a hot cup of pleasure

Theme Thursday: Eyes

2012-02-04T17:36:00.000+05:30

Bev @ My Reader's Block, participates regularly in Theme Thursday meme. This time I decided to do so too.

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event, hosted by Reading between pages, that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)

This week’s theme is very related to the eye – any action that you do with your eye.

SEE
WINK, VISION, ROLL etc

Here's mine:

The most remarkable feature of Mrs. Thrawn's face was her eyes. They were light hazel, luminous, compelling eyes, and as Ivy Lexton advanced rather timidly towards her they became dilated, as if with a sudden shock of gripping, overwhelming surprise.

(The Story of Ivy by Belloc Lowndes, 17)

Favourite Crime Read

2012-02-02T06:27:00.000+05:30

Kerrie @Mysteries in Paradise has started a new meme in which one picks one's favourite crime read of the month.

Well, I read four novels last month, all mysteries, but my pick is A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler, first published in 1939.

January: the month that was

2012-02-02T05:41:00.000+05:30

Taking a cue from Bev @ My Reader's Block who does a monthly wrap-up, I too have decided to be a little more organized in keeping a track of my reading and the progress in various challenges etc.

So, January is over. It's hard to believe that the first month of the new year has just flown by. I read four books:

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
The Slippery Staircase by E.C.R Lorac
The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl. (Review pending).

I also read 100 pages of the mammoth Drood.

Took part in two events: The Charles Dickens Month and A Winter's Respite Read-a-thon. Enjoyed both.

Made progress in a few challenges but right now the road is long....

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The image at the top is by Anusorn P nachol @freedigitalphotos.net

Review: The Slippery Staircase by E.C.R Lorac

2012-02-01T16:21:00.000+05:30

When Caird's housekeeper showed his visitor to the door a few moments later, the old actor stood and listened as Flemming's footsteps died away beyond the closed door. He had turned to the right, towards the staircase which led to the upper part of the house, not to the left, towards the descending flight.

Caird shrugged his shoulders in the manner of one who acts, even when he is alone.

"Foolish fellow, foolish fellow! At least I warned him."

And outside the rain fell steadily.

Martia Vannery's parties are the talk of the town. Daughter of the renowned painter (and devil incarnate) Gabriel Vannery, Martia has returned from Paris after the death of her father. Inheriting the house where she had spent a miserable childhood, she promptly converts it into flats, keeping the lower portion for herself and hosting lavish parties in her father's studio.

One person who is dying to be invited to these parties is the snoop, Elroy Flemming. Always looking for cheap news meant to titillate, Flemming wants an entry into the Regency style building which houses so many interesting individuals. The first floor is owned by Waller Caird, a retired stage actor; the second by a bit-player actress Thelma Romney whose husband had died in mysterious circumstances (drug overdose???); the top floor by the Byrands, Valetta and Anton, whose book Gangways, is a huge bestseller.

Somehow caging an invitation, Flemming becomes a fly on the wall, listening to the gossip flowing freely round him. He also strikes up an acquaintance with an enigmatic girl, Juliet Romney, who volunteers to take him to the top floor and introduce him to the Byrands. Flemming cannot believe his luck but as he starts ascending the massive staircase that joins all the floors of the house, he has his first misgiving:

Flemming looked up at her, and into his cautious trivial mind came a feeling of unease. There was something dramatic in her poise, in the slender, tense figure, and the rebellious discontented face. Those vivid blue eyes under their dark pencilled brows, the line of close-shut, obstinate lips, the gesture of long, red-nailed fingers, it was an actresses' pose and expression, but Flemming preferred drama on the other side of the footlights, or at least in the company of his fellows. He suddenly wondered why he had left the crowded studio to go on what he suspected was a wild-goose chase with Juliet Romney.

He should have remained in the party because at the top of the stairs he not only finds the corpse of an old lady but he is also accused of killing her by a hysterical Juliet Romney! So much for his scoop...

But was the old lady, who turns out to be Fanny Seely and who had been living in the attic at the top, really murdered? Or did she just lose her balance and slip down the slippery staircase? Had she been pushed from above, there would have been footprints on the stairs, right? But wait a minute, wasn't there another old lady who had slipped down the stairs and died and wasn't she the sister of the deceased? The CID, led by Chief Inspector MacDonald, is called in but first it has to be determined whether it was accident or murder.

I discovered E.C.R. Lorac last year after reading Bev's review of one of her books. Subsequently, I read Murder of a Martinet by her. This is the second book of hers that I have read and it is fun going through these rather old-fashioned police investigations, not so much forensics as digging painstakingly into the archives.

And, as somebody interested in history, I also look for references to the empire in the literature of the colonial age. In this book, it is Waller Caird who 'won a packet in the Calcutta Sweep and left the stage'.

The rest of the post contains spoilers so don't read any further unless you have read the book. Do scroll down though and leave a comment. Love to hear what you have to say.

SPOILERS

Were you able to guess the identity of the killer? Well, I knew that the top floor must have been sub-let for a reason. So, the question was which of the two young men? And I was like....please neither because (damn it) who wants a charming, handsome youngster to be a killer! And Martia's love did seem something out of the blue, didn't it?

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First Line: "By the way old chap, are you going to Martia Vannery's party next week, by any chance?"

Title: The Slippery Staircase

Author: E.C.R Lorac

Publication Details: London: Collins (The Crime Club), 1938.

First Published: 1938.

Series: Chief Inspector MacDonald

Other books read by the same author: Murder of a Martinet

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Book(s) with similar theme(s):

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The book might be found in libraries. I borrowed it from a local library too.

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Submitted for the following challenges:

A-Z (Titles), AZRC, Borrowed Book, British Books, Criminal Plots II, Find the Cover, Merely Mystery, Mystery and Suspense, Support Your Local Library, Vintage Mystery

Twelve Best: Agatha Christie.

2012-01-31T14:47:00.003+05:30

This year I have decided to post (at least) one list per month citing some of my favourites. Inspired by Rishi @ Classic Mystery Hunt, who posted a list of his favourite Agatha Christie Reads, I am posting (in alphabetical order) my 12 favourite books written by her.

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE/ TEN LITTLE NIGGERS/ TEN LITTLE INDIANS

Ten people on an island, dying one by one by one...

What can I say about this classic that hasn't been said except that only Agatha Christie could have written this and only Agatha Christie could have ruined this by turning it into that awful play with a most insipid ending.

CARDS ON THE TABLE

Mr. Shaitana (love the name) was a man everybody was a little afraid of. But to be murdered at his own party, in full view of everybody else! It's good Poirot is one of the guests...

This was one of the first Agatha Christies that I read. I also learnt something about Bridge.

DEATH ON THE NILE

Linnet Ridgeway lacked nothing, so why did she have to steal her best friend Jackie's boyfriend Simon Doyle and marry him? Now, Jackie cannot forgive either of them and follows them on their honeymoon cruise. Poor Poirot, eager to relax and travelling on the same ship, finds himself involved in the menage a trois.

The story was first narrated to me by my sister, Nitu didi. Later on we watched the movie too and absolutely enjoyed I.S. Johar's performance as the manager of the ship.

EVIL UNDER THE SUN

Arlena Stuart's body is washed ashore. The actresses' body bears marks of strangulation. It's good that Poirot, taking a well deserved break at Smuggler's island, pays attention to even off-hand remarks.

To me, one of the most ingenious murder plots ever.

HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS/ A HOLIDAY FOR MURDER/ MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS

It is Christmas time. The Lee family is having a reunion. Only somebody's desire for revenge is far greater than the goodwill and cheer. Hercule Poirot (Poor fellow!), spending the holiday season in the same village, is called for investigation and finds a dysfunctional family.

One of the most under-rated of Christie's books.

THE HOLLOW/ MURDER AFTER HOURS

Invited by Lady Angkatell to her estate, The Hollow, Hercule Poirot is disgusted by the tableau that greets him on his arrival. A handsome man is playing corpse (complete with red paint and all) while a stocky middle-aged woman stands over him waving a gun. As the other statues round these two come to life, Poirot realises, that it is murder which he is witnessing...

A personal favourite. I adore Dr. John Christow.

THE MOUSETRAP

A Guest House. A Snowstorm. Trapped people with secrets. A Police Inspector who arrives with the news of a murderer on the prowl.

The longest-running play ever. Need I say more?

THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD

Roger Ackroyd is a man with a mission. He is determined to find the blackmailer who forced his beloved to commit suicide. Only before he can read the name of the blackguard, he too is put to death. Hercule Poirot investigates.

When Hercule Poirot announces the name of the murderer, one cannot believe one is reading the line correctly. It just cannot be...

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. QUIN

Twelve stories with just that touch of the supernatural.

Loved the story of the singer and her friend, and the music that can kill.

N OR M?

Espionage, treachery, deceit...it is all there in a boarding house during World War II.

The first Agatha Christie that I ever read was The Secret Adversary featuring Tommy and Tuppence. They are not so young in this but remain irrepressible as ever.

THE SITTAFORD MYSTERY/ MURDER AT HAZELMOOR

Captain Treveylan is declared dead during a seance session. Concerned, his friend Major Burnaby decides to go and check upon him. To his horror, he discovers that his friend is indeed dead. Other worldly visitor or a human hand?

Love the atmosphere during the seance with the thought processes and reactions of the people in that dimly lit, eerie room.

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

Leonord Vole is put on trial for murdering an elderly widow for her money. And nobody is more eager to put him on the death row than his own wife, Romaine, who appears as a witness for the prosecution.

The short-story is thrilling but the play is absolutely enthralling.

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It was hard to select only twelve. There were quite a few I had to leave out. What about you? Do you agree with this selection or did these leave you underwhelmed? Do share your favourite Christies too.

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The image at the top is courtesy Sura Nualpradid @freedigitalphotos.net

Reading Challenge # 29

2012-01-30T12:14:00.000+05:30

I have always loved reading books in translation. So, I am signing up for the Books in Translation Reading Challenge hosted by The Introverted Reader. Aiming for the Conversationalist level which means I'll be reading 4 - 6 translated books.

Reading Challenges # 27 & 28: Books from Libraries

2012-01-30T11:47:00.001+05:30

I am all for borrowing books from the library and am perturbed by the fact that libraries all over the world are dying a slow death. So I am signing up for two challenges that involve (you guessed it!) reading books borrowed from libraries.

In the Support Your Local Library Challenge (hosted by The Eclectic Bookshelf), I'll be reading 12 books borrowed from the libraries I frequent.

Details and Sign Up, here.

1. The Slippery Staircase by E.C.R Lorac

In the second, Borrowed Book Challenge, a mini-challenge, hosted by La Toya, I am going for the Bookie level, that means, I'll be reading between 5-10 books in three months.

Details and Sign-up, here.

1. The Slippery Staircase by E.C.R Lorac

Reading Challenge # 26: Color-Coded

2012-01-30T07:46:00.000+05:30

One of the challenges that I regretted missing out on last year was the Color-Coded Challenge hosted by Bev@My Reader's Block. Thankfully, Bev is hosting it this year too. The challenge is to read nine books with various colours in their titles. It is an interesting challenge and you too can join the fun, here. You can also have a look at Bev's other challenges: Vintage Mystery, and Mount TBR.

Reading Challenge # 25: Chunkster

2012-01-30T07:29:00.000+05:30

Since I am reading the mammoth 700 pages long Drood, I thought I'll sign up for the Chunkster Challenge hosted by Wendy and Vasilly . I am signing for the Chubby Chunkster level which means I'll be reading at least four 450+ pages adult novels.

Details and Sign-up, here

Reading Challenge # 24: Dusty Bookshelf

2012-01-30T04:24:00.000+05:30

There was a time when I collected a lot of material on Greek Literature, hoping to read all the extant ancient Greek plays and epics.....The books continue to gather dust on my shelves, so I thought I'll enter the Dusty Bookshelf challenge, hosted by Booksatruestory.com to get them out of the way. Some of the books are:

Greek Literature for the Modern Reader by H.C. Baldry

Towards Greek Tragedy by Brian Vickers

A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama by Ian C. Storey and Arlene Allan

A Companion to Greek Tragedy (ed.) by Justina Gregory

The first of these books has been on my shelf since 1999. The rest are from the early 2000s.

I am aiming for the Cobwebs level, i.e., I need to clear 10 -15 books from my shelves.

Interested in joining? Do so here.

