Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts

Monday, 21 March 2016

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 by BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT

d March 21, 2016 0

Book Review

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 by BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT (Author,

Creator)

Synopsis:-

World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 is a journey through an age of myth and legend, a time long before the Horde and the Alliance came to be. This definitive tome of Warcraft history reveals untold stories about the birth of the cosmos, the rise of ancient empires, and the forces that shaped the world of Azeroth and its people.

This beautiful hardcover features twenty-five full-page paintings by World of Warcraft artist Peter Lee, as well as a cosmology chart, half a dozen maps charting changes through time, and other line art illustrations by Joseph Lacroix, and marks the first in a multipart series exploring the Warcraft universe; from the distant past to the modern era.

Written by Chris Metzen, Matt Burns, and Robert Brooks, Chronicle Vol. 1 covers the history of the Warcraft universe from its creation all the way up to the cusp of the First War, and includes a metric ton of never-before-seen lore. Even if you’ve been following Warcraft lore all this time, you’re still going to get a mountain of lore reveals.

FOR MORE INFORMATION WATCH THIS:-

The Magnolia Story Hardcover by Chip Gaines , Joanna Gaine, Mark Dagostino

d March 21, 2016 0

Book Review

The Magnolia Story Hardcover by Chip Gaines , Joanna Gaine, Mark Dagostino

Synopsis:-

These famous words are now synonymous with the dynamic husband-and-wife team Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV’s Fixer Upper. As this question fills the airwaves with anticipation, their legions of fans continue to multiply and ask a different series of questions, like—Who are these people?What’s the secret to their success? And is Chip actually that funny in real life? By renovating homes in Waco, Texas, and changing lives in such a winsome and engaging way, Chip and Joanna have become more than just the stars of Fixer Upper, they have become America’s new best friends.

The Magnolia Story is the first book from Chip and Joanna, offering their fans a detailed look at their life together. From the very first renovation project they ever tackled together, to the project that nearly cost them everything; from the childhood memories that shaped them, to the twists and turns that led them to the life they share on the farm today.

They both attended Baylor University in Waco. However, their paths did not cross until Chip checked his car into the local Firestone tire shop where Joanna worked behind the counter. Even back then Chip was a serial entrepreneur who, among other things, ran a lawn care company, sold fireworks, and flipped houses. Soon they were married and living in their first fixer upper. Four children and countless renovations later, Joanna garners the attention of a television producer who notices her work on a blog one day.

In The Magnolia Story fans will finally get to join the Gaines behind the scenes and discover:

The time Chip ran to the grocery store and forgot to take their new, sleeping baby

Joanna’s agonizing decision to close her dream business to focus on raising their children

When Chip buys a houseboat, sight-unseen, and it turns out to be a leaky wreck

Joanna’s breakthrough moment of discovering the secret to creating a beautiful home

Harrowing stories of the financial ups and downs as an entrepreneurial couple

Memories and photos from Chip and Jo’s wedding
The significance of the word magnolia and why it permeates everything they do

The way the couple pays the popularity of Fixer Upper forward, sharing the success with others, and bolstering the city of Waco along the way

And yet there is still one lingering question for fans of the show: Is Chip really that funny? “Oh yeah,” says Joanna. “He was, and still is, my first fixer upper.”

This Book is not still published to pre-order it click buy now button and it will be published on 18th October 2016..

INDIA AFTER GANDHI BY Ramchandra Guha

d March 21, 2016 0

Book Review

INDIA AFTER GANDHI BY Ramachandra Guha

SYNOPSIS:-

India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy focuses on the significant events in the history of India which highlight the core of its past and present, its politics, culture and society. The chapters in the book deal with the struggle which India faced post almost a century of colonization, the components of Indian culture, the return of caste and the revival of religion and the effects of war and globalization. The book is also concerned with providing insights into the life of India's first Prime Minister, the troubled times of emergency during Indira Gandhi's regime, the liberation of Bangladesh and the lives of farmers, musicians, tribals and workers. India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy meticulously describes how a country plagued by the evils of discrimination in terms of caste, creed, religion and language rose to form the world's largest democracy. A detailed account of events that shook the foundation of India and the events that helped in joining the broken pieces together is given in this thoroughly researched and well written book. The book was first published in the year 2007. It is available in paperback and the publisher is Picador. This Indian ed edition was published on 14th August, 2008.

Review:-

It's in the nature of nations to be addicted to their own histories. Older, pre- national communities, one imagines, occupied themselves with mythology. The secular nation, agog, rehearses its history, the very reasons and outcomes of its existence, to itself. What's common to both activities is the endless familiarity of the subject-matter to the audience. It's safe to assume that very few people in a group of devotees listening to, say, the Indian epic Ramayana being read out would not have heard it before. It's equally prudent to assume that almost all the Indian readers of Ramachandra Guha's capacious history of democratic India would be familiar with a great deal of the story. What is it, then, that gives myths and national histories their appeal?

In mythic retelling, it is repetition itself, accompanied by improvisatory flourishes, that transfixes the audience by returning it to known terrain. Historical narrative, too, depends on familiarity enlivened by interpretative freshness and the surprise of new archival research; but there's also, at times, something else. Guha reminds us, more than once, that it's the historian's job to tell us what happened, and not spend too much time speculating on what might have. Yet it is precisely the possibility of what might have happened but didn't that gives an immediate but inexhaustible magic to some of the 20th century's most triumphal historical narratives. Both the American film-maker embarking on the new second world war movie and the Englishwoman wearing a poppy are thinking, yet again, of events that took place many years ago, but also, in some hidden but urgent way, of the world that might have come into existence had the other side won.

