Travel With Books!

"No-Spoiler Alert" For someone like me, who belongs to the Doon Valley, Ruskin Bond is a childhood favorite. But the Victorian Era authors transcended him during my formative years. Blue Umbrella's protagonist Biniya, a cowherd, leading the tedious life in her village, on her way back home stumbles upon a blue-umbrella, which defines her vanity in the rest of the book. She trades her lucky necklace for the blue umbrella, which has charmed her senses. She is eating, breathing, drinking, in short living the blue umbrella. Trading her long-possessed lucky charm wasn't an act of valor for her. The narrative includes the episodes of her on the verge of losing the blue umbrella, once in a deep slumber on the meadows and the umbrella  scudded away by the forceful gust of wind into the chasm. She heroically, rescues it. Though, torn and washed away in luster, still the umbrella is a possession of pride in the entire village. A priced possession of her vanity. As this review d...

  *No-spoiler Alert* A gothic novella which doesn't scare but teaches to love and spread smiles! A timeless Christmas classic with a spirit of love and giving. A stern, dry, skinflint Mr. Scrooge is paid visitations from his long-lost friend Marley and the spirits of Past, Present, Future during Christmas eve. These encounters mellow down his hardened spirit and renders a change of heart. He becomes happy as an angel, merry as a schoolboy and as giddy as a drunken man.  In short, he is altered from a hardened monster into a human which we all are supposed to be.  A totally splendid light-hearted one-sitting read. "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future." 5 stars for this. Shall read it every Christmas from this year onwards.

  "No-spoiler Alert" For me Northanger Abbey wasn't a casual pick, but a much-awaited pick for the first-written novel of Jane Austen from my most-admired Regency Era.  Naivety, lies, ignorance, innocence, parental tyranny, filial disobedience, all intricately and cleanly knitted into and around "Northanger Abbey".  For me the ignorance and innocence of our naïve and pretty heroine Catherine, speaks aloud about our then young Jane Austen. Usually, the first-ever novels of writers speaks volumes about their own persona.  Be it Isabelle's vivacity and proclivity towards lies , or the self-conceit of Mr. Tilney to the delicate-woven love between Catherine and Henry, it is a perfect gothic yet-not-so gothic but sheer-love mystery. Henry and Catherine are inextricable towards the end. I patiently waited to know more about Henry and his pursuits, but Jane Austen dabbled more into introducing Catherine into the gothic setup of our favorite Northanger Abbey. NB- I w...