Dark Desires: Dickens' Edwin Drood

2012-01-24T20:35:00.001+05:30

'Edwin, Edwin, Edwin,' she repeats, trailing off into a drowsy repetition of the word; and then asks suddenly: Is the short of that name Eddy?'
'It is sometimes called so,'he replies, with the colour starting to his face.
'Don't sweethearts call it so?' she asks, pondering.
How should I know!'
Haven't you a sweetheart, upon your soul?'
'None.'
She is moving away, with another 'Bless ye, and thank'ee. deary!' when he adds: You were to tell me something; you may as well do so.'
'So I was, so I was. Well then. Whisper. You be thankful that your name ain't Ned.'
He looks at her, quite steadily, as he asks: 'Why?'
'Because it is a bad name to have just now.'
'How a bad name?'
'A threatened name. A dangerous name.'

Charles Dickens' last novel is an unresolved mystery. At its heart, is the enigmatic figure of John Jasper. A respected personage in the town of Cloisterham, where he is associated with the church as a choir master; Jasper leads a double life, of a drug addict who frequents sleazy opium dens in London (the first chapter, in fact, opens in an opium den, and it's one of the most brilliant openings ever). He also harbours a secret desire for the (oh so childlike and frail) Rosebud. Only trouble is, Rosa is betroth to his nephew, the young and easy-going, Edwin Drood. The girl, who learns music from Jasper is aware of his insidious intentions but cannot confide in Edwin as he is fond of his uncle who also loves him deeply. Moreover, the young couple though on the threshold of matrimony are not really sure of their feelings for each other or whether they would like to spend their years together.

Meanwhile enter two siblings Neville and Helena Landless into the plot. Neville, promptly and without any reason whatsoever (except that she is oh so frail and childlike, in a nutshell en-chan-ting) falls in love with Rosa at the first glance. Like any other devotee, he thinks that Edwin doesn't care or show enough regard for his goddess.(Damn it all! He calls her Pussy!!) Result is that Edwin and he get into a violent quarrel which Jasper, of course, tells to all and sundry. However as the wedding day approaches, efforts are made to reconcile the two young man, notably and surprisingly by Jasper, who invites them both to his house. After a pretty amiable dinner, Edwin and Neville take a walk...

The next day a distraught Jasper is seen running round the town searching for his nephew who hasn't returned home after the post-dinner stroll and Neville is caught with bloodstains on his clothes and with a heavy stick in his hand while he is on a walking tour (running away?)

Did Edwin really die? If yes, was he murdered by Neville? What devious plot did Jasper conjure? These questions will remain unanswered as Dickens died before completing his book. But it is not so much the crime that is so fascinating about the novel. It is the figure of John Jasper. How does he reconcile his two selves? The repressed desires for Rosa, how do they come in the way of his love for his nephew? Did he hatch and carry out the diabolical plan of getting Edwin out of his way:

'It was a journey, a difficult and dangerous journey. That was the subject in my mind. A hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses where a slip would be destruction. Look down, look down! You see what lies at the bottom there?'....' Well; I have told you. i did it, here, hundreds of thousands of times. What do I say? I did it millions and billions of times. i did it so often, and through such vast expanses of time, that when it was really done, it seemed not worth the doing, it was done so soon.'

For whom does he utter these enigmatic lines? Edwin or his own divided self:

'To think,'he cries,'how often fellow-traveller, and yet not know it! To think how many times he went the journey, and never saw the road!'

For a look into the inner recesses of the heart, read the novel.

First Line: An ancient cathedral town?

Title: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Author: Charles Dickens

Publication Details: Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1983

First Published: 1870.

Pages: 302

Other Books read by the same author: A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Oliver Twist

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Book(s) with similar theme(s)

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The book is easily available in book shops, and libraries; and can also be downloaded from the net for free. Long on my wishlist, I borrowed it from the University library [0111, 3M12, ME L4].

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Submitted for the following challenges: A Classics Challenge, A-Z (Titles), AZRC, Back to the Classics, British Books, Death by Gaslight, Find the Cover, Mystery and Suspense, Smooth Criminals, Vintage Mystery, Wishlist.

Edwin Drood: Did he or Didn't he?

2012-01-24T11:34:00.001+05:30

What do you do with a book with an unresolved mystery? The Mystery of Edwin Drood teases you with its suggestions, insinuations, cryptic conversations. I have my own ideas about the mystery [and would be doing a detailed review soon] but right now I am off to read an off-shoot of it: The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl.

A Winter's Respite Read-a-thon has begun...

2012-01-23T18:55:00.001+05:30

A Winter's Respite Read-a-Thon hosted by Michelle at The True Book Addict has begun. For this whole week, I'll be devouring books. I am already reading Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

The books in the queue include:

The Last Dickens.

Drood.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

However, this list is subject to change.

Charles Dickens Month: Edwin, Rosa, and Jasper

2012-01-17T11:04:00.001+05:30

This month, I am participating in the Charles Dickens bicentennial celebrations hosted by Amanda at Fig and Thistle. The book that I am reading right now is one that has long been on my wishlist: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. So far, the mystery has been fairly gripping. There are two young people, Edwin and Rosa whose parents (before their demise) had (kind of) wished them to get married. Now the two young people are not really keen on the union but do not want to betray the wishes and memories of their parents. Adding to this problem is Edwin's young uncle, John Jasper, who is addicted to opium, and Rosa. Rosa is aware of it but is unable to reveal anything to Edwin as he is very fond of his uncle. Further developments include a quarrel between Edwin and Neville Landless, a violent young man who has fallen (you guessed it right) in love with Rosa. I fear the worst for young Edwin, whom I rather like, and the mystery to me is how can people be so enamoured of the simpering Rosa. Victorian Men!

Reading Challenge # 23: Criminal Plots II

2012-01-17T08:24:00.001+05:30

Just when I thought, I had signed-up for all the interesting mystery challenges out there, here comes another one. Jen @ Jensbookthoughts.com is hosting her Criminal Plots reading Challenge for the year 2012. Here is what she writes:

This year's Rules of the Road:

You'll be reading six books between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2012. One book should be read that fits into each of the following categories:

1. Novel with a weapon in the title (examples: A Night of Long Knives, A Nail Through the Heart, Sharp Objects, The Rope, Lay Down my Sword and Shield)

2. Book published at least 10 years ago - this should be an easy one, time to pull out those backlists (examples: Goodnight Irene,The Black Echo, Indemnity Only)

3. Book written by an author from the state/provinence/etc. where you live. (I live in Ohio, so examples for me would be Carla Buckley, Les Roberts, Craig McDonald)

4. Book written by an author using a pen name (i.e., Spencer Quinn, Ross Macdonald, Ariana Franklin, Noah Boyd, Juliett Blackwell, Lisa Black)

~~5. Crime novel whose protagonist is the opposite gender of the author~~ (i.e., Demolition Angel, Bury Your Dead, Calumet City)

6. A stand-alone novel written by an author who writes at least one series (i.e., El Gavilan (Craig McDonald), Long Gone (Alafair Burke), The Lock Artist (Steve Hamilt

ton), Envy the Night (Michael Koryta), The Most Dangerous Thing (Laura Lippman))

Other Important Details:

You can read the books in any format you choose: print, audio, e-book, etc.

You can read books from any sub-genre of crime fiction: hardboiled, P.I., police procedural, cozy, thriller, etc.
You do not need to have a blog to participate.
You can use the books for other challenges but one book cannot count for more than one category in THIS challenge.
Books do not need to be pre-determined. You can choose them at any time throughout the year. And you can read them in whatever order you choose.
At the conclusion, each participant that completes the challenge will be entered for a chance at one of three prize packs.

Want to participate, go here:
http://criminalplots.blogspot.com/2011/12/announcing-criminal-plots-ii-2012.html

Readathon: A Winter's Respite

2012-01-16T07:29:00.001+05:30

Through CMash loves to Read, I've come to know of a Readathon in January being hosted by the true book addict. The week long event has mini-challenges, giveaways, and a lot of reading. Since I had great fun in the readathons I participated in last year, I am signing up for this too.

For details and sign-up, go here:
http://thetruebookaddict.blogspot.com/2011/12/winters-respite-read-thon-2012.html

A Paean to the Sun

2012-01-15T09:48:00.000+05:30

The Sun has started on his northward journey. The time is considered auspicious. Gungun and I go to the temple, next door, along with Alka, Ajay Jijaji, and Kala Aunty. We partake the delicious parshaad of Khichdi, Aalu ki Sabzi, Papad, and Achaar. Return home, have a til ka laddu and wash it all down with a cup of garma garam adrak ki chai. Settle down, not with Edwin Drood but Lorac's The Slippery Staircase. The Sun, beaming upon us, keeps the chill at bay. Life is bliss.

Here's to Surya. He who symbolises Light and Wisdom.

1 HIS bright rays bear him up aloft, the God who knoweth all that lives,
Sūrya, that all may look on him.
2 The constellations pass away, like thieves, together with their beams,
Before the all-beholding Sun.
3 His herald rays are seen afar refulgent o’er the world of men,
Like flames of fire that burn and blaze.
4 Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Sūrya, maker of the light,
Illuming all the radiant realm.
5 Thou goest to the hosts of Gods, thou comest hither to mankind,
Hither all light to be beheld.
6 With that same eye of thine wherewith thou lookest brilliant Varuṇa,
Upon the busy race of men,
7 Traversing sky and wide mid-air, thou metest with thy beams our days,
Sun, seeing all things that have birth.
8 Seven Bay Steeds harnessed to thy car bear thee, O thou farseeing One,
God, Sūrya, with the radiant hair.
9 Sūrya hath yoked the pure bright Seven, the daughters of the car; with these,
His own dear team, he goeth forth.
10 Looking upon the loftier light above the darkness we have come
To Sūrya, God among the Gods, the light that is most excellent.
11 Rising this day, O rich in friends, ascending to the loftier heaven,
Sūrya remove my heart's disease, take from me this my yellow hue.
12 To parrots and to starlings let us give away my yellowness,
Or this my yellowness let us transfer to Haritāla trees.
13 With all his conquering vigour this Āditya hath gone up on high,
Giving my foe into mine hand: let me not be my foeman's prey.

May darkness be dispelled. May there be light all around. Happy 2012.

Happy Lohri

2012-01-13T22:08:00.000+05:30

Twinkle Twinkle Yaraan di Car
Khadke Glassi in the Bar
Punjabi Bhangra te Makhan Malai
Twanu Lohri di Lakh Lakh Vadhai

Wishing Everybody a very very Happy Lohri. May you have a bountiful year.

Light the Bonfire. Make the offerings of Til, Rewari, Phulle, Chawal, Moongfali. Eat Gajjak and Kheer. And Dance to the Dhol. Enjoy.

Reading Challenge # 22: E Book

2012-01-13T10:02:00.000+05:30

Participating in the E-book Challenge hosted by Sarah at Workadays Reads.

Here are her guidelines:

This challenge will run from Jan 1, 2012 - Dec 31, 2012.
Anyone can join, you don't need to be a blogger. If you don't have a blog, feel free to sign-up in the comments. You can post reviews to any book site (i.e. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Goodreads, etc).
Any genre or length of book counts, as long as it is in ebook format.
You can list your books in advance or just put them in a wrap-up post. If you list them, feel free to change them as the mood takes you.
When you sign up in the linky, put the direct link to your post about joining the E-Book Reading Challenge.
You can move up levels, but no moving down.
Sign-ups will be open until Dec 15, 2012, so feel free to join at any time throughout the year.

Levels:

Floppy disk - 5 ebooks
CD - 10 ebooks
DVD - 25 ebooks
Memory stick - 50 ebooks
Hard drive - 75 ebooks
Server - 100 ebooks
Human brain - 150 ebooks

Signing-up for the Floppy disk level, though I might end up with a higher level as the year progresses.

Details and sign-up:
http://www.workadayreads.com/2011/11/2012-ebook-challenge-sign-up.html

Writing Challenge: 500 words

2012-01-10T18:51:00.000+05:30

After signing-up for all those reading challenges, I thought it will be fun to sign-up for a writing challenge as well. So I have signed-up for inkygirl's 500-words- a- day writing challenge.

If you too feel like challenging yourself to write everyday, you can sign-up over here:
http://bit.ly/dailywords

Chasing a Crooked Shadow: Eric Ambler's Dimitrios

2012-01-09T00:27:00.000+05:30

Colonel Haki was slowly turning the pages inside the folder, and on his way was a look that Latimer had not seen there before. It was the look of the expert attending to the business he understands perfectly. There was a sort of watchful repose in his face that reminded Latimer of a very old and experienced cat contemplating a very young and inexperienced mouse.

