Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 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. The...

 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...

 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 cle...

 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 at...

 The Dark Tower Series #1  The Gunslinger  By Stephen King  Published Year: 1982 Page count : 234 pages  Medium Used : Paperback  Genre : Adventure, Bibilical, Fiction, Suspense, 2024-read,PostApocalypticFuture. Rating : 3.5/5  I think this is my first book with Stephen King that is less than 300 pages. I felt some magic of King is missing in this book, which left me with more questions than the answers it provided towards the end. First off, the man in black and thr gunslinger .. who are these two characters? Are they even human? The Man in black - in whose chase the Gunslinger goes - says he is immortal and made so by the man in the dark tower.. but what about the gunslinger ? How did the gunslinger get on his trail? What is this dark tower and how does one get to it?  The book would be mind blowing,I feel, if all the aspects of it are known. But since a lot of it is kept under wraps  - perhaps to be disclosed in later parts - this one feel...

 Study for Obedience  By Sarah Bernstein  #Shortlisted for Booker Prize 2023 Published Year: 2023  Page count : 105 pages Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Psychological Fiction, Suspense,Good Prose, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5  Eerie. Ominous. The main character comes off as a self proclaimed masochist. She tells that all her life, since her childhood, she has tried to please people and be obedient to all their wishes and psychic desires. It felt,from her story, like she could perceive the desires of their souls through some psychic ability. But always she ended up being abused and abandoned like a stranger, one who cannot mingle with them and be accepted. She subjugates her opinions and thoughts for the benefit of others as we see but she is still frowned at - i haven't understood why this must be so. It's strange and uncanny.  The prose is good but the sentences in some places are so long, I couldn't follow what she was trying to convey. I had to re...

 Maestro (2023) : Movie Review  Released Year: 2023 Written and Directed by: Bradley Cooper  Cast : Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan.  Genre : Musical, Biographical, BasedOnRealStory, 2024-watched.  Rating : 8/10  Its a beautiful movie. Its a beautifully made movie. Bradley Cooper seems to have really altered himself and put himself in the shoes of Leonard Bernstein, the highly successful and world famous music composer. His hardwork and devotion to the role shows. It just shines through and lights every frame he is on. His make up is also really good  - reflecting his different ages when young vs old.  I also like Carey Mulligan's acting. Her role shows that deep and enduring love will last no matter how many temptations come in the way. I thought her performance was better as an older woman. This is their story  - Leonard Bernstein and his wife - and it shows the value of endurance, kindness and hanging in there for time to heal all wounds!...

 Roadside Picnic  By Strugatsky Brothers  Released Year: 1972 Page Count : 210 Pages Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller, Adventure,2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Mind blowing. I got this as a next book recommendation because I had read the book Solaris by Stanislaw Lem on MeetNewBooks.com; I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Gave me a lot of food for thought. I got immediately hooked. The prose and story telling is very cinematic. All the characters are likeable and feels like even the bad ones are just playing their parts. The inner dialogue, stream of consciousness of Red is funny, hilarious and witty as hell.  Loved the script. Aliens visit earth, do whatever they must have, and left (speculation) leaving behind six "Zones" around the world. In a small town Harmont, the main character, Red, is working as a lab assistant for IIEC. His job description includes that he makes trips to one of these zones in Harmont and obtain...

 Kindred  By Octavia E. Butler  Published Year: 1979 Page count: 300 pages   Medium Used: Paperback  Genre  : Science Fiction, Horror, Historical fiction, Ancient American, Black History, 2024-read.  Rating : 4.5/5  I have been reading and watching a lot of these time, space travel books and movies lately. This book I didn't expect to turn out the way it did. I didn't expect this quality work from a black woman writing this in late 1970s. It superbly mixes the worlds of science fiction, time travel with black history and drama. Her writing and prose are superb. Very much like a memoir by a real character, not fictional.  Much as I have enjoyed the story, I couldn't wait to get to the end. I wanted to have all my exasperating and probing questions answered. I wanted to see how this ordeal of harrowing time travel would end. Time travel ought to be fun. And in some form, controllable by the traveler. But for the most part, in this story, i...

