Book updates

Our school started last week and the chaos has begun 🙂 Apart from computer science, I teach a little bit of maths this year but only for a small group. Have to see how that goes. I broke two brollies (umbrellas) yesterday. How did that happen? I have no clue. Mine was a souvenir from Singapore, so I removed the cloth and have saved it. I was trying to fold Mr M’s and ended up breaking that one too. I shouldn’t have tried that before I have had my coffee, you see. I should have followed the rules of procaffeination.

I realized that I haven’t told you about some of the books I read over the break (am yet to read one non-fiction, which was my goal for this year). So here they are.

a) Animal Farm – George Orwell – Mr M bought this book some time ago and kept it on my to-read list once he finished it. It took me more than 3-4 months to pick it up. I finished reading it in 2 days during my trip to Carmarthen. It is surprising how that story can be applied to any timeframe of humankind. Mind blowing isn’t it? Is there any point to even talk about it when everyone knows how great that story is? 5/5

b) The Woman on the Orient Express – Lindsay Jayne Ashford – A very interesting premise. A fictional story (with some true events woven in) about the woman who wrote the famous “The Murder on the Orient Express”, Agatha Christie. How her life adventures led her to write those amazing stories with Mr Poirot. A very interesting take and done well. The author also gives us the list of true events which she picked up from Agatha Christies biography. I enjoyed it a lot. 4/5

c) The Good Widow – Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke – A Kindle Unlimited book which starts all nice and sad about two people who are grieving for their spouses who were found dead in Maui whilst having an affair there. Slowly and steadily they retrace their steps to try to find out what made them cheat and why. I was totally into it until the very end. That final surprise came out of nowhere and kept me awake during the school night last week to complete the book. 4/5

d) Strike (TV Series) – I had read all the Strike series books but have forgotten the stories over time. We weren’t sure of how this was going to be and given that it is only a three series adaptation. Of course, the whole story is condensed and even though Tom Burke didn’t match the Strike of my imagination, he was OK. It was short and was done OK. Felt a bit rushed though. The personal touch to the involved characters was missing for some reason. Would give a 3/5 for sure.

 

 

Close to home

Recently I saw a movie and read a book which involved incidents much close to home (mine at least). Let me start with the movie

Pink (Hindi) – My friend and I went for this movie. It was a total cry fest for her. I managed to hold it until the very end and the last scene where a lady constable shakes the hand of the lawyer appreciating him silently for stating the obvious and standing up for all the women, I lost it. This movie is very much appreciated by all. I am sure the scenes could have been done a bit better. Sometimes it felt like there was too much silence to increase the dramatics which wasn’t really necessary in this movie. The dialogues are the best. It also shows clearly how women are treated in this society (may be in many societies) It also introduces us to some of the unknown legal terms like Zero FIR. It is a must watch for all. I know some of my colleagues who have the same mentality as the guys in this movie. I wish they would watch this movie.

Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman #1) – One of the Kindle Unlimited discoveries. A women who escapes an abusive relationship and becomes a forensic expert is given a body to examine and that throws her off badly because it looks just like her. When she thought she was far away from her narcissistic husband apart from his occasional flowers and cryptic messages, here is a proof that things are getting much darker for her. Is she just imagining the relationship between this girl’s death and her husband’s involvement in it or has he really gone to an extreme to kill someone to threaten her. This story follows Annabelle and her quest to be free from her abusive husband who is not ready to leave her be. It was quite gripping and are left to wonder along with Annabelle if it is indeed her husband or is it just coincidence. As always in such cases, there are some good friends of hers who come to her rescue. Gave 4 stars in Goodreads.

 

Celebrating Professionalism

Woohoo!!!
Congratulations, Linda 🙂

 

Comments disabled here.

It’s official. I’m a professional author!

My novelette, All Good Stories is on sale today! It’s a romantic comedy, complete with pirates, a parrot, and a Viking. What could possibly go wrong? Lighthearted and fun, it’s perfect to enjoy over a lunchtime or two. It’s available for the low cost of 99¢, or the equivalent in whichever country you live, on both Amazon for Kindle here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JQWMQAE

and Kobo here: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/all-good-stories

The Kobo site has a preview of the book. I plan to figure out how to set one up on Amazon soon. In the meantime, here are the first two chapters:

Aarin, The Topless Pirate

Jupiter bounded into my book store with an extraordinary spring in her step.

“I finished it!” she proclaimed, beaming much like the ray of sunshine that fell upon the counter every fair morning at this time of year.

