Book Review: Thanks for the Memories

My love for books, unlike my love for words, is not a selfless one. I invest time in a book hoping to get something in return. I expect a book to keep me good company; it can make me happy, sad or happy-sad, it can make me contemplate or melancholic, it can even make me angry. That’s my deal with books. So if a couple of chapters into the book, if it doesn’t engage me I break up with it. And then I might never go back to the book or even the author, for that matter. Such has been my relationship with Cecelia Ahern and P.S. I love you. And, more than 5 years hence, quite skeptically I picked a copy of Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern from a coffee-shop book shelf. I’d had a long and tiring day, and was looking for a book to keep me company while I finished my cup of hot chocolate, and wham- magic happens! (P.S. I carefully sneaked the copy so I could finish reading it. P.P.S. It will be sneaked back to the shelf by the time this post is up.)

This story is about two people, their lives and how it connects in the most unexpected and bizarre way. Joyce Conway has just had an accident which resulted in a miscarriage of her pregnancy and her marriage. In her moment of grief she can no longer imagine holding on to her love-less marriage with Conner. Justin Hitchcock, an American academician in historic architecture, is in Dublin to deliver a lecture when he’s talked into donating blood for the very first time in his life. A  divorcee who just moved to London to be near his daughter-the only true love in his life, Justin is just beginning to get his life back on track after the end of his marriage. In a twist of destiny, Justin’s life collides and entangles with Joyce, who herself is struggling to make purpose of her life after her tragedy.

Cecelia Ahern, in her masterstroke, introduces us to the protagonist, Joyce Conway, at her lowest; I felt her pain, her agony and her struggle to remain sane speak to me through the pages. But, even though my heart went out to Joyce in her sorrow and cried out of joy in her celebrations, she wasn’t my favorite character in the story; neither is Justin Hitchcock nearly as adorable. My favorites are Joyce’s dad, Mr. Conway and Justin’s daughter, Bea. They light up the story peppering it with their love and innocence. Conway reminded me of my mother in her innocence, childishness and stubborn resolve. Possibly like every parent, Conway looks out for his daughter and trusts her decisions unquestioningly. While at it he will possibly also put them in trouble with his innocent, yet mischievous ways.  Bea on the other hand could well have been the parent between Justin and her. She is an understanding and caring young woman who loves her dad unconditionally. Although you would find the novel in the romance genre, make no presumptions as to who the most romantic and lovable couple in the story are, as no couple in the entire story is as cute as Conway and Gracie- you really need to read the story to find out why.

As to whether I will read more of Cecelia Ahern's books? I will. I believe there are writers who write for the love of the language and then there are writers who write for the love of the emotions. I believe Cecelia Ahern is of the latter brand of writers. Her writing is more visual than verbal. She paints you a picture of the emotions at play in the air than what meets the eye; you might experience more from her writing than even if you were physically present there. So, yes, I'm looking forward to another beautifully writing story that she may have to tell.

ISBN: 978 0 00 731130 9

HarperCollinsPublishers

Cecelia Ahern

2008

Book Review: Rage of Angels

ISBN04: 46366611

Author : Sidney Sheldon

Pages  : 504 pages 

Warner books, 1980

(Borrowed book no. 2 from ChaiCofi)

I have sinned and yet I'm purged from any crime. A validation to this dates back to my school days when my school library, in the brightly lite corridors of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom, was my favorite places of all in the school and my librarian, Ms. Sushma, whose pet I was, carefully guided me through all the right books I should have read from the vast collection they had in there. She was a darling, in that she let me have the best of books at all times. She even let me slightly bend her rules. Everyone, but me, could pick one book a week and could return it only after that week. Everyone, but me, had also to write a detailed review of the books they read. I think the one thing she liked about me was my obsession over keeping the books neat. I never used to dog-ear mark pages and she taught me to hold the book properly, in that the binding are in 45'. I Loved all that about her. Even today when I walk into a library and I half expect to find her standing there, as I've not known a better librarian than her.

But while all shelves in that library were open to me, one wasn't. This was one afternoon after lunch when we had our library period and I had chosen two books from a shelf I always look beyond. This was a shelf on a closed wooden cupboard with glass doors. I had chosen The Godfather by Mario Puzo and a Sydney Sheldon book. But, like God forbade Adam and Eve from tasting Satan's apple, Sushma ma'm forbade me from reading both these books and any other books by the authors. Maybe she thought that I wouldn't enjoy it of she thought it inappropriate for my age, I might never know. But what I do know is that she putt me off these authors up until now.

Coming back to our subject, I have sinned and yet purged of crime. Behold while I take you through my experience with my first Sydney Sheldon book, Rage of Angels. It's one of those self discovery, coming-of-age stories, where Jennifer Parker, freshly out of law school landed a job at the DA's office and is very excited about her first day at work. 