Similarly, a "What if?" animates Guha's reconstruction of the past 60 years of Indian history. Since 1947, the possibility of disaster has taken the form of certain questions and crises: "What if India were to disintegrate; or to become a totalitarian society; or a military dictatorship; or a Hindu state?" All these are scenarios that appeared plausible, at one time or another, to both the Indian and foreign observer. Guha tells us what happened elegantly, sometimes doggedly: but it's by constantly implying what might have, while disavowing it with the professional historian's gesture, that he brings his copious material to life. Guha's book reminds us of what some other recent studies of India have been getting at, but without this civilised single-mindedness: that it's not just the story of independence that's worthy of being counted as one of the great triumphal stories of 20th-century world history; that the survival and perhaps the flourishing of free India counts legitimately as another. Once this fact is acknowledged, its political and cultural consequences, I'm sure Guha will agree, need to be viewed with suspicion.

There are reasons for that tenacious feelgood experience. Guha delineates them effectively: the establishment of the machinery and the miracle of the elections (there's an excellently orchestrated chapter on how the first one happened); the creation of provinces along linguistic lines (which should have led to conflict) by forgotten historical figures; the survival of democracy and free speech in spite of poverty, corruption, sectarian strife, Indira Gandhi and, more recently, the waning of power at the centre and the rise of an opportunistic federalism. Every dubious development has a positive outcome; it's a story of incorrigible resilience and charm. The first two-thirds of the book, where Guha is describing the consolidation of the shaky state, are, notwithstanding the deluge of facts, surprisingly absorbing; by quoting frequently and shrewdly, Guha allows us to eavesdrop on the multiplicity and richness of the conversation - between politicians, writers, civil servants, well-wishers, detractors - within which change took place.

One thing the book lacks, despite its comprehensiveness, is a sense of interiority. It's hardly alone among recent Indian histories in this regard. Guha's understanding of the secular basis for Indian democracy is a constitutional one; that is, the "secular" is a product, in India, of ideals, laws and institutions articulated and validated by the constitution. But the "secular" in India is not only a political construct; it is a cultural space. The domain of culture was inhabited and produced by writers and artists and their audience from the early 19th century onwards; it's a domain that comprises the interior life of Indian secularism. In this sense, independence and the Nehruvian era that followed are not really the beginning of a history, but the last phase in the story of Indian humanism. From the 1980s onwards, the secular middle class and its culture is completely redefined; the parameters for a new free-market understanding of "Indianness" are put in place. As it happens, the single chapter Guha devotes to culture, or "entertainment", as he calls it, is the weakest one in the book, with Wikipedia-like accounts of cultural achievements; it attempts to place culture in the constitutional idea of secularism - as providing instances of pluralism and fellow-feeling - but doesn't locate the constitutional in the interior life that culture represents.

The epilogue, "Why India Survives" (echoing RK Narayan's unflappable assurance to Naipaul in the 60s: "India will go on"), is a strangely moving coda, and clarifies the country's peculiar appeal. At one point, Guha mentions he's "speaking as a historian rather than as citizen"; but allowing the historian to be in commerce with citizenship is what provides the book with impetus, and gives it its most palpable strength. Guha, as a citizen, has been "exasperated" by India, but, in the light of historical evidence, has been won over by it. This mixture of distance and surrender is fairly emblematic of why many middle-class Indians continue to invest themselves, emotionally, in the country; it's quite distinct from patriotism. To suggest the ambiguity of his own relationship with the country of his birth, and also his utter investment in it, Guha has often in the past used some oddball Englishman of distinction who's lived in India or thought about it as a metaphor: Verrier Elwin, EP Thompson. In his epilogue, Guha invokes the biologist JBS Haldane, who, moved by the "wonderful experiment" India had embarked on, decided to become an "Indian citizen". Guha's book reminds us that the citizenly pride that permeates it is not incompatible with judgment, hindsight, intelligence and distance; that citizenship is not a natural thing, but that it is, in some cases, inevitable.

About the Author:-

Ramachandra Guha is a historian with major interests in the field of social, environmental, political and cricket history. Guha holds a B.A. degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College (1977) and is a post graduate from the Delhi School of Economics with a fellowship from the IIM- Calcutta. He has won the Padma Bhushan Award, R.K. Narayan Prize and the U.K. Cricket Society's Literary Award. Ramachandra Guha is an avid columnist along with being an author of books like the Picador Book of Cricket, Patriots and Partisans and the Wickets in the East.

Sunday, 20 March 2016

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD BY JEFFERY ARCHER

d March 20, 2016 0

Book Review

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD BY JEFFERY ARCHER

SYNOPSIS:-

Mightier than the Sword opens with an IRA bomb exploding during the MV Buckingham's maiden voyage across the Atlantic - but how many passengers lose their lives? When Harry Clifton visits his publisher in New York, he learns that he has been elected as the new president of English PEN, and immediately launches a campaign for the release of a fellow author, Anatoly Babakov, who's imprisoned in Siberia. Babakov's crime? Writing a book called Uncle Joe, a devastating insight into what it was like to work for Stalin. So determined is Harry to see Babakov released and the book published, that he puts his own life in danger. His wife Emma, chairman of Barrington Shipping, is facing the repercussions of the IRA attack on the Buckingham. Some board members feel she should resign, and Lady Virginia Fenwick will stop at nothing to cause Emma's downfall. Sir Giles Barrington is now a minister of the Crown, and looks set for even higher office, until an official trip to Berlin does not end as a diplomatic success. Once again, Giles's political career is thrown off balance by none other than his old adversary, Major Alex Fisher, who once again stands against him at the election. But who wins this time? In London, Harry and Emma's son, Sebastian, is quickly making a name for himself at Farthing's Bank in London, and has proposed to the beautiful young American, Samantha. But the despicable Adrian Sloane, a man interested only in his own advancement and the ruin of Sebastian, will stop at nothing to remove his rival.

