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Author: Ali Smith
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Year: 2014
ISBN: 9780241146828
Rating: 
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How to be Both is not just a book. It is an art form by itself. Depending on your luck, you might get one version of the book, or the other. Your understanding of the story could change, depending on which version you happen to read.
When I picked up Birth of The Bastard Prince, the titillating title dominated my choice. And it certainly lived up to its name. In this sequel to the widely acclaimed Legend Of Amrapali, Anurag Anand has captured an important fragment of history with his raconteurial abilities.
It is hard not to feel cynical about both love and marriage, when the papers are full of horror stories about women being tortured and killed over dowry, or honor killings in which two youngsters who dared to fall in love are butchered to death. One wonders if love and marriage ought to be relegated to the trash heap!
Radhika Jha’s novel, My Beautiful Shadow, is set in Japan of the 1980s. It was the time when the Japanese economy was experiencing a heavy boom and its unemployment rate was as low as 4.9%. It was the time when various new brands were storming Japan and ‘they brought a new religion of ‘Happyism’’.
Ultimate Horizons is one of the best books, rather narratives, I have read. It discusses at length the evolution of our understanding about our universe and its functioning. In every direction, it explores the ultimate horizon which we have reached and can reach.
Before taking up Adultery by Paulo Coelho, I was a tad bit skeptical. I’d absolutely fallen in love with The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes, whereas The Winner Stands Alone was a huge disappointment. Regardless of highly varying critical reviews, Paulo Coelho always manages to touch the life of his readers.
Author: Karen Joy Fowler
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Year: 2014
ISBN: 9781846689666
Rating:
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This is the story of the Cooke family. A father, a mother, a son and two daughters. One day, one of the daughters disappears, and is never heard from. But the parents, who are involved in her disappearance, act as though nothing were wrong. The missing daughter is, quite simply, never mentioned in their family again.
It’s hard to judge a book when it fails to create an opinion, when the work is neither bad nor too impressive. I call this situation ‘The Valley of Hot and Cold’.
Author: Virender Kapoor
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-93-82951-58-2
Rating:
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The moment I opened this book, I had mentally braced myself to be reading about stark comparisons between a leader and a boss. However, I was very pleasantly surprised to realize how the Kapoor has projected the quality of being a boss as a sub product of the quality of being a leader.
The story is intensely gripping – just when you feel that no more misfortune can befall these characters, a dark tragedy is just around the corner, waiting to happen. Just when you dream of a happy ending, the twist takes your breath away.