Babyland by Holly Chamberlin

The central character of a novel is a 37 and half year old single woman who runs a business of event management. She gets engaged to a mlti-millionaire Ross who is a perfectionist in most ways, always prim and proper and full of social graces. Both of them were getting along just fine till she realises that she is pregnant. Always of the idea, that she would never have a baby, the novel talks about how she adjusts herself to her new lifestyle. Ross and family are overjoyed with the news and suddenly the pending marriage is not of much importance as compared to the baby shower. In the process, our lady realises that her importance is limited to the fact that she has been the vehicle of the gorgeous Ross' baby. Once she loses her baby, she is dumped like a hot potato with numerous accusations. It is then she realised that she was gonna be marrying Ross because he was good and settled in life but she did not love him and vice versa. She also gets to know about the person she loved, who was her dear friend Jack, who had a past of his own, who was not as gorgeous and glorious as Ross was, who had a baby with another woman Leslie.... Yet she loved him inspite of that...

Makes for a very interesting reading on a rainy afternoon. Brings into focus the dilemmas a girl faces as she chooses the one she is gonna spend her life with...

Rating: 3.5 star

The Secret by Rhonda Byrnes

The Secret was old knowledge ina new packing. Though the packing was just awesome would say. Not enough to simply comment on the book. One must read and re-read the book to experience the amgic. There is something like magic that the human mind can conjure and the same has been very well illustrated in the book. A perfect book when one's feeling low or unwell.

Overall rating: 4.5 stars

One Night @ A Call Centre by Chetan Bhagat

It is about a night at a call centre with weird ongoings including a call from God. Vroom, Esha, Shyam, Priyanka, Radhika and Military Uncle are the characters that define the novel. In one night, all of them come to know they may lose their jobs to rightsizing of the firm. Vroom proposes Esha and gets rejected. He also comes to know Esha's nefarious activities. Esha gets to know that the one inch of her height would not get her a modelling role even if she slept with hundred thousands designers. Shyam realises that his relationship wih Priyanka was over. Priyanka was about to start jer life with Ganesh, an NRI software geek who has a bungalow with a swimming pool and is about to buy a Lexus. Radhika, who was anyways troubled by her mother-in-law and was on anti-depressants, came to know that her husband was having an affair with someone else. Military Uncle realised that neither his son nor his daugter-in-law appreciated him contacting his grandson. All the frustrated souls were on their way back from a lounge when the vehicle crashed and landed on the framework of a construciton site. There was no network to summon help. Suddenly Shyam's phone starts ringing and he realises it is GOD calling. God gives them a piece of advice on how ro live their life and whenever they are confused to take some time off and focus on that inner voice which is God speaking. Life can be lived with intellignce, imagination, self-confidence and a little bit of failure.

Good read for a lazy Sunday or a train journey perhaps. Style of writing is strictly mediocre. Does not help the vocabulary in an sort of a way. Pretty wannabe at times. Unbelievable but God is really that small voice that tells us this is wrong and that is correct.

Overall rating: 2.5 star

Thanks for the memories by Cecelia Ahern

Joyce, a 33 year old, has a miscarriage with a revelation of a loveless marriage, resulting into a complete breakdown of her 10 year old marriage. Due to severe loss of blood, Joyce is given blood from a general blood bank that leaves her completely changed as a person. Her tastes, likes, dislikes had ceased to be her own and suddenly she was speaking about art, architecture and foreign languages as if she were a connoiseur. She keeps bumping into Justin, the blood donor. Both are not aware that he is the donor of the blood which is why she was having identical tastes, interests and even memories. A series of stalking incidents bring Joyce the knowledge about the donor being Justin. The plot ultimately ends with Justin wooing Joyce after a series of issues including even assuming Joyce is mad.

Cecelia Ahern, author of 'P.S. I Love You', fails to make an impact like her first bestseller. Predictable plot, repetitive characters but charged with an emotional writing that albeit does not leave you in tears like P.S. I Love You. The plot is so surreal that it makes you even want to reconsider before donating or getting blood. Cecelia had created magic in her previous book but the same touch was slightly missing in this one. A good read for a rainy day although doesn't really make you feel fuzzy or feel like cozying up to someone special.