REVIEW:-

In the fifth Clifton Chronicles novel, the epic family saga takes us from the mid-1960s into the 1970s. This isn't one of those series where the reader can just jump in with the latest book; the story of the Clifton and Barrington families began just after WWI, and there is a long and complicated backstory to this latest installment. For readers familiar with the saga, here's the gist: Harry Clifton, the best-selling mystery writer, is championing the cause of a Russian writer and political prisoner; Emma, Harry's wife, is embroiled in a battle for control of her family business, the Barrington Shipping Company; Emma's brother, Giles, is facing a bleak political future; and Giles' ex-wife, Virginia, is orchestrating the overthrow of Emma, the ruination of Barrington's, and the destruction of Giles' career. And that's just for starters. Like its predecessors, this is a rich, compelling, intricately structured story with plenty of intrigue and surprises.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR BY JEFFERY ARCHER

d March 20, 2016 0

Book Review

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR BY JEFFERY ARCHER

SYNOPSIS:-

Be Careful What You Wish For: 4 (Clifton Chronicles #4), available in paperback, is a novel which revolves around the Cliftons and the Barringtons. The book begins with Harry Clifton and his wife Emma Clifton who hurry to the hospital after they hear about the car accident that their son Sebastian has been a part of. Emma Clifton wishes to take up the post of the chairman at the Barrington Shipping Company, after Toss Buchanan was forced into resignation. With the company planning to build the new luxury liner called the MV Buckingham, there are people trying to destroy the family business. Don Pedro Martinez brings in his candidate, Major Alex Fisher, to fill in the chairman position. Be Careful What You Wish For: 4 further tells the story of how the adopted daughter of Harry and Emma falls in love with her fellow student, Clive Bingham in London, whom she intends to marry. The wedding is planned, but on the eventful day, Lady Virginia Fenwick who is visiting Priscilla Bingham, Clive's mother, poisons the wedding chalice. Amidst everything that is going on, Cedric Hardcastle becomes a board member of the Barringtons. He's a bluff Yorkshireman who was never in the picture until now. This creates an environment of confusion and tension amongst the families. Hardcastle finds himself trying to decide which candidate to support for the chairman's chair. Be Careful What You Wish For: 4 (Clifton Chronicles # 4) was published on 19th March, 2014. It presents the readers with a lot of unexpected twists and turns.

REVIEW:-

After a year long wait and pondering on various permutations and combinations about what will happen to the characters after finishing the third book (Best Kept Secret) in The Clifton Chronicles series, I laid my hands on 'Be Careful What You Wish For' as soon as it got released worldwide. I kept reading it whole day today just to find out what happens to the Cliftons and the Barringtons this time. And once again, Lord Archer, being a marvelous storyteller and a tease that he is, has managed to leave the story at a point where I just can't wait for the next book in the series.

The story begins with Harry Clifton receiving a call from Emma telling him that their son, Sebastian has been killed in a car accident. Harry, who is on a book tour for his latest William Warwick book is in New York, catches the first flight to London only to find out that it was not Sebastian who died in the car accident, but his companion for the journey, Bruno Martinez.Pedro Martinez, who is anyway mad at the Cliftons and the Barringtons for what they did to him in the previous book goes all out there to seek revenge for his son Bruno's death, among other reasons. This time his target becomes Barrington's more than 100 years old shipping company and he plays on the front foot to ensure that the company goes bankrupt. He somehow manages to place Major Alex Fisher on the board of directors of the company to keep a close watch on the inside happenings. Ross Buchanan, the chairman of the company had to resign from his post after a debacle that has been carefully operated by Pedro to bring the company down and Emma Barrington takes over as the new chairman of the board, which came as a shock for Pedro. Emma, being a strong-headed woman that she is, fights the adversities that the shipping company is facing along with tumultuous affairs on her personal front as well.

Meanwhile, Sebastian, after the accident, starts working for Cedric Hardcastle, Chairman of the Farthings Bank, as his assistant. Being an intelligent man himself, Sebastian manages to impress his boss, as he himself is a shrewd banker. Cedric Hardcastle plays an important role in the story and with an intelligent aide like Sebastian with him, manages to pull off an operation against Martinez that goes wrong time and again.

Some new characters and many old characters play an important role in taking the story forward. With his latest offering, Jeffrey Archer has again proved that there is no other storyteller like him. Just when you feel that the story is dragging a bit, he will bring in a twist that will make you sit straight and force you to turn pages to know what next and so on and so forth. For readers, who are keenly following The Clifton Chronicles series, some things in this book will take you by surprise and one particular happening in the book will leave you sad. And for those, who still haven't laid their hands on The Clifton Chronicles series, it is never too late, start with the first book right away. And those like me, who are an ardent fan of the series, Keep Calm & Wait For 2015 for the next book in the series.

