drficticity

Children of blood and bone by #tomiadeyemi is our next book in the #femmemarchfest
.
.
.
.
This book gathered so much word around it even before publishing and it got many great reviews afterwards(some not so good too ) and now a movie is also behind made based on this and I read this now, in March so yeah I’m late to the party
.
.

The book, Adeyemi’s debut novel and the first book in a planned trilogy, follows heroine Zélie as she attempts to restore magic to the kingdom of Orïsha, following the ruling class kosidáns’ brutal suppression of the class of magic practitioners Zélie belongs to, the maji.
While reading the novel and while researching about it both I felt the theme of the novel somewhat came from the spate of police violence against black Americans, in author’s own words “it had a large impact on her”; she wanted to escape the helplessness and fear she felt: “What is the point if my life ends at the barrel of a police officer’s gun?”
.
.
Also In the author’s note at the end of the novel, Adeyemi makes a call to emotion, telling the reader that “if cried for Zulaikha … cry for innocent children like Jordan Edwards, Tamir Rice, and Aiyana Stanley-Jones.” .
.
I personally loved it ,i love the fantasy genre, i loved how the book was told from four separate view points and they slowly intersect with each other, the physicality of the book also i feel is amazing,from the fight sequences,deaths,torture sequence to the sceneries and dresses all are beautifully addressed,but i understand that all of this also can be seen as drawbacks like the four view points can be disorienting sometimes and the physicality demands a lot of imaginative capabilities from the reader .
.

Educated

“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I’m fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I’m not falling apart. I’m just lazy. Why it’s better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital”

Education for me has been the biggest blessing in my life,it has given me a sense of responsibility and freedom at the same time,and more than the degrees and diplomas I feel it’s something that opens up your mind to the world and to yourself.

This book Educated by Tara Westover is the most powerful piece of literature I have read in a while,yes it was difficult to read at times but also impossible to put down and a book I think everyone should read.

A religious fanatic father, hoarding food and guns and bullets and keeping his family off the radar, not filing for birth certificates, not getting medical attention when they needed it, avoiding the government, the feds at all cost , keeping his children out of school, the paranoia, the preparation for the “Days of Abomination” – this is what we find in this place on a mountain in Idaho.

There are horrible accidents and he won’t get medical help for his family. Her mother’s healing herbs and tinctures are used to treat the slightest scrape to the most horrible head injury or burns from gasoline to an explosion.

If some thing bad happens it because that’s the will of the Lord.

Her mother seems at times more sympathetic to her children, but she is complicit by her subservience to her husband;family of neglect in the name of religious beliefs and in reality mental illness.

It isn’t just her father but the brutality by one of her brother’s which is more than awful and creates rifts between family members,fortunately she was bold enough and somehow found the will to rise above it all while she is torn with the sense of duty, of loyalty to her family, the ingrained beliefs, still loving her family is miraculous.

Going to college was the first time she’d been in a classroom, not knowing what the Holocaust was, learning about slavery, the depression, WWII, the civil rights movement. She doesn’t just get a college education but ultimately a PhD from Cambridge, a Harvard fellowship. She struggles for years to discover who she was, who she could be – a scholar, a writer, an independent woman. This is a stunning, awe inspiring story that will haunt the reader long after the book ends.

“Reading this book will be an emotional investment; moving and thoughtful memoir of family, medicine and literature. It is, despite its grim undertone, accidentally inspiring.”

We often tend to forget the inevitability of death; everyone dies but when and how? And if you know you have this much time left, what will you do?

And when you are a doctor you know what’s up the sleeve, what reports means, what survival rate means and that does not make it easy at all but this guy managed to father a child do a number of surgeries, write a book and what not!

He was not able to finish the book as he wanted probably but this book is as complete as any memoir can be, I read this book in one go I stayed up quite late to finish this and it caused me to question my life and break my heart at the same time,

The pages zoom in and out of OTs and chemotherapy sessions and past and some happy moments, I get why people find this book so depressing but to me it has been more kind I would say rather inspiring, but definitely as it says the cover too this book has made people who never met Paul mourn him.

Summary: Paul Kalanithi is thirty six and so close to finishing his training as a neurosurgeon when he finds out he has stage IV terminal lung cancer. As an undergraduate Kalanithi studied English literature and his love of reading and writing had been a constant throughout his life. He had always felt that when he was older he would like to write and decided to focus on neurosurgery for now, where he could make a bigger difference by saving people’s lives. All his hopes and dreams for the future were suddenly became unrealistic as an upper limit of a handful of years was put onto his life. Kalanithi pens this memoir, dealing with the struggles of facing death and having to go from being able to save others’ lives to now be the one staring down mortality.