The story is one of the most fast-paced and dramatic one I've come across. It actually reads like one of those serialized drama series you watched in late 80s and early 90s. Without giving away any spoilers let me just tell you that this story has been re-created on the silver screen in many languages, including Malayalam, my mother-tongue. And atleast the Malayalam movie was just as enjoyable as the book. 
So the most significant question here is whether I will read another Sydney Sheldon? The answer is-YES. I'm dying to read Tell me your dreams if not anything else. Will you tell me which one's from the Sydney Sheldon bandwagon did you enjoy? Post your comments here and do let me know; I would love to hear your suggestions. So until we meet again. Keep reading!

Book Review: Love Story

ISBN-13: 978-1444776966

Author  : Erich Segal 

Year     : 1970

Pages   : 216

Price     : Rs.76/- (Kindle version)

Love means never having to say you're sorry

-Erich Segal, Love Story

Love Story book cover

Obsessed with love stories, I now wanted to read one of the classics. Love Story made the cut since I'd come across a review of the book on bookgeeks.com (Click here for the review). Promptly I found a copy on Amazon delivered directly to my Kindle and it just stayed there. I was keeping busy trying to strike off books from my TBR pile. And then on this fateful rainy Monday in May I had to make a train journey, and I had decided for Love Story to keep me company.

I am relatively new to the romance genre of books, but I'm thoroughly enjoying this stint. Let me start by saying that I'm not the mushy, hopelessly romantic kind. I like my crime thrillers and my non-fictions alike. But something in me changed since I read The Fault in Our Stars. I've begun to appreciate the genre and I couldn't have asked for anything better than this masterpiece. I run the risk of singing paeans for this book, but can't help it; this could very well be the father of all modern love stories.

Oliver Barrett IV is an all-Ivy Harvardian law student, with a multimillionaire couth upbringing, who hates everything about his upbringing-including his surname and the weight it carries. Jennifer Calliveri, a Radcliffian of Italian-American descent, is a musician in love with her family-with a passion Oliver terms as an 'Italian-Mediterranean' syndrome of paternal love. The cliche of the rich boy and the poor girl falling for each other at first sight ends right there. This story takes off with the unique chemistry between them. I instantly fell in love with the slightly snobbish, yet loving and considerate Jenny. Oliver too is perfectly adorable with all his imperfections. And the moment her dad Phil is introduced you can't help but fall for "the ever affable Mr.Cavilleri."

This is my first Erich Segal book and what I loved about the story is the romance embedded in playful humor and it's frank simplicity in defining love in it's pure sense. I finished the book in 2.5-3 hours flat and I stress that by the time I was done with it I felt like a marshmallow in hot chocolate- all warm and mushy inside. Now I really want to set hands on Oliver's Story, but not without fear. What if I don't like it as much? What if it doesn't live up to my expectations? Fears set aside I will read it soon enough. But before that, I really want to watch the movie Love Story, also written by Erich Segal. (Fun fact: Erich Segal has first written the screenplay of the moview which was turned down. So he was suggetsed to make it into a novel. He then re-wrote it into a novel which also then became a motion picture.) The theme song of this movie, by Francis Lai, has haunted me for years. Listen to it yourself.

 So, that's all about the book. You may wonder why I'm not getting into ratings for the book. I couldn't. I can't get myself to rate such a timeless classic that was written way before I was even born.

Verdict: A must read even if you aren't the hopelessly romantic kind, but just someone with a kind heart.

So time to move on to the next book. Keep reading and let me know what new stories you read.Ciao! 

Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars

ISBN 978-0-141-34565-9

Author: John Green
Year    : 2012

Pages  : 316 

Price    :Rs.399/- (paperback)

My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations.

John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

When I like a book it it could end in two ways. Either I could be dying to reach the very end as I want to

The Fault in Our Stars book cover

know how it ends, or I just don't want it to end. But something went terribly wrong here. In this case, I loved the book, and I badly wanted to know how it ended (atleast for a while) but I also couldn't part ways with the characters. Never have I so deeply invested my emotions in a book, in fictional characters as this one.

Fault in Our Stars is the story of a sixteen year old Hazel Grace Lancaster who never remembers her having anything but "crappy lungs". She is terminally ill with leukemia.She has to move around with an oxygen tank, she so fondly calls 'Philip', which helps her breath. She believes she is a "grenade that can blow up anytime leaving everyone around wounded." Her worst nightmare could be leaving her loving family wounded by her 'shrapnel' once she's gone. She has been out of school for a while and practically stopped socializing much. All she has been doing lately is to watch episodes of America's Top Models and to re-read just one book, her favorite, An Imperial Affliction and obsessing over what a sequel to the book would be like. Her socializingwas limited to attending a support group for Cancer kids. Except from her high-school friend Kaitlyn, who she hardly ever wants to talk to these days, he kids at the support group are her friends now. 

That's where Hazel meets Augustus Waters, the blue-eyed, one-legged boy with a sexy crooked smile. Augustus Waters is full of life. He is doing "grand" and is "on a roller coaster that only goes up". He keeps a pack of cigarettes at hand and occasionally hold one between his lips, but never lights it. It gives him a a sense of victory to not give the cigarette the power to "kill"him. He fears being forgotten once he's gone, and wants his life to be meaningful.