 A Quiet Place : Part 2 Released Year : 2020 Director and Writer : John Krasinski  Genre : Horror, Suspense, Thriller, 2024-watched.  Rating: 7/10 Enjoyed the film. Only yesterday, learned that Cillian Murphy has won an oscar award for best actor for his part as Robert J. Oppenheimer and felt pleasantly surprised that he is one of the major characters in this movie. I was sitting on the edge of my seat from the beginning till the end. Its a flawless execution and the kids overdid themselves with amazing acting.  I think I enjoyed this movie even better than the first part. Do watch it for good dose of horror and drama. The sentiment between mother and children is very convincing and Emily Blunt seems to improve herself with each of her performances.  

 The Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb  : Documentary Review  Released Year : 2020 Released Medium : Netflix  Genre : Historical, Ancient Egypt, Excavation, 2024-watched.  Rating : 8/10  I took copious notes while watching this. I have filled three full pages on my remarkable tablet. Rich in information and a treat to the eyes. I learnt a lot about the process and practices of Egyptian excavations. I am stunned at how precious the ancient, rotting and decayed bones and objects found buried deep under sand are treated. Its almost like they are precious and rare jewels - which in a sense they are!  Saqqara is a desert village near Memphis which is also its necropolis/cemetary/graveyard. Through luck or providence, a group of excavationers hit upon an unexposed, untouched tomb of an ancient Egyptian King's high Priest. The process of digging and piecing together all the information gathered from the scenes and hieroglyphs drawn on the burial chamber is like pee...

 Saturday  By Ian McEwan  Published Year: 2005 Page count : 279 pages Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Speculative Fiction, war, Drama, Contemplative Fiction, 2024-read.  Rating : 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐💫 Very thought provoking. This is my first book by Ian McEwan and I took some time to get habituated to his writing style. It felt like watching a movie at a much faster speed of frame switching. It also has a feel of phantsmagoric to it - a seamless,uninhibited flow of one episode/chapter of the day's events into another and somehow forming a connection between the personal,inner world with the impersonal, outside world.  This story recounts the events in one day of the life of Henry Perowne, a successful 40-plusish neurosurgeon. On this Saturday, something disturbs his sleep. Unable to go back to sleep, he wakes up at 3ish am, before dawn, and looks out from the bedroom of his mansion. He sees an airplane with its engine on fire making its way through the city of London...

 The Secret of the Nagas  By Amish Tripathi  Published Year: 2011 Page Count: 361 pages  Medium Used : Paperback  Genre : Mythology, Fiction, Shiva, 2024-read. Rating: 4/5 💫💫💫💫 It's been years since I read the first and the most popular book in this series, Immortals of Meluha. I thought I will have trouble catching up on the references to the events from that book but this one can be read standalone as well. Phew!  When I picked this book, I wanted to learn something about the mythological Naga tribe or the fabled divine snake people. To get an understanding of their behaviors, attitudes and what makes them divine and special over the other snakes. But what I ended up reading about is a completely fictionalized narrative of these people.. some Mythological characters like lord Ganesh are picked off and portrayed as Nagas with deformities because of which they live in seclusion and away from a regular way of life. I couldn't have been more disappoi...

 Tutankamun (Rai Rahotep #2) By Nick Drake  Published Year : 2009 Page count : 331 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller,Mystery, Ancient Egypt, Tutankhamun, Rahotep, 2024-read.  Rating : 3.5/5  Verdict : Its an ok read. I felt this to be more a historical fiction and biographical novel than a mystery thriller. Do check this out for an idea of the kingdom of Tutankhamun and his guardians.  The boy-king,Tutankhamun, has been ruling Egypt with his sister-wife, Ankhesenamun for over ten years in name only. The decision making and actual control lies in the hands of their guardian and protector Ay. Every one is weary and dissatisfied with the iron fisted rule of Ay. While Ay controls and pulls the strings of treasury, bureaucracy and temples, Horemheb controls the army and fights the international wars for Egypt. They are both eyeing the power and pose a serious threat to the young couple who decide to take over the rule into t...