Paul Kalanithi was in residency in neurological surgery and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience. In May 2013, Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage-4 non-small-cell EGFR-positive lung cancer and died in 2015, book was published posthumously

One of the most celebrated writer has brought life to history’s most enigmatic women -Mata Hari

“I don’t know if the future will remember me, but if it does, may it never see me as a victim, but as someone who moved forward with courage, fearlessly paying the price had to pay”

The story was not new to me as I was always very fascinated by Mata Hari and read a lot of articles about her before picking up this book ,but this book is written in first person as a form of a letter by Mata Hari telling her story to her lawyer, and with Paulo cohelo’s style of writing and all his beautiful quotes he brings this story to a next level,which was very much needed because everyone know the story and how it ends here,so only the writing style can entice you,

Would I recommend this ? If you like history and open minded ,definitely!

Category: Historical Fiction | Literary Fiction

Published by Vintage

Published on Jun 27, 2017

Pages- 192

Summary: Born as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle,raped by her school principal,lost her mother later married to Rudolf John MacLeod an army captain and twenty years her senior ,she was mother to his two children but the marriage was an overall disappointment,her husband was an alcoholic and regularly beated her,but her life moved around 360 degree when she goes to Paris ,went there penniless but Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, Mata Hari captivated her audiences and was an overnight success,within weeks she became the talk of the tabloids and favourite courtesan of all the rich and powerful but her life get another huge turn when the world goes all bad with the world war 2 and she starts as a spy as she was always close to rich and powerful but for this she paid the ultimate price,

Some #mondaymotivation For y’all

Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of A P J Abdul Kalam “Be active! Take on responsibility! Work for the things you believe in. If you do not, you are surrendering your fate to others”-A P J Abdul Kalam’s words to live by

I have read this book over and over again at different ages and I’m very happy that this book has been a part of my childhood and life in general

Written by role model of many including me,and former President of India Dr. Kalam and Arun Tiwari

This book is written beautifully in a very simple language and as inspirational as any book can be.

Dr. Kalam starts with his childhood, his early life,his childhood home in Madurai,his parents,siblings, and his days at college and life after graduating from Aerospace engineering at MIT (Chennai), His later life as he moved to ISRO and helped to establish the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and how he pioneered the first space launch-vehicle program.

Later during the 1990s and early 2000, he moved to the DRDO to lead the Indian nuclear weapons program and found particular success in thermonuclear weapons development,And how eventually his efforts and hardships that led him to lead Indian space research, nuclear and missile programs known as Agni.

Ps.

This book also focusses on the importance of moral values given to children at a very young age,which also makes it a very good read for youngsters and parents.

#apjabdulkalam #apjabdulkalamquotes #wingsoffire #autobiography #bookstagram #bookflatlay #bookquotes #bookish #likeforlikes #followforfollowback #bookstagrammer #booksbypeopleofcolor #motivationalbooks

How to deal with a introvert/booktrovert/recluse

Back story:

Recently I have started working,it’s my first job and I try to be a good person ,behave well to people and smile at them but when you work in a office for 10 hours that much is not enough & the problem is I’m not good at long conversations especially about a spouses I have never met,or their kids school,yes I sympathise but I never seem to know what to say so I just say something very generic or keep quit,

I and many other people I have met need much more time to establish a trustworthy relationship to any person and we literally have to come out of our shells ,and we cannot just have empty talks

I sometimes even feel awkward complimenting someone’s outfit or their new hair cut even if I may like it, so I just say quite,but I have felt people don’t seem to get this kind of behaviour they feel I’m being rude or I never share anything personal while they share,and why I avoid human interactions

And I started questioning myself too,am I some psychopath who hates other humans but after a few therapy sessions and some books I get to know that there are many people like me,

Meanwhile at work It got to a level of introvert shamming to say the least.