At once, Augustus is everything Hazel is not. It is like they are yin-yang. Hazel is the smart,intelligent and composed one, while Gus is the witty, humorous and creative one. While she is is strong Gus is persistent. So, quite predictably, they were meant to fall in love with each other. And this book is about their love and how it changed their lives.

This book is a cancer book, except for it doesn't drown us in sentiment and drama. This story is of a resilient battle to live a life as close to normal as possible, not giving cancer the power to kill for as long as possible. And hence the story never calls for us to sympathies over any character, be it Hazel, Gus or their friend Issac. They don't ask to be indulged in sympathy-they hate it.

The book also deals with how a life-threatening hurdle, as cancer, can alter your life in different ways, and yet it up to you to choose how you want to life your life.

This book sheds thoughts on feeling pain, on being hopeful about life even when there is practically no hope, and of being in true love even through the uncertainty of a future.  

I liked the book for the light nature in which it deals with grim and morbid sentiments. I like it for the positiveness it instilled in me. I would have given it a miss but for some awesome turn of fate. And as this is my first John Green book, so I'm not in a position to review this one with respect to any other of his books. So if you have read this book, or any other John Green book do let me know. Also share your thoughts on this book or any other book you think is worth a read. 

Rating

3.5/5

Verdict: The story is a light read that starts as a cliche cancer story progressing into deeper sentiments on life and death. 

Reflected in You

Paperback: 352 pages
E-book: About 10 hrs
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd(1 August 2013)
Language: English

• ISBN-10: 1405910259
• ISBN-13: 978-1405910255

When I sit to write this review I have finished the Crossfire series till the books available now, ie Reflected to you and Entwined with you. Yet what follows have no spoilers.

This book, Reflected in You, is not a stand alone book, and yet this is the first book in this series that grabs my attention: simply because it was a NewYork Times best seller. But I chose to read the books in the intended order.
 I believe that relationships are always complicated. It ain't a relationship till it gets complicated, because people are complicated. So here's continuing with the...alright...romance between Eva Tramell & Gideon Cross.
The two were drawn to each other like moth to a flame, and what followed was a raw, fierce, hot and tumultuous relationship. Both of them want the same things out of their relationships, but neither of them have been in a healthy relationship long enough to know how to work it through. The books goes about how the couple deals with their own demons and evils, while trying to save the relationship. Both of them have their own set of demons from the past to deal with. To make things worse, Eva is quite often faced by blasts from her past.

So in the beginning Eva is the volatile and self-obsessed among the two. But advancing into the story see that Eva realizes how she has been in the relationship and decides to work harder at making things work. At one point she decides to stop running because her 'recovery was so fragile that she'd learned to protect it at all costs.' So, midst the self-discovery, self-realization and the struggle to stay together the couple more than anything depend more on physical bonding to bond emotionally (No, I'm not complaining!). In Reflected in You, Eva and Gideon fall more and more in love, instilling some hope in us, readers, so that we keep pining for the franchise.

Well written and feel-good, it's not a stand alone story. Nevertheless it's a good continuation to the 1st book. If you have read Bared to You, you are bound to love this one as it just adds to the experience.

Rating: 3/5

(I have a Kindle at hand which makes me grab the e-book. But if you still live the paperbacks, fret not, as they don't make much of a difference to your pockets. Though paperbacks come cheapest at Flipkart the e-books are out of stock. So for e-books you still have to go to Amazon.)

The many shades of 'Bared to You'

I was hardly ever a fan of the mills & boons kind of erotic novels. In all of my 26 years I have hardly read 1-2 of them. To me these excessively erotic novels, with a powerful and over-powering alpha male dominating a coy and demure female losing all their control over spacetime for orgasm-hungry sex,  were never always palatable. Being the girl I am, after reading thrillers for every single day over 6 months had me longing for a romantic novel. So here I was, one evening,  looking up the list of New York Times Bestsellers when I came across Bared To Me. I decided to give the book a random chance.
Diving into the book, the first person voice had my rapt attention right from the start. I felt like I was in Eva Tramell's head. Young, confident and ambitious Eva, bemused by the charms of her new home at New York seemed like someone you would instantly fall in love with. Gideon Cross, on the other hand is as Eva describes him, dark & dangerous, and all sinfully alpha and unattainable. That's their ying-yang factor in the relationship that makes them an instant hit.
But as they say, everything isn't half as perfect as it seems. The couple is fighting against all odds within themselves to get their dysfunctional bit out of them. And the story goes as they explore and unravel each other.
I was/am a crime-thriller/feel-good novel girl. Neither was I a fan of the 50 Shades of Grey series. So I was quick to dismiss any random allegations leveled on Sylvia Day about the many similarities in the plot between the Crossfire series and the 50 Shade series. Lucky for me, I didn't know of the allegations before I finished book and frankly the alleged similarities don't include sadomasochism and bondage in the sex scenes.

The sex scenes are hot, frequent and long; but what triggers me to move on to the the 2nd book in the series are the honesty and tenderness in the story. So look out for this space to know how I find 'Reflected in You'.

Romance between Eva & Gideon is wild, raw and passionate. But the cherry on the cake is the tenderness and honesty in their love.

Rating: 3/5