Amanda's Wedding

October and this month November were fully filled with surprising events :) I was trotting between Madurai and Chennai and now almost settled in a place.To me, every year, October is a month of joy and surprises and this year is no exception. I have totally slacked off on reading the last month :( And hence decided to read a novel and to my surprise, the book was something about Wedding.

Amanda's Wedding by Jenny Colgan is a fiendishly funny debut novel and is a romantic comedy like no other. This is an author who will have you howling with laughter one moment. Well, Amanda’s Wedding took me by surprise… and not in a good way. I was expecting the book to be funny as it is, after all, a book about friends trying to sabotage their ‘friend’s’ wedding. But it was just a whole mess that I was so bored reading it. If it wasn’t written by Jenny Colgan, I would not have finished it at all (and I was really bored).

Mel is a copywriter and lives in a flat with a quiet woman named Linda. Fran, on the other hand, is someone who has Mel’s best interests in mind and tries to keep her from making a ‘man mistake’ every time, but of course Mel doesn’t listen to her. She and Mel are best friends and she practically lives in Mel’s flat.
Amanda, who I cannot even call ‘poor’ despite the antics of the others against her, is a real piece of work. She is condescending to Mel and Fran, she’s so bossy, she is disrespectful to the family of her fiancée, Fraser, and she is just so…fake. While I am not saying she deserved what she got, no one deserves to be leg-shackled to someone like that. And Fraser seems so nice…although I still wonder how they got engaged in the first place. Really.

I thought Fran was nice, but in the end, I was just surprised. I mean, you do not do that to your best friend and expect to be immediately forgiven. That was just undoing several years’ worth of friendship for a guy you didn’t even love.
The only characters that I actually liked was Fraser and his younger brother, Angus. They both seem to be nice and they actually look out for each other.

The book was unexpected because it wasn’t what I was expecting of her. The love angle of Mel’s love life was just so confusing as well as the love lives of the other characters. It’s as if not one of them can get it right. Mel ends up with someone unexpected, Fran does something unexpected and ends up with someone unexpected as well, and Angus is…well, you’ll see.

My rating would be 3.5/5

Are you afraid of the DARK ?

There was a time when Sidney Sheldon ruled the roost of contemporary fiction. Books such as BLOODLINE, THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT, RAGE OF ANGELS and MASTER OF THE GAME were all over the place, with sales figures that resulted in self-perpetuating multiple paperback reprintings. 

Are You Afraid Of The Dark by Sidney Sheldon is a pretty confusing story and I am afraid that it’s not really my cup of tea. The book has 2 elements; either crime or a science gone wrong. Sidney Sheldon is called the 'Master of the Unexpected' as he never failed in keeping up with his fan's expectations, infact he always out did himself in his each book. Sadly for me 'Are you afraid of the dark'  was quite predictable and apparent. It was something you could call a typical Sheldon plot. The fact that I predicted each upcoming twist didn't put me off immediately. I forced myself to read the whole thing and kept reassuring myself that may be something new and thrilling pops up but that never happened and the book ended just like I thought so. But I must comment that Sidney Sheldon does write amazing power language and the power command of the characters in the book are really engaging.

Anyway, in my opinion, this is probably Sidney Sheldon’s worst work. However, do not misconstrue that to mean that the book isn’t worth reading; It is! It is fun, gripping and explores questions we should all be asking ourselves as human beings. It just doesn’t hold up to the standard I’ve set for Sheldon. But if you like Sidney’s form of writing, you can give it a try.

Welcome October :)

October is just around the corner. There are lots of things that I have to look forward to this month. Every year, it brings  in lots of surprises and hope this time it turns out to be the same :)

Had a great time reading "I have a dream" by Rashmi Bansal. The first thing that would attract you most  is its blue book cover and the fluffy white cloud, on which rests the book title. The aesthetics is in perfect sync with the title and concept that is “Dreams”. Quite naturally, the book is about one common dream that 20 social entrepreneurs have of transforming the world with their capabilities to something phenomenal. The stories are impressive because of the amazing grit and resolve that each one has shown to bring a change in the society. It's plain inspiring and makes you think, " What am I doing for the country? "

I am glad that someone out there is not as selfish as we are and is relentlessly working to bring a change in the society. There are IIT grads, IIM passouts and many many others who could have easily had a better life but chose to go down this path of social entrepreneurship.

