Category: Review
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Film Review: the half of it
About twenty-three years ago, I created my first personal email account. It was an account that I shared with my best friend. It was also an account that saw a lot of emails go back and forth with “pen pals”, people we did not know. There were no smartphones, no way to scan and send…
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Giftorations: Decor That Doubles As Gifts
I rarely do advertorials/sponsored posts on the blog but being that this is family and I feel comfortable writing about it because of having experienced the product personally. A few months ago, a cousin of mine Swetha reached out to talk about SEO and website traffic. Turns out she and a friend, both moms to…
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Book Review: Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
A friend recommended this book on Goodreads and on impulse, I checked it out from my library. At a little under 500 pages, it took me two days to finish the book. The story is about two women. Solimar from Mexico who dreams of getting to and building a life in America. Kavya, a Berkeley…
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Philadelphia Writers Workshop – A Recap
All week before the actual conference, I went about my day thinking about it. I lay awake at night thinking of plot, structure, synopsis and query. Then a day before I decided to chuck it all and just go as an attendee. I vented on twitter tagging my posts with #phillyww and before I knew…
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Art Imitating Life
It is mid morning. Ideal time to declutter, check off items on my to-do list that has been constantly growing since I quit work two years ago. Instead I am in my study watching the drama unfold in Season 11 of Grey’s Anatomy. I missed the show when it first aired stumbling on it one…
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Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss – Poetry, Fantasy and World-Building at its best
Early this week, I borrowed the first of Patrick Rothfuss’s books (The Name of the Wind) from my library. I devoured it in less than a day and waited eagerly for the next (Wise Man’s Fear) which I finished reading at 2:00 AM this morning. My brain swirled with Kvothe, Felurian, Auri, Denna, Bast and…
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The Association Of Small Bombs – Rich, Evocative, Compelling
I stumbled on to this book on a friend’s timeline and put it on hold at my local library. As someone working on a book of her own, I am forever on the lookout for books by Indian authors. So, this seemed a promising read. The book starts with a bomb going off in a…
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Without Benefits by Nicole Tone – Beach Read With Soul
Nicole is someone I got to know on Twitter when looking for critique partners. As we swapped first chapters, I soon realized her writing was exemplary and she had much to offer in terms of feedback and the craft of writing, something I could only aspire too. So, when I knew her first book was…
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The House We Grew Up In – Dysfunctional Much?
I picked up The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell based on a recommendation on Twitter. The story starts promisingly enough with the eldest daughter of the Bird family arriving at the family house after her mom dies. Weaving back and forth over a period of 20 – 30 years, the story traces…
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The Nightingale – A Riveting Read
I bought this book after it was our book club pick for this month. It sat on my Kindle for over three weeks before I even looked it up. I had no idea what to expect as I skipped reading the synopsis or the reviews before buying the book. I finished the book a day…