Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Peter Wohlleben GENRE: Nature Nonfiction. RATING: 4.25 stars. As humans, in no other year has it been more important than in 2020 to look at the impact of our actions on the environment. It is easy to blame a virus for bringing the world to a standstill, but if we think about it, we humans have been the biggest parasites for Mother Nature, sucking everything out of her like a leech and then complaining if she hits us back with cyclones or forest fires. Let us all be more conscious of our actions now onwards. After all, Earth doesn't need us, but we need Earth. So we need to be more environmentally aware and environmentally responsible. Else, we'll soon join the league of extinct creatures. Let's today vow to leave a better planet for our children. Every step counts! Every human action matters! One of the most ignored aspects in terms of environment are trees. In Mumbai, every year, people complain that trees fall during the monsoon and there is a big hue and cry ov...

AUTHOR: Anne Bogel GENRE: Nonfiction. PUBLICATION DATE: September 4, 2018. RATING: 4.75 stars. How would you classify people based on their reading preferences? Personally, I feel that there are dabblers ( who are still checking out the hobby ), casual readers ( who read but without regularity ), bibliophiles ( who love reading ), book addicts ( who love anything and everything to do with books ) and book maniacs ( who can't see a thing beyond books! ) ( PS: There are also human beings who can't stand reading. But let's not count them as people, ok? Those miserable anomalies of evolution! Hmmph! 😤) I am a book addict. I love books, I breathe books. I can never have too many books. I can't imagine a life without books. I know I'm sounding like a maniac, but no, I'm just a book addict! 😇😇 And today, I've found my kindred spirit in Anne Bogel! I happened to glimpse this book while browsing through the Scribd collections. Needless to say, the title was attrac...

AUTHOR: Damyanti Biswas GENRE: Crime thriller. PUBLICATION DATE: September 17, 2019. RATING: 4.5 stars. My first crime thriller after a long time, my very first by an Indian author at that! And I'm just gobsmacked after reading this book. YBYS tells the story of an Indo-American lady named Anjali Morgan, who lives with her autistic teenage son in our national capital. In an illicit amorous liaison with her is Jatin Bhatt, a senior police officer. Jatin meanwhile is also investigating a series of rape-murders occurring in Delhi, with acid being used to render the victims unidentifiable. One fine day, there occurs an unforeseen, drastic event that irrevocably impacts the lives of Anjali, Jatin, and everyone around them. YBYS focuses on Delhi at its grimy & slimy best. The dark underbelly of crime is not just exposed but stripped bare to its bones. The book runs like a good Anurag Kashyap movie, so dark and depressing that you don't want to watch it and yet you can't stop ...

AUTHOR: Ruth Hogan GENRE: Magical Realism PUBLICATION DATE: February 21, 2017 RATING: 4.25 stars. On some days, you don't want an adrenaline-increasing book, but just something mellowing and calming, not something full of action-packed adventures but something full of bittersweet moments, something that won't cause you to bite your nails in anticipation but that would tug at your heartstrings.... That is a day you ought to pick up "The Keeper of Lost Things" by Ruth Hogan. The book narrates two stories across two different time frames. The first story playing out in the present time frame tells of Anthony Peardew, an ex-writer, who is the eponymous "keeper of lost things". After having lost something precious, he begins collecting lost things and meticulously maintains a record of how and where he came by them. Laura, his housekeeper and friend, needs to take over this task after a change in certain circumstances. The second storyline spans a time of forty y...

AUTHOR: Solomon Northup GENRE: Memoir. PUBLICATION DATE: February 5, 1853. RATING: 4.25 stars. In times like these when we complain about staying at home, it does our minds well to read books that make us realise what luxury we are still enjoying. 12 Years A Slave is one such brilliant book. Published in 1853, 8 years before the American civil war, it is the memoir of Solomon Northup, a black man from Saratoga, New York. Solomon was a free black man from the north who was a skilled carpenter and violinist. Two white men tricked him into accompanying them as a violinist for a circus tour and after drugging him, sold him into slavery. Solomon didn't even have a chance to inform his wife or three kids about this drastic change in his circumstances. It took 12 years for Solomon to finally escape the dreary turn his fate had taken. In this period, all the atrocities that he suffered or witnessed have been faithfully narrated in the book. He even provides detailed information on the cott...

AUTHOR: Art Spiegelman SERIES: Maus #1-2 GENRE: Graphic Novel. PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 1980. RATING: 4.25 stars. Based on the life of Art Spiegelman's father who was a concentration camp survivor. Art Spiegelman depicts himself interviewing his father from a period of 1980 to 1991. All that his father tells him about life as a Jew in the concentration camps, life after the ordeal, and even his father's current mental state (until his death) is depicted in the book. What strikes you first about Maus is the cover. You wonder, why "Maus"? You open the book and you see the significance of the word. Spiegelman uses his artistic license to depict all the humans in his story as anthropomorphs. All the Jews (such as Spiegelman) are depicted as mice (maus = mouse in German), the Germans fittingly are drawn as cats. Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs. So there is never any confusion in your head about what which citizen you are seeing. The story brilliantly moves between t...

AUTHOR: E. Nesbit SERIES: The Psammead Trilogy, #3 GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy. PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 1906. RATING: 2 stars. The Psammead returns in the life of the children and helps them locate a magical time-traveling Amulet. With this new gift, they travel back in the past to historical places like Babylon, Atlantis, Egypt, etc. and even travel to the future. Nesbit's research into past cultures is clearly visible in the book. But I didn't enjoy this book as much as the former two. Though this story involves time travel, it is the most dated of the three books and the English "We are superior" mentality of the time reveals itself too strongly. I know it was written in 1906 so I shouldn't really judge it by today's standards but somehow, for this book, I couldn't get past this. There were just too many stereotypes in this book and after a point, it just becomes irritating.

