All posts tagged: Books

10 Riveting Books That Have Stayed With Me

Have you ever read a book and it’s just stayed with you? Have you every found yourself carrying around characters, story-lines and dialogue around with you, the same way you would tangible memories you’ve made in real life? This list of books I’ve compiled today is made up of my literary ex-lovers (read: the kind that I actually want to remember and whom I do so quite fondly). These are books that I fell in love with on first read and that have stayed with me over the years. It was hard to narrow down the selection to just 10 books, but after many elimination rounds (a la American Idol style) these are the ones that were top of my mind and made the cut…

Book Review: “Me Before You” by Jojo Moyes

“The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life– or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else’s life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window– is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people.”  Every year, or so, there appears a book whose very essence becomes ubiquitous among book lovers and non-book lovers alike. It starts off with spotting a random review in a magazine one day to coming across a full-on praise piece for it online. After a while, it just seems to be everywhere! Jojo Moye’s book “Me Before You” did all those things. I definitely feel the strength of its popularity is based on word-of-mouth marketing and personal recommendations. For a book that I’d heard only great things about, what impressed me the most is that I was still clueless as to what the whole plot of the book was when I eventually got around to reading it. The only heads up …

Book Review: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand

“She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought—and never worried about it again.” ~ About Dagny Taggert It’s not everyday I go out of my way to purchase AND read a book because Mr Tall-Dark-And-Handsome whom I met at some random party claimed it was his favourite book and insisted I should read it. But here we are. Listen, I’m highly aware that this kind of literary venture could have gone very badly: It could have been a serious dud of a book, thus shattering all ill-placed-and-overly-exaggerated virtues I may have bestowed upon Mr Tall-Dark-And-Handsome; Reading said book could make me come across as a smidgen too eager *shrug*; and I would never be able to reclaim the many, many hours it took to get through the 1168 (!!!) pages that make up this book. …