Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 Helen of Troy  By Margaret George (2006) (800 pages Kindle Digital Edition) Rating : 2/5  Genres : Historical,  Mythology,  Greeks, Trojan war. WARNING!!! STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIECE OF DESPICABLE WORK !!  The worst book on the Trojan war I have come across!! 🤢🤢🤢 I stopped reading and decided to shelve this at 50 percent of the book.(I am glad I didn't splurge money on buying a hardcopy like I initially intended to!)  It is an understatement to say that I am just disappointed! I feel cheated and played. I had such high hopes for this! Having read her 'Memoirs of Cleopatra', I wanted to get dragged hopelessly into the world of ancient Greece and get a new look at this most retold old tale. Such books are like fiction within fiction - because the existence of Helen and the occurrence of Trojan War could have been artistic creations of Homer. The intricate details within the story are the added speculation,fantasy - adding layers and putting pieces of p...

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...

Krishna Gopeswara book 1  By Sanjay Dixit  Rating 2.5/5  Genres Fiction, Mythology, Lord Krishna. Even though the story is based on the events from the life of Lord Sri Krishna, reading them from the thesis of Sanjay Dixit felt totally silly and preposterous. Most of the events and situations were devious from what the scriptures and sacred texts like Srimad Baghavatam say. I am not writing this from the place of bias for Krishna - his being my most cherished and favorite God. It felt acceptable to make Shiva the God into Shiva a human warrior in the Immortals of Meluha series but to remove magic and mysticism from Krishna is like removing fangs from the most powerful snake in the universe. It is utter hogwash and ridiculous.   Sanjay Dixit tries to explain and attribute most of the miraculous and mystical events in the childhood and puberty of Krishna to luck and careful military planning. I was fuming while he happily explained away Govardhana inci...

 The Maidens By Alex Michaelides Genre : Suspense, Thriller, Greece, Mythology, Horror, detective, whod-unit, female-oriented, 2021-read Rating : 4.5/5 👌👌 Woo Hoo! I just finished this book and I feel like I have been taken for quite a ride by the author. He gave my taut imagination a spin making me guess and second guess at a game I eventually lost. He threw me - a hooked reader at that point -  off into wrong directions about who might be the murderer and right enough, I took the bait each time. So as the end was nearing, there were multiple suspects and with a pounding heart, I kept reading ignoring sleep and late hour of the day. But I felt that the end fell a bit flat for me - after all the expectation, it was like an anti-climax.😕 Something that could have been a little different and improvised upon. 🙄🤔 But still, this is one hell of a book!! I thought this engaged me more than his first book The Silent Patient which was a rage and a massive success. When this b...

Circe  by Madeline Miller  Genres: Mythology, Fantasy, Fiction,Magical,Mystical, Sorcery, Witchcraft, Imaginative, good prose, 2021-read Rating: 4.5/5  💓💓 Circe is a witch. She spends most of her time collecting, grinding and boiling herbs, precious minerals from soil and casting spells of magic. Madeline Miller has done the same thing in her lovely book. She has poured different elements of mythology, history, fantasy, suspense and imagination into a giant couldron and prepared a savory concoction - with an occassional bitter taste. Ha ha ha 😂😂😂😂  I doubt if I could call this book the regular things - like "amazing", "gripping". I think more apt terms would be "amusing","interesting","magical". It's loosely based on multiple Greek mythology stories balancing them on one pivotal point,Circe. At the backdrop of it, we have a woman, a goddess,a nymph who comes into her own power after being treated worthless for a long time. Anc...