AUTHOR: Heather Morris SERIES: The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #1 GENRE: Historical Fiction. PUBLICATION DATE: RATING: 2 stars. What jarred me again and again during the narration was how unrealistic it seemed. The focus seemed to be on showing Lale as a hero and not a victim. I ignored that as an writing device by the author to show her main character in a heroic light.  There were some threads in the narrative that didn't seem to fit properly in the whole tapestry being created. But I keep that too aside, considering it as my inability to focus on the narration.  I somehow trudged on to the end, because I thought I was reading an actual survivor story and hence was willing to give some leeway to the author.  As I still wasn't satisfied, I went online to read Lale's story from some other reliable source. And turns out, quite a few of the details in the book were fabricated. And get this? The actual name of the survivor wasn't even "Lale" but "Lali"! How...

AUTHOR: E. Nesbit SERIES: The Psammead Trilogy, #2 GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy. PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 1904 RATING: 3 stars. The title is self-revealing this time, isn't it? After bidding goodbye to the Psammead in the first book, the children are back in their home in London where they soon come across a phoenix and a magic wishing carpet. With the help of these two new magical discoveries, the children go on adventures around the world. The phoenix is a very interesting character and a fabulous addition to the story. There are plenty of humorous scenes in this book too, though a couple of scenes are really quite illogical even for this genre. But it's still above average and children might enjoy it if they understand the difference in the cultural thinking of that time.

AUTHOR: E. Nesbit SERIES: The Psammead Trilogy #1 GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy. PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 1902. RATING: 3.75 stars. "It" here refers to a sand fairy, or Psammead that the five children discover while in the country. The Psammead is an irritable character but has the ability to grant wishes. How the children interact with it and take daily wishes from it which never really turn out as planned forms the crux of the story. Though the writing is obviously dated, this is still an enjoyable book. It teaches kids how wishes aren't always what they seem like. A very nice book, and easily the best in the series. This is one book that children even today will enjoy.  PS: There's a movie by the same name. Don't go for it. It has just the bare facts in common with the book. The story is quite different and is pretty average. The book is way better.

AUTHOR: Michael Morpurgo GENRE: Middle-Grade Adventure. PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 1999. RATING: 4.25 stars. In school, we used to have a special period once a week called "Rapid Reading", where we used to read aloud all those abridged S.Chand classic editions. This RR period probably sowed the first seeds of a strong love for the classics in my heart. Two such books I was mesmerized by were "The Coral Island" by RM Ballantyne and "Swiss Family Robinson" by Johann Wyss. The common thread between these two books was that of humans being stranded on an island after a shipwreck. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, arguably the most famous book in this genre, wasn't a part of the school RR syllabus but my Dad convinced me to borrow it from the library and give it a go. It seemed darker and more dangerous than the first two books ( probably because I was reading the unabridged version ) but I still enjoyed it. After all these years, I have finally found a book t...

AUTHOR: L.M. Montgomery SERIES: Anne of Green Gables #5 GENRE: Historical Fiction, Classic. PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 1917 RATING: 4.5 stars. Book number 5 of the Anne of Green Gables series is finally done, and I am as happy & satisfied as I was after reading the first Anne book. After the boring third book and the disastrous fourth book , I had almost given up on this series. Today, after completing Anne's House of Dreams, I'm glad my romantic curiosity got the better of my logical side. After the unnecessary story stretch and boring characters of the previous two books, we finally have the story moving ahead clearly and beautifully. Gilbert is a doctor now. Anne and Gilbert are wed, and they move into their own "house of dreams" in a distant village to begin their new life together. The writing is crisp and picturesque right from the first page. Though it is still descriptive, it does not overdo it. The new characters introduced are so interesting that you ...

AUTHOR: L.M. Montgomery SERIES: Anne of Green Gables, #4 GENRE: Historical Fiction, Classic. PUBLICATION DATE: June 28, 1936 RATING: 1 star. Book 4, Anne of Windy Poplars, mostly contains massive missives sent by Anne to her fiance Gilbert who is away at medical school.  So far, and by far, the most boring book of the series. It is an epistolary novel, but the letters by Anne just seen to drag on and on and on with totally useless trivia about the locals in the new place where she is working as a school Principal.  I discovered later that though this is the fourth book in terms of series chronology, it was actually written seventh! I wish LM Montgomery hadn't written this at all. I was almost on the verge of quitting the series after this disaster of a book. Only the curiosity of seeing Gilbert and Anne together made me continue.

AUTHOR: Emma Donoghue GENRE: Contemporary Thriller. PUBLICATION DATE: August 20, 2010. RATING: 3.5 stars. My husband wanted to watch this movie and I wanted to complete the book before going for the movie. Hence taking a tiny break from my Anne of Green Gables series, I picked up Room with high hopes. Now that I'm done with it however, I'm left with very mixed emotions. Room is the story of a five year old boy and his mother, who had been kidnapped by a perverted sadist seven years prior and locked up in a "Room". The boy is an unfortunate outcome of the nightly rapes, and yet, he becomes the beacon of hope and means of escape for his mother. Their lives in their locked Room and after their escape, their attempt to settle in the "Outside" forms the crux of the story. The story of Room brought to mind the Fritzl case of Austria, where a perverted father kept his own daughter captive for an unbelievable 24 years. I remember being horrified at that cruel realit...