Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

The Yellow Wallpaper [1892] By Charlotte Perkins Gilman 24 pages, Kindle Digital Edition  Rating 5/5 🔮🎉 Genres: Horror, Short Story  Was getting goosebumps while reading this short story. Although it is only 24 pages in length, it has given the creeps and struck horror in my heart that a lengthy novel might have failed to do. I see similarities to this novel with The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson where the house slowly takes mental possession of one of its residents. And with a more recent boon The Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno which has a a living mold in a house that takes possession of its residents.  A wife and husband with his sister as housekeeper take residence in a palatial bungalow for three months to get a change of atmosphere. The wife has a condition of mental nervousness and feels that being in company of lively people will help her. But her husband who is a physician barely listens to her and practically locks her in a room with a...

The Old Devils [1986] By Kingsley Amis  Winner of Booker Prize 1986 Rating : 5/5 🎉🎉🔮 Genres : Humor, Dry, Fiction, Booker Prize, Welsh people.🎃 340 pages, Digital Kindle Edition  I enjoyed this book very much. The dry and brutally honest wit,humor and open satire on the nature of relationships and superficiality between a bunch of so called life long friends by the author is very appetizing. They backstab each other. They poke at each other. They often booze and snooze and share far too many secrets than they should. They are there to empathize. They are there to offer shoulders to cry. And despite being really old - too much that they can't even bend properly or chew without help of aids - they are there to romance and show off to the opposite sex. 😄🤣 I can understand where some of the negative reviews find their roots and soil for the novel. It deals in less than idealized settings where romance is supposed to be flying high between a bunch of old peop...

The Strange Library  By Haruki Murakami Genre : Novella, Horror, Gothic🎃, Fantasy 🎉 Rating 5/5 🎃 This is perhaps the first book by Murakami that I have felt unqueasy reading. It has no sexual content .. obviously because it is about a horrid experience by a child at a library .. and very picturesque in the imagery as usual with all his novels .. I just loved it. Next time I think of a library, I might give myself in to wondering what wonderful things or horrible things are going down in its basement .. lol  A kid walks into a library to return a set of books and loan some more and meets an old man librarian. The old man gives him three thick volumes on the topic the boy wants to learn about and tells him he has to read those books on premises only. He takes the boy into a basement which is organized like a maze like structure. The boy is locked into a room, his feet chained to a heavy iron ball to prevent movement and escape. A strange wool/sheep man is assigned...

Upgrade : A Novel  By Blake Crouch  Rating: 4/5 🥂🔮🎯 Genres : Science Fiction, Thriller, 2022-read, Virus, Genetic Alteration  Well. First things first. This is not a horror novel but it might as well fall into that list. The premise and the setting is damn scary. Because it is utterly plausible and there won't be a damn thing anyone can do should it happen. Some maniac and genius scientist with a god/savior complex working on gene manipulation experiments and releasing a virus out into the human world .. to turn everyone into an "upgraded" version of themselves .. so the survival of the fittest would ensue and kill away all the rest .. no matter how big a number is to be sacrificed in the process. Well, if this is not the negative side to a genius mind and their detached/self serving actions, don't know what is.  Coming to the story, Logan Ramsay is an agent working for the GPA .. which deals with arrest and prevention of genetic manipulation expe...

August 26,2022 Some thoughts on The Penelopiad (by Margaret Atwood book) Sitting myself by the window sill and pondering on the mysteries of life and human soul, I recollected some interesting facet in Atwood's thinking from her book The Penelopiad which I finished reading recently.  Penelope is dead and her soul is migrated over to Hades. Here she sees her other friends, maids, Helen and husband Odysseus moving in and out of multiple next lives donning different personalities while she just stays put. She justifies this by saying " I know that the past has been bad but who knows how future will be" (paraphrasing). She is referring to her next lives and the uncertain conditions surrounding them. She has seen how her husband and Helen fared. How her friends and maids did. Still, she had a deep rooted fear that was keeping her fixated.  It would be different I guess if this is not fiction and everyone has the same alternative to remain stagnant. But that's not how evolu...

The Paris Library  By Janet Charles  Rating 3/5  Genres : Historical Fiction, World War 2, Romance  This story is based on a set of true events that happened in Paris during the World War 2. A bunch of librarians risked everything to provide literary support to subscribers and prisoners/patients of war by delivering books to cheer them up and keep them in high spirits. Some of them got booted for aiding jewish readers, some were sent packing back to their homelands but the group's indomitable resolve to do their part kept them afloat till the very end .. when the war is finally over and German occupancy of Paris came to an end.  Its a great idea in theory but I felt that the execution/narrative failed to really stir any hard emotions for me. Perhaps because the World/Paris where war was under progress, where people are suffering and getting sent to concentration camps and the World/Paris where the librarians were cheerfully carrying on their book del...

