My 2014 Reading Challenge

Purnima's books

The Beach House 

by Jane Green

Average read, insensitive handling of some issues grated on your nerves. Not even recommended as a read to pass time.
 

Magnolia Wednesdays

by Wendy Wax

Interesting interpretation of Gone With the Wind in modern times. Falters a couple of times on plot but picks up pace along the way. Enjoyable light read which is funny and moving.
 

The Wednesday Sisters

by Meg Waite Clayton

Goes in a minute from superficial to super deep. Excellent manipulation of language manipulates your feelings and you almost feel like a " Wednesday Sister" yourself.  Book club sort of book- but surprisingly I did not come away with any " OMG, I need to read these" titles.
 

Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

Best book I have read all year. I started the year with this book. Phenomenal book, keeps you on the edge of your seat. Wonderfully written, exciting, racy, intellectual thriller. Was sad to see the book end.
  

The Case of the Calendar Girl

by Erle Stanley Gardner
Guilty Pleasure! Not so much a pleasure though this one with a weak plot left me feeling only guilty. 

I reset my expectations this year to account for all my occupational and non occupational hazards and went with 150 books instead of 200 books this year. Unfortunately for me, I have once again over estimated myself and am 57 books behind schedule. I am still struggling ineffectually to cope my over ambition of 8 months ago.

Passenger: On a weird journey

 My reading speed seems to be reducing as my age increases. I have been on this book now for almost a week. It is quite unusual for me considering that this is quite a short book. Well, it might have to do with the fact that this story is very unusual and in some ways quite disturbing. I have to take breaks from this book to recover and get back to reading it. Right now, it is pretty much only the half hour I spend waiting for my office shuttle that I get to dip into this story.

It is in a fashion a nod to the tale of two cities, in this case two people named after cities. Milan and Roma, the protagonists of this story have a unique symbiotic relationship. It is not a story of traditional affection or familial relationships. It is the story of an enduring love and the consequences which everyone faces as a result. Milan, is a not unusually confused individual, sort of going through a mid life crisis.

Milan starts of as a sort of clueless individual, he does not have a clue beyond his music. So, it is a  poetic justice of a kind that when faced with needing to communicate with Roma, he chooses to use music.  We follow Milan's evolution from a self centered individual to a person almost obsessed with helping Roma. It could be love which drives him tinted with a bit of guilt. But whatever he feels for Roma makes him behave in ways he never imagined, forge relationships he would never have otherwise and learn to be a better and worse personality than he could have ever become himself.

This takes living with a conjoined twin or a sibling that you have to take care of to a whole new level. The story follows Roma and Milan's journey and leaves you wondering if Roma is the Milan's muse or the albatross around his neck.

Couch Traveling

I started out like most children as a couch traveler. Since I was 3 or 4 years old, I pored over fairy tales in big print, thinking about all those imaginary lands and the mysterious ways and means to reach them. When I graduated to Enid Blytons, " The Faraway Tree Series" and the " Adventure Series" were my first picks and I was sad there was so few of them. I loathed the Secret Seven because all they did was stay at home and have not so secret meetings. Well to each his own, but not my cup of tea.

 I have for as long as I remember been fascinated by the travel columns in the Sunday newspaper. All summer the television at home was and still is when I have a holiday tuned to the Travel and Living Channel, which used be the awesomer Discovery Travel. I loved every show on it and watched all of them religiously storing them up in my brain for future use.

.

Lost and Found- Part 1

Meet Don, 30 years old. He's about 5 feet 6 inches tall, short compared to the rest of his clan. If you were kind, u would call him broad shouldered. If you weren't, you would approximate a rectangle.

He likes taking walks in the summer sun just as much as in the pleasant rains. So you would find him nicely bronzed off on a good day and badly sun burnt on others. The first thing everyone noticed about his hair was never the color. You just saw that there seemed to be too much of it on that little head of his. But for purposes of your imagination it was coffee grounds brown. If you met his eyes, which you inevitably did, because he always did talk that way, was a softer ice tea brown.

Before he starts sounding like one of those stock photos on the internet or a safe date on an internet dating website, let's see what Don was getting upto now. He was sitting on the edge of his seat on the 10:30 subway going downtown. "Ping!" went his phone. He scrolled through it absentmindedly.

"Not another of these reports!" he thought to himself," I should never have subscribed to this alert service." Though it wasn't really much of a choice anyway. His job as a hot shot financial expert demanded this at a minimum. He had never borne the brunt of a bubble bursting around him, but it would be good to be in the loop when it did. 

So, now that he was 30, in fact that very day was his birthday, Don was thinking very deeply about nothing in particular. Especially not what he was going to do next. He wasn't much of a philosopher, but he hadn't gotten away unscathed from the kind of situations he had been in. Introspection was dangerous, so he tried not to indulge.

He tried to look fascinated again as he caught sight of the skyline. Another day, another dollar!