What a way to start the New Year! Right with a BANG!!

I had heard about Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Dimitrios. It'd crop up on many of those 100 top crime/ mystery/ suspense lists of all time. These lists are not always trustworthy. I have had quite a few disappointments, but in this case, yes the praise is well-deserved.

Combining elements of the thriller with the academic mystery, Ambler writes a gripping narrative of a man's obsession. Charles Latimer, erstwhile lecturer in political economy, and a professional writer of mysteries ("one of the shamefaced few who could make money at the sport"), is enjoying a short break from his writing engagements at Istanbul, Turkey, when he first hears of a man called Dimitrios. A man who might be in the Turkish Secret Police tells him that a body which had been fished out of the river Bosphorus
might be of a notorious criminal Dimitrios Makropoulos whose litany of criminal activities ranges from Murder, espionage, drugs... to assassination.

Latimer shows an interest in having a look at the corpse. From then on, he embarks on a journey which will take him to the various haunts of Europe: Smyrna, Sofia, Geneva, Paris as he tries to reconstruct Dimitrios' life of crime. Relying on state records, police reports, court proceedings, newspaper articles, interviews, Latimer tries to add flesh and bone to this rather shadowy figure who always remains elusive.

But for a little dragging towards the end, the book is a fast-paced read though it is handy to bookmark the note that Latimer (so obligingly) prepares in chapter 4. As must be clear, I enjoyed the book tremendously. As a reader I too got involved with Latimer in reconstructing Dimitrios' life. And the recreation of the third decade of the twentieth century is marvellous. Europe is both old- having experienced a war - and young - revolutions, regime changes, shifting population. One meets Greek refugees as well as Mensheviks. Reading about people like Kemal Ataturk not as some half-forgotten historical figures but as coevals added an extra thrill to the reading of the book.

*

First Line: A Frenchman named Chamfort, who should have known better, once said that chance was
a nickname for Providence.

Title: A Coffin for Dimitrios

Original Title: The Mask of Dimitrios

Author: Eric Ambler

Publication Details: New York: Vintage Books, 2001

First Published: 1939

Pages: 304

*

Any other book read by the same author: None

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s):

*

Copies of the book are available on the Net. I was lucky enough to receive this from Bev Hankins @ My Reader's Block after successfully completing the Vintage Mystery Challenge last year. If you want, you can participate in the challenge this year @

http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2011/10/vintage-mystery-reading-challenge-2012.html

*
Submitted for the following challenges: AZRC, British Book, European Reading, Find the Cover, Free Reads, Merely Mystery, Mount TBR, Mystery and Suspense, New Author, Unread Book, Vintage Mystery

Reading Challenge # 21: Find the Cover

2012-01-08T20:12:00.002+05:30

Hosted by Martina Bookaholic, Find the Cover is a Fun Challenge that looks at cover images rather than the titles. The challenge is to find images on the books read that start with the letters that spell out the year: Two Thousand Twelve. No cover can be used more than once.

T
W: Woods @ The Mystery of Edwin Drood
O

T
H
O
U
S
A
N: News paper in the hands of a man @ A Coffin for Dimitrios
D

T
W: White hair of the dead lady @ The Slippery Staircase
E
L
V
E

Sign-up:
http://martinabookaholic.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/find-the-cover-coversuch-challenge-2012/

Charles Dickens Month: The Man Who Liked Dickens

2012-01-07T13:32:00.000+05:30

"We will not have any Dickens today ... but tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that...."

As part of Charles Dickens bicentennial celebration, Amanda @ fig and thistle, is holding a Charles Dickens Month, this January. So read, review, and write about Dickens as part of the celebration.

A lot is already known about Dickens, that Eminent Victorian, so instead I am going to talk about a story that deals with obsession: [Arthur] Evelyn Waugh's terror-inducing: The Man Who Liked Dickens.

After being told by his wife that she loves another man, Henty, a genial Englishman, joins an ill-fated expedition to Brazil. The last survivor of his group, his life is saved by one James McMaster who lives and lords over the Shiriana Indians. As Henty recovers his health, McMaster tells him about his love for the works of Dickens.

“You are fond of Dickens?”

“Why, yes, of course. More than fond, far more. You see, they are the only books I have ever heard. My father used to read them and then later the black man ... and now you. I have heard them all several times by now but I never get tired; there is always more to be learned and noticed, so many characters, so many changes of scene, so many words ... I have all Dickens’s books except those that the ants devoured. It takes a long time to read them all—more than two years.”

“Well,” said Henty lightly, “they will well last out my visit.”

“Oh, I hope not. It is delightful to start again. Each time I think I find more to enjoy and admire.”

A grateful Henty starts reading Dickens to McMaster. Days pass into weeks, weeks into months... Henty starts getting restless, he is eager to get back to London...only McMaster doesn't seem so inclined. Then a stranger arrives at the village but before he makes his way out, Henty is able to slip a note in his hand telling about his predicament. From then on it becomes a waiting game, surely somebody will come to his rescue...

If you haven't read the story, read it to see how Waugh slowly builds up an atmosphere of menace and foreboding. The last paragraphs shuttling between hope and despair are some of the most moving. How easy it is to dream and yet how fragile are those dreams.

If you'd like to participate in the event, please go here:

http://figandthistle.blogspot.com/2011/11/january-charles-dickens-month.html

Reading Challenges # 18, 19, & 20: The Classics

2012-01-07T10:00:00.001+05:30

Have signed up for a fair number of mystery challenges, it is time to move on to the Classics. I am signing-up for three.

Sarah at Sarah Reads Too Much is hosting the Back to the Classics challenge for the year 2012. You have to read works in the following 9 categories:

~~Any 19th Century Classic~~
Any 20th Century Classic
Reread a classic of your choice
A Classic Play
Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction
Classic Romance
Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your language - To clarify, if your native language is NOT English, you may read any classic originally written in English that has been translated into your native language.
Classic Award Winner - To clarify, the book should be a classic which has won any established literary award.
Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime - To Clarify, this does not have to be a country that you hope to visit either. Countries that no longer exist or have never existed count.

There is a grand prize at the completion of the challenge.

Further details and sign-up:

http://www.sarahreadstoomuch.com/2011/11/announcing-back-to-classics-challenge.html

The Second, 2012 A Classic Challenge, is hosted by November's Autumn. One has to read 7 Classics (three of which can be a re-read). Here is what the host has written:
Instead of writing a review as you finish each book (of course, you can do that too), visit November's Autumn on the 4th of each month from January 2012 - December 2012.

You will find a prompt, it will be general enough that no matter which Classic you're reading or how far into it, you will be able to answer. There will be a form for everyone to link to their post. I encourage everyone to read what other participants have posted.

Details and Sign-Up:

http://novembersautumn.blogspot.com/2011/11/classics-challenge.html

1. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (1870)

The Third Challenge, the Classic Double Challenge, hosted by One Librarian's Book Reviews, will "encourage you to read one older book (classic) and a newer book that relates to the older one in some way. (BTW, can be any reading level from MG to Adult)."

There are different levels of participation. I am aiming for small, i.e, I read one set of related books.

Details and Sign-Up:
http://librariansbookreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/sign-up-for-classic-double-challenge.html

Favourite Crime Read

2012-01-06T13:35:00.000+05:30

As anybody who has been following this blog knows, my favorite reads happen to be mysteries. Kerrie over at Mysteries in Paradise wants to know our favourite crime read(s) of the year 2011.

Well, I read quite a few but the one book that had me in its thrall was Death in Kashmir by M.M. Kaye. I knew Kaye as a writer of historical romances, I had no idea that she had written such spine-tingling chillers. (Is there a word as 'chillers'? I don't know but am using this mix of chilling thrillers).

My review of it over here:
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/07/gotterdammerung-twilight-of-gods-in.html

For more on the feature, go here:
http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/2011/12/collecting-your-best-reads-for-2011.html

Reading Challenge # 17: European Reading

2012-01-06T09:29:00.000+05:30

Now that I am on a roll, I am signing up for the European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader. As the name makes clear, the goal is to read books either by European authors or set in European countries. There are different levels one can particiapte in and I am going for the highest level: Deluxe Entourage which entails that I'll be reading at least five books by different authors or set in five different countries. There are other challenge categories too to make it more interesting. Also there are a number of prizes. Interested? Go here to sign-up:

http://www.rosecityreader.com/p/european-reading-challenge.html

Some of the books I might read:

Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Dimitrios
Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Franz Kafka's America

Reading Challenges # 15 & 16: A-Z - Authors & Titles

2012-01-05T22:41:00.002+05:30

Last year, one of the challenges that I couldn't finish was the A-Z Reading Challenge which required me to read at least one book for each letter of the English alphabet. For not completing that challenge, this year (since I am a glutton for punishment) I am signing up for two versions of it.

The First one, hosted by Babies, Books, and Signs requires one to read 26 books in all, their titles beginning with each letter of the English Alphabet .
Details and Sign-Up:

http://www.babiesbooksandsigns.com/2011/12/join-my-z-book-challenge.html#comment-form

TITLES:

M: Mystery of Edwin Drood, The
S: Slippery Staircase, The

The Second one, hosted at Strawberry Splash Reviews, requires one to read either 26 books whose titles begin with the 26 letters or whose authors' last names begin with the letters. I am doing the author version for this.

Details and Sign-Up:

http://www.strawberrysplashreviews.com/2011/11/to-z-reading-challenge-2012.html

A: Ambler, Eric: A Coffin for Dimitrios
D: Dickens, Charles: The Mystery of Edwin Drood
L: Lorac, E.C.R: The Slippery Staircase

Since X is problematic, in both the challenges the hosts have made the provision of having it somewhere in the title/ name rather than right in the beginning.

Reading Challenge # 14: Mystery and Suspense

2012-01-05T21:02:00.002+05:30

Last year, one of the challenges that I enjoyed and was able to finish was the Mystery and Suspense hosted by bookchickcity. I am signing for this year's edition too. I am aiming for the higher level, thus will be reading 24 mysteries rather than the previous year's 12.

Details and Sign-Up:

http://www.bookchickcity.com/2011/12/sign-up-mystery-suspense-reading.html

1. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
2. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
3. The Slippery Stircase by E.C.R Lorac

Pick-Your-A-Thon: Wrap-Up

2012-01-05T20:47:00.000+05:30

At the fag end of 2011, I had signed up for the Pick-Your-A-Thon challenge hosted at The Book Monsters. I participated in a few of their mini-challenges. I also read, and reviewed Andrew Taylor's The American Boy; K.K. Khullar's The Yellow Rose and Other Stories, and Sean Slater's The Survivor. With this extra burst I was able to successfully complete two challenges: Mystery and Suspense, and Borrowed Book.

It was fun and I hope to participate in such events again.

Have a look at the blog over here:
http://www.thebookmonsters.com/

Reading Challenge # 13: Free Reads

2012-01-05T17:14:00.000+05:30

Last year I received a number of books as presents, giveaways etc. so I am signing up for the Free Reads Reading Challange hosted by Bookish Ardour. I am going for the most basic level : For Me?. I'll be reading 5 books that I received for free last year.

Details and Sign-Up:
http://bookishardour.com/free-reads/

Reading Challenge # 12: New Authors

2012-01-05T15:33:00.000+05:30

New Year, New Beginning, New Authors

I am signing up for the New Authors Reading Challenge hosted by Literary Escapism.
The goal is to read authors whose works you have not read previously. They could belong to any period: from Classical to Contemporary. The only criteria is that you should be reading them for the first time. I am aiming for the mid-level, so would try to read 25 authors whose works I've not read earlier.

Details and sign-up over here:
http://www.literaryescapism.com/new-author-challenge/new-author-challenge-2012

Reading Challenge Addict

2012-01-04T15:28:00.001+05:30

Reading Challenge # 11: Unread Book

2012-01-04T07:53:00.001+05:30

There are many challenges this year that involve reading your own personal collection. Since I have shelves that are creaking with the weight of all those books bought but never read, I am signing up for the Unread Book Challenge hosted by the hopeful librarian. The rules are simple: You have to read your own books, crossovers from other challenges are allowed, and you set up your own level.

