Sunday Diners – ****

Now that I have got my Kindle Paperwhite and have associated my Kindle and Goodreads to it, it is so easy to track my books and my ratings. Now that I am also subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, I get my hand on all new books much sooner 🙂

So as you see, after ‘The Short Drop’ I have finished a whole romance series (some of them didn’t get updated correctly because I was out of my Wi-fi range and it got updated much later and hence the dates going haywire) and as of today finished another book called ‘Sunday Diners‘, a family drama.

I took my time with it, because …well, it needed it. Yes, it does need some patience to read. Because it is a story which we can relate to very easily. It was like seeing my own life (along with that of my family’s) being written down in English and reading it back again. Just like my family, this family of Greg also has three kids with Lucy being the eldest (just like me 😉 ), Matt, the second one in the family (just like my brother) and Holly, the last kid (just like my sister). It matches so well you know. So I didn’t want to rush it and get going. But apart from bits and pieces it isn’t related to us in any way at all (if you exclude the eldest daughter syndrome that I share with ….well all eldest daughters in the world, or the only boy in a family always has a loud mouth and says the most inappropriate things at the very inappropriate times or how the youngest daughter always feels that she is an unwanted addition to the family… all of these I think are pretty common and not specific to one single family yeah? and that is where the similarity (sadly) ends) But it was fun to read about a family not from one person’s perspective, but from everyone’s perspective in different time frames told on the day of their famous Sunday Roasts, which is sort of a tradition.

Their ups and downs, their pains and laughter, their success and failure, their love and hatred…everything that makes them a family. One spoiler alert. It ends on a happy note.  So it’s all good. The way each one of them sees a particular event with a different perspective actually makes you think. I am sure, I will forget all about it in a week, but it was quite fun to read it and relate a lot of that to your own experiences. No big twist or turn in this story. It is simple but since it’s about a family and about life, it is as complicated as life can get even in the simplest of terms.

It does make me want to call up my family and have a small get together just to share some nice moments with them. I am definitely gonna have it when they are gonna be here during the kid’s vacation. It felt nice to read something like this and feel good about it too. I am sure that this book may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I gave it 4 stars because I could relate to it and felt good about the whole story.

Cormoron strikes again

Ever since I registered for the 30 day free trial of Kindle Unlimited, I am on a reading spree. I can almost star in the advertisement ‘We are the readers‘ 😛 with me and my new Kindle paperwhite! But before going there, let me tell you about the latest adventure of our recent favorite detective Mr Cormoron Strike. ‘The Career or Evil‘, part 3 of the Strike Series by Robert Galbraith.

Finally, in this series, we get a lot of back story of our favorite assistant Ms Robin. And she plays a very active role in this book. Don’t worry, no spoiler alerts here. I am gonna try and keep it as clean as possible. Their on and off chemistry gets a little frustrating in between…its like, they aren’t sure whether to go ahead with their liking for each other or not. They get close and they go apart…It happens quite a lot in this than the other two books. And I did feel that this felt a bit longer than the other two. Well, with those two main complaints out of my way, let me go with the nice ones.

We get a glimpse of the world that was once a part of Cormoron. His past, his pain, and well, his enemies too. He is no big hero, getting into fist fights and jumping over the roofs and all. He is normal in lot of ways, screwing up stuff, missing deadlines, missing the clues lying right before his eyes, not giving enough credit to our Ms Robin. That makes him more real. More likable. The ending was a cliff hanger and a little bit too dramatic but at least we are left with ‘WTH just happened’ kind of feeling 🙂 , which is good by the way.

There are one too many villains in this story when compared to the other ones. But it was very interesting in a lot of ways. It gets more personal , just like our latest James Bond movie, hitting it close to home, almost running Strike to the ground.

It was a good and interesting read and I rated it 4/5 in Goodreads.

Bored on a Monday Afternoon!

Got a little bored between work, so decided to play with my new purchases. My Kindle Paperwhite and anti-glare glasses. I thought why not take a picture of them using my wide angle lens and my pinhole lens and see how they come out 😉
It’s just me on a Monday morning afternoon. So, here are the photographs, edited a bit with DPP (Digital Photo Professional)

Wide Angle view:

Pinhole view:

I like both of them, one is very crisp and clear whereas the other makes it a little bit more real, like how it would look if I was seeing it if I was wearing a glass with thicker lens.