Before I begin reading my next book and get lazy, let me write about this one. What a ride. It felt like four cases packed into one book.
Scene is set in Glasgow in the early 70’s with police officer Harry McCoy. Clearly no cop is immaculate in this book, all bent in some way. But Harry McCoy tries to walk the straight and narrow.
I began this book because I needed to feel a sense of excitement. That sense of dread knowing a killer is lurking, even if it’s between the pages of a book. I ditched ‘Quiet Heroines’ by Brenda McBryde, this book on British nurses during WW2 which was boring and I’m okay with boring sometimes, but it was also racist and orientalist in its writing and story telling, and picked up Big City Lies, believing that rarely do suspense thrillers ever disappoint.
Oh this book was juicy! This is from the series of books my Kiwi cousin sent me. It is set in New Zealand, a woman married to a wealthy builder with a 20 year age gap.
After the massive success that Lioness was in engaging all the right emotional and intellectual muscles, I decided the next book would obviously be the last one in the series of Kiwi cousin books. This one will be a longer review.
Old habits die hard, and in my case almost never. So after a few non-suspense thrillers, I craved some murder, clues and spunky detectives. The Echo Man delivered and then some.
If you’re familiar with Tess Gerritsen, you know her work is murder. Not ghosts, red- blooded murder. So I picked it up expecting exactly that. Such a shocker to initial find it to be in the haunted genre. And not just any haunted genre, erotic haunted genre.
I just finished watching It Ends With Us. I cannot help but remember all the times I’ve felt unsafe with a man or men.
The movie has received some criticism for not being able to capture the depth of domestic violence, both the physical and emotional level of manipulation and Blake Lively has received criticism for taking a light-hearted approach to the message of the movie during promotions.
Its been a long break, but I assure you I have been reading! Initially it was mostly academic (doing my thesis) and then branching out of my comfort zone into non-thrillers by Aussie and Kiwi writers courtesy my Kiwi cousin who has shipped half a dozen books to me!
I read my first John Grisham book at the beginning of this year. While I know there are many who worship the ground he walks on, for some reason while the book was interesting and fast-paced the ending was so anticlimactic I was completely disappointed. I realized I haven’t been disappointed by a book in a long time.
Ending the year with Haruki Murakami. Before some of you get excited, it’s not Kafka on the Shore. It’s a collection of short stories.
The closest I’ve ever come to Murakami is buying Birthday Girl for my close friend. He also seemed like an author everyone keeps saying you MUST read. Like Ayn Rand. But if you tell me I must do something, chances are I really won’t. Also, I always thought people who read Murakami were pretentious.
Commitment. The reason I rewatch so many shows and rarely start new ones is my fear of commitment. I’m afraid I’d have wasted a lot of time if I commit to a show and it turns out to be bad or have an awful ending.
A relatively quick read about the overthrowing of humans by farm animals and the renaming of Manor Farm, as Animal Farm. Well this book is a bit more complex. At first, it is hard to keep up with who is who when most characters are introduced but as you unravel the plot along with the all-knowing third person narrator, you easily keep up.
When I took upon myself the task of reading one classic a month in order to floss my mind, the Catcher in the Rye seemed like a good start for me. Indeed! It most definitely was good. I have always been of the opinion that classics are not very interesting and most people have read them because their syllabus demanded them too.
I had typhoid when I was in the 12th std so I had to take 2 weeks off from college. This made me miss the Malhar department interviews (Malhar is the cultural college featival of St.Xavier’s College Mumbai. This used to be a massive deal when I was still in college!).
Lies. Pardonable lies. What type of lies fall under this category. I assume little white lies fall under them. Like when we did not tell my 90-year grandpa who had just lost the love of his life that his friend had also just passed. Things like that assume.
I judged the title and I bought the book. I’ll admit it. I mean come on, when you first look at it, it reads as Kill Father.
The book has been lying around the house since October 2020. And I received lots of not-so-happy reactions from my family. Given my strong views on Religion, they initially believed it was about killing a priest, which I assure you it is not.
We’re sticking to suspense thriller again. I have to say I have slight anxiety, so it takes a lot of willpower for me not to skip pages and read who the culprit is. And this ending was definitely something I didn’t see coming.
If you’ve ever watched Tinker Tailor Solider Spy then you can imagine my surprise when I found out that A Legacy of Spies was written by the same author!
Mumbai, India