The book also tells us that social entrepreneurship does not always mean no profits. You can always earn profits and yet be a driver of change in society. Some stories are so exceptionally impressive that you would feel the urge to quit job and do something similar. Why we don't do it, is a different topic altogether.

The bad part is it seems to have a more journalistic way of writing. Each story is more of an interview conducted by her. While there is nothing wrong in that approach, I feel it should be accompanied by immaculate writing that keeps the reader interested. This is where Rashmi fails. The writing does become dull at times, you'll have to push yourself to finish the book at times.

But it is not easy travelling around India, collecting the information, interviewing them and then penning it down to a book. And also making it a best seller. So, kudos for that. 

My rating for this book would be 3.5/5

Hmm..Can't wait for the awesome things going to happen in October. Hope it turns over a new leaf in my life.

If God was a Banker

This weekend was quite boring for me  and had very few choices left to explore. Hence I decided to read the novel “IF GOD WAS  A BANKER”  written by Ravi Subramanian, an alumnus from IIM Bangalore.  The story is of two bankers of New York International Bank (NYIB) who started their career together post their MBA from IIMs. But as they come from different family backgrounds, they have different levels of ethics and benevolence.

The story revolves around five characters viz Sundeep, an arrogant and overconfident graduate from IIM Ahmadabad; Swami, a modest and honest chap from IIM Bangalore; Kalpana a campus recruit for NYIB who goes on to marry Swami; Aditya, the first boss of Swami, Sundeep and Kalpana; Natasha, secretary of Aditya whom Sundeep gets married to.

The two of them Swami and Kalpana are hardworking and honest but the other guy Sundeep is a firm believer of shortcuts in success. All three of them achieve incredible success in their careers but as it always happens, especially in typical Indian imagination, the person who had taken wrong way to achieve success lands in a predicament.

The story subtly brings out some of the corporate issues of the like Glass Ceiling, sexual encounters at work place etc. The story is slightly engrossing in nature at the beginning where in it reminded the famous book “Five Point Someone” by Chetan Bhagat  and in some patches becomes slightly boring. The story sometimes seems to be inspired by Bollywood movies where an arrogant boss takes advantage of his women sub-ordinates belonging to middle class background.
Well, my rating for this novel would be 2/5

Life is what you make it

I ended up reading Preeti Shenoy's Life Is What You Make It.  Yes, one look at the front cover of Preeti Shenoy’s novel ‘Life is What You Make It’ and I fell madly in love with her, she made me poetic and I read the book in 3 hours. It is a well crafted and synchronized novel, in which emotions are intensely described.

Pride and Prejudice

Happy is the man who acquires reading. According to me, poor is the man who does not read, and empty is his life. Books are real treasures. I had totally slacked off on reading the past month. So I started with a book "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen which I got from one of my friends. I was initially reluctant to move on with this book as I had more interest towards non-fiction. But now, it has become one of my favourites. Inspite of youngster's natural attraction to Sidney Sheldon and sometimes even the light and foolish Archie's comics, Pride and Prejudice dominates my preferences. Not to forget Anne Frank's "The Diary Of a Young Girl" which always tops in my favourites list.

Connected the dots..:)

I didn't have much passion for writing or reading. I didn't have much patience to sit and read a novel. The passion for both started before a few months. Reading and writing, both are akin to meditation. My reading started from "The diary of a young girl". I got this book "connect the dots" by Rashmi Bansal from my sister. Anything  titled MBA or IIT would interest me a lot. The front cover had the lines " the inspiring stories of 20 entrepreneurs without an MBA....".That lured me a lot. Even the title was catchy. It is  a collection of mini biographies of people who have made it big, bitten by the entrepreneurship bug. The people who have made into this book are entrepreneurs without an MBA. The stories of these men quench our curiosity and really inspires us. Each story finely ends with a section “Advice to Young Entrepreneurs”. True to its title, every story unravels the dots which none of them  could have connected looking forward but makes a lot of sense when retrospected.

I have connected the dots....now I am very hungry..:)

Stay Hungry Stay foolish follows up.