For details and sign-up, go here:
http://www.thehopefullibrarian.com/2011/12/05/announcing-the-unread-book-challenge-of-2012/

1. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

Reading Challenge # 10: Merely Mystery

2012-01-01T14:20:00.002+05:30

There is something about a mystery that I cannot resist. So I am signing up for the Merely Mystery Reading Challenge hosted by Musings of a Bookish Kitty. The aim of the challenge is to explore the different types of sub-genres in the crime fiction category.

There are 12 sub-genres to choose from:

~~The Whodunit~~: The classic crime puzzle. The story generally revolves around determine who committed the crime, and potentially apprehending them. Some Whodunits, called "fair play mysteries", will include all of the clues available in the text so that a careful reader can solve the crime on his or her own.

Locked Room Mystery: Like the Whodunit, there is a puzzle (crime) to solve. However in this instance, the crime has taken place under impossible circumstances, such as in a locked room or on an island with no way to exit or enter.

Cozy: The nice person's mystery. Often the crime, particularly if it's violent, occurs off scene. Sex and language are on the cleaner side. Humor is a common feature of the cozy.

Hard-Boiled/Noir: Often cynical, bleak or realistic, hard-boiled and noir stories often focus more on the characters involved instead of the crime. Violence and sex are not downplayed.

The Inverted Detective Story: In this style of story, the person perpetrating the crime is known up front. The point of the story is to see how (or if) the detective goes about solving the crime and how the perpetrator reacts to the investigation.

The Historical Whodunnit: Simply put, this is a mystery set in a historical setting. Often the mystery has some historical significance and features detection methods that are appropriate for that era.

The Police Procedural: Instead of featuring a independent detective, the police are investigating the crime in these stories. They often focus on the actual methods that police officers use to solve crimes.

~~The Professional Thriller~~: This kind of mystery involves a professional who is not involved directly in law enforcement, such a lawyer or doctor, who nonetheless finds themselves investigating a crime.

The Spy Novel: Related to the other professional mysteries, spy novels focus on intelligence operatives as they work to prevent or avenge some criminal plot. Spy novels can feature either in fantastic or realistic settings.

Caper Stories: While other crime and mystery stories look at the aftermath of crimes, caper stories feature criminals as the lead characters. The story usually details the planning and commission of a crime.

The Psychological Suspense: In these stories, the detective story takes on a psychological component.

Spoofs and Parodies: Spoofs and parodies make light of crime fiction, often with the goal of commenting on the conventions of the genre. Many feature famous characters, e.g. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Philip Marlowe, or pastiches of those characters.

You can either choose a few categories or read one or more books from each category. Since it is the dawn of a new year and I am feeling ambitious, I am signing up for the Shamus who has seen it all level. i.e. I read at least one book from each category. I'll make a list as the year progresses.

For more details, go here:
http://www.literaryfeline.com/2011/12/merely-mystery-reading-challenge-2012.html

Reading Challenge # 9: British Books

2012-01-01T09:34:00.001+05:30

One of the Challenges that I regretted missing-out on last year was the British Books Challenge. I am signing-up for it this year. Hosted by The Overflowing Library, the goal of the challenge is to read at least 12 books by British authors by the year's end. There are also monthly prizes and giveaways.

Two of the books I'll be reading this year:

1. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
2. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

The rest of the list as the year progresses.

3. The Slippery Staircase by E.C.R Lorac

If you want to sign-up for it too, go here:
http://www.overflowinglibrary.com/2011/12/british-books-challenge-2012-sign-up.html

Reading Challenge # 8: Wishlist Challenge

2012-01-01T09:04:00.002+05:30

The Wishlist Challenge is a fun challenge hosted by Judith @ Leeswammes blog. The goal is to read at least twelve books that are on your wishlist. The books should not be on your shelves.

Well, my wishlist is pretty long. I am trimming it down to 21 and hope I am able to read 12 books from it. Why 21? Becuse it is an auspicious number. Who knows, I might be able to read them all!

So, here goes (in alphabetical order):

1. The Curious Case of 221 B by Partha Chatterjee.
2. Death in the Garden by Elizabeth Ironside.
3. The Double Traitor by E. Phillips Oppenheim
4. The Eleventh Little Nigger by Jacquemard Senecal
5. The Empire of the Indus by Alice Albinia
6. The End of Her Honeymoon by Marie Belloc Lowndes
7. The Englishman's Cameo by Madhulika Liddle
8. Foucault's Pendulam by Umberto Eco
9. Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
10. Lesser Breeds by Nayantara Sehgal
11. Mira and the Mahatma by Sudhir Kakar
12. Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy
13. ~~The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens~~
14. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
15. On the Natural History of Destruction by W.G. Sebald
16. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
17. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
18. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
19. The Storyteller of Marrakesh by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
20. The Yellow Room by Mary Roberts Rinehart
21. The Zoo in My Luggage by Gerald Durell

If you want to sign up for the challenge too, go here:
http://leeswammes.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/wishlist-challenge-2012-sign-up/

Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-01T07:28:00.000+05:30

" Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.... "

Wishing Everybody A Very Happy 2012. May you read all the books on your Wishlist.

Quote from Lord Alfred Tennyson.
Image courtesy Idea Go at freedigitalphotos.net

Challenge Complete: Mystery and Suspense

2011-12-31T18:50:00.000+05:30

I had joined the Mystery and Suspense Challenge hosted by BookChickCity way back in June. The goal was to read at least 12 books in the mystery and suspense genre. I also received a copy of Sean Slater's taut thriller The Survivor for participating in the challenge. The book has become my last submission for the challenge.

Review: The Survivor by Sean Slater

2011-12-31T18:11:00.000+05:30

For the briefest of moments, there was only silence. No gun fire. No explosions. No screaming. Just nothing. And everything felt oddly surreal. Previous nightmare incidents flooded him - the Active Shooter situations everyone had seen on their TV screens a million times:

Dunblane.
Virginia Tech.
Columbine.
But St. Patrick's High?

I love Cozies. Murders yes, but little violence, bloodshed, or brutality; and usually the ends tie up neatly. But I do realise that killings are often not like that. Not everything is neat and tidy and the stink of blood and the depth of depravity can make one shudder.

Sean Slater's The Survivor takes a look at what has, of late, become common-place: Gunmen going on a shooting spree.

Slater's Homicide Detective, Jacob striker, has but returned to work after a six-month lay-off when his world erupts. It begins with a call from the principal of the school which his daughter attends. Aware of the growing chasm between his daughter, Courtney, and himself, after his wife's death, Striker makes his wary way to the school along with his partner Felicia. Even as they are talking to the principal, the school suddenly becomes an inferno as three men open fire on the hapless students. Striker manages to take down two of the gunmen but one gets away.

The rest of the book deals with the cat-and-mouse game played between Striker and the Killer. And there is very little for Striker to go on. The gunman before fleeing had obliterated his partner's face. The third gunman might have been an innocent student of the school whom Striker shot dead by mistake! If this is not nightmarish enough, Deputy Chief Laroche is creating problems for Striker. And then there is the million-dollar question: What is the connection between an Ancient Secret Society and the students at St. Patrick's High?

Sean Slater, himself in the Canadian Police force, handles the police-procedural well. Right from forensics to computer graphics to the third-degree, we are told how painstakingly, the police force solves a crime. There is a lot of sweat and hardwork. Grey cells have to be complimented by a lot of running around and twisting of arms!

What I liked best about the book was the character of Felicia. As a woman cop in a male-dominated field, she has to put up with a lot, including sexual innuendos and comments from her own colleagues. On top of that, Striker never lets her forget that he is the boss.

What I did not like about the book was the constant confrontation between Striker and Laroche. Just as the tension would build up, there would be this face off between Striker and Laroche, and everything would go kaput. A major irritant, it just seemed like a ploy to lengthen the novel. Also the Khmer Rouge angle to the story was a little overdone. And why should anyone with a Chinese cast of features, be referred to as Asians? Asia comprises of many countries and not all Asians look alike.

These irritants aside, the book is a taut thriller which will keep you fairly glued. Also the cover with a bullet-hole for the O is eye-catching and much better than the earlier cover with a man wearing a hockey mask.

*
First Line: Dying is easy; living is the hard part.

Title: The Survivor

Author: Sean Slater

Publication Details: London: Simon and Schuster, 2011

First Published: 2011

Pages: 513

*

The book is available in bookstores and can also be ordered on the Net. I received this from the publishers for having participated in the Mystery and Suspense Reading Challenge, hosted by BookChickCity.

*

Submitted for the following challenges:

Off the Shelf

Mystery and Suspense

Pick a Thon Mini Challenge # 4

2011-12-31T16:39:00.000+05:30

The 4th Mini Challenge in The Pick-Your-a-Thon focusses on how you are planning to spend the last few hours of 2011. Reading, Reviewing, or both.

Well, since morning I've been busy either reading or reviewing. Have posted two reviews: The Yellow Rose and Other Stories, and The American Boy.

And have just completed The Survivor and would be reviewing it right after this post. And after that most probably the non-fiction book...

For more on this or to sign-up, go here:
http://www.thebookmonsters.com/2011/12/pick-your-thon.html

Challenge Complete: Borrowed Book

2011-12-31T11:27:00.000+05:30

One of the most interesting challenges, I joined this year was the Borrowed Book Challenge, hosted by Book'd Out. As the name makes clear, the challenge involved the reading of books borrowed (mainly) from libraries. Since I joined the challenge, half-way thru the year, I opted for the Borrower Be level which meant I had to read atleast 12 books. Well, I've been able to read and review 13 books in all. I am reading another book borrowed from the library but don't know whether I'll be able to finish it in the stipulated time.

Well, here are my 13:

First entry: Ammi: letter to a democratic mother
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/06/saeed-akhtar-mirzas-ammi.html

2nd entry

Death in Kashmir by M.M. Kaye
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/07/gotterdammerung-twilight-of-gods-in.html

3rd Entry

Murder of a Martinet by E.C.R Lorac

http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/08/spider-caught-in-its-own-web-murder-of.html

4th Entry

Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham

http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/09/house-of-horrors-police-at-funeral.html

5th Entry

Night in Bombay by Louis Broomfield
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/10/gateway-to-india-night-in-bombay.html

6th Entry
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/11/growing-up-with-books-in-nazi-germany.html

7th Entry

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/11/issue-itself-present-day-germany-and.html

8th Entry

The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/11/nachgeborenen-those-who-came-after.html

9th Entry

The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/wheel-spins-and-how.html

10th Entry

The Savage Garden by Mark Mills
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/two-under-tuscan-sun.html

11th Entry

The Sonnet Lover by Carol Goodman
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/two-under-tuscan-sun.html

12th Entry

The Yellow Rose and Other Stories by K.K. Khullar
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/pain-of-partition-kk-khullars-yellow.html

13th Entry

The American Boy by Andrew Taylor
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/edgar-allan-poes-reynolds-and-therein.html

Though I have seen a lot of challenges that involve reading your own personal library, I am yet to see one that involves borrowing books from public/ institutional libraries. I hope Shelley hosts the challenge this year too as I'd love to participate in it once again.

Have a look at Shelley's blog, over here:
http://bookdout.wordpress.com/

Edgar Allan Poe's Reynolds: And Therein Hangs a Tale

2011-12-31T11:03:00.000+05:30

The truth is there are days when the world changes and a man does not notice because his mind is on his own affairs.

There are some writers whose life is as (if not more) interesting as the texts they wrote. Edgar Allan Poe is one such.

On the 26th of September 1849, Poe was in Richmond, delivering lectures that had been well received. He was also, ostensibly, in high spirits. He was supposed to sail for Baltimore, a journey that would have taken some 25 hours. But Poe reached Baltimore a week later, in great distress and unable to speak. He was taken to the Washington College hospital. The doctor there later testified that Poe had kept on calling for one 'Reynolds' before giving up the struggle. He was only 40 at the time of his death.

According to author, Andrew Taylor, this Reynolds was actually Thomas Reynolds, young Edgar's school-master in England where he stayed between the ages of six and eleven with his adoptive parents, the Allans. Thru the adventures of Reynolds, Taylor draws a compulsive picture of late Regency England. But what was it that Reynolds told his former ward, meeting him years later in America? A secret so devastating that it destroyed Poe's equilibrium and sent him to an early grave! Well, read the book to find out... :)

*
First Line: We owe respect to the living, Voltaire tells us in his Premiere Lettre sur Oedipe, but to the dead we owe only truth.

