family find their lives suddenly touched by the eerie and inexplicable. The ancient house has always had its share of creaks and quirks, but now strange incidents suddenly start occurring. General Thoughts: I read this book back in May. I saved up the review for Halloween. I randomly came across this book while browsing on Flipkart and something, well a lot of things about it drew me to it and I decided to give it a shot.  I read this book when I was battling the flu and I needed to read something that would cheer me up and for me nothing cheers me up like a good ghost st...

Book: Horns Author: Joe Hill Read On: iPad Pages: 368 How Long It Took Me To Read: 2 days Plot Summary:  Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples. At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real. Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it  all , and more—he ha...

Book: The Merciless  Author: Danielle Vega Pages: 278 Read On: My Kindle How Long It Took Me To Read: 1 day Plot Summary:   Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned Brooklyn Stevens sits in a pool of her own blood, tied up and gagged. No one outside of these dank basement walls knows she’s here. No one can hear her scream.   Sofia Flores knows she shouldn’t have gotten involved. When she befriended Riley, Grace, and Alexis on her first day at school, she admired them, with their perfect hair and their good-girl ways. They said they wanted to save Brooklyn. They wanted to help her. Sofia didn’t realize they believed Brooklyn was possessed.   Now, Riley and the girls are performing an exorcism on Brooklyn—but their idea of an exorcism is closer to torture than salvation. All Sofia wants is to get out of this house. But there is no way out. Sofia can’t go against the other girls . . . unless she wants to be next. . . . General Thoughts: I wanted ...

After my Book Buying madness in Feburary, I wanted to keep my book buying to a minimum. So I enforced a Book-Buying Ban...and I think I did quite well. I can't go cold turkey on books, it just won't happen! Also it might make me go crazy, crack and buy 30 books in retaliation! Eek! So I take my bans in moderation and with a pinch of humour.  I try to minimise my book buying. 6 books in all of this month..so far...19 days and 6 books. I don't know it seems rather impressive to me! I mean I am someone who buys 6 books in one go! So this is mighty great.  I once again bought 3 Modern Classics- I am really enjoying Modern Classics at the moment.  A short story collection by Neil Gaiman.  And of course another Sherlock book with the beautiful Benedict Cumberbatch on the cover! I mean I had to...no really...this is the how far I am in the Sherlock Holmes saga...so once I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I can read the rest of t...

Book: Frost Author: Marianna Baer Pages: 396 How Long It Took Me to Read: 2 days. Plot Summary:   Leena Thomas’s senior year at boarding school starts with a cruel shock: Frost House, the cozy Victorian dorm where she and her best friends live, has been assigned an unexpected roommate—eccentric Celeste Lazar. As classes get under way, strange happenings begin to bedevil Frost House: frames falling off walls, doors locking themselves, furniture toppling over. Celeste blames the housemates, convinced they want to scare her into leaving. And although Leena strives to be the peacekeeper, soon the eerie happenings in the dorm, an intense romance between Leena and Celeste’s brother, David, and the reawakening of childhood fears all push Leena to take increasingly desperate measures to feel safe. But does the threat lie with her new roommate, within Leena’s own mind…or in Frost House itself? General Thoughts and Review: I love boarding school stories. I guess anyone ...

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...