Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 Crying in H Mart  By Michelle Zauner  Published Year : 2021  Page Count : 237 pages Medium Used: Paperback  Genre: Memoir, Non fiction, Cancer, Nostalgia, Parent love.  Rating : 3.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐ In her 25th year, Michelle loses her mother to Cancer. Her mother is a Korean and her father, American. She has lived most of her adult life in the States. As a child, she has always clung to her mother and was inseparable from her. Growing up, she could always feel the love emanating from her mother in the korean food she cooked and the immense care she took to feed her. Still their relationship is not without its rough patches as they differ over her career path, college education, her mother's over criticality and her own rebellious nature asserting itself. She walks away from her mother to pursue a career in a musical band. Little later, she learns of her mother's cancer diagnosis and comes back to her. She stays with her mother till her death nursing her and taking care of her. Cooking f

 Eragon (Inheritance Cycle #1) By Christopher Paulini  Published Year: 2002  Page count : 495 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Fanstasy, Dragons, Fiction, Magical, 2024-read.  Rating : 3.5/5  I like this ok ok. I will definitely check out the second book in the series because I felt the world building and the different characters are good. I took longer to read this book than usual. I felt , at times, to toss away the book and happily DNF. But I somehow trudged my way through the parts that felt dragging, drawling. I felt some fight sequences are unnecessary and it is unreal how whereever Eragon went, he was mystically followed by enemy troops. I also thought that the author struggled a bit with descriptions and portraying the fight scenes.  Eragon is a sixteen year old boy but he is treated like a very young kid. His dragon has this mental connection with him where they have no boundaries and everything is known to each other - i thought this is magical and fantastic. I loved th

 The Miniaturist  (The Miniaturist #1) By Jesse Burton  Published Year : 2014 (by Picador) Page count: 425 Pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Suspense, Supernatural, Religion, Church, Court Room Drama, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Verdict : I liked and enjoyed reading this. It is quite suspenseful and gloomy at times. The world building is immaculate. Characters are very well developed. The writing felt a bit unpracticed and amateurish.  Nella is eighteen years old. She just got married and moves to her husband's house in Amsterdam,Netherlands from Assendelft,Netherlands. He lives with his sister, Marin who is a spinster and a very secretive character. What Marin professes to the world and what she practices are quite different/opposite. Like the multiple layers of cloth she wears, truth with her comes in different shades and layers. The household has two servants - Cornelia, who was taken in as an orphan and Otto, who was bought as a servant. They both have been working since

 The Heretic Queen  By Michelle Moran  Published year: 2008 Page count : 368 pages  Medium used : Kindle Paperwhite  Genre : Speculative Fiction, Historical fiction, Ramses 2, Nefertari.  Rating : 2/5 First off, I didn't understand why this book is named so. Who is the main character? Nefertiti or Nefertari? And what's the point of naming it heretic queen if the author is showing that in reality Nefertiti wasn't heretic?   This book is more speculative fiction than historical. Everything I have learnt and read about the Ramses II and Nefertari from other books is tossed to the wind. Michelle Moran took lot of liberties, at lots of places and this is a hopeless turn off for me. She tried to cram lot of events together without offering any explanations. She turned good people bad and marred their images in my mind. I agree that most historical fiction books have speculation and conjecture at the core of the narrative but this book just deviates from what is common knowledge s

 The Way of Kings  [Stormlight Archive #1] By Brandon Sanderson  Published Year: 2010 Page count: 1252 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Fantasy, Adventure, Fiction, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5  First off, this is such a big book. It took me a while to finish. But at the end of it, felt totally worth the time and effort.  It is hard to pick one favorite character in this one. This is my first book by the author and it totally blew me away. I have come to care so much for the characters and their desires that I was held in a rock solid grip by the turn of all events.  At the base, the story is telling about a great darkness/desolation/dark times coming and capturing the efforts of a selected bunch of heroes. One of them is given visions of all the ancient history the human kind has gone through. An other might be a reincarnation of a great warrior from the past. Another is trying to undi what many are working to do and save. Its all very clearly presented and wonderful. God himself co

 Dune Messiah  [Dune Series #2] By Frank Herbert  Published Year: 1969 Page count: 236 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Science Fiction, Fantasy, Maud Dib, Prescience, 2024-read.  Rating : 3/5  I had difficulty in recognizing some of the characters that are introduced in this and referring to Wikipedia cleared my doubts. I think the gap between my reading of first part and this one has been huge and the cause for this conundrum. Nevertheless, I seek to remove this issue with the next book in the series by starting off right away on that! The world building is super and sucked me in. But I had some trouble imagining a planet that is mostly desert and also has modern developments erected in it. The prose is flawless but the flow of Herbert's thoughts are difficult to catch sometimes.  Paul Atriedes has been ruling for a long time and during this period, the universe is brought, by force and mass killing, under his "jihad" rule. Yet, for the atriedes brother and sister