Title: The American Boy

Author: Andrew Taylor

Publication Details: London: Harper Perennial, 2008

First Published: 2003

Pages: 485 + 13

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s)

The book can be ordered on the Net. I borrowed it from Delhi Public Library, Vinoba Puri [ N TAY]

*

Submitted for the following challenges:

Borrowed Book

Mystery and Suspense

*

The Pain of Partition: K.K. Khullar's Yellow Rose

2011-12-31T09:52:00.000+05:30

"I thought it was time to spin the story, weave the tale. The result is Yellow Rose and 19 other roses of different colours titled differently."

I had enjoyed reading K.K. Khullar's biography of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, so when I saw a book of short stories written by him, I picked it up with great expectations. The expectations were not really met by the volume which contains a total of 20 stories besides a brief history of the short story and why the present writer felt the need to pen these stories. The stories can be divided broadly into two categories: One dealing with the bureaucratic set-up in India with all the accompanying frustration and red-tapism; the other, based on personal reminiscences and dealing with life in Pre-partitioned and Newly-partitioned Punjab. The second set is far more interesting and at times extremely heart-wrenching, as in this story where the narrator's grandmother asks a man to look after the sparrows that she used to feed at her village before partition forced her to migrate to this side of the border:

"If you visit Duska": She told an official connected with the recovery of abducted women : "Bring back all my girls: Sita, Savitri, Sheila, Sushma, Sohini... they are all brahmins: chaste, virgins, gentle, humble: gentle as cows: pure as the Ganges: bring all of them back. There is nobody to look after them. they must be waiting for me to give food to them: they must all be thirsty, hungry, forlorn. I know Sumitra gets sick if she drank the dirty pond water, Sneh likes nuts" [The Mourners 14-21]

These lines well encapsulate the pain of our grandparents' generation. If only all stories had tugged the heart-strings in this manner!

The editing too leaves much to desire. There are typos and a story is even repeated with only a little change. However, for vignettes of life in Pre-partioned Punjab, this is a good book.

*

First Line: Short story, like love, is eternal.

Title: The Yellow Rose and Other Stories

Author: K.K. Khullar

Publication Details: ND: Oshan Publications, 1998

First Published: 1998

Pages: xxxii + 114

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s)

India Partitioned: The Other Side of Freedom

Copies of the book can be ordered on the Net. I borrowed it from Dyal Singh Public Library, ITO.

Submitted for the following challenges:

A-Z

Borrowed Book

Pick-Your-A-Thon Mini Challenge # 1

2011-12-30T16:58:00.000+05:30

I have signed up for the Pick-Your-A-Thon hosted by The Book Monsters. Details here, at their blog:
http://www.thebookmonsters.com/

Time for their first challenge:

What book(s) are you starting with?

Definitely, a book that has long been on my wishlist.

I hope to read / review:

Finish a novel that I am currently reading and at least one non-fiction book. Would like to review them too.

Books I hope to read / review or at least will try to get to:

Post pending reviews. Finish the books I am presently reading before the 31st.

Pick-Your-A-Thon

2011-12-30T14:11:00.000+05:30

Since I am reading and reviewing like crazy to complete (a few) challenges at least before the year comes to an end, I thought it would be fun to do so along with others. I am signing up for the Pick-Your-A-Thon hosted by The Book Monsters. The event [both read/review -a-thon] runs from 28th Dec to 3rd January [you can sign-up for it any time b/w these two dates, but the earlier the better :)]. There are also mini-challenges and giveaways and of course reading, reviewing, and racing against time.

For more information and sign-up, click here:
http://www.thebookmonsters.com/2011/12/pick-your-thon.html

Two Under the Tuscan Sun

2011-12-30T01:21:00.000+05:30

After Cozies, the genre in mysteries that I like best is the Academic mystery. I greatly enjoy the unfolding of the plot as the characters set about to solve a mythological/ historical/ literary puzzle while going over old records, journals, letters, and try to connect point A to point J. (A -J, it rhymes you see).

I read two recently, and strangely both of them were situated in Tuscany.

In The Savge Garden, young scholar, Adam Strickland, moves to Post-war Italy in 1958. His project is to do research on a Renaissance garden owned by the Docci family. In the course of his research, Adam uncovers two murders, one of them, occuring but recently and involving the very family he is staying with.

In The Sonnet Lover, Dr. Rose Asher, a Renaissance poetry lecturer, moves to the Villa La Civetta to examine the truth in the local legend of Ginevra de Laura, rumoured to be the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Rose is not comfortable going to a place that has some hurtful memories associated with it. As an undergraduate, Rose had spent a year at the same place and had lost the man she loved passionately. On top of it there are suicides, murders, college politics, greed, and betrayal.

The two books should have hooked me up but somehow or the other they just fell flat. In both the books the end is too neat and tidy. All unwanted elements are done away with and the lovers are (re)united. The identity of the murderers is clear right from the beginning. I kept on waiting for that twist in the end.... but it never came.

*

First Line: Later, when it was over, he cast his thoughts back to the sun-struck May day in Cambridge - where it had all begun - and asked himself whether he would have done anything differently, knowing what he did now.

Title: The Savage Garden

Author: Mark Mills

Publication Details: London: Harper Collins, 2008

First Published: 2007

Pages: 388

*

First Line: The most thankless job on the planet might be teaching Renaissance love poetry to a group of hormone-dazed adolescents on a beautiful spring day.

Title: The Sonnet Lover

Author: Carol Goodman

Publication Details: London: Piatkus Book, 2008

First Published: 2007

Pages: 350 + 9

*

The two books can be ordered on the Net, I borrowed them from Delhi Public Library. The Savage Garden from the main one, opposite Old Delhi Railway Station [N MIL] and The Sonnet Lover from its Vinoba Puri branch [N GOO].

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s)

The Historian

*

Submitted for the following challenges:

A-Z

Borrowed Book

Mystery and Suspense

Challenge Complete: Birth Year Reading Challenge

2011-12-28T13:20:00.000+05:30

One of the most interesting challenges I had signed-up for this year was the Birth Year Reading Challenge hosted by Hotchpot Cafe. You could either read books written in the year of your birth or throw the dice and come up with a different year. You could also decide the number of books. As I wasn't too keen on my birth year, I threw the (virtual) die and came up with 2009. I selected two books, both of which had been lying on my shelves for long.

Well, with the reading and reviewing of them, I've completed the challenge.
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/two-candles-on-my-cake.html

The books were boring but I am happy that the challenge is complete. I don't know whether the challenge will be hosted next year or not but I hope it is. One of the nicest things about it is that everybody who completes the challenge, gets a prize. Have a look at Hotchpot Cafe, over here:
http://hotchpotcafe.blogspot.com/

Two Candles on my Cake

2011-12-28T12:43:00.000+05:30

Chetan Bhagat did both a huge service and disservice to the cause of Indian literature. While his first novel (and all subsequent ones too) gave India a taste for reading, he also made every person with the ability to put pen on paper, think that he could be the next literary sensation.

The two novels that I read recently, 'Oh Shit, Not Again!', and Zero Percentile: Missed IIT Kissed Russia are nothing but an exercise in primary school essay writing: My Family, My Friends, My Fantasies, My Neighbours, My School/ College/ Institute...

'Oh Shit, Not Again!' is the story of a young boy Raj whose family moves to Pune. There he makes new friends and fantasises about every female whom he meets. Nobody is safe from this Peeping Tom. Right from his friends to the neighbourhood aunties to the maids, his favourite past time seems to be watching them in a state of undress.

Zero Percentile has the pretensions of a plot. Pankaj Sharma, calls himself a 'less favoured son of destiny' but actually comes across as a Bollywood super hero who conquers all adversities and comes out tops. From Delhi to Russia, he leads an adventurous life where he is always centre-stage.

I would have given up on these books had I not committed myself to reading them for the Birth Year Reading Challenge.

During this year's Jaipur Lit Fest, Vikram Seth had advised wanna-be authors not to write pure drivel and thus cut trees and waste paper. I wish people would pay heed to his advice.

*

First Line: "Dhooom....." I lobbed the first bag out of the truck, and then the second.

Title: 'Oh Shit, Not Again!'

Author: Mandar Kokate

Publication Details: Pune: Expression Publications, 2009

First Published: 2009

Pages: 262

*

First Line: It was spring in 1997, but in Moscow it had arrived only as date of the month.

Title: Zero Percentile: Missed IIT, Kissed Russia

Author: Neeraj Chhibba

Publication Details: ND: Rupa, 2009.

First Published: 2009

Pages: 219

*

The books, if you so desire, can be purchased on the Net. I borrowed these from my cousin, Tarun, many moons ago, and they had been sitting on my shelves since then.

*

Submitted for the following Challenges:

A-Z

Birth Year

Off the Shelf

Review: The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart

2011-12-24T14:59:00.000+05:30

What happens when you take too long finishing a book? You end up butchering it. It happened with Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase. I read Yvette's review of the book sometime back in March. Since I had wanted to read a Rinehart for long and since Yvette was all praise for it, I thought I'd begin with it. So downloaded it from Manybooks.net and read it, left it...read it, left it...read it. This is no way to read any book, let alone a mystery....no wonder I didn't really like it.

The story is of a middle-aged woman, Rachel Innes, who rents a house during summer and moves in it with her nephew, niece, and a maid. Soon mysterious things start happening. There are noises in the night, intruders in the house, shootings and killings... And on top of it, Rachel has an uncomfortable suspicion that her wards are not being completely honest with her. It'd have made for a top-notch mystery but somehow or the other, I failed to get involved with the book. Rachel, despite her tartar tongue and racial prejudices, is still likable, I didn't like her nephew Halsey and niece Gertrude. And Halsey's beloved, Louise (I believe) could put Lydia Languish to shame!

I'll be reading Rinehart again but not in this manner.

For Yvettte's excellent review of the book, go here:
http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com/2011/03/monday-review-circular-staircase-1908.html

*
First Line: This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous.

Title: The Circular Staircase

Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart

First Published: 1908

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s):

Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White

*

The book is in the public domain and can be downloaded from various sites. I downloaded it from manybooks.net

*

Submitted for the following challenges:

A-Z

Mystery and Suspense

Vintage Mystery

Reading Challenge # 7: 2012 South Asian Challenge

2011-12-18T08:06:00.000+05:30

I am signing up for the 2012 South Asian Challenge hosted by Swapna Krishna at S. Krishna's Books. The challenge involves reading books either written by South Asian writers or set in South Asia. For the uninitiated, South Asia includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, and Maldives. Crossovers with other challenges are allowed and you can set your own goal. Well, as this is the seventh challenge I am signing up for, I'll go for at least 7 books.

If you are interested in exploring the region, why don't you sign up too? Details can be found over here:
http://www.skrishnasbooks.com/2011/12/2012-south-asian-challenge-faq-and-sign.html

Review: The Daughter-in-Law by Diana Diamond

2011-12-17T23:42:00.000+05:30

Jonathan Donner, heir to a multi-million fortune, meets a young woman by the name of Nicole Pierce while sky-diving. He saves her from certain death, she is indebted to him. It is the beginning of a whirlwind romance that culminates in a runaway marriage. While, Jonathan's father, Jack, and his sister, Pam, accept Nicole as family; his mother, Alexandra, has reservations about the girl whom she considers nothing but a gold-digger. Digging into Nicole's past, Alexandra, comes up with some unsavoury facts. Before, however, she can reveal all, tragedy strikes the honeymooning couple. Jonathan disappears while they are scuba diving. Alexandra is convinced it is murder but has to convince her husband and daughter. Things get further complicated as Jack starts falling for Nicole's charms...

Is it murder? Did Jonathan really die? Is Nicole really a cold-blooded killer? Are Alexandra's suspicions unfounded? Who is pulling the strings?

The book starts off well but by the end peters out.

*

Opening Lines: She was frightened. Maybe even terrified. Jonathan could tell from her expression.

Title: The Daughter-in-Law

Author: Diana Diamond

Publication Details: NY: St. Martin's Press, 2003

First Published: 2003

Pages: 324

*

Second hand copies of the book can be ordered on the Net. I was gifted this by Pinki Masi.

*

Submitted for the following Challenges:

Mystery and Suspense

Off The Shelf

Reading Challenge # 6: Mount TBR

2011-12-17T23:07:00.001+05:30

I have signed up for the 2012 TBR Pile Challenge which involves reading books from your own shelves. However as that challenge stipulates that one cannot read books acquired in 2011, I am signing up for Mount TBR Challenge hosted by Bev at MY READER'S BLOCK, as I am really keen to read certain books acquired this year. There are various levels to choose from and I am choosing Pike's Peak which means I'll be reading 12 books from my shelves.

