Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Yuval Noah Harari GENRE: Nonfiction. PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 2011 RATING: 3.25 stars. Assume that you are a huge coffee lover, and you are served a cup of tea. You refuse at first, but are then informed by all and sundry that it is no ordinary tea, but a delightful masala chai, exotic and exquisite, innovatively prepared like never before... All these raring compliments convince you to give it a try. Still slightly wary, you take a tentative sip. "Well, it does seem pretty good for tea", you think, and end up drinking the whole cup. You relish the flavour and appreciate the chai-maker for converting something mundane into something so pleasing to your senses. You feel like complimenting him for not following the typical tried-and-tested recipe but taking a different approach towards instilling new flavours in the brew. However, a teeny tiny part of your heart is still not satisfied. Just because it was tea and not coffee. "Sapiens" to me is that brilli...

AUTHOR: Fredrik Backman TRANSLATOR: Henning Koch GENRE: Contemporary Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: July 15, 2014 RATING: 4.5 stars. Like I had mentioned in my Eleanor Oliphant review , books that come highly recommended tend to be read with higher expectations, and more often than not, you end up disappointed. But I can't believe I have been lucky enough twice in the same year to find a book that doesn't just match the expectations I had but goes well beyond it. If you want a detailed analysis of "A Man Called Ove", there are many brilliant reviews of the same and I anyway won't be able to match that standard. What I can only do is pour out my heart about the book. This is the first book since "Wonder" that made me live the emotions rather than read them mechanically. I rarely laugh out loud or cry with books, but in this case, I found myself not just doing the above but even snorting a couple of times (and I am certainly not a snorter!) The book unfolds lik...