Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

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...

 Song of Kali  By Dan Simmons Rating : 2.75/5 Genres : supernatural, theology, dark fiction, fiction, mystery, suspense, 2021-read.  This book is extremely gripping - till the end. But I couldn't give it more than what rating I have given it. Why? First, it had me simmering with rage and there is more than one scene which left me cringing - the author is outright blasphemous in using curse words against the deity and over blowing/exaggerating about his experiences in India. Second, I think he is confused between - kali, the demon who defines the age of kali vs Kaali the goddess who is known as all powerful. I had to remind myself that this is not a memoir but only a work of fiction. It felt like a slowly unwinding nightmare. This work of Dan Simmons beats many of the recent works of Stephen King - in horror and in touching the morbid, graphic violence, grisly ideas too deep.  The narrator is a writer and he gets commissioned to obtain a manuscript of p...

Valis  By Philip k. Dick  Rating: 4.75/5 Genres: Science fiction, suspense, thriller, good vs evil, theology, mental illness, insanity, novel plot, 2021-read, reviewed. Just like living things have an 'aura'  around them with which some could guess their health/well being, books also seem to have a kind of aura around them. If it's a book written by Philip k Dick, one can be assured that it has some element of surprise, novelty, drugs, madness and a promise of a fun ride. Valis is a pleasure to read.I ran through the pages with my eyes glued to my kindle. I couldn't put this book down. Philip Dick is one of the very established authors in the genre of science fiction but for the first 20-30 percent of the book , I wondered if he diverged into a memoir. Yet, his writing is so hilarious that on the one hand I was telling myself  'what a poor fellow this Horselover Fat( an alter ego of Philip, the narrator) is' and on the other hand laughing my head off...