Beyond the Book

  It is quite safe to say that once you enter the world of fantasy novels, there really is no escaping it. Holly Black is certainly in the same category as Sarah J Maas if not her equal in terms of creating a world of Fey that delights the human mind and makes it more real than it could ever possibly be.  Book one of The Folk of the Air series, the Cruel Prince is a story about three sisters, Vivienne the eldest, along with Jude and Taryn who are forced to enter the Court of Faeries when their parents are murdered in front of their own eyes.  Despite undergoing the extreme harshness and impoliteness of the Fey, the 17-year-old Jude wants nothing more than being able to belong with the cruel Fey and learn their ways of life. She is power-hungry, cunning, and charming and wants a place for herself in the High Court of those very creatures who loathe humans, which is exactly what Jude is.  However, with her struggle to find herself and her place within the Fey, she must...

  Normal People, Sally Rooney's brainchild is nothing short of an absolute wonder to be read. One of my favorite books that takes you on an emotional rollercoaster of love, friendship, and heartbreak, Rooney won me over with her ability to showcase the reality of the complex relationships that people unknowingly form.  Marianne is an awkward teenager with an eccentric yet distant personality who wants to accept the reality of her unfortunate world that is composed of an ignorant and unfeeling family and hardly a  handful of friends. Connell is the exact definition of what one might describe as the high school sweetheart. Famous, friendly, and extremely handsome, he tends to suppress his own feelings and desires only to be someone the world adores and loves. Rooney somehow transcribes certain extreme qualities of love and loneliness along with a common urge to suppress one's true desires which in my opinion, might actually be one of the biggest factors that bring the two c...

To base one's first novel on a story as famous and repeatedly told as that of "the best of all Greeks",  Madeline Miller has achieved a tremendous and courageous feat.  Achilles, the hero of the legendary Trojan War, was the son of the fierce sea-nymph Thetis and the renowned King Peleus. Prophesied to become one of the greatest warriors to be born, he was prepossessing, alluring, and charmingly humorous.  The novel begins with the story of Patroclus an awkward Prince and son of Menoetius, who was exiled to Peleus' court after killing a nobleman's child in anger. Thus, Patroclus meets Achilles and as fate would have it, goes on to become his life-long companion, friend, and lover much to Thetis' dismay.  Patroclus and Achilles are trained by the wise centaur Chiron in the art of war, medicine, and survival. After the kidnapping of Helen of Sparta, Achilles and the Kings of Greece are forced to join the King of Mycenae, Agamemnon's army to fight the Trojans...

Beautiful World Where are You is Sally Rooney's latest brainchild. The contemporary novel revolves around the complexity of relationships just like her previous works, Normal People and Conversations with Friends. You essentially know the sight of a good book when it's aggressively tagged and highlighted, and with this one, I went as far as making notes because Rooney really hits you in the gut with her observations in this book.  The book revolves around the lives of four people, Alice, Eileen, Felix, and Simon who want to experience life to the fullest yet, like most people it soon turns into a hazy bundle of the mess that you endlessly start despising. Alice a novelist, is an eccentric woman who suffered a mental breakdown due to the newfound fame of a celebrity novelist and now lives alone in a huge rectory in Dublin. Her best friend, Eileen, often lonesome, is an excellently witty and intelligent female who works at an extremely low-paying literary agency. Unlike the usu...

  I'm not a big fan of self-help books (I'm rather bad at following advice and I tend to forget the previous chapter) but Atomic Habits managed to change my opinion.  Written by James Clear, an American journalist and author who proudly calls himself an advocator of useful ideas, the book is an essential framework towards building better habits through simple yet effective strategies. Through the book, the author tries to reveal how making small changes however minuscule in nature, can lead to greater outcomes. The best part of the book is that Clear uses stories of successful CEOs, athletes, musicians, artists, etc in order to prescribe an evidentiary value to his theory of building better habits. An interplay of psychology and neuroscience opens your eyes to the working of your own lifestyle and what changes you must make in order to live a more fulfilling and desirable life. Clear has the astounding ability to make the process of habit formation seem simple and easy to achi...

  "Brains give rise to our ability to form relationships and make life meaningful. Sometimes, they break." When Breath becomes Air is a gut-wrenching, inspiring, and heartfelt memoir by a young and brilliant neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi, who at the age of  36 comes face-to-face with a life-altering diagnosis indicating terminal cancer.  Paul Kalinithi was a neurosurgeon-neuroscientist with a burning passion for literature which stemmed out of the need to find and fully understand the meaning of the question that burdens most of us, "What makes life worth living?" He pursued his doctorate in literature from Stanford University and went on to study medicine at Yale. Paul explains in the book how medicine was never the path for him. Medicine to him was an absence, primarily in the form of the absence of a father who as a doctor had to work strenuously for long hours. However, the question that introduced literature to him, now led him towards biology and medicine. ...

  Sequel to the best-selling book To Kill a Mockingbird , Go Set a Watchman is a story of a 26-year-old Jean Louise Finch who is now an eccentric woman and loves to have her way with things. The book begins with Jean Louise reminiscing about her family while  she’s travelling back home to Maycomb, Alabama from New York City. Her 72-year-old, kind and wise father and role model, Atticus Finch has been reduced to a medium sized man due to arthritis. As Jean Louise settles back home with her impossible aunt, Alexandra Finch Hancock and Atticus, she realizes  Maycomb has slowly changed and so have the residents of Maycomb. She comes across a pamphlet that is labelled as “The Black Plague” with a drawing of an anthropophagus Negro. Disgusted and shocked with the contents of the same, Jean Louise realizes  Maycomb is going through turmoil and she has been left behind. She manages to sneak into the Maycomb Citizens’ Council Meeting and is horrified to witness the thoughts ...