For further details, go here:
http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2011/10/mount-tbr-reading-challenge.html

(and while at it, look at Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge too).

1. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

Reading Challenge # 5: 2012 TBR Pile

2011-12-17T16:01:00.000+05:30

Are your bookshelves groaning under the weight of books brought with a lot of enthusiasm but then never read because of one thing or the other? If yes, then you can sign-up for the 2012 TBR Pile Challenge hosted by Adam @ Roofbeamreader.

The challenge requires you to read 12 books that have been sitting on your bookshelves for over a year and thus were published before 2011. Crossovers with other challenges are fine and anyone who completes the challenge will be entered for a grand prize at the end of the year.

To sign-up, you must prepare a list of the 12 books that you plan to read (along with two alternates) and then link up the post.

Here is my list (in alphabetical order):

1. America by Franz Kafka (1927)

2. For Pepper and Christ by Keki N. Daruwalla (2009)
3. Inqilab by K.A. Abbas (1958)
4. Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)
5. King's General by Daphne DuMaurier (1946)
6. Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl (2010)
7. North and South by John Jakes (1982)
8. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)
9. Paris Enigma by Pablo De Santis (2007)
10. Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy (1963)
11. Vision by Dean Koontz (1986)
12. Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen (ed) by Michael Kerrigan (1996)

The 2 Alternates:

1. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (2006)
2. A Train of Powder by Rebecca West (1955)

For further details, go here:
http://roofbeamreader.net/2011/11/14/the-2012-tbr-pile-challenge-sign-ups/

It's Monday! What are you reading?

2011-12-13T10:42:00.000+05:30

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme by Bookjourney where one writes about the book(s) one - has just finished, is reading, will take up next. It is a nice way to iteract with other bloggers and perhaps to pick up a recommendation or two.

Well, the book I have just finished is The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart. The review is pending.

Currently I am reading Sean Slater's The Survivor which is an explosive thriller about a detective investigating a case of gunmen going berserk in a school where his daughter studies.

I plan to read Zero Percentile after this.

To see what others are reading, go here:
http://bookjourney.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/its-monday-what-are-you-reading-116/

Reading Challenge # 4: War Through the Generations

2011-12-13T07:39:00.000+05:30

I am participating in War Through the Generations 2012 challenge that focuses on WWI. One can read fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels etc with WWI as the primary or secondary theme. Books can take place before, during, or after the war, so long as the conflicts that led to the war or the war itself are important to the story.Books from other challenges count so long as they meet the above criteria. There will be a read-along and giveaways too.

The challenge, which will last the entire year, has different levels for one to choose from. I have chosen Dip which means I will be reading 1-3 books related to WWI. I might, as the year progresses, jump on to a higher level but as of now I am choosing the first level.

As I've already read the (frequently) recommended books of WWI: Across the Black Waters, All Quiet on the Western Front, A Farewell to Arms, Goodbye to All That, The Great War and Modern Memory, The Regeneration trilogy, Siegfried Sassoon's Diaries, I will be looking for lesser known books of this period. I am excited about the (re)search.

For more information and sign-up, go here:
http://warthroughthegenerations.wordpress.com/2012-challenge-info-and-sign-up/

Vintage Mystery Trivia Challenge at Pretty Sinister Books

2011-12-10T07:16:00.000+05:30

John at Pretty Sinister Books has a most mesmerizing blog where he writes about mystery books and authors that/ who I haven't even heard of. His posts are always interesting [and make "on my wishlist" pile huge :)].

Presently, he is hosting a vintage mystery quiz where you can test your knowledge and win prizes. Attempt it over here:

http://prettysinister.blogspot.com/2011/12/so-you-think-you-know-your-vintage.html

And while you are at it, have a look at his blog. Believe me, you'll not want to leave.

Reading Challenge # 3: Smooth Criminals

2011-12-10T05:41:00.001+05:30

Well, here's my third Reading Challenge for the year 2012. The Smooth Criminals Reading Challenge hosted by Dead EndFollies. The goal is to read books in Eight different categories. The categories (as explained by the host) are:

Hardboiled Classic

What is hardboiled? It's up to you to find out. I'll drop two names though. Chandler, Hammett, rings a bell? There are other hardboiled novelist (better even), you just have to look them up.

Noir Classic

There is a difference is between hardboiled and noir. When you look at it, it's rather evident, but I'll let you investigate it for now. Two pioneers of the style are James M. Cain and David Goodis. You can start there.

Prison Book

It can be a novel, or it can be narrative non-fiction. Prison is a very powerful narrative device and a lot of great writers that have written books about it.

Book written by a writer who did time

Writers often provoke and often live within the margins of society. There's a rather large number of them that have been prison walls. Read one of them, see if it influenced his/her writing.

Book with psychopath protagonist

What's a psychopath exactly? I'll leave you do find out. You'll see there is an impressive number of them in the history of literature.

Gothic Novel

That deserves some explanation. The concept of literary genres really took its stride when Gothic fiction was invented. It's debatable that there were older examples, but it's Gothic that changed the game. It birthed many genres like Southern Gothic, crime, science-fiction and dark romance, but it's still a genre going strong today. You might want to read an older Gothic novel (Walpole, Poe, etc.) or a more recent one, but it has to be Gothic. No, Southern Gothic isn't a part of this. It's a different thing.

Classic where the plot revolves around a crime

Easy peasy. It just can't be an all out crime novel. Not every literary classic turn around a crime but maybe twenty or thirty percent are.

Read: The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (1870)

The "Why the hell am I doing this to myself?" book

Read a book that looks menacing from the store shelves. A novel (or narrative non-fiction) that looks like the most daunting task to you. PICK UP THAT THING AND READ IT, SOLDIER!

If you are unsure about any category, you can mail the host at benoitlelievre (at) gmail (dot) com with SMOOTH CRIMINALS in the Subject Line. And you have to post your reviews. For further details, go here:

http://www.deadendfollies.com/2011/11/smooth-criminals-reading-challenge-for.html

Right now, I plan to read a Hammet and an Archer for this one, the rest I will choose as the year progresses.

Reading Challenge # 2: Death by Gaslight

2011-12-08T07:21:00.000+05:30

Okay, so here's the second challenge I am signing up for. Death by Gaslight challenge, hosted by Jenn at Simply... Challenging, requires one to read mysteries either written or set during the Victorian and Edwardian eras (1837-1910). Any location is permitted as long as it fits the time frame.

There are different levels to choose from. I am opting for Palmer the Poisoner that requires me to read 10 books.

For details and sign-up (admit it to yourself, you love the button), go here:
http://jcreadingchallenges.blogspot.com/2011/12/death-by-gaslight-reading-challenge.html

Reading Challenge # 1: Vintage Mystery

2011-12-08T06:36:00.002+05:30

Well, now that I have completed one challenge, it is time to sign up for all those lovely challenges for 2012. And in keeping with tradition, the first one that I am signing up for is The Vintage Mystery Challenge hosted by Bev at MY READER'S BLOCK.

This year round Bev has introduced a thematic twist to the challenge. There are ten themes in all and one has to read atleast eight books (all published before 1960) - on a particular theme - to complete the challenge. Crossovers with other challenges are allowed. There is a grand prize and other giveaways too.

There are some very interesting themes but I am playing it safe and opting for the two safest ones:

1. Golden Age Girls: It requires me to read 8 vintage mysteries that are either written by a female author or have a female detective

1. The Slippery Staircase by E.C.R Lorac
2. The Story of Ivy by Belloc Lowndes

2. Cherchez le Homme: It requires me to read 8 vintage mysteries that are either written by a male author or have a male detective.

1. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler (1939)
2. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

For further details, go here:

http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2011/10/vintage-mystery-reading-challenge-2012.html

Vintage Mystery Challenge Complete!

2011-12-04T10:26:00.000+05:30

The first reading challenge that I ever signed up for was The Vintage Mystery Challenge hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block. It gives me great pleasure that it is also the first one that I have completed. I read 7 books in all, discovered new authors and some wonderful mysteries.

Thank You Bev for a most pleasurable experience.

1. In the Fog by Richard Harding Davis
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/03/twist-in-tale-in-fog.html

2. Murder of a Martinet by E.C.R. Lorac
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/08/spider-caught-in-its-own-web-murder-of.html

3. Death in Kashmir by M.M. Kaye
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/07/gotterdammerung-twilight-of-gods-in.html

4. Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/09/house-of-horrors-police-at-funeral.html

5. XYZ: A Detective Story by Anna Katharine Green
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/10/x-y-z-intriguing-title-predictable.html

6. The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/wheel-spins-and-how.html

7. The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.com/2011/12/review-circular-staircase-by-mary.html

If you want you can still participate in the ongoing challenge or you can sign up for the new year (as I am planning to do).

For details, click here:
http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2011/10/vintage-mystery-reading-challenge-2012.html

The Wheel Spins and How!

2011-12-04T08:17:00.000+05:30

... he could have no idea of the hell of fear into which he plunged her. She was white to the lips as she shrank into the corner of the carriage. She was afraid of him - afraid of everyone in the train. Even Hare seemed to have entered into a conspiracy against her. The whole world appeared roped into a league that threatened her sanity.

What will we do without sisters?! My elder sister, Nitu didi, was coming over to India to attend a wedding. And, just a few days before she has to catch her flight, I ask her to bring me a book that has long been on my wishlist: Ethel Lina's White The Wheel Spins (aka The Lady Vanishes). And putting aside all the packing and other arrangements to be made before the journey, Nitu didi goes hunting in the libraries for it! Thank God for didis. I am indeed blessed.

Now about the book.... The story, set sometime in the tense thirties, is about a young woman, Iris Carr, who has been holidaying in Germany. Feeling out of sorts - separated from her companions and alienated from the other passengers - she strikes up an acquaintance, on her return journey, with another English woman, who introduces herself as Miss Froy. They get into a conversation but soon Iris decides to take a sedative as she is quite feverish and has suffered a sunstroke. When she wakes up, the seat opposite her is empty and the other people in the carriage deny ever having another woman in the midst. As the train rushes on, Iris has to prove the existence of Miss Froy to others. But was there a Miss Froy or was she just a figment of Iris' feverish imagination? Why would anyone try to do away with a middle-aged harmless governess? Is the world in cahoots against Iris or this is just a ploy of hers to gain attention. White spins a gripping tale that has its moments of real horror as when this story is narrated to Iris:

A certain woman had been certified as insane, but owing to a blunder the ambulance went to the wrong house and forcibly took away an Englishwoman, who did not understand a word of the language, or of her destination. In her indignation and horror at finding herself in a private asylum, she became so vehement and violent that she was kept at first, under the influence of drugs.

When the mistake was found out, the doctor - who was a most unscrupulous character, was afraid to admit it. At the time he was in financial difficulties, and he feared it might ruin his reputation. So he planned to detain the Englishwoman until he could release her as officially cured.

"But she couldn't know she wasn't in for life," explained Miss Froy, working up the agony. "The horror of it would probably have driven her really insane, only a nurse exposed the doctor's plot, out of revenge...But can you imagine the awful position of that poor Englishwoman? Trapped, with no one to make inquiries about her, or even to know she had disappeared, for she was merely a friendless foreigner, staying a night here and night there, at some Pension. She didn't understand a word - she couldn't really explain - "

"Please stop," broke in Iris. "I can imagine it all. Vividly...."

The book has a wonderful cast of supporting characters - the professor, his young acquaintance, the honeymooning couple, the parson and his wife, the baroness, the blonde beauty...all have a role to play in this journey.

I love mysteries set in trains and this - with its frantic rhythm - was most enjoyable.

*

First Line: The day before the disaster, Iris Carr had her first premonition of danger.

Title: The Wheel Spins (The Lady Vanishes)

Author: Ethel Lina White

Publication Details: NY: ibooks, 2004

Pages: 245

First Published: 1936

Trivia: The book was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock in
1938.

*

Being out of print, the book is not so easily available. Nitu didi borrowed and brought it for me from Mississauga Library System. [39079036048345]

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s)

Murder on the Orient Express

Submitted for the following challenges:

A-Z

Borrowed Books

Mystery and Suspense

Vintage Mystery

'Nachgeborenen': Those who Came After: Herta Muller's Green Plums

2011-11-30T07:21:00.000+05:30

We laughed a lot, to hide it from each other. But fear always finds an out. If you control your face, it slips into your voice. If you manage to keep a grip on your face and your voice, as if they were dead wood, it will slip out through your fingers. It will pass through your skin and lie there. You can see it lying around on objects close by.