ONLY TIME WILL TELL BY JEFFERY ARCHER

d March 20, 2016 0

Book Review

ONLY TIME WILL TELL BY JEFFERY ARCHER

SYNOPSIS:-

The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1919, in the backstreets of Bristol. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father. Only Time Will Tell takes a cast of memorable characters from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take his place at Oxford, or join the fight against Hitler's Germany. In Jeffrey Archer's masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won't want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you will be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton, could ever have anticipated.

REVIEW:-

Only Time Will Tell, Jeffrey Archer’s 16th novel, is the first in a new three-volume cycle the master is calling The Clifton Chronicles.

The sequence will chart the life of one Harry Clifton, whom we first meet as the orphaned son of a Bristol stevedore at the start of the 20th century, and where it will leave him – oh, Lord – only time will tell.
Harry is Archer’s stock character: the unassuming chap from a modest background in whom predatory well-wishers divine some grand potential they conspire to make him fulfil. In this case it’s – well – it’s pretty vague actually but it hardly matters. He could be a gifted frogman.
Harry is plucked from obscurity and put up for a scholarship to a fancy prep school. Will he be bullied? Will he see off the bully? Will he make various lifelong friends? Will he get a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School? Will he meet a pig-tailed girl with her nose in a book? Will his mother’s tea shop succeed so that she can pay the fees?
Harry’s path is inevitably barred by those who have reason to be jealous of him or to fear him, but each reversal is met with fortitude and overcome with selfless grind and a dash of talent.
For long stretches Only Time Will Tell reads like a misery memoir, albeit one written by an accomplished narcissistic fantasist with a penchant for genealogical mysteries. Because at its heart, you see, there is a conundrum: is Harry his father’s son? Or is he the illegitimate son of a shipping magnate?
There are one or two surprises along the way: a couple of legal niggles and a curious wrinkle in the plotting. Instead of a cracking showdown as the baddie is unmasked there is only a letter of apology and promise to be better in future.
As ever a little too much of the author creeps in, to sometimes comical result.
Here is a housemaster talking to a 12-year-old boy: “‘By the way Harry… I’ve just read your essay on Jane Austen, and I was fascinated by your suggestion that if Miss Austen had been able to go to university, she might never have written a novel, and even if she had, her work probably wouldn’t have been so insightful.’
‘Sometimes it’s an advantage to be disadvantaged,’ said Harry.
‘That doesn’t sound like Jane Austen,’ said Mr Frobisher.
‘It wasn’t,’ replied Harry. ‘But it was said by someone else who didn’t go to university,’ he added without explanation.”

Archer is on top form elsewhere, too. It is as if the laws that bind ordinary novelists don’t apply to him, and he performs his signature trick – the oily glissade past the twin imperatives of plausibility and verisimilitude – with ease, so that despite the better part of you knowing this is an over-egged farrago of corny nonsense, he pins you down like an ultimate fighter.

Saturday, 19 March 2016

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

d March 19, 2016 0

Book Review

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

SYNOPSIS:-

A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war – that great fall of Man from grace – and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction.

Those who loved the bestselling Life After Life will recognise Teddy as Ursula Todd’s adored younger brother – but for those who have not read it, A God in Ruins stands fully on its own. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age.

'Better than most fiction you’ll read this year' The Times

'Witty and compassionate' Marian Keyes

'Brilliant…a major writer' David Mitchell

'Magnificent' Washington Post

'Extraordinarily affecting' Telegraph

'Devastating' New York Times

'Engrossing' Irish Independent

'Inexhaustibly ingenious' Hilary Mantel

'A marvel' Gillian Flynn

'Bleakly funny' Financial Times

Extract:-

30th March, 1944

The Last Flight

Naseby

He walked as far as the hedge that signalled the end of the airfield.

The beating of the bounds. The men referred to it as his 'daily constitutional' and fretted when he didn’t take it. They were superstitious. Everyone was superstitious.

Beyond the hedge there were bare fields, ploughed over last autumn. He didn’t expect to see the alchemy of spring, to see the dull brown earth change to bright green and then pale gold. A man could count his life in harvests reaped. He had seen enough.

They were surrounded by flat farmland. The farmhouse itself stood square and immoveable over to the left. At night a red light shone from its roof to stop them crashing into it. If they flew over it when they were coming into land they knew they had overshot and were in trouble.

From here he could see the farmer’s daughter in the yard, feeding the geese. Wasn't there a nursery rhyme in there somewhere? No, he was thinking of the farmer’s wife, wasn’t he – cutting off tales with a carving knife. A horrid image. Poor mice, he had thought when he was a boy. Still thought the same now that he was a man. Nursery rhymes were brutal affairs.

He had never met the farmer’s daughter nor did he know her name, but he was disproportionally fond of her. She always waved them off. Sometimes she was joined by her father, once or twice by her mother, but the girl’s presence in the farmyard was a constant for every raid.

She caught sight of him now and waved. Rather than return the wave, he saluted her. He imagined she would like that. Of course, from this distance he was just a uniform. She had no idea who he was. Teddy was just one of the many.

He whistled for the dog.

1925

Alouette

‘See!’ he said, ‘there - a lark. A skylark.’ He glanced up at her and saw that she was looking in the wrong place. ‘No, over there,’ he said, pointing. She was completely hopeless.

‘Oh,’ she said at last. ‘There, I see it! How queer - what’s it doing?’

