Review: Adrenaline

Adrenaline by Jeff Abbott is one of the most gripping and interesting thriller in recent times. It is a fast paced story; if you are a fan of Robert Ludlum you must definitely read this book. The story reminds one of vintage Ludlum books like The Bourne Identity while reading this. An espionage story well told.

The story is about Sam Capra who is a CIA operative in London. He is living the life of his dreams. He is an American living in London; he has a perfect flat, a perfect job and a perfect wife Lucy who is seven months pregnant with his first child.

But one sunny day, it all comes crashing down. Sam receives a call from his wife, who is also with the CIA, while he is at work. She asks him to leave the building immediately, which he does- just before it explodes, killing all those who were inside. Lucy vanishes after that call and Sam finds himself in a prison cell. Sam is now under suspicion of being a part of the blow up conspiracy and an enemy agent.

It is Sam’s fight to find out the perpetrators of this crime and to prove that he is innocent. It is also a race to find his wife Lucy and his child who he has not seen yet. The book will keep you hooked to the very end. A kind of a book which you have to read from start to finish in one go thanks to all its exciting twists and turns.

Immensely readable book by the bestselling author of Panic.

About the Author:

Jeff Abbott is the internationally bestselling author of eleven novels, which are published in twenty languages. He is a three-time nominee for the Edgar Award. He lives in Austin with his wife.

Review: The Very Thought of you

“Of all the people we meet in a lifetime, it is strange that so many of us find ourselves in thrall to one particular person.Once that face is seen ,an involuntary heartache sets in for which there is no cure.All the wonder of this world finds shape in that one person and thereafter there is no reprieve ,because this kind of love does not end,or not until death.

For the lucky ones,this love is reciprocated. But for so many others everywhere,anywhere,there follows an unending ache of longing without relief.Incurable love is a great leveler.Yet I believe that this bittersweet love is better by far than the despair which blights those with a dead heart.”

If you loved reading these lines, you’ll love Rosie Alison’s book, The very thought of you. I picked up this book from the library when I spotted a list of accolades and awards the books have been considered for. It’s been shortlisted for Amazon Rising Star award 2009, Long listed for RNA Romantic novel of the year 2010 and Le prince Maurice prize and for Literary short stories 2010.

It is 1939 and the world is at the brink of a war. Thousands of children are being evacuated from London to protect them from the bombings that everyone anticipates,with Hitler gaining momentum.Anna sands is an eight year old girl, who is displaced and is sent off to a school for evacuees along with 80 others to a large Yorkshire estate called Ashton Park.There she meets Mr Ashton, the owner of the estate,a cripple who teaches them Latin ; Elizabeth Ashton, a beautiful ice queen; Ruth Weir ,the plain-Jane teacher who has a lovely way with children among many others. Ashton park,a rambling house with gardens and sculptures and it’s secret nooks act as a brilliant tapestry for the undercurrents that run in the household. Anna is a quiet, introspective child,who prefers keeping her own company rather than playing with the other children.

The Ashtons are a childless couple and both pine for a child of their own. Their marriage is on the rocks with both of them having receded into their private shells. They really need a baby to revive the marriage.Elizabeth gets anxious and lives a bohemian double life which nobody knows about. It is her way of escaping her soul- less, passionless existence. Then there is Roberta, Anna’s mother who lives alone in London .With Anne away at Ashton park and her husband away in Egypt in the army, Roberta feels the need for male company and starts seeing a man. Meanwhile at Ashton park, romance is on the cards for Elizabeth as a new guest enters the household.

Suddenly, Anna becomes a witness to things a girl her age shouldn’t witness and in a strange way gets drawn to Thomas and her teacher, Ruth. Will Elizabeth fall in love again? Will she leave Thomas? Will Anna go back to her mother? Will Thomas find love of his own ? Well, for answers to these questions,you need to read the book.

What could have been a wonderful, flowing narrative from the word go, sags because of a lot of flashbacks The book is an essay in melancholy and flows slowly letting us delve more into every character. The 3^rd person POV doesn’t work for this book and after a point gets choppy and repetitive as you have all the main characters talking about their loneliness and inadequacies.

However, the language is beautiful and serenades you, making you fall in love with it. With the war on, the need for comfort in another human being is so heightened that morality and the question of being right or wrong becomes secondary to the guiding emotion itself. The book makes you realize this at every juncture. A wife is not just a wife, but a woman with hot-blooded passions.A cripple is not just a cripple,but a wounded man who is grappling with questions about his self-worth.

Overall, a lilting book that left its haunting mark on me, despite some minor complaints.

3.5/5 for this lovely, brooding tale.

