Not a bad year but could have done more…

Last year I clocked 120, so it is much lesser but I have been reading Morse and Inspector Battle series from the library and physical books takes twice the time when compared to their kindle counterparts. I am enjoying them very much, so I am going to go with them until I can finish the series, by next year.

As long as I keep reading that is all that matters, to me.

End of an Era

As of today, we finished watching all the episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot starring David Suchet. We have always liked a good detective series and Agatha Christie’s is one of the best. It was bitter sweet to see it end. What will we do for our Sunday afternoon viewing now 😦 ?

Poirot, Hastings, Japp, and Ms Lemon made such a good team. They were always good fun. There was a subtle humor in the earlier series. The encounters between Japp and Poirot were so funny sometimes. As the series moved towards the late 90’s, it started becoming slightly darker. Hastings, Japp and Lemon are replaced with Ms Oliver, who is OK, but I preferred Hastings and Lemon by Poirot’s side. We were glad to see Hastings make a comeback for the last one and all of them get together in a couple of episodes before. We missed the humor in the later ones as it became darker and darker. The series was brilliant and the darkness suited the episodes well but I guess I wanted to see Hastings and Japp more 😉

I haven’t read any of the books depicted in the series (except may be a couple) but one day I would love to read all of them and then re-watch the episodes again. This is one series which I can watch again and again and never get tired of it.

I am sad to see it end but glad to have watched it all. Until next time, old chap!

I am Pilgrim

Nope, it ain’t me. It is just the title of the book that I recently completed. It took me more than 2 weeks to complete this massive 900-page paperback. I got it for 3£ on a second-hand sale. Since the half-term break was coming up, I decided to finish it just before then. Thankfully I gave myself two weeks time to read this. And it took just a couple of days more than that and some extra reading time to complete it before we went on our short half-term holiday break.

I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes is a book I never thought I would enjoy. I have read this book’s blurb so many times and have passed it because of the sheer size and magnitude of the story. But this time I decided it was time and since it was on second-hand sale I didn’t want to miss it. Terry Hayes is a screenwriter and it is very evident in this book. It goes back and forth with memories, with people, with pov’s etc. It needs getting used to such randomness, but the imagery it creates is very captivating. It is a very heroic story (heard that Brad Pitt was being considered for the movie?!!?) akin to the Mission Impossible ones. Very patriotic, very dramatic, very gruesome… I thoroughly enjoyed it.  My only gripe was that I couldn’t read the book lying down. It is too heavy and my wrists started to hurt after a couple of minutes. And towards the end, I spared no time (small breaks between classes, while having my food, any spare time I got I used it) to complete the book and just in time for my half-term break and my journey to Swansea.

Mission Accomplished!

I gave it 4 stars out of 5 (I am not a very generous person with respect to marks…my students would vouch for that 😉 )

 

Cyberspace Facts

From the book I am currently reading : I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes.

It has been a mad week…

but I still managed to complete a book. The first week of school is always chaotic. Thanks to all the new students, the new rota, the missing teachers, the new teachers trying to find their way in the maze of stairs in our school, the lack of books, stationery, misplaced orders, confused timetables, … anything and everything that can go wrong goes wrong. Not just that, I have been shuttling between buildings (school has almost 5 different buildings). Among the chaos, my kindle was a constant companion trying to keep me sane in the insane world. I recently read a book which was on my to-read list for quite a while. The time was right and I finally finished it.

I started with The Elephant Keeper’s Daughter by Julia Drosten (Goodreads Author), Deborah Rachel Langton (Translator) because this is a culture I am slightly aware of. It is much closer to my home. The story is based in Sri Lanka and is about this girl who is the daughter of the Elephant Keeper and the story unfolds during the British invasion of Sri Lanka in the 1800’s. It was very well written and translated to bring the essence of the culture and the nativity to the reader’s mind. I enjoyed the story very much. It took a while to finish it due to the various day to day distractions but I took it slow and steady. Once I was done with the book, I decided that I will take up the one on my to-do list and finish that too.

The Lioness of Morocco by Julia Drosten (Goodreads Author), Christiane Galvani (Translator) was on my list for way too long now to ignore it. So I started on that next. Thanks to the Kindle Unlimited option, I was able to get my hands on this book. This book took me to another world which is totally alien to me. It is, as the book title describes, set in Morocco. I have no idea of the culture or the lifestyle of the people. In a way, this book transported me to a new place even without me making a trip. I love it when books can do that. It is almost 200 pages more than the first book I read by this author and so it took almost twice the time for me. But, I enjoyed it very much. I finished it just today on a much needed lazy Sunday.

I gave 5 stars for both these books which is a rare thing for me to do.