Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

Flowers for Algergon  By Daniel Keyes  Rating 4/5 Genres : Psychological fiction, Mental illness, 2022-read My God! This is some pretty deep stuff. Makes me look at mental retardation from a totally new perspective. The fear and anathema the main character - who is retarded - feels towards being laughed at and ridiculed is very tangible and visceral through the text that inspired me into absolute  pity for him and hatred towards his perpetrators. Its a consolation that he is not used as a guinea pig by those ruthless and self centered scientists..atleast there was some humane element to the whole plot. Most of the abusive past the main character Charlie recalls is while he is becoming smarter as a result of a brain surgery and it is handled with some detachment and in a non emotional way which I felt took the sting out of the whole past for Charlie but failed to cause a stir in me as a result..I would have liked to read the same material handled by someone els...

The Stepford Wives  By Ira Levin  Rating 3.5/5  Genre Horror, Fiction, Mystery. Very fast read.  Obviously,  this book is not as scary as Ira's most successful book Rosemary's Baby but for someone having to go through this, it is quite nerve wracking and nightmarish. I felt Ira Levin has left a lot to the imagination and not explained how exactly and what exactly happened to all those wives of Stepford..that turned their minds and souls into mush. I think it also makes one wonder with all the focus on the wives, what is also happening to the husbands..are they just becoming complicit in the wicked scheme for the benefits or are they getting brain washed ? I would have loved to have more clarity on these fronts..but for now I m assuming whatever makes most sense to me.  The plot is Joanna and her husband Walter buy a new house in Stepford town and move in with their kids. Right off the bat, she notices something off with the neighborhood wives. T...

Matrix  By Lauren Groff  Rating 4.5/5  Genre : Monastery, Fiction, Visions, Mysticism Holy-moly! This book is totally unexpected. I and unaquainted with previous work of the author and  thought it's some science fiction novel because of the title but dealt in topics that are polar opposites to science and technology. It has nuns, monasteries, good and evil, virtue and sin