“Finished what?” I asked. As if…

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Books and a Series

I recently finished the two book regency romantic comedy series called The Fairweather Sisters.  The first book kept me company through out my 8+ hours flight journey. I did not bother to use the in-flight entertainment at all. I read and slept and read and slept through the journey. The only problem was sometimes I had to laugh out because of the antics of these heroines I was finding a hard time controlling it. Its  been a long time since I read a regency romance comedy which made me chuckle. Some of the plot lines were very ridiculous, but that was why I liked them. They were mad, these sisters. And they were fun. The romance was very cute. It had everything, surly Dukes, funny Earls, pet Goats, loony Pirates, beautiful and crazy country heroines, bad Poets, mustache loving grandpa’s, beautiful Spies…you name it.

I finished the second one today and I gave both these books 4 stars. I was glad that both were available to me on Kindle Unlimited.

Talking about series, its been a while since I did any photography based series. I did a A-Z Book title series in March I think, just before the A-Z challenge of April. During my trip last month, I got to do a lot of photographs of street art and graffiti. I don’t exactly know the difference between the two, but I did capture a lot of them which I liked and loved. Some are funny, some intriguing, some convey message. All in all, they were very interesting. I am going to name it the “Wall & Art” series (not very original but that is all I have got, if you have any nice suggestions let me know and if I like any I will definitely use it, with your permission). Watch out for those amazing arts from tomorrow.

2 books & a movie

I know, I know. I have been writing about books a lot recently. But with Kindle Unlimited subscription, it is inevitable. But that is gonna stop for a couple of weeks. Have some other important stuff to finish, not to mention my long weekend trip 😉 during the Good Friday weekend. Yay!!!

So here are a couple of books I had finished but haven’t told you about it (not that I write about every book I read but still). And I also managed to see a movie which was on my watchlist for a long time. So here it goes.

a) Ineligible Bachelor by Kathryn Quick:

Now, I don’t watch TV especially the reality TV (watching YouTube versions of XYZ’s Got Talent or The Voice etc doesn’t count), so I wouldn’t know about the various reality shows that go on in them. But recently I saw a news article about Jimmy Kemmel and his (in)appropriate questions to the couple, who were the winners of the show ‘The Bachelor’. Now imagine my surprise to read that news article when I had just finished this book the previous night. I was like ‘what are the odds’. So I guess the whole drama of how the eligible Bachelor chooses his partner with the help of his very best female friend, who was the reason he got into this show in the first place, and how they are all rigged may or may not be true. It also goes a little further than that I guess because this female friend’s attempts to make this eligible bachelor see her as more than a friend totally backfires especially with all conniving and very pretty women out in the show but fate plays a game in the end. It was a quick fun read and since I haven’t seen the show I was intrigued. I am not sure how it would fare with those who already knew about these. I wanted a quick fun read and that this book was. 3 stars.

b) The Bette Davis Club by Jane Lotter: I chose this book because I liked the cover. Simple logic 🙂 That car, that hair style, the old 70’s-80’s look come on, doesn’t it look cute? This was again a fun read. This is about a middle-aged woman (anyone between 35-55 according to my standards) who is bankrupt, goes to her step sister’s daughter’s wedding, finds herself in her dad’s old MG car to retrieve her eloped niece, who also happens to have her father’s scripts (her father was a screenplay writer), not to mention the counterpart in this chase, who happens to be the groom, who is as old as this woman and how their journey takes them across places (and states may be) and the fun and various new things that they learn in the process. It was a different story line I should say. It is not your usual romance. Yes sir, romance it is. But with lots of humor. I enjoyed the storyline and the fun that came with it. Gave it 3 stars.

Both are HEA books. There, I finally gave away a spoiler for both 😉

Next comes the movie:

The Book Thief: Unfortunately my intention of reading the book and then watching the movie didn’t last in this case. I finally ended up watching the movie because it was free on Amazon Prime (Jee…Wonder what would Amazon do without me and my subscriptions!!!) It is a very very cute movie. It is a sad one (spoiler alert) but not in the way you think. Yes, death is a sad thing, but more for the ones who are left out. We know that people die even in the beginning because we hear the voice over of Death telling you about this cute little girl who loves to steal books and read them and introduced you to other characters and their last thoughts before he sucked in their souls. I am not going to give away anything else about this movie. It did not make me cry, wasn’t even sad. Wonder why. I was able to see this movie with an understanding that people are gonna die no matter what, but what goes on between this girl and them during their lives is what is important. Maybe because it was the introduction of the movie by the Death himself (or herself) that prepared me for this. No idea. But I loved the concept, the execution, the acting, the cinematography and the art direction in this movie. Not sure how close to the book it is, but nevertheless enjoyable as a movie too. If you are an avid book reader, you will relate to this girl in one way or the other.