‘Hovering, and then it’ll go up again probably.’ The skylark soared on its transcendental thread of song. The quivering flight of the bird and the beauty of its music triggered an unexpectedly deep emotion in him. ‘Can you hear it?’

His aunt cupped a hand to an ear in a theatrical way. She was as out of place as a peacock, wearing an odd hat, red like a pillar-box and stuck with two large pheasant tail-feathers that bobbed around with the slightest movement of her head. He wouldn’t be surprised if someone took a shot at her. ‘If only,’ he thought. Teddy was allowed – allowed himself - barbaric thoughts as long as they remained unvoiced. (‘Good manners,’ his mother, counselled, was ‘the armour that one must don anew every morning.’)

‘Hear what?’ his aunt said eventually.

‘The song,’ he said, mustering patience. ‘The skylark’s song. It’s stopped now,’ he added as she continued to make a show of listening.

‘It might begin again.’

‘No, it won’t, it can’t, it’s gone. Flown away.’ He flapped his arms to demonstrate. Despite the feathers in her hat she clearly knew nothing about birds. Or any animals for that matter. She didn’t even possess a cat. She was indifferent to Trixie, their Lurcher, currently nosing her way enthusiastically through the dried-up ditch at the side of the road. Trixie was his most stalwart companion and had been by his side since she was a puppy when she had been so small that she could squeeze through the front door of his sisters’ dollhouse.

Was he supposed to be educating his aunt, he wondered? Was that why they were here? ‘The lark’s known for its song,’ he said instructively. ‘It’s beautiful.’ It was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was. You were either moved by it or you weren’t. His sisters, Pamela and Ursula, were, his elder brother, Maurice, wasn’t. His brother, Jimmy, was too young for beauty, his father possibly too old. His father, Hugh, had a gramophone recording of The Lark Ascending which they sometimes listened to on wet Sunday afternoons. It was lovely but not as lovely as the lark itself. ‘The purpose of art,’ his mother, Sylvie, said – instructed even - ‘is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself.’ Her own father, Teddy’s grandfather, had been a famous artist, dead long ago, a relationship that gave his mother authority on the subject of art. And beauty too, Teddy supposed. All these things – Art, Truth, Beauty – had capital letters when his mother spoke about them.

‘When the skylark flies high,’ he continued, rather hopelessly to Izzie, ‘it means it’s fine weather.’

‘Well, one doesn’t need a bird to tell one if it’s good weather or not, one simply looks about,’ Izzie said. ‘And this afternoon is glorious. I adore the sun,’ she added, closing her eyes and raising her painted face to the skies.

Who didn’t, Teddy thought? Not his grandmother perhaps, who led a gloomy drawing-room life in Hampstead, with heavy cotton nets drawn to prevent the light entering the house. Or perhaps to stop the dark escaping.

‘The Knights’ Code’, which he had learned by heart from Scouting for Boys, a book he frequently turned to in times of uncertainty, even now in his self-exile from the movement, demanded that ‘Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace.’ He supposed entertaining Izzie was one of those occasions. It was certainly laborious.

He shaded his eyes against the sun and scanned the skies for the skylark. It failed to make a reappearance and he had to make do with the aerial manoeuvres of the swallows. He thought of Icarus and wondered what he would have looked like from the ground. Quite big, he supposed. But Icarus was a myth, wasn’t he? He was going to boarding school after the summer holidays and he really must start getting his facts in order. ‘You will need to be a stoic, old chap,’ his father advised. ‘It will be a trial, that’s the point of it really, I suppose. Best to keep your head below the parapet,’ he added. ‘Neither sink nor float, just sort of paddle about in the middle.’

‘All the men in the family’ went to the school, his Hampstead grandmother said (his only grandmother, Sylvie’s mother having died long ago), as if it were a law, written down in ancient times. Teddy supposed his own son would have to go there too, although this boy existed in a future that Teddy couldn’t even begin to imagine. He didn’t need to, of course, for in that future he had no sons, only a daughter, Viola, something which would be a sadness for him although he never spoke of it, certainly not to Viola who would have been volubly affronted.

Teddy was taken aback when Izzie unexpectedly started to sing and – more startling – do a little dance. ‘Alouette, Alouette, gentille Alouette.’ He knew no French to speak of yet and thought she was singing not ‘gentille’ but ‘jaunty’, a word he rather liked. ‘Do you know that song?’ she asked him.

‘No.’

‘It’s from the war. The French soldiers sang it.’ The fleeting shadow of something – sorrow, perhaps – passed across her features, but then just as suddenly she said gleefully, ‘The lyrics are quite horrible. All about plucking the poor swallow. Its eyes and feathers and legs and so on.’

In that inconceivable yet inevitable war still to come - Teddy’s war - Alouette was the name of 425 Squadron, the French Canadians. In the February of ’44, not long before his last flight, Teddy made a an emergency landing at their base at Tholthorpe, two engines on fire, shot up as they crossed the Channel. The French boys gave his crew brandy, rough stuff that they were nonetheless grateful for. Their squadron badges, something Teddy hadn’t known before he met them, showed a swallow above the motto Je te plumerai and he had thought about this day with Izzie. It was a memory that seemed to belong to someone else.

Izzie did a pirouette. ‘What larks!’ she said, laughing. Is this, he wondered, what his father meant when he said Izzie was ‘ludicrously unstable’?

‘Pardon me?’

