Happy December!!!! bookish peeps!! Which books you guys have planned to read this month? Have you already met your 2019 reading goals? or still, haven't just like me?
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Beth, a new mother working as a wedding planner is struggling to keep her marriage where her husband is no more interested in getting intimate with her. Ruby had a tough time managing her three-year-old daughter, Bonnie after she got separated from her husband on the humiliation of her body hair. Lauren, a social media celebrity, sharing her blissful life moments through her frequent Instagram posts, but nobody knows what her real life is behind those regular posts.
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The book is narrated from the point of view of Ruby and Beth, while Lauren is introduced through her Instagram posts. Nothing is perfect in the lives of these women whose lives are perceived as happy and ideal by people around them and their social media followers.
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The first half of the book was quite funny, Risky’s character literally left me giggling. Her amusing take of feminism, people, marriage, sex, and life was fun to read. The parts of the book where Ruby had terrible moments raising her daughter were quite comical. Concisely, all the characters had their significant individualities. Porter’s forthright writing painted the honest and genuine sentiments of every character.
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It was fun to read So Lucky. It is certainly a wonderful book deserving to be on your tbr list. A funny, fascinating, and entertaining read.
#solucky #dawnoporter #goodreads
#bookstoread #booksbooksandmorebooks #bookaholic
Thirteen Kinds of love is a beautiful short novel that is impressive, convincing and my recent favorite. And mind you, this is not a romance book narrating a love story.
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Soumya Bhattacharya has written an engrossing account of several families living in Imperial Heights apartments in Mumbai. These short narratives are about the intricacy of modern lives, their entangled relationships, loving and letting go.
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The book shares the bond of mother and son, father-son, marriage relations, through the mind and views of the characters- Manish and Sunita Chandiramani., Samrat and Malini Chaudhuri, Priyanka Dandekar, Shailesh Patel. It portrays the lives of these characters where a father wants to spend time with his son after a divorce, a marriage is on the edge of an end owing to infidelities, a mother raises her son after her husband’s death and a retired serviceman whose wife had recently died.
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The narration is expressive, the thoughts and sentiments of the characters have been crafted into words so eloquently that it makes the reader sit and get absorbed in it.
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I had a great time reading Thirteen kinds of love and will definitely recommend it as an appealing short read. And yes, the cover is so pretty.
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Any recent short read you loved lately? What do you think about this book, if you'd read it?
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#thirteenkindsoflove #bookstoread
#bookgram #books #igreads
Vivek’s memoir is very personal, his words will stick to you, his warmth will overwhelm you, and you will just want to read some more. So Now You Know is about Vivek, his early days of growing up as a gay, his realization of his different identity at the age of eight, accepting and admiring the way he is, trying to find a deserved place in the city where homosexuality was a crime.
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The book reads like a diary, not in chronological order, random chapters where he shares about acknowledging his first love, bullied childhood, longing family acceptance, sexual preferences of different men, and books as his only solace.
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This book is special, why? you ask? It is brave! It is extremely honest! It takes immense courage to put out everything in open, to share one’s feelings with acute honesty, without fearing people’s perceptions.
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This book needs to be read, just not because it’s about Vivek, a voracious reader, the whole reading community admires, but because it shares the story of a young innocent boy who struggled to be accepted the way he is, who craved for acceptance in this brutal society that was never kind to him, about being a normal human being who just happened to be gay.
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Well, Vivek is the only reader, whose Instagram stories I eagerly look forward to, curiosity to know about the books he is reading, the book projects he is involved in or planning to do. I wish someday he write in detail about his varied reading interests, how he picks reading projects, and everything about books.
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Have you read this book? What are you currently reading?
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#sonowyouknow #weekendreads
#vivektejuja #bookaddict #bookworm
#booksbooksbooks #bookstoread #memoir
Well, ‘The Testaments’ is not as powerful as the prequel was, but it is a bit of a page-turner. Narrated from three-point of view - Aunt Lydia, Agnes and Daisy (baby Nicole). Aunt Lydia’s part is the most engaging perspective where her early days come into the picture and how she ended up as a powerful aunt of the Ardent hall. The other two perspectives were of teenagers, Agnes and Daisy, where Agnes shares her story of growing up as a daughter of the commander, Daisy is a smuggled child from Gilead living in Canada.
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The Testaments bring in the testimonies of these three POVs accounting the downfall of the Gilead in an intriguing manner. While Atwood’s writing flows effortlessly, the plot was unsophisticated. Comparing both the books, The Testaments is a much lighter read than the ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. The plot is quite facile with no dark shades and gloominess as was in the prequel. The expectation for a powerful sequel might not be met by this book, but it is a sure pick for the reason of Atwood, for her writing and how she framed the fall of the Gilead.
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While putting the thoughts across, I don’t wish to give away the whole plot of the book in order to substantiate why the book was an okayish read and not a brilliant piece for me. I would recommend picking The Testaments to know the perspectives of three different accounts of the happenings in the Gilead and not as the follow-up story of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. .
Have you read it? How do you treat it, as an independent read or as a sequel?
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#thetestaments #margaretatwood
#bookerprize2019 #goodreads
#bookstoread #books #bookster #booksbooksandmorebooks
Well, I completed this book today and was contemplating the right kind of words to pen down. I do love non-fiction reads be it belongs to self-help books, business reads, biographies or autobiographies, books on mind or life. I read all the styles of non-fiction. But Indistractable wasn’t the book for me.
