Archive | March, 2012

Sailing aboard her father’s shop is all seventeen-year-old Camille Rowen has ever wanted. But as a lady in the nineteenth-century San Francisco, her future is set. On her last voyage before she must marry a man she does not love, Camille learns about a life-changing secret that lies in Australia. When their Sydney-bound ship goes down in a gale, and her father dies, Camille sets out to find her long-lost mother and a map that could lead to an even greater and more dangerous secret-a stone that can bring back…

Mercy Thompson’s sexy next-door neighbor is a werewolf. She’s tinkering with a VW bus at her mechanic shop that happens to belong to a vampire. But then, Mercy Thompson is not exactly normal herself … and her connection to the world of things that go bump in the night is about to get her into a whole lot of trouble. (From Goodreads)
I get weary when I try to read something that falls into this type of genre, because I think it’s going to be filled with glorified fluid swapping…

Book Review : The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Spoilers Alert!
Thomas wakes up in a box knowing nothing more than his first name. When the box opens he meets the Gladers, a bunch of boys living on their own in an inexplicable world. The Gladers are given deliveries of food and a new person once a month. The Maze surrounding the Glade is closed off at night to protect the kids from the Grievers, monstrosities of flesh and machine. Thomas is riddled with questions, but he knows he was…

Book Review : Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale
Spoiler Alert!
Charlotte Kinder is nice. She always has been nice, it’s just what she does. Charlotte’s husband has not been so nice, having had an affair and left his wife and children. After several blind dates Charlotte decides it is time to get away, not just from the country, but to a different time. She comes to Pembrook Park playing the part of Mrs. Charlotte Cordial. Mr. Mallery is brooding, Mr. Grey is fun-loving, Colonel Andrews is theatrical, Miss Gardenside…

Book Review : The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Spoiler Alert!
It is 1962 and Aibileen is a black maid, and raising her seventeenth white child. She has loved everyone of the children she has raised. She is trying to find her way through mourning for the loss of her son due to a senseless accident at his job. At times it seems it is only her own dignity that can keep her going through her trials.
Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan has graduated from Ole Miss and returns home with dreams of…

Book Review : The Host by Stephenie Meyers
Spoiler Alert!

Earth has been taken over by aliens, and it all happened before the humans could do anything to stop it. The aliens, known as Souls, have inserted themselves into humans’ brains suppressing the consciousness of the former occupant of the body. Wanderer has been given the body of a wild human as her host to discover the location of other renegade humans. However, there is an unexpected problem, Melanie refuses to relinqish her mind to Wanderer. In a test of…

Book Review : Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
Spoiler Alert!
Mary Faber is thrust on the streets as an orphan when her parents and sister die. Her clothes are stolen and then she is taken in by the Charlie the Rooster, the leader of one of the gangs of orphans, where she is taught to beg and steal to survive. After Charlie is murdered, Mary finds a new gang leader for the remaining children, and leaves to seek her fortune as a boy, Jack. Mary finds it is a lot…

Book Review : The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
Spoiler Alert!

One clone has survived. The doctor wonders if he will be thanked or cursed because he has left the clone’s intelligence intact as directed.
Matt has lived with Celia, and she has warned Matt to never go outside. One day Matt is seen by two children and he is drawn to them wanting to play. The next time Matt breaks a window and jumps out of the house to play, but his foot is deeply cut. The…

Book Review : Looking for Alaska by John Green
Spoiler Alert!
Miles Halter is tall and skinny, has no friends and loves to memorize people’s famous last words. Miles latches onto Francois Rabelais’ last words, “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” Miles decides to move from Florida to attend the same boarding school his father attended in Alabama in seeking his own Great Perhaps.
Miles, who is now known as Pudge, is thrown into a friendship with his roommate, the Colonel, Takumi and Alaska, the sexy girl that leaves…

Title: Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Author: Katherine Boo
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Imprint: Hamish Hamilton
ISBN: 9780670086092
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 280
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5
When I first started reading, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo, it didn’t strike me as a different book. I mean I had read the similar story in Suketu Mehta’s, “Maximum City” (Honestly I didn’t think much of it), though it was in brief. It was still more or less the same – Mumbai and its dichotomy (like every major cosmopolitan), its slums, its…