Random Update #1

Published January 21, 2017 / by Elizabeth / Leave a Comment
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Have you ever reached a state where you are working even in your sleep? When you are coding away or thinking how to solve a defect in your sleep..Or your mind is full of Excel and Word documents?

I am in that state now. Things at work are quite tough that it has become tough to detach yourselves from all of it even at times when you are not working. This stresses you even more.

How am I coping?  Thanks to Amazon Prime Video. I have downloaded few of those old movies and have been watching them. Then I read 3 books in 2017. So these two things have helped me cope up a bit.

I watched Hugo, You’ve Got Mail and The Bridges of Madison County. I am currently watching ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. I will have to write separate posts about these movies because they deserve it.

I read They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie, A Man Called Ove by Fredick Backman and The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. All of them were good reads.

I am hoping that things will ease up on the work front soon, that is around mid February. I am living in that hope. After that I will just take leave for few days and just stay home with the kids.

Till then catch you all some time…

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Published January 19, 2017 / by Elizabeth / Leave a Comment
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A-Man-Called-Ove-by-Fredrik-Backman.jpg

 

Title: A Man Called Ove

Author: Fredrik Backman

Date published: July 15th 2014

Publisher: Atria Books

In language: English

Genre: Fiction

ISBN: 1476738017

Review rating: 4/5

Review date:19th Jan 2017

When I was going through few reviews of ‘A Man Called Ove’,I read someone’s comment that Ove is like the old man in the movie Up. That image of the old man who flied up the sky in his house stuck with me all the while I was reading this story. There are an awful lot of similarities between Ove and Carl Fredricksen (the elderly man in Up), but I did wish I didnt had his image in my mind when I was reading the book. But I do wish I could recall on whose blog I read this so that I can go and tell them that it was an accurate description.

I don’t read book blurbs or reviews with spoilers before reading most books. When I read good reviews, I just bought a kindle version and started reading the book without much clue. Then things are revealed as the story progresses and you start feeling for Ove and starts wondering why he wants to do what he has decided to do. You start putting things together and realize the desperation of a lonely old man who has nothing to live for. You start rooting for Ove to disuade from what he thinks is the logical conclusion.

Then there is a cat which is an orphan which lands on his house steps one day. I was not enchanted by the dog just like Ove. To be frank, I kind of ignored the cat even though it was there for a better part of the story.

Paravaneh, the foreign lady next who kind of crashes into Ove’s life – that is the character I ended up liking the best in the story. Who will not want a friend like her? Though Ove found her a nuisance initially, you can see their beautiful friendship blossoming into something lovely. Probably Paravaneh’s character stuck with more than that of Sonja.

Ove’s story is about the people who lose the will to live when the objects of their affection is no longer there. The story is Ove’s journey when he discovers love unexpectedly from different quarters when he had given up on life and the joy that comes with it. A charming story indeed.

The days ahead…

Published January 10, 2017 / by Elizabeth / 3 Comments on The days ahead…
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When you have written a post about looking back at 2016, I thought I will write about things I look forward to in 2017.

Mummy’s 70th Birthday

I am the 5th child and my parents are elderly. This year I am looking forward to celebrating mummy’s 70th birthday with the whole family. We are planning to have a small get-together including extended families. My mummy’s siblings are older; most of the able-bodied ones are outside India.But we hope that can get few of them to be with her on her special day.

Chotu starts school

Come June, my son will start his formal education starting with nursery. We have already enrolled him in a pre-school from yesterday. The experience has been quite incident-free for the first 2 days, but we are expecting him to bring down the school one day soon. As of now, he is enthralled with all the toys at the pre-school and has even stayed there till noon from 9 am.

Reading Challenges

I have decided to read just 25 books in 2017 as a part of Goodreads Reading Challenge. This is quite less compared to the target of 35 which I completed in 2016. The reason behind the lesser number is that I want to read a few big books towards the Classics Club challenge in 2017. If I don’t make a dent in the reading list, I may miss the target of reading 50 classics between 2014-2019 by a long way.

Blogging

Bluehost has hiked the hosting charges quite high that it is forcing me to rethink the hosting. If I am not making any progress in keeping up this blog, I may very well move it to a free wordpress site. Personally I prefer spending time on reading books that use it for writing reviews. There are only very few books that inspire me to write a review and I really don’t want to force myself to write review for the sake of it. Anyway I have decided to give another year to this self-hosted site and will make some decisions by end of the year.

That is all dears. I will try to be more regular here. Do follow me on instagram for better updates regarding my life.

Looking back at 2016

Published January 6, 2017 / by Elizabeth / 1 Comment on Looking back at 2016
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2016 will be known as the year we started living in our own apartment. Other than that this year doesn’t have any exciting events for me.

I started the new year working on something very urgent at work, but the year turned out to be less hectic work-wise than I expected.

Goodreads reading challenge and The Classics Club are the only  book reading challenges that I have taken part and I am pretty happy with how they have progressed in 2016.

Goodreads Challenge

2016 my year in books goodreads

I challenged myself to read 35 books in 2016 and I accomplished it. Thanks to the reading spree in the first half of the year.

Re-reads:2

Graphic/Comics: 3

Non-fiction: 4

The highlight of the reading in 2016 would be the increase in the number of non-fiction books that I read and my top reads would be from this list.

The Classics Club

I read 6 books for this challenge in 2016. I am currently reading Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. It is an awesome read and I highly recommend it. If ever I met Vikram Seth, my only question to him would be why is there no Kindle edition for this 1300+ pages book.

Click to find my Classics Club reading list.

The Kindle

Ente-kadha-by-Madhavikutty-Kamala-Das

My happiness had no bounds when TH gifted me a kindle for my birthday in last December. So 2016 saw us reading a lot of Kindle books. And recently Amazon India introduced Kindle books in 5 regional languages. That is revolutionary in my opinion. I have already read Ente Kadha by Madhavikutty in Malayalam and have enjoyed the experience.

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