‘What larks,’ Izzie repeated. ‘Great Expectations. Haven’t you read it?’ For a surprising moment she sounded like his mother. ‘But, of course, I was making a joke. Because there isn’t one any longer. The lark, I mean. Flown orf. Gorn,’ she said in a silly Cockney accent. ‘I’ve eaten lark,’ she added in an offhand way. ‘In Italy. They’re considered a delicacy over there. There’s not much eating on a lark, of course. No more than a mouthful really.’

Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him.

Many, many years later, in the early Seventies, Viola, discovered Emily Dickinson on an American Studies course that was part of her degree. In her scrawly, untamed hand she copied down the first verse of a poem she thought her father would like (too lazy to transcribe the whole of the short poem). ‘Split the lark – and you’ll find the Music, bulb after bulb in silver rolled’. He was surprised she had thought of him, she rarely did. He supposed literature was one of the few things they held in common even though they rarely, if ever, discussed it. He considered sending her something in return, a poem, even a few choice lines – a means of communicating with her – ‘Hail to thee, blythe spirit! Bird though never wert’ or ‘Hark how the cheerfull birds do chaunt their lays and carol of love’s praise’ or ‘Ethereal Minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?’ (Was there a poet who hadn’t written about skylarks?) He supposed his daughter would think he was patronizing her in some way. She had an aversion to learning anything from him, possibly from everyone, and so in the end he simply wrote back, ‘Thank you, very thoughtful of you.’

Before he could stop himself - the armour of good manners falling away - he said, ‘It’s disgusting to eat a lark, Aunt Izzie.’

‘Why is it disgusting? You eat chicken and so on, don’t you? What’s the difference, after all?’ Izzie had driven an ambulance in the Great War, dead poultry could do little to ruffle her emotions.

A world of difference, Teddy thought, although he couldn’t help but wonder what a lark would taste like. Thankfully, he was distracted from this thought by Trixie barking extravagantly at something. He bent down to investigate. ‘A slow worm,’ he said appreciatively to himself, the lark temporarily forgotten. He picked it up gently in both hands and displayed it to Izzie.

‘A snake?’ she said, grimacing, snakes apparently having no charms for her.

‘No, a slow worm,’ Teddy said. ‘Not a snake. Not a worm either. It’s a lizard actually.’ Its bronze-gold lustred scales gleamed in the sun. This was beauty too. Was there anything in nature that wasn’t? Even a slug demanded a certain salutation, although not from his mother.

‘What a funny little boy you are,’ Izzie said.

Friday, 18 March 2016

The Sialkot Saga by Ashwin Sanghi

d March 18, 2016 0

Book Review

The Sialkot Saga by Ashwin Sanghi

SYNOPSIS:-

When it’s a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.’ The trajectories of Arvind and Arbaaz, both ‘businessmen’ of a kind whose lives are unwillingly intertwined, ricochet off one another while they play out their sinister and murderous plots of personal and professional one-upmanship, all the while breaking every rule in the book. Both are unaware that what they seek and fight over is the very obstacle in realising an ancient secret that dates back to a time long forgotten. And yet, at the heart of it all, there lies tenderness... and pathos... and blood... and rare moments of an almost exalted happiness. So, can it be that a man is both sinner and saint, victor and victim, black and white? Ashwin Sanghi, master storyteller and spinner of yarns, weaves together once more threads of the past and present, fact and fiction, history and mythology, business and politics, love and hatred while dangling you ceaselessly over the cliff with this chilling multi-layered narrative, keeping you guessing till the totally unguessable end. And you’re left wondering whether it’s a matter of faith... or fate?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:-

Ashwin Sanghi is counted among India’s highest-selling English ﬁction authors. 13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck is his foray into the world of non-ﬁction. Ashwin is the author of three bestsellers—The Rozabal Line, Chanakya’s Chant and The Krishna Key. In addition he has co-authored a crime thriller, Private India, along with James Patterson, the world’s highest-selling writer. Ashwin’s books have sold in lakhs and have been translated into many languages. He was included by Forbes India in their Celebrity India 100 Rankings and was the recipient of the Crossword Popular Choice Award. Ashwin was educated in Mumbai, at the Cathedral & John Connon School and St. Xavier’s College. He also holds a Masters degree in business from Yale. Ashwin lives in Mumbai with his wife Anushika and his son Raghuvir.

This Book is not yet released, it will be soon released on 5 April 2016. To pre-order and to buy the book at lowest price Click here...

Thursday, 17 March 2016

HOST BY ROBIN COOK

d March 17, 2016 0

Book Review

HOST BY ROBIN COOK

SYNOPSIS:-
The master of the medical thriller' New York Times The explosive new thriller from New York Times-bestselling author and master of the medical thriller, Robin Cook, takes readers back to where the genre began, with Coma: what happens when innocent hospital patients are used as medical 'incubators' against their will. Lynn Pierce, a fourth-year medical student at Mason Dixon University, thinks she has her life figured out. But when her otherwise healthy boyfriend, Carl, enters the hospital for routine surgery, she doesn't know it's the last time she will see him whole again. Devastated by Carl's death, Lynn searches for answers. Convinced there's more to the story than what the authorities are willing to reveal, Lynn uses all her resources at Mason Dixon-including her initially reluctant lab partner, Edward-to hunt down evidence of medical error or malpractice.What she uncovers, however, is far more disturbing. Hospitals associated with Sentinel Healthcare, including the one attached to Mason Dixon, have unnervingly high rates of unexplained anesthetic complications and patients contracting serious and terminal illness in the wake of routine surgery. When Lynn and Edward begin to receive death threats, they know they're into something bigger than either of them anticipated. They soon enter a desperate race against time for answers before shadowy forces behind Sentinel Healthcare can put a stop to their efforts once and for all.