First published in 1949, George Orwell's iconic 1984, is a study of a dystopic future where the State has penetrated deep into the life of the citizens and where fear and suspicion rules each and every relationship. Reading Nobel-prize winner Herta Muller 1993 novel The Land of Green Plums is like revisiting 1984. Only this time, the novel is not a product of the writer's imagination but rather based on everyday experiences in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicole Ceausescu.

The story narrated by an unnamed young woman is about four young people - Edgar, Kurt, Georg, and the narrator herself - who come together after a young woman called Lola commits suicide (or is it murder?) in the hostel where she is a roommate of the narrator. All four come from similar families. They all belong to the German-speaking Minority in Romania, their fathers are former S.S. Men who fought for (and still sing songs in praise of) Hitler, and whose mothers are long-suffering, hard-working women.

The four young people, eager to free themselves from the all-suffocating/ all-pervasive presence of the State indulge in minor subversive activities - reading and collecting books that are banned, composing poems that talk of toppling dictatorships. Their deepest desire is to not turn into a puppet of the State, wearing fear like a second skin:

The gym instructor was the first to raise his hand. All the other hands flew up after his. While raising their hands, everybody looked at the raised hands of the others. If someone's own hand wasn't as high as the others', he would stretch his arms a little farther. People kept their hands up until their fingers grew tired and started to droop and their elbows began to feel heavy and pull downward. Everyone looked around, and since no one else's arm was lowered, they straightened their fingers again and extended their elbows. Sweat stains showed under the arms; shirts and blouses came untucked. Necks were stretched, ears turned red, lips parted and stayed half-open. Heads kept still, while eyes slid from side to side.

Freedom, however, as they realise eventually can only be gained through two ways: the passport...

But the letters exchanged between the narrator and her mother show that it is not so easy to sever ties:

They have good streets here, but everything's so spread out. I am not used to asphalt, it makes my feet hurt, and my brain. I get as tired here in a day as I do back home in a year.

That's not home, other people live there now, I wrote to Mother. Home is where you are now...

And Mother wrote back to me: How would you know where home is? the place where Toni the clockmaker tends the graves, that's home.

or the slashed wrist/ broken neck/ splattered body...

It is a chilling realisation.

The book does not allow easy access but stick with it. It made me thankful for the little space that is my own.

Incidentally, can anyone tell me the meaning of the original title: Herztier?

*

First Line: When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become
unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of
ourselves.

Title: The Land of Green Plums

Author: Herta Muller

Translator: Michael Hofmann

Original Language: German

Original Title: Herztier

Publication Details: London: Granta Books, 1999

First Published: 1993

Pages: 242

*

The Land of Green Plums can be purchased on the Net. I borrowed it from the College Library. [833 M 9132]

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s)

1984

The Handmaid's Tale

*

Read and reviewed as part of the German Literature Month hosted by Caroline and Lizzy.

Submitted for the following challenges:

A-Z

Borrowed Book

Haunted by Ghosts: Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck

2011-11-30T00:59:00.000+05:30

...but with each step you take while fleeing, your baggage grows less and less, with more and more left behind, and sooner or later you just stop and sit there, and then all that is left of life is life itself, and everything else is lying in all the ditches beside all the roads in a land as enormous as the air, and surely here as well you can find those dandelions, these larks.

"No poetry after Auschwitz, " Adorno had declared famously. At the same time however, great tragedy has often created sublime art. Thus, it is no wonder that the most moving passages in the book Visitation are those reflecting the thoughts of a young Jewish girl, Doris, hidden in a cupboard by her mother and waiting for her return. As the wait grows longer and darkness spreads, little Doris' (she is all of twelve) thoughts get frantic. And then, just before she is shot, because she is considered an inconvenience that might interfere with things running smoothly, Doris recalls a beautiful moment of love and laughter:

Nothing is nicer than diving with your eyes open. Diving down as far as the shimmering legs of your mother and father who have just come back from swimming and now are wading to shore through the shallow water. Nothing more fun than to tickle them and to hear, muffled by the water, how they shriek because they know it will make their child happy.

Midway through the book, this chapter titled The Girl was so heart wrenching that I felt suffocated and had to close the book, take a few deep breaths, walk round the room, swallow past the lump in my throat, and only then could I open the book once again.

Through the history of a house built near a lake, the author Jenny Erpenbeck presents the history of Germany in a microcosm. The story proper begins in a fairy tale manner and ends in a technical description of demolition, effectively demonstrating the nightmarish descent of Germany from a land of fairy tales to a land of destruction and devastation. Beginning somewhere at the fag end of the 19th Century, the house (or the woods where the house is built) sees a succession of owners, tenants, workers, neighbours that make the novel meander through the first world war, the rise of Nazism, the second world war, the march of the Red army, the division and the reunification. Stories and characters are repeated. One doesn't quite know at times which character is being talked about. While the human landscape changes, the natural landscape, the lake remains as it was at the beginning of its creation, reflecting the follies of mankind.

Not surprisingly, the novel deals with setting up roots and uprooting, often violent and forced. Thus, characters ponder on the sense of what can be called home.

Home! he'd cried out like a child that would give anything not to be seeing what it was seeing, but precisely in this one brief moment in which he hid his face in his hands, as it were, even the dutiful German official had known that home would never again be called Bavaria, the Baltic coast or Berlin, home had been transformed into a time that now lay behind him, Germany had been irrevocably transformed into something disembodied, a lost spirit that neither knew nor was forced to imagine all these horrific things. H-o-m-e. Which thou must leave ere long. After he had swum his way through a brief bout of despair, the German official had applied to retain his post. those others, though, the ones who had fled their homeland before they themselves could be transformed into monsters, were thrust into homelessness by the news that reached them from back home, not just for the years of their emigration but also, as seems clear to her now, for all eternity, regardless of whether or not they returned.

Questions are also posed as to one's sense of belonging. As you are stripped of your belongings, do you lose your privilege of belonging?

Everything had kept getting less, they'd had to leave behind more and more baggage, or else it was taken from them, as though they were now too weak to carry all those things that are part of life, as though someone were trying to force them into old age by relieving them of all this.

Alongside though there is also an affirmation of the human spirit, that can endure and survive, and finally emerge a winner:

Which means that in the end there are certain things you can take with you when you flee, things that have no weight, such as music.

The book is not lenghty but extremely dense. At times, I found the going tough and wished that the writer had adopted a more easy (read conventional) way of conveying things, and the epilogue seemed heavy-handed but there are certain sections which will haunt you for ever. One of these days, I'll like to read the book -at a much slower pace - again.

*

First Line: Approximately Twenty-Four Thousand Years ago, a
glacier advanced until it reached a large outcropping of
rock that is nothing more than a gentle hill above where
the house stands.

Title: Visitation

Author: Jenny Erpenbeck

Translator: Susan Bernofsky

Original Language: German

Original Title: Heimsuchung

Publication Details: London: Portobello Books, 2010

First Published: 2008

Pages: 150

*

Visitation is available on the Net. I was lucky enough to win it as a giveaway during the German Literature Month.

*

Book(s) with similar theme(s)

Train to Pakistan (with photographs by Margaret Bourke-White)

Read and Reviewed as part of German Literature Month hosted by Caroline and Lizzy.

Submitted for the following Challenges:

A-Z

Off the Shelf

Book Most Thankful For

2011-11-26T07:32:00.000+05:30

On this Thanksgiving Weekend, Jenn at Jenn's Bookshelves has posed the question as to which book one is most thankful for.

The Mahabharat is my all-time favourite book. Passion, Romance, Friendship, Courage, Chivalry, Envy, Arrogance, Cowardice, Sacrifice, Suffering...: It contains the kernels of all the literary plots of the world. However, most translations don't do justice to this Sanskrit epic, turning the charcaters one-dimensional and presenting the story as a simplistic one of the victory of good over evil.

Kamala Subramaniam's translation is a notable exception that presents the grandeur of the epic in its varied hues and brings out the inherent tragedy of this magnum-opus. I still remember the thrill when I picked it up from the shelf of my school library and the nights spent narrating the text to my (sleepy!) sister.

Thankfully Reading Weekend: The Beginning

2011-11-26T07:07:00.000+05:30

I am participating in Thankfully Reading Weekend hosted by Jenn's Bookshelves. Well, to start with I finished Jeremy Erpenbeck's Visitation and have moved on to Herta Muller's The Land of Green Plums. Both are not easy reads, so I am very happy that I have finished one (review up soon) and am (almost) halfway thru the second one.

'The Issue itself": Present Day Germany and the Nazi Past in The Reader

2011-11-25T08:18:00.000+05:30

Sometime I think that dealing with the Nazi past was not the reason for the generational conflict that drove the student movement, but merely the form it took. Parental expectations, from which every generation must free itself, were nullified by the fact that these parents had failed to measure up during the Third Reich, or after it ended. How could those who had committed Nazi crimes or watched them happen or looked away while they were happening or tolerated the criminals among them after 1945 or even accepted them - how could they have anything to say to their children? But on the other hand, the Nazi past was an issue even for children who couldn't accuse their parents of anything, or didn't want to. For them coming to grips with the Nazi past was not merely the form taken by a generational conflict, it was the issue itself.

How does one accept the fact that one's loved ones may have committed grievous wrongs? How do you react when the woman whom you have loved comes in front of you as a monster? How does one move on when one has inherited a history of sin and guilt?

If this review has begun with questions, it is because Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader poses one question after another for the reader. Schlink's dwells into an area very few writers have sought to explore: The Nazi past of Germany. Writers tend to avoid such uncomfortable issues, issues which may bring up the past in all its ugly details. But Schlink poses the questions regarding those years of Germany, when, fed on the rhetoric of the Master Race and Aryan Supremacy, ordinary Germans either applauded or turned a blind eye to the things happening to their Jewish neighbours and friends.

The story is about a young boy Michael Berg who has an intense love affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz, during his teenage years. Their love making is interspersed with discussions of books that Michael reads out to Hanna. The woman is a mystery and Berg always has the feeling that she doesn't reveal everything to him. Then one fine day Hanna disappears. Young Berg grows up - and as a law student is attending a case against former Nazis - only to recognise Hanna in that line-up of criminals. Her crimes are horrific and Berg is caught between the memories of the woman whom he had loved and the reality of the woman who now stands before him as an accused.

As the case progresses, Berg realises that the answers that he wants from Hanna, in fact, from his country itself, can never be a simplistic Yes/ No kind of thing. In one of the most perceptive passages of the entire book, Hanna counter-questions the judge who asked her why she had committed certain acts. Hanna is bewildered because she saw herself as just carrying out certain orders.

"I ...I mean...so what would you have done?" Hanna meant it as a serious question....

"There are matters one simply cannot get drawn into, that one must distance oneself from, if the price is not life and limb."

Perhaps this would have been all right if he had said the same thing, but referred directly to Hanna or himself. Talking about 'one' must and must not at and what it costs did not do justice to the seriousness of Hanna's question. She had wanted to know what she should have done in her particular situation, not that there are things that are not done. The judge's answer came across as helpless and pathetic. Everyone felt it. They reacted with sighs of disappointment and stared in amazement at Hanna, who had more or less won the exchange.

The book thus provides no answers as such. There is just a quest for answers and an attempt to understand the past. If Hanna represents Germany which failed to 'read' the signs than is her ultimate fate the only way forward for the new generation? As Michael says at one point:

I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna's crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that. When I tried to understand it, I had the feeling I was failing to condemn it as it must be condemned. When I condemned it as it must be condemned, there was no room for understanding. But even as I wanted to understand Hanna, failing to understand her meant betraying her all over again. I could not resolve this. I wanted to pose myself both tasks - understanding and condemnation. but it was impossible to do both.

Besides these issues of moral dilemma, there is also sheer poetry in certain passages. Sample this poignant reflection:

But there was so much energy in me, such belief that one day I'd be handsome and clever and superior and admired, such anticipation when I met new people and new situations. Is that what makes me sad? the eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill? Sometimes I see the same eagerness and belief in the faces of children and teenagers and the sight brings back the same sadness I feel in remembering myself. Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept.