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Indistractable focuses on the reduction of distractions that is mainly caused by the use of technology and gadgets. It comprises of easy to read short chapters with further sections talking about dealing with distractions from within, reimagining internal triggers, hacking back external triggers, workplace distractions, having Indistractable relationships and, etc. etc.
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The first few chapters were compelling, my interest was building up, but as I moved further to the next chapters, it looked like the addition of content was only done with the purpose to increase the volume of the book. It also includes a lot of research material just to present facts but I couldn’t understand how it is useful as a solution or benefits the readers. It is merely like a collection of numerous anecdotes.
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I found a lot of positive reviews of the book online, so some of you might like the book, but it wasn’t a great read for me. I recommend reading both reviews before picking it up to read.
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What style of non-fiction do you guys look forward to, Biographies or autobiographies, self-help, spiritual or any other? How was your weekend?
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#octoberreads #booksbooksbooks #books #bookstagramfeatures #bookcommunity #bookworld
“Sometimes you needed someone kind to sit with you while you dealt with things.”
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Straight away after finishing, ‘Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine’ on Saturday night last week, I put down my half-sipped coffee on the side table, sit down for a few minutes to contemplate on what a brilliant book I had just read. The effect was such that I was so overwhelmed with delight, warmth and extreme fondness for Eleanor.
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Eleanor Oliphant is here to take your heart. You are surely gonna fall for her and her amusing sense of humor. You will laugh at her quirky jokes, smile on her warm comments and shed tears when she’s not fine. Eleanor lives a timetabled life wearing the same clothes to the job every day, eats the same meal every day and treats herself with the same bottles of vodka every weekend. She is socially awkward with no friends and family. And she thinks she is completely fine.
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“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”
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Eleanor’s story will give you the perspective of what it could really mean when people often seems to be completely fine, how one’s emotions could trigger mental health issues and despair, and why it is important to talk about it and seek for help on time. Eleanor found a true friend in Raymond at the correct time and he indeed saved her. Talking and looking out for friendship does wonders and take one out from the darkest of times.
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‘Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine’ is an exceptional debut. If you haven’t read it yet, then you’re surely missing out on a great read.
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Highly recommended. READ THIS BOOK. Will you?
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#eleanoroliphantiscompletelyfine #gailhoneyman #mustread
#goodreads #mustreadbooks
#books #amreading #reader
Happy weekend! Hope you guys are having a great one!
Mine is good with white pasta, coffee, and some cough! God! The past few weeks were unpleasent in terms of health.
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What is your weekend read? How many books are there in your current read tbr?
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I recently finished, 'Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine' and it was a damn great read. I seriously need time to gather my thoughts on how much I loved it and put it down into words. Meanwhile, I'm resuming my other current read, 'Hard things about hard things', sixty pages in, the book is going okay as of now. Hopefully, aiming to complete it soon.
#amreading #bookstagramindia #bookstagram #hardthingsabouthardthings #fiction #weekendreadingwithsonam #weekendreads #bookstagramfeatures #booksandcoffee
No matter what people say, it is certainly not easy to let go of things that live in your mind, situations that affected you emotionally, negative thoughts, past worries, anxieties, the people who came and left. But, is it worth holding onto those thoughts? Does it really easy to let go of such things? Does freeing your mind from the negative thoughts look effortless?
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Unquestionably, letting go of all the shit that life throws at you is not a piece of cake, but it is important to let go in order to live in the moment, to stay happy and healthy and most importantly for calmness of mind. Do you know what stress can do to your body, let alone your mind?
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Let That Shit Go is about embracing self-love, being in the present moment, practicing mindfulness, kicking out the negative thoughts and experiencing inner happiness in daily life. It’s not a usual to-do list kind of self-help book but rather giving thought to how to let go of things you can’t control, how acceptance is the key to a peaceful mind and how forgiveness will give you inner happiness.
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The authors had been honest and clear in writing this considerable piece of a book. I genuinely loved reading it. Let that shit go is my recent favorite. Pick it for sure because it’s not worth holding onto all that shit.
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How do you guys let go of negative thoughts? How do you deal with the excessive stress?
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#letthatshitgo #bookstagramindia #bookstagram #booksbooksbooks #readmorebooks #bookstoread
An American Marriage is powerful and heartbreaking at the same time. I loved every part of my time I spend reading this brilliant read. A beautiful book that will leave an overwhelming feeling in your heart and mind. It is now one of my favorite reads of this year.
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Roy and Celestial have been married for nearly one and half year when Roy was wrongly arrested for a crime he didn’t commit and sentenced to 12 years. The hopes and dreams that both of them had built for the future, shattered in seconds of the verdict.
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During his jail term, Roy exchanged letters with Celestial telling about things in there and Celestial, about her life without Roy out there. These letters form a major part of the book accounting genuine and raw emotions of the couple and will surely stir your emotions inside.
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An American Marriage speaks of race, color, marriage, and injustice. It is about the marriage of Roy and Celestial, how wrongful imprisonment of Roy, a black man, changed the situations in their marriage.
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Tayari’s narration is exceptional, writing down so well that one could certainly feel for the characters, saddened on the circumstances, they have been put into and appreciate on how they accept the change, though dishearteningly but with hope to move forward.
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An American Marriage deserves to be on your shelf and trust me spending on this book will be worth it. This was my first book of Tayari and it convinced me to reach out for her other books too. Highly recommended.
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Have you read this book? If not, Is it on your tbr?
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#anamericanmarriage #tayarijones #mustread #womensprizeforfiction #oprahbookclub #bookstagram #books #fiction #bookworm