So just to do a little for myself and people like me who would never tell this on your face (ahem) these are a few tips to bear with people like me

My type: While you may like to go to a pub and dance with a group I would rather go to library read or have coffe with someone who matches my frequency,or sometimes just stay at home watching Tv while having a champi from my mom,it’s really very rejuvenating for me

Simple steps to deal with me and people like me:-

1. Give them space and don’t take it personally : we don’t hate you or anything,neither are we sad but we need some time alone for introspection,to think about our self and yes we need much more “me-time” than most of the people

2. Sharing : We unlike extroverts don’t feel as comfortable sharing our feelings and problems to other people so we share them with ourselves try to solve them,sort them out and if still we are not able to do it ,we will come to you

3. Making Friends

Lets just refer to this pie chart here

4. Be a little more sensitive if I talk to you about my issues : Probably I have thought a lot about it myself before sharing it with you,and by sharing I’m being vulnerable and I trust you, be a little gentler than you usually be with your extrovert friends

4. And you may think we are psychopaths or we hate people,may be we are but I cannot talk for hours to you to explain it,but just get this we don’t hate people, we just prefer solitude and we do enjoy company of people that match our frequency but in divided doses.

A Hundred Bricks Down- A poetry Anthology

A really successful poetry anthology needs two essential ingredients: pace and rhythm. The editor has to think hard about which poems are put together and how they relate to each other. Much of the challenge is working on the order and identifying certain poems that act as breathers to achieve the right tempo.

And then there’s the central thrust around which a selection of poems can be made. The idea of a poem’s therapeutic power is at the heart of an anthology.

With this anthology a new publication has outdone itself ,it has poems from some ten budding poets,from different walks of lives,so you get the blend of different stories.

They have soulfully painted their emotions about love,life,heartbreaks and hopes.

The poems by these new poets demands your attention,the best part about anthologies which includes this book is that everyone finds something or the other they relate to,You may relate or like one poet more than other but that’s part of it.

The one thing I feel can make this or any anthology more appealing is as I said earlier is the arrangement of poems,how are they put together and how they relate to each other.

supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo,fell to her death

police ruled it a suicide, but her brother doesn’t believe it and walk through the door of a detective ,Cormoran Strike.

Strike is struggling in his own way to find work and losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, he takes up the case and with his temporary assistant Robin.The character of robin is a delight and I really liked that the friendship here remains ‘friendship’

The Cuckoo’s Calling is a delightful murder mystery especially the interactions of Strike with the wide cast of potential suspects and witnesses, most of them belonging to the world of British rich and famous,supermodels their rock-star boyfriends, desperate designers

And there is no point in saying Rowling’s writing is flawless as usual but here she has generously peppered it with a lot of abuses.

Loved this book, this is sort of a biography of drapadi or story of Mahabharata from Draupadi’s viewpoint

She starts of as special girl,who has prophecies around her that she will change the course of history.

Growing up she is pretty average or even below it,not very good nor interested in the traditional arts girls need to learn but rather keen towards political sciences,

Growing up we also see her insecurities about her looks and we watch her wondering about how her future husband would be like but again she is very determined to make a dent in history.

Next is the part we all know how she get married to five pandavas and a strange arrangement by Rishi Vyas shows the obsession with virginity goes a lot back that we think ,

As written in the book your childhood hunger never leaves you,she and her five husbands are also not spared, They keep on fighting for the kingdom for which they are born to rule and undergo many many hardships during all this.

She loves her five husbands dearly and stood by them in every thick and thin.

That’s something we all know from watching Mahabharata on tv or listening to their stories from our grannies but this book makes the characters more humane and present them in shades rather than just black and white.

For e.g. Draupadi, she stood with husbands throughout and loves them dearly but at times she took their love and use it as balm to soothe her ego,Even queens of queens doubt herself and have thoughts about a man other than her five husbands and gets so jealous that songs are made about it but she ultimately grows out of it and like everyone else in this world die alone.

Yes I have read this book in 2019, for starters I’m not a fan of this genre ,secondly earlier when I tried to read this book I didn’t liked the start,but now I have completed it I get the hype.

The book is narrated by three women Rachel-an alcoholic,Megan-the missing girl and Anna-Rachel’s ex husbands new wife

All people are equally unreliable and unlikable though I really felt bad for Rachel by the end

Anna basically travels the same route via train everyday and the train stops at a place where she can see her old house where now her ex husband lives with her new wife (Anna)and they have a child,

Rachel drinks heavily throughout to down her pain and have constant blackouts

She meanwhile also watches a couple who lives near her old house and build a story around them mentally,name them and everything but one day the girl (from the couple) disappears and now Rachel has started questioning her own involvement in all the things and discover quite a few things about herself

This turned out to be quite a page turner for me but was not overwhelming

#booksuggestion #bookclub #bookstagram #reviewer #bookrecommendations #bookreviews #likeforlikes #like4likes #followforfollowback #followtrain #followbackinstantly #bookstagrammer #vintagebooks #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksofinstagramfeature #feminist #womeninbooks