(This book has been reviewed by Bedazzled. She lives in Chennai with her husband,loves to travel and read. After spending many years in cubicles getting cross eyed, she took to writing. She blogs at bedazzledeternally.blogspot.com. )

Review: By the Water Cooler

Recently got a chance to read an immensely enjoyable book , Parul Sharma's By the Water Cooler. Any management student or corporate types (slave/slave driver/ wannabe/guru/czar or whatever) will identify with the characters and laugh out loud while reading this book. By the Water cooler is a hilarious mix of office tales, management fundamentals, and workplace politics. Mini and her friends will be hard to forget long after the book is over.

The book is the story of Mini and Tanya who are the typical best friends forever who have studied together and are now working together. Both of them are restless and discontent with their jobs in an advertising agency, they soon quit their jobs and join JR Enterprises. They both have stars in their eyes and dreams of making it big in their new corporate career but their dreams are short lived. As soon as they join the company they realize things are not as easy as they looked. Right from the HR Manager who hired them gets fired on the first day of their joining to having a CEO who is a megalomaniac to the madhouse which is also known their office. The book will keep you laughing with Mini and Tanya’s tales.

The book is a crazy, whacky, and full on fun ride complete with office deadlines, dirty office politics and eccentric characters. Some of their types you would have encountered in your work place for sure.

This is Parul Sharma’s second book. Her first book was a hilarious account of a first time mother’s desperate attempt to be a super mum. Many would say her first was the book version of her popular mummy blog but with her second book she has convincingly proved herself to be a fine humour writer.

If you haven’t read the book yet go read it now believe me you won’t regret it!

The Book Lovers Book Club Meet

The Book Lovers Book Club December meeting details are as follows:


Date: 19th December
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Prithvi Cafe, Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu,Mumbai-49
To attend and to join the group contact us at : bookwelove (at) gmail (dot) com 
Book discussion of the month : Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires


Book Summary: 
Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg an awkward maths prodigy and a painfully shy computer genius were never going to fit in at elite, polished Harvard. Yet that all changed when master-hacker Mark crashed the university s entire computer system by creating a rateable database of female students. Narrowly escaping expulsion, the two misfits refocused the site into something less controversial The Facebook and watched as it spread like a wildfire across campuses around the country, along with their popularity.nnYet amidst the dizzying levels of cash and glamour, as silicon valley, venture capitalists and reams of girls beckoned, the first cracks in their friendship started to appear, and what began as a simple argument spiralled into an out-and-out war. The great irony is that Facebook succeeded by bringing people together but its very success tore two best friends apart.

About the Author

Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor to Flush magazine.Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.

Review: City of Thieves

Cyrus Moore’s book ‘The City of Thieves’ shows the murky insider dealings of price fixing and how the big broking houses fix share prices for their own and their clients gain. The lengths that these broking houses can go to, to achieve their goals makes this book worth a read.

The story, set in London, is about Nic Lamparelli a journalist who is hired as a research analyst for a telecom practice. Nic soon becomes a sharp and insightful analyst whose views and analysis of companies can move the share prices of the companies. He rises through the ranks to reach the pinnacle of his profession, and soon he has a high flying career in the city, with a reputation as one of the bank’s star analysts. But things change for him soon enough when Nic is pressurized to raise his call on a particular share which his bosses are fixing with their clients to make a killing on the insider prices. Nic refuses to play along and soon whatever Nic has managed to build starts to crumble right in front of his eyes. But in the face of everything can he hold true to his principles?

A very interesting and novel concept which shows the Armani suited villains of the financial markets in their true light. The villains may not be larger than life like Gordon Gekko but stay true to his mantra of ‘Greed is good’

A controversial page-turning thriller set in the days leading up to the credit crunch, City of Thieves is the novel that lifts the lid on city life.

Good and fast paced read.

About the Author:

Cyrus Moore is the writing name for Cyrus Mewawalla, a leading City analyst. After twenty years’ experience in the City, Cyrus left corporate banking to set up independently. In 2006 Bloomberg ranked him the number one telecom analyst in the UK. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

Review: After Dark

I picked up After Dark after I finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which was a truly intoxicating read. It took a few days for the after-effects of The Wind-Up Bird to wear off. While Wind-Up Bird came out in the 90s, After Dark is the most recent novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Unlike The Wind-Up Bird which was a thick volume, After Dark is a slim one almost like a novella. The book is an easy and lucid read translated into English form the original Japanese. The language is poetic, the story is told in third person and the events happen in real-time. Each chapter displays the time elapsed since the story began (It reminds one of the popular TV series 24.) The third-person viewpoint might feel detached and indifferent but the characters are not and more than make up for it. As the title suggests, the story begins at night and ends when darkness slowly gives way to the break of the dawn.