The book is not an easy or quick read. There are many instances that will make you take a pause and ponder over your own responses to certain issues. This was the aspect of the novel that I enjoyed the most and the one that made me overlook what I don't enjoy reading: descriptions of an underage youngster involved in a torrid love affair with a mature adult. It might have been necessary for the plot but certain descriptive scenes were uncalled for.
*

First Line: When I was fifteen, I got Hepatitis.

Title: The Reader

Author: Bernhard Schlink

Original Title: Der Vorleser

Original Language: German

Translator: Carol Brown Janeway

Publication Details: London: Phoenix, 2008

First Published: 1995

Pages: 216

Trivia: The book was made into a movie in 2008 and was much in
the news for the lead actress, Kate Winslet, winning a
number of awards for her portrayal of Hanna.

*

The book is available on the net. I borrowed it from Delhi Public Library, Vinoba Puri. [N SCH]

*

Books with similar theme(s):

The Book Thief

The Night in Lisbon

*

Read and Reviewed as part of the German Literature Month.

Submitted for the following Challenges.

A-Z
Borrowed Book
Mystery and Suspense

Reading Challenge

2011-11-24T11:55:00.000+05:30

What am I doing signing up for another challenge when I haven't even finished a single one? Well, this challenge is for people like me who do things at the last hour. All you have to do is to read, read, and read in the month of December so that you start with a (comparatively) small pile in the New Year. There will be weekly check-ins and a giveaway too.

Hosted by Loving Books, you can click here for more details:
http://lvngbooks.blogspot.com/2011/11/coming-up-get-read-y-for-2012.html

Sunday 4th December 2011

Well time to take a stock of the year and plan for the month of December.

Signed up for 7 (besides this one) challenges. Haven't completed any so far though some are on the verge of completion.

A-Z: Have read and reviewed 12 out of a total of 26. Read a few others but have to review them. Letters left are: C, E, F,G, H, J, K, O, Q, S, U, W, Y, Z. 14 books in one month. Seems like a tall order.

Birth Year: To read 2 books. Will do it this month.

Borrowed Book: Have read 8 out of 12. Since I am reading a few books borrowed from libraries, this challenge I definitely hope to complete.

Dewey Decimel: The goal was simple. To read 1 non-fiction book. Haven't done it so far. Hope to do it before the year ends.

Mystery and Suspense: Have read and reviewed 6 out of a total of 12. But have read a couple which I need to review, so will be able to finish it.

Off the Shelf: Have read only 2 out of 15. Again seems like a tall order.

Vintage Mystery: 1 book left. Will finish this first.

*

Selected list of books that have to be read/ reviewed:

1. The Wheel Spins
2. Survivor
3. Freedom Struggle in Indian English Novels
4. The Weavers
5. Oh Shit Not Again!
6. Zero Percentile
7. The American Boy
8. The Yellow Rose and other Stories
9. The Daughter-in-Law.
10. The Sonnet Lover.

Quite a lot to do. So let me go back to the books.

Thankfully Reading Weekend

2011-11-24T06:34:00.000+05:30

Jenn at jennsbookshelves is hosting a thankfully-reading-weekend that starts on Nov. 25th. There are no rules as such, just an 'obscene amount of reading.' Since I've to read quite a few books before November ends, I thought it would be fun to have some cheering and encouragement. There are also mini-challenges and giveaways. For more details, go here:

http://www.jennsbookshelves.com/2011/11/12/thankfully-reading-weekend-2011-edition/

Growing Up (with books) in Nazi Germany: The Book Thief

2011-11-19T10:38:00.000+05:30

The stars set fire to my eyes...

Usually I avoid reading books set in Nazi Germany because in the guise of Nazi bashing there is a blanket basterdization of ordinary Germans - people caught on the wrong foot in the march of history.

It was with this trepidation that I started The Book Thief. Had heard a lot about it - it being hailed as a modern classic - and it had even featured on my wishlist. The beginning was strange. The narrative voice was stranger. And it took me some time to gain entry into the book. Perhaps, it was some 100 pages down the book that I warmed up to it. From then on, however, it was a terrific ride - often heartrending and leaving me teary eyed.

The book - a bildungsroman - tells the story of a young German girl Liesel Meminger, the eponymous thief of the title and her life in the house of her foster parents the Hubermanns at Himmel Street - one of the poorer sections of the town of Molching, a suburb of Munich.

Growing up in Nazi Germany means that everything is secondary to the Party. One cannot even have the freedom to have different thoughts! How can anyone grow in such suffocating circumstances? But Liesel does, along with her close friend Rudy Steiner and the other kids of the street. Life is certainly not a bed of roses but it has laughter and sharing and happiness and thievery. Mostly of books but at times of food items.

Politics enters the household in the form of a dispute between the father and the son and the appearance of a Jew - Max Vandenburg- whom the family hides. It is a nightmarish existence for the young man hiding behind paint tins in a cold basement. And in one of the most moving lines of the book, he looks at the stars after a period of two years:

From a Himmel Street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.

The line reinforced with tragic intensity the suicidal march of a country.

As the novel progressed, the narrative voice started making sense. It is disjointed and it is fragmentary because life is like that. It isn't easy, smooth sailing. In fact, it's a brilliant trope employed by the author.

Stick with the book. It will take time but it will be rewarding.

*

Opening lines: First the colours. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least how I try.

Title: The Book Thief

Author: Markus Zusak

Publication Details: London: Black Swan, 2007

First Published: 2005

Pages: 554

*
Other books with similar theme:

Two Lives

Baumgartner's Bombay

*

Here's a link to another review of the book (by Deborah):

http://thebookstop.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/review-the-book-thief-by-markus-zusak/

*

The book is easily available in book stores and on the Net, I borrowed it from Delhi Public Library, opposite Old Delhi Railway Station. [N ZAS]

*

Submitted for the following:

Borrowed Book Challenge

November Book Giveaway

On My Wishlist

2011-11-06T07:40:00.000+05:30

On My Wishlist is a fun meme hosted by BookChickCity in which one writes about the book(s) one is really keen to read.

Today on my wishlist is W.G. Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction which discusses both the devastation of Germany during the Second World War as also the silence that envelopes it. I got to know of this book thru Caroline's wonderful review of it as part of the German Reading Challenge in which I am participating. You can find the review over here:

http://beautyisasleepingcat.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/w-g-sebald-on-the-natural-history-of-destruction-luftkrieg-und-literatur-1999/

To see what others are wishing for, go here:

http://www.bookchickcity.com/2011/11/on-my-wishtlist-97.html

HAPPY DIWALI

2011-10-26T09:36:00.000+05:30

Wishing all the Readers a Happy and Prosperous Diwali. May the New Year be full of Good Cheer.

This image is from the following site:

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2280">Image:

Reading List: First World War

2011-10-22T07:01:00.000+05:30

There is a new feature at The Blue Bookcase: Reading Lists. Here's what they have posted:

Welcome to this week's installment of our newest feature here at The Blue Bookcase: Reading Lists. Every week one of us (or a guest blogger) will post on one of his or her favorite topics and provide a list of books he or she is familiar with on that topic. At the end of each post we will invite you to throw out any suggestions of books, fiction or non-fiction, that you have read or know about on that topic and we will add them to the list on that post.

The week's topic being First World War and most of the books that I have read and loved: All Quiet on the Western Front, Goodbye to all That, A Farewell to Arms already being listed, I am posting about a book that is not so well known.

Mulk Raj Anand's Across the Black Waters.

Discussion of the First World War is usually Euro-centric, neglecting the contribution and sacrifices made by the soldiers from the African and Asian colonies of the European powers. Anand's novel, first published in 1940, and part of a trilogy (though it can be read as a stand-alone) talks about one such regiment from Punjab, India. Fighting in the fields of Flanders, far away from home, and being used as cannon-fodder, the soldiers try to make sense of what's happening around them. It's a brutally poignant book with all the tension of fighting in the trenches in a foreign land for a cause that is futile.

For more on the feature, the Reading List, and recommendations of others, go here:

http://thebluebookcase.blogspot.com/2011/10/reading-list-world-war-one.html

The Monkey's Paw at Pretty Sinister Books

2011-10-17T17:39:00.000+05:30

Since it is the season of Halloween, and people are citing their favourite ghost/ horror/ supernatural stories, I was reminded of one such that I read years ago: W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw. I was pleased to see John at Pretty Sinister Books refer to the story in a review of his. Since I wanted to read John's take on the story, I requested him to post an article on it. He very graciously complied.

Here's the link to his article:

http://prettysinister.blogspot.com/2011/10/shaking-monkeys-paw.html

If you are familiar with John's blog than you know for sure that he writes extremely interesting articles and this one is no exception. And if you are not, than I suggest you become acquainted. Go on, click on the link!

German Literature Month

2011-10-14T20:02:00.000+05:30

I have decided to participate in the German Literature Month co-hosted by Lizzy from Lizzy's Literary Life and Caroline from Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. The event is planned for the month of November and includes read-alongs, thematic reads, discussions, and giveaways. The books range from Classics to Contemporary.

If you would like to know more about Germany - its literature, culture, people, history - why don't you too join me (and a host of others)? Details can be found over here:

http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/announcing-german-literature-month/

a hot cup of pleasure

Theme Thursday: Eyes

SEEWINK, VISION, ROLL etc

Favourite Crime Read

January: the month that was

Review: The Slippery Staircase by E.C.R Lorac

Twelve Best: Agatha Christie.

Reading Challenge # 29

Reading Challenges # 27 & 28: Books from Libraries

Reading Challenge # 26: Color-Coded

Reading Challenge # 25: Chunkster

Reading Challenge # 24: Dusty Bookshelf

Dark Desires: Dickens' Edwin Drood

Edwin Drood: Did he or Didn't he?

A Winter's Respite Read-a-thon has begun...

Charles Dickens Month: Edwin, Rosa, and Jasper

Reading Challenge # 23: Criminal Plots II

Readathon: A Winter's Respite

A Paean to the Sun

Happy Lohri

Reading Challenge # 22: E Book

Writing Challenge: 500 words

Chasing a Crooked Shadow: Eric Ambler's Dimitrios

Reading Challenge # 21: Find the Cover

Charles Dickens Month: The Man Who Liked Dickens

Reading Challenges # 18, 19, & 20: The Classics

Favourite Crime Read

Reading Challenge # 17: European Reading

Reading Challenges # 15 & 16: A-Z - Authors & Titles

Reading Challenge # 14: Mystery and Suspense

Pick-Your-A-Thon: Wrap-Up

Reading Challenge # 13: Free Reads

Reading Challenge # 12: New Authors

Reading Challenge Addict

Reading Challenge # 11: Unread Book

Reading Challenge # 10: Merely Mystery

Reading Challenge # 9: British Books

Reading Challenge # 8: Wishlist Challenge

Happy New Year 2012

Challenge Complete: Mystery and Suspense

Review: The Survivor by Sean Slater

Pick a Thon Mini Challenge # 4

Challenge Complete: Borrowed Book

Edgar Allan Poe's Reynolds: And Therein Hangs a Tale

The Pain of Partition: K.K. Khullar's Yellow Rose

Pick-Your-A-Thon Mini Challenge # 1

Pick-Your-A-Thon

Two Under the Tuscan Sun

Challenge Complete: Birth Year Reading Challenge

Two Candles on my Cake

Review: The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Reading Challenge # 7: 2012 South Asian Challenge

Review: The Daughter-in-Law by Diana Diamond

Reading Challenge # 6: Mount TBR

Reading Challenge # 5: 2012 TBR Pile

It's Monday! What are you reading?

Reading Challenge # 4: War Through the Generations

Vintage Mystery Trivia Challenge at Pretty Sinister Books

Reading Challenge # 3: Smooth Criminals

Reading Challenge # 2: Death by Gaslight

Reading Challenge # 1: Vintage Mystery

Vintage Mystery Challenge Complete!

The Wheel Spins and How!

'Nachgeborenen': Those who Came After: Herta Muller's Green Plums

Haunted by Ghosts: Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck

Book Most Thankful For

Thankfully Reading Weekend: The Beginning

'The Issue itself": Present Day Germany and the Nazi Past in The Reader

Reading Challenge

Thankfully Reading Weekend

Growing Up (with books) in Nazi Germany: The Book Thief

On My Wishlist

HAPPY DIWALI

Reading List: First World War

The Monkey's Paw at Pretty Sinister Books

German Literature Month

SEE
WINK, VISION, ROLL etc