REVIEW:-

Host by Robin Cook explores medical/biotech ethical issues intertwined with a thrilling storyline. This book mirrors his best-selling 1977 novel Coma that spurred him to be known as the master of medical thrillers. Now over thirty books later this ophthalmologist turned writer expands on the issues of greed and medicine.

The plot begins with Carl Vandermeer, a healthy Millennial, undergoing a routine operation to repair his knee. Yet, something goes terribly wrong with the anesthesia, leaving Carl in a vegetative state with no brain activity. His girlfriend, Lynn Peirce, a fourth-year medical student at South Carolina’s Mason-Dixon University, where Carl’s operation took place, believes something has gone awry. She enlists her good friend, Michael Pender, also a fourth year medical student, to find out why this hospital, and others associated with Sentinel Healthcare, have high rates of unexplained anesthetic complications. This is in addition to patients entering the hospital with one complaint, but leaving with a more serious medical issue. Lynn and Michael must find answers while fighting the shadowy forces that are attempting to thwart their efforts.

Besides getting an action packed story readers learn about the dangers regarding healthcare. The theme of the book explains how both pharmaceutical companies and hospital corporations are basically robbing patients legally. In this case a conspiracy exists between Mason-Dixon University, Shapiro Institute, and Sidereal Pharmaceuticals. A powerful quote shows the pharmaceutical industry’s hypocrisy, “They want people to think their motivation is for the public good when they are, in fact, poster boys for capitalism run amok...The reality is that they spend more money on advertising prescription drugs directly to the pubic than they spend on research.”

Cook commented to blackfive.net, “Once I began medical school, I realized the patient was not the center of things; the doctor and the medical profession were. I thought, 'Someday, I'm going to write about the way it really is.' I became a writer to show the problems with healthcare. I wanted to write about medicine that was closer to the truth. For this book I wanted to point out how the various stockholders are taking advantage of all of us. We are spending way too much on healthcare with very mediocre results. Hospitals are unsafe, just look at the statistics I quote in my book, which are all true. The only people now disenfranchised and out of the system are the patients and doctors. The only way the system can change is the people must demand change, which is where my books come in, as warnings.”

As with all of Cook’s books he lends a level of authenticity by including medical procedures and research. In Host he details with some exaggeration how biologics works. This new product of the pharmaceutical companies is not based on drugs being made with chemicals but with antibodies. Cook explained, “They are derived from mouse cells that have been further altered with great effort to make them invisible to the human immune system. What they are doing in Host would make them all human. The mystery comes in when the hospital conspires to create guinea pigs by putting patients in a vegetarian state. I did not tie everything up in a bow because I want readers to understand how the pharmaceutical companies and hospital corporations are still using patients for their own benefit, both monetarily and for research purposes.”

He also gave a heads up about his next projects. The book will delve into social media and medicine. It takes place in Boston, which means both Lynn and Michael might be returning. Cook is also hoping to make a movie after forming his own production company. He did this because he wants control over his own storyline based on his vision, not the director’s.

Host is a very suspenseful novel that is also a warning to all readers. They begin to understand that those in charge of healthcare have no restrictions and are never transparent. Since healthcare will affect everyone people need to read this informative, action-packed page-turner.

About the Author:-

Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word 'medical' to the thriller genre, and over twenty years after the publication of his breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created. Robin Cook has successfully combined medical fact with fiction to produce over twenty-seven international bestsellers, including Outbreak, Terminal, Contagion, Cell and this, Host, is his most recent.

Whiskey Words And a Shovel 2

d March 17, 2016 0

Book Review

Whiskey Words & a Shovel II by r.h. Sin and Reuben Holmes

SYNOPSIS:-

Real and raw, the voice of R. H. Sin delivers gritty, impassioned truths on matters of loving, living, and leaving in his second book of poetry. Sin's first book is a bestseller and continues to delight his one million followers.

R.H. Sin’s second volume continues the passion and vigor of his previous publication. His stanzas inspire strength through the pure emotional energy and the vulnerability of his poems. Relationships, love, pain, and fortitude are powerfully rendered in his poetry, and his message of perseverance in the face of emotional turmoil cuts to the heart of modern-day life.

R.H. Sin’s poems are often only a few lines long, and yet the emotional punch of his language gives these words an enduring power beyond the short page. He doesn't’t back away from the pains and struggles of life and love, and yet his determined, unapologetic voice provides a measure of comfort and a message of perseverance that is at once realistic and indomitable. This blend of determination and painful vulnerability gives his poetry a distinctive, engaging flavor.

About the Author:-

Born in New Brunswick, NJ, later moving to Florida, r.h. Sin comes from a place where a life of pain is the norm and destruction is a constant. Through a love for reading and writing at a very young age, r.h. Sin was able to pull away from some of the social distractions that plagued so many of his peers. Returning to the northeast and moving to New York in pursuit of love and an opportunity to find success, the young, modern poet is doing just that.

Product Details
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (June 7, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1449480357
ISBN-13: 978-1449480356
Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.4 x 7 inches

This Book is not yet published, Click Here to pre-order and to get the lowest price when it will be released.