Mari Asai is a 20-year-old girl and is sitting in a coffee shop, whiling away her time in downtown Tokyo, all by herself, trying to concentrate on a book. It’s close to midnight and she should be home but she doesn’t feel like going home for no particular reason. A young man named Takahashi comes in after a while and introduces himself to Mari. After little initial hiccups, the two get on talking. Meanwhile, Mari’s sister Eri Asai is lying asleep in a room, the location of the room unknown. Her sleep is abnormally deep and frighteningly perfect. We can’t tell if she’s alive if not for her pulse. We don’t know for how long she’s been sleeping and when she would wake up, if she would at all. As darkness takes the city in its grip, routine normalcy of the day gives way to the eerie and the ominous of the night. After Mari and Takahashi make some talk, Takahashi takes leave and Mari is again all by herself till she is called by a nearby hotel owner – a retired female wrestler – to help her out with a Chinese girl who’s been attacked by a stranger and who doesn’t know Japanese. There’s a third storyline involving seemingly the stranger who attacked the Chinese girl. His world is equally bizarre and he seems to be an embodiment of evil. The three different stories run parallel and converge in the end at the break of the dawn.

It feels strange thinking of the contrast between the night and the day, between the dark and the light; not just the absolute difference but also the foreboding, the ominous, the apprehension, the uncertainties they entail. Outside and inside of our psyche. The story tells of the modern-age decay, the alienation, the melancholy of loss, the evil and the bizarre. The ending is vague and it feels like the story was left in halfway but it’s a Murakami book and he never gives you the conclusion. May be there isn’t one or may be he wants to you to find it out by yourself. If you’ve read Murakami before or if you like the bizarre and the strange and can take in the surrealism, then this is a book for you. Others can read this for the lucidity of the language and some wonderful lines.

About the author:

Haruki Murakami is a popular Japanese writer. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages. His most famous works are The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka On the Shore, Norwegian Wood among others. His fascination with surrealism and looking for the ominous and unsettling in the seemingly mundane events is thrilling. His most recent work IQ84 would come out in English in 2011

(This book is reviewed by Ajay Kumar. Ajay, is pursuing engineering and is in the fourth year at IIT, Kharagpur .He blogs at http://ajaykgp.wordpress.com)

Review: The Delhi Walla series

Delhi, the capital of world’s largest democracy, is perceived differently by different people. You can hate it, love it but you cannot ignore it! The city has been the hot seat right from the times of the epic Mahabharat, legend has it that Indraprastha, the capital of Pandavas, was situated in the current metropolis.  Historically there have been seven cities of Delhi starting from Rai Pithora, capital of the Chauhan dynasty of Prithviraj Chauhan fame right up to the British and Independent India’s capital of Lutyens New Delhi.

This historical journey makes Delhi, the city, a rich mix of monuments, culture and cuisines.  Mayank Austen Soofi who blogs at delhiwalla.com, through his books in the Delhi walla series, takes the reader on an exciting journey of the capital city.

Mayank Austen Soofi’s books are a definite guide not just for visitors, tourists in the city but also for the residents of Delhi. His books bring out the known as well as the lesser known places in Delhi. If on one hand in his book  on Monuments you have the well known Lotus Temple on the other you could get to know more about Razia Sultan’s tomb, if you have the better known Qutub Minar you also have the lesser known Agrasen Baoli.

The Delhi walla book on various hangouts of Delhi is also works as a perfect guide to make the most out of the city. So if it is shopping you are looking to do in Delhi the Delhi walla will take you to the best shopping destinations in the city. In his hangout guide he also covers some interesting places like the Daryaganj book houses, Sufi spaces and Gay hangouts.

In his third book about food and drinks he takes the reader through the best eating places of Delhi. Which is the best place in Delhi that serves you Raj Kachori or Aloo tikki? Or if you are in Old Delhi which is the best food option you can choose from? This book will guide you through it all! If it is Gobi Manchurian you are craving for or steamed momos or the paranthe waali galli of Chandni Chowk he has it all covered in the book with his interesting views about each place!

The Delhiwallah books seem to be a work of passion and on reading which you can easily say that the author knows the city in and out.

Interesting and informative guides for anyone who wants to know the city better from a writer who knows the city best!

About the Author:

Mayank Austen Soofi is a writer, photographer and passionate bibliophile who spends his time in the city’s by-lanes and bookshops. Since 2007 he has written a blog called The Delhi Walla, in which he documents the minutiae of the city he loves. The books bring together the best of his writings and photographs, for the reader to get to know the city better.