This is my 10th year of the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I’ve been challenging myself to read more books for the last ten years. After getting interested in the Wheel of Time series, I decided to spend the year reading the entire series mixed with a bunch of random books I come across.
Usually, I would have a separate post for each category, but this year was dominated by Fantasy Fiction interspersed with some short stories and suspense thrillers. So here goes!
The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra is one of those soft mystery books that take you on a journey while investigating a crime. It is the first instalment of the Kaveri and Ramu mysteries set in pre-independence India. The reader gets an inkling of the socio-political situation around the time, providing an interesting background for the story to evolve.
Harini Nagendra is a professor of ecology at Azim Premji University. She writes on issues of nature and sustainability and has published works of non-fiction on the topic of sustainability in urban areas. The Bangalore Detectives Club is her first work of fiction.
I came across a few short stories on Amazon last year and loved them. Amazon has commissioned a series of original short stories by prominent writers. These stories are categorised by genre and are only available as digital books on Amazon or as audiobooks on Audible.
The stories are short but impactful. They take you on a journey and make you see the world differently.
Short stories in the Hush Collection ranges from political mysteries to psychological thrillers, in which deception can be a matter of life and death
The One by John Marrs is a science fiction book that seems all too real. It is based on the concept of finding your soulmate through genetic mapping. We follow the lives of five people from different walks of life and whose lives are changed considerably because of this technology. There is a little romance and some sci-fi, but this is a suspense thriller to the very end.
Overall, I found the book to be interesting. The subject matter was good food for thought, and the underlying suspense of it all kept me hooked till the end. If you’re looking for a quick, fast-paced book for the holidays, The One by John Marrs is a good recommendation!
Do you love the edge of your seat? Do you love staying awake till the early hours of the morning? If you do, you’re probably a reader, and this book is for you. The Nothing Man by Catherine R. Howard is an exciting murder mystery unlike any I have read before. The premise of the book is that a young girl, whose life was turned around after her entire family was murdered, has grown up to write a book about the experience. She hopes that the killer is still alive and wants to catch him after all these years. “…fiction only really worked if it was built like a lattice through which you were repeatedly offered glimpses of absolute truth.” There’s not much I can add to it without giving away any plot twists. All I can say is that this was a wild ride. There are twists and turns, especially at the end, that catch you off guard. “These are no dark magicians. They have no special skills. People seem to forget that we …
This year was a good year for books for me. I had started to diversify my reading list to books by authors in different countries, and even looked into some contemporary Indian authors. My goal was to read 40 books this year but I upgraded it to 50 by August. I had given up reading books by Indian authors after being disappointed countless times (looking at you Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi). In college I’d read the likes of Anita Desai and found the subject matter morose and the writing high-brow; meant for submission to book awards and discussed in literary societies, not something you’d want to cuddle up with. Then last year I discovered the books of Manto, Perumal Murugan, and Arundhati Roy’s new work of fiction. Not to mention Amitav Ghosh. This year my journey continued. It’s a good mix of popular and hidden gems, classics and contemporary. Once again, I divide my list into three different posts of fiction, fantasy fiction, and non-fiction. Here goes the first list: Fiction. The Namesake by …
Fiction has been the first type of books I enjoyed reading. Sweeping me into another world, full of possibilities. There are many types of fiction – suspense, science, historical, pulp, fantasy, to name a few – and I love them all. As I’ve grown older and read more of these books, I am amazed at how similar we all are in all corners of the world; wanting similar things, dreaming similar dreams. These are just some of the books in this category I read in 2018 that stood out among the rest. For a full list, do visit my Goodreads profile. The House of Clay and Water by Faiqa Mansab: Everything from the covers to the words in between them are beautifully expressed. It was a breeze to read through although there were times when you need to stop and face the harsh realities she talks about. The status of women, the unsafe children, the segregation, and the claim for the moral high ground. It is all relatable and is our thoughts put into words …
It was such a joy last year to get back to reading after having survived on just two or three books a year for the lack of time. Now when I look at my reading list, I am filled with anxiety because I feel I have so much to catch up on. I calm down after I realise that everyone’s ‘to be read’ pile is probably longer than their ‘read’ pile. This year I reduced the number of books for the challenge because I felt a bit rushed last year and I knew that I was going to have a busier 2014. I managed to complete the challenge well in time so that I could go on my break without feeling the pressure to read – that’s no way to enjoy a book. Here are some of the books from this year that I think deserve a mention – for better or for worse. Non-fiction Zealot by Reza Aslan: It gave a good historical background into Jesus’ life and how he became a man of legendary …
Love, Life, & Beyond 