Overall rating: 3 star

Lajja by Taslima Nasrin

Lajja is a description cum documentary on the spiral effects of the demolition of Babri Masjid in Bangladesh. The wounds inflicted upon the Hindus, the torture, the fires, snatching the porperties of the Hindus made for a very gruesme reading. The facts on such behaviour were put all through the book. It was the story of Dr Sudhamoy Dutta who did not want to leave Bangladesh because of the torture, was forced to ultimately leave his homeland after his daughter Nilanjana was abducted and there was no trace of her. His son Suranjan had lost his first love Parveen who was a Muslim to a Muslim businessman. His wife Neelima had given up singing hymns as it was considered as characterless. They had lost their ancestral property and the once upon a rich family was forced to live from hand to mouth. In the wake of the unrest, even Muslim friends were not acknowledging the relationship they shared because none had the courage to do so.

Overall, a very serious book. Not meant for the typical rainy day reading. Sounds like a newspaper article at places. Very poor language, practically sounds like someone is translating Hindi into English.

Rating: 2.5 star

Fleeced by Carol Higgins Clark

Regan Reilly, the central charater is a private investigator in California and is home to attend the crime convention conducted by her mom. One of her friends, Thomas, the manager of Settler's Club calls to inform her about a death that loked like a normal death but may have been a murder. The death of Nat, the jeweller seemed to be like a murder since the diamonds worth 4 million dollars had been missing and he was found in a bathtub that he never used. The pace is fine but doesn't still set the heart racing. There was no conlcusion as to whether Nat was killed and if he was killed who was the murderer was left open-ended. The diamonds were found since I guess they had to be to end the story.

Fleeced by Carol Higgins Clark was one of her disapoointing works. She has been one of my favourite writers but this time around clearly "Fleeced" fails to make its mark. The pace of the book or the writing fails to leave you at the dge of your chair. The lesser I write, the better! Did not even deserve a mention. All in all, a disapoointment or her fans.

Rating: 2 star.

Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

Veronika decides to die is about a young girl Veronika, who decides to die since she is tired of the monotony in her life. She had studied law but had taken up a librarian's job due to the job security it offered. Her life was a routine of going to the library, then with her latest boyfriend and then back to her hostel, the typical reason being the timelines at the convent. She is so tired of the routine that she decides to end her life with an overdose of sleeping pills as any other mode would be too painful and would also embarrass her parents. While waiting for her death after consuming an entire bottle of sleeping pills, she was reading a newspaper where a journalist did not know Slovenia, the place where she stayed. She was so upset that she left a suicide note in the name of the newspaper and the journalist. Unfortunately she did not die from such an overdose as she was young enough to take the blow. However, she landed up in Vilette, the mental hospital because of the suicide note she left behind.. Who would kill herself for a journalist who did not know Slovenia, except a mad woman? She met Zedka who suffered from depression and wanted to have a happy life with her husband and children, one of her first friends at Vilette. Mari, a guide, who was suffering from panic attacks, wanted to spend the rest of her days doing social service. Eduard, the great love of her life, who was a schizophrenic, wanted to become a painter to paint the Visions of Paradise and for whom she played the piano with all that she had. Dr. Igor who was the doctor in charge of the hospital and was writing a thesis on effects of Vitriol, had told her that her heart was weak and would only last for at best a week. Veronika is terrified of the wait for death and decides to live the remainder of her life each moment at a time. It is because of this dying girl that all the inmates of the mental hospital understood how to live their life to the fullest, taking risks they always wanted to, doing things they always wanted to. She had taught them how to live again. Veronika and Eduard fell in love with her playing the beautiful sonnets and sonatas and decided to escape Vilette and go to the castle. They hugged each other when there was a clutching pain in her heart again and she wished for death in his arms. Lo and behold! The next morning she is still alive and they have one more day to go. Little did they know that the pains in her heart were artificial and caused by medication administered by Dr Igor who wanted to try this experiment to know what is it that made the essence of life. The fear of death only made people live their life fuly. Even if Veronika went to any other doctor she would know that the story about her heart was untrue but the way she lived her life thinking it would be no more was something that would never be repeated.

One of Paulo Coelho's very well written books. A wonderful lesson on how to live. At some point, heart in heart, all of us know that we have forgotten how to live, this is a book that makes you want to live all over again. And people who really know how to live are often called mad! All that you would want to do is t be done and today is something that we miss out since we assume life will be today, tomorrow and a year hence also. We forget that if life were to go the next momenht, we would have those desires left unfulfilled, that part of life woul dhave never been consumed.

Rating: 4 star