Cometh The Hour by Jeffery Archer

d March 17, 2016 0

Book Review

Cometh The Hour by Jeffrey Archer

SYNOPSIS:-

Cometh the Hour opens with the reading of a suicide note, which has devastating consequences for Harry and Emma Clifton, Giles Barrington and Lady Virginia.

Giles must decide if he should withdraw from politics and try to rescue Karin, the woman he loves, from behind the Iron Curtain. But is Karin truly in love with him, or is she a spy?

Lady Virginia is facing bankruptcy, and can see no way out of her financial problems, until she is introduced to the hapless Cyrus T. Grant III from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who's in England to see his horse run at Royal Ascot.

Sebastian Clifton is now the Chief Executive of Farthings Bank and a workaholic, whose personal life is thrown into disarray when he falls for Nadira, a beautiful Indian girl. But her parents have already chosen the man she is going to marry. Meanwhile, Sebastian's rivals Adrian Sloane and Desmond Mellor are still plotting to bring him and his chairman Hakim Bishara down, so they can take over Farthings.

Harry Clifton remains determined to get Anatoly Babakov released from a gulag in Siberia, following the international success of his acclaimed book, Uncle Joe. Harry's wife Emma convinces her new friend Margaret Thatcher to raise the subject with the Russian President when she visits Moscow. But then something unexpected happens that none of them could have anticipated.

REVIEW:-

This sixth, and penultimate, addition to the Clifton Chronicles series (after Mightier Than the Sword) continues with the Cliftons and the Barringtons in the 1970s—their family fortunes and travails, love affairs, political dramas, business mishaps and espionage entanglements. The story begins with a libel trial and a suicide note, bringing embarrassment and consequences for Emma and Harry Clifton, Lady Virginia Fenwick, and Sir Giles Barrington. Sir Giles, in love with an East German translator, risks everything to bring her over the Berlin Wall and to England, but is she smitten or a spy? Meanwhile, Lady Virginia, Sir Giles's ex-wife, is becoming desperate after having been financially cut off by her father. She victimizes a wealthy, gullible American in an outrageous scam, but the victim's wife is on to her. Emma's husband, best-selling author Harry Clifton, uses his photographic memory and oratory skills to help the world recognize a Nobel Prize-winning, imprisoned Russian author. Emma and Harry's son, Sebastian, still has a messy love life which now turns shockingly violent. Archer continues his storytelling magic to create characters of spellbinding substance, and readers can count on his surprising twists and shocking conclusion. Here, just when the end seems too tidy, Archer provides a killer cliffhanger.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:-

Jeffrey archer is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (eighteen times), short stories (four times) and non-fiction (the prison diaries). jeffrey archer's writing career has spanned over 30 years with international bestsellers like not a penny more, not a penny less, kane & abel, a matter of honour, first among equals, a prisoner of birth and paths of glory among many others. now published in 97 countries and more than 33 languages, jeffrey archer remains firmly established as one of the biggest authors of his generation with continuing global international sales surpassing 270 million copies. he is married with two children and two grandsons. he lives in london and granchester.

BUY NOW:-

Harry Potter and the Crushed Child

d March 17, 2016 0

Book Review

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts I & II (Special Rehearsal Edition) -
by J.K. Rowling , Jack Thorne , John Tiffany

This Book Cover is not final

Synopsis:-

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play will receive its world premiere in London's West End on 30th July 2016.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

About The Authors:-

J.K. Rowling is the author of the seven Harry Potter novels, which have sold over 450 million copies and have been translated into 79 languages, and three companion books originally published for charity. She is also the author of The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults published in 2012, and, under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, is the author of the Cormoran Strike crime series. J.K. Rowling is making her screen writing debut and is a producer on the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a further extension of the Wizarding World, due for release in November 2016.

Jack Thorne writes for theatre, film, television and radio. His theatre credits include Hope and Let The Right One In both directed by John Tiffany, The Solid Life of Sugarwater for the Graeae Theatre Company, Bunny for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Stacy for the Trafalgar Studios, 2nd May 1997 and When You Cure Me for the Bush. His adaptations include The Physicists for the Donmar Warehouse and Stuart: A Life Backwards for Hightide. On film his credits include War Book, A Long Way Down and The Scouting Book for Boys. For television his credits include The Last Panthers, Don't Take My Baby, This Is England, The Fades, Glue and Cast-Offs and the upcoming National Treasure. In 2012 he won BAFTAs for best series (The Fades) and best serial (This Is England '88).

John Tiffany directed Once for which he was the recipient of multiple awards both in the West End and on Broadway. As Associate Director of the Royal Court, his work includes The Twits, Hope and The Pass. He was the director of Let The Right One In for the National Theatre of Scotland, which transferred to the Royal Court, West End and St. Ann's Warehouse. His other work for the National Theatre of Scotland includes Macbeth (also Broadway), Enquirer, The Missing, Peter Pan, The House of Bernarda Alba, Transform Caithness: Hunter, Be Near Me, Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us, The Bacchae, Black Watch, for which he won the Olivier and Critics' Circle Best Director Awards, Elizabeth Gordon Quinn and Home: Glasgow. Other recent credits include The Glass Menagerie at A.R.T and on Broadway and The Ambassador at BAM. Tiffany was Associate Director of the National Theatre of Scotland from 2005 to 2012, and was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University in the 2010-2011 academic year.

This book is not yet released and will be released on JULY 31 2016 ,if you want to pre-order it you can pre-order here

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Monday, 21 March 2016