The Penelopiad [2005] By Margaret Atwood  Rating : 4/5 🎃🔮 Genres : Greek, Mythology, Alternate History, Historical Fiction. I think Margaret Atwood's writing this short book(of just over 100 pages recounting such an important classic tale) has accomplished two things. And even though the book is small, I felt she has conveyed what she wanted to .. without deviating from her central theme. One,according to her introduction in the book, is she wanted to present an alternate case/myth to the single authoritative voice on the greek tale - Odyssey by Homer. Second, through keeping the focus directed towards the "wronged" women in the Odyssey - namely Penelope and the twelve maids who were hanged in haste by the boisterous and assuming Odysseus, she championed the causes of victimized women from the tale.  The story starts with the birth of Penelope to the then king of Sparta Icarus and a naiad mother and details some notable childhood events from her life. Her fa...

The Satanic Verses  By Salman Rushdie  Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize 1988 Rating 4.5/5🙃😇 Genres : Fantasy,Fiction,Magical Realism, Indian Author. What a crazy, wild story this has turned out to be!!  Reading some sections of the book, I was enthralled and speechless at how fantastic it was! Rushdie has combined many folklore and mystical beliefs held by Indians into making some highly creative stories within the main story.  There are also parts which left me dumbfounded for his overt disrespect and disregard for the teachings of not just Muslims but other religions as well. I think I was over 90 percent into the book and was feeling wonderful and joyous at the humorously witty, magical narrative when he makes fun of a hindu God, Lord Shiva. Being a devout Hindu, I felt outraged. I fully comprehended and understood why this book got so much negative reception upon release in 1988. It was banned by many countries and Iran most of all, issued a fa...

The Songs of Distant Earth  By Arthur C. Clarke  Rating 2.5/5 Genres Science fiction, Fantasy, Romance,2022-read. Just closed the book and there are a myriad of thoughts floating in my head. This is a short book and a quick read. It is only 200 pages or so in digital format. Many of the scenes seem to hold no weight against the overall plot. I am no longer surprised to read really below average and underwhelming work from really great authors as I used to in the past. This is one of the works which Clarke seems to have undertaken to convince the science community of a point rather than make himself more successful in the line of novelisists - probably because he is already a very well established author in the science fiction genre.  The point he seems to be making is not to abandon research into alien contact and also not to stop any steps being taken towards reaching distant stars and making them home if they are uninhabited. The prologue to the book se...

The Last House on Needless Street  By Catriona Ward  Rating : 4/5  Genres : Horror, Mental Illness, 2022-read,Psychological Fiction, Multiple Personality Disorder.  Here comes one of the books that's not over rated at all in this genre of fiction. I guess I was 25 percent into the plot and the time was 12 AM and decided to turn in for the night. Fifteen minutes later, I got up and resumed from where I left off  realizing that the plot got deep under my skin. I got hooked to the sensation of peeling off layers of the story and having a different taste with each bite. The plot gets curvaceous and twisted with depth and at the end once everything is figured out and all the bones are laid bare, it seems too simple. I was able to unlock some of the mystery but not all of it. And the author really plays with the imagination and judgements of the reader by playing with her words and writing style .. putting and framing an innocent victim into the role ...

The Gods Themselves [1972] By Issac Asimov  Rating :4/5 🍀 Genres : Science Fiction, Hugo winner, Nebula Winner, Novel Ideas  I close this book with a smile on my lips. It ends on a note of hope and optimism for a romantic future.  I was 25-30 percent into the book when I realized that some of the images forming in my mind are familiar and as it turned out, I did read this book once back in 2014 and re-picked it without checking my goodreads. And I am glad I did because it is a good revisit .. love the prose style of Asimov, the non-complex simplicity of his characters and there was some subdued humor throughout the narrative as well.  I broke down the book into three phases/parts .. the first dealing with people on Earth and setting up of the most popular Electron Pump, the second with the alien race that guided and helped them set it up for their own survival needs, the third deals with people on Moon who find a solution to the problem posed by the...

 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell #1) [2009] by Hillary Mantel  Rating: 4/5 Genres : Historical Fiction, Booker Prize Winner 2009, England, Royalty, Treachery  This is not one of the most easiest of books to quickly navigate through. For one, it refers to a period of time and events that are not part of common knowledge. And second, there are a lot of characters some with no significance or bearing on the plot and they make it a little confusing to follow the narrative. Otherwise, there is ample wit and veiled humor that makes even ruthlessness seem funny in the actions of kings and queens or their high appointed officials. Hillary Mantel's style of writing is also very picturesque and some conversational exchanges between the main characters are worth bookmarking and reading over and over.  It also felt strangely funny at times that so much narrative has gone into explaining the circumstances surrounding a king marry his second wife while making his first marriage void. ?...