A Visit From the Good Squad - Jennifer Egan

First book of the author again.. supposedly one of the 2010 New York time best sellers this book did get me really interested at the outset describing the two main characters whose journey of ups and downs and highs and lows in their personal and professional (records and musicals of west) lives, Sasha and Bennie.

I really liked the way Sasha, the PA for an ageing music mogul who has been with him through her formative years through much later in life, was introduced, her feelings expressed, her compulsiveness to steal or rather pick items that she thinks she will replace later but not find time to do again, a comfort stealer getting therapy and then Bennie, using Gold flakes 'cos they are believed to be aphrodisiac the way he feels for a marriage that is over, his own tiny way of getting back at his wife through mind games or in his mind.. very subtle psychological insight into two individuals around whom the story is framed..

but then gradually, the author lost me in the musical setting and youthful struggles of young musicians, etc... okay read!!  I had skipped a lot of pages just to get to the end of the book :).. but then that is me.. if you have time to spare, then maybe fine! 

The Moment You Were Gone - Nicci Gerrard

I really loved this work of fiction by Nicci Gerrad, a tale of two friends whose lives got intertwined with each other in a such a way that they were never separate even when they were not in touch for 20 long years.  A story about friendships, relationships, revelations, secrets, struggles..

I really liked the intro on author and the story behind the story.  There are a lot of aspects that touched me, a lot of things about me surfaced when I read the book.. the need to keep surroundings clean.. that sense of  being in control with orderly surroundings, the need to cut off stuff, the burning bridges, the way things just re-begin, a lot many similarities and a lot more self-revelation through the author.

Good read!

Prarthana - Yandamoori Veerendranath

So, after the stretched out read of GMM, I needed something to break the slow reading spell and took Prarthana, a book by YV based on Robin Cook Fiction Fever, the battle of a father with the cancer and cancer-curing drug makers and system in general intertwined with fiction suitable for telugu readbuds (eeks I suck at it but this is my version of taste-buds for book readers).

Like other investigative novels there is quite a lot of information and data to absorb from this book regarding, cancer drugs, braille font, corporate culture in pharmaceutical drug industries, the hospitals and research centers, etc and the data just does not look boring or bearing.   The story line is quite intricate with a widowed scientist who is left with his 3 young children, the eldest daughter is Prarthana.  She gets her dad married to a teacher from her school and ironically on the very next day of their wedding it is discovered that the kid suffers from leukemia at a very critical point, how the ground shatters from beneath the father's feet when he realizes what he has been convinced all through that the actually-touted panacea is not all that good and that very same method is used to treat his daughter.  The way he rebels, joined by another employee of the research center, who stands by him through his thick and thin tolerating the worst possible health and personal hazards and how it all ends in finding a cure for cancer under very trying circumstances.

More than the book, the "Swagatham" portion of it by YV touched me.  In that part, he comes across as a person with genuine feel about wrongdoers of the society.. by the way, it is 2009 editions that I currently have!!

Good Morning, Midnight - Reginald Hill

For a different and easy flow reader like me this book was quite a task to finish and come to think of it that I had taken a week to read a large-print 400 pager, it speaks for itself.

The book is a murder mystery by Reginald Hill, in fact a copy-cat suicide mystery where the son follows the exact same pattern as the father 10 years prior.  How the story unveils and mystery untangles forms the crux of the story.  A dysfunctional family, a business-mad father who kind of lost his identity in an overseas merger who kills himself, a step mother with a past, un-accepting elder stepchildren, son and a daughter and a doting and loving third step daughter, who gets married to the takeover guy, a bird-crazy aunt, spouses of these children, their affairs, and a whole lot of investigative agency, their lives and people in them, kind of too very cluttered!!!!... and finally when the end comes, I am glad it got over.

 Too many characters introduced too early on kind of confused the flow of my reading and I could not really get out of that confusing mode for quite some time.  Even a bad cramp could not get me focus on the pages of a mystery, so I guess this is not my kind of a read; however, it gets interesting towards the end, too many of loose ends, not really getting anywhere.

I guess this book is kind of a series of crime novels starring Pascoe and Dalziel and their weird way and style of working together and how all comes to a conclusion, kind of lost me because I am not really aware of those two and the author really does not take too much of pain to set a tone for these characters to begin with and just dives into the story.

Maybe I should begin at the beginning to understand the flow of the author better...

RIP Bobby (Rubin Preetham)

Bobby as he lovingly introduced himself to me around 10 yrs. ago when I was new to office and Bangalore, a good friend who made the surroundings lighter by his presence, very friendly a real lovable friend, a very sensitive guy despite the tough exterior he tried to project.

Rubin Preetham, I came to know this morning through FB updates is no longer there with us physically.  It came as a shocker, tough to digest, a hard lump that just refuses to go away!!!  Heart attack at this young age.. unbelievable!!!!!!   Though we hardly interacted over years, it was enough just to know he was around and that would bring a smile on my face.  Good bye my friend! RIP..................:(((... and this reminds as to how much shorter the life is and how unpredictable....

Aches and Cramps!!

Well, my allergies are showing me literal hell than anything else :(.  The past few days I have been battling this damn shortness of breath, wheezing and almost got confined to the bed but strictly decided not to go for English medicine as that would imply strong doses of antibiotics and steroids and in stead wanted to try out Ayurveda which I am told has relatively less or no side effects.  So this local doctor starts me on a course and I give up all the drugs except the inhaler and go for the treatment.. wheezing is okay but God, I just could not sleep at all, at times just an hour or two of sleep and for a 8-hour must sleep kind of a person, one can imagine how zombie it all got.. so back to square and I stop Ayurveda completely.. try to ignore the coughing, taking diet precautions and trying out meditation and other non-medicinal alternatives.. alas!! but I guess it needs it own dosage to get alright.. So suddenly one night, I develop this acute cramping in the hip that I am barely able to breathe or cough or lie down on that side.  I had the worst of cramps ever!!! and then the doctor lists cramps, suture bursting and hernias with the amount of coughing that I do.. trust me, it sounds really barky, bad and a nuisance to the listener and dont even ask me how it is to get it out of the body.

I must admit that in the past few days I have been a major mobile noise polluting source wherever I ended up... phew, so back on medication, steroids as usual... the moral of the story.. I am not a doctor, I need to trust my physician first and I need to get my stamina at any cost!

This and That

There are a lot of things happening in life..

still coughing but happy happy not wheezing.. yay!! life seems all too good!
the kid is at school and I get a little more settled in the job.
catching up on lives of a lot of people in real life that I admire, courtesy HS - The Hot Seat!! yay!!!
back to watching a whole lot of new movies on the screen... yay!!
Reading a lot of good books, listening to music...yay!!!.
This damn sakala janula samme is beating the hell out of us, power cuts more than 8 hrs...nay!!!!
everything is twice as costly.. nay!!
travel is a mess.. we never know when we reach the destination thanks to the dharnas all over the place... NAY!!!
the crops are drying out..barely any rain..nay!!!
it feels like it is hottest summer ever despite approaching winter months. naaay!!!
looks like half the world  is busy reproducing.. a lot of people I know around me and everywhere show up with a bump, not that I am complaining... loads of cutie pies on their way.. yay!!

13-14-15 - YV

Yet another one in the seemingly YV marathon.  Interesting fiction with good analysis and research on gynecology, hypnosis, obstetrics and infertility intermixed with love, deception, monotony, yearning, touching all these aspects forming a good story line.. I loved some of the analytic passages and explanations of the characters by the characters, a very interesting read for me..

Bharya Gunavati Satru - Yandamoori Veerendranath

Yandamoori kind of surprised me because I was convinced that I will not like this guy's books and the one off reading that I do whenever I happen to find one in the local library should be fine.  The more I read him, the more I am beginning to like.  He is a very good copy-author, absorbs matter from all over the world and purges it out in his own style covering up the loose ends of the original even :).

Well, this said, I have surprised myself enough as I get sucked deeper and deeper and OA has provided me a complete set of his works, so I am gradually digging into them when I find time.

A gripping narrative with tight script, makes the reader feel with the story yet keeps guessing, a good casual read.

This is the story of a couple who make it from rags to riches.. the girl comes from a mafia backdrop but has a golden heart and is in there because of forced circumstances.  How the couple meet, fall in love, get married and struggle to make the ends meet, how they have their differences and get things resolved is the essence, good narrative

Dookudu

Finally after a lot of ooh-aahing from the friends across the globe about how honey drippingly cute Mahesh is and all that, managed to go and watch Dookudu in GDV, was worried I will not be getting tickets considering people were telling me the prices were around 500 to 700 in black and all. We went at around 12:30 for 2:30 show and the balcony tickets were over by then (apparently available in black for 150/-) and directed to another non-a/c theater, we took up the second alternative and braved it out in the non-a/c dabba hall but thank fully climate was not that bad or sticky!!

Coming to the movie, it might have gotten tremendous openings only because of nothing else is going on as good at this time and Mahesh did a decent movie after a looooooooooooooooong time..but it is definitely not an all-time good movie of Mahesh and I most definitely would not be watching this movie another time in theater ever and on TV too at the max just another time. It kind of looked like a patchwork movie typical of Srinu Vytla, too many punch dialogues, at times I felt as if the need to produce a punch dialogue dominated the scene requirement though some of them were really good. I have seen Mahesh look better. Mahesh's accent too seemed all patched up when and why and how it changed it left me wondering why? Leaving the logic behind, if we just want some eye candy and mindless intermittent fun, we can go for it...and another thing I liked in the movie is the way it is made a multistarrer without actual presence of those stars.. NTR, ANR, Nagarjuna, Krishna.. all the 3 bigwig movie families presented decently forgetting the actual rivalry, must say truly a bold experiment.

Sainikudu, Athidhi, Khaleja (I was kind of giving it up that he would choose good subjects any longer), though I kind of liked Khaleja the other two were yuckkkk!! Maybe going with too much of expectations ruined the fun for me or maybe not.. 

Ashtaavakra - Yandamoori Veerendranath

This is one book I absolutely loved reading, though the narrative is a bit shaky in the beginning, I felt all the loose ends are tied up beautifully.. good reading considering as a child i was a sucker for such evil devil type of movies in Telugu..

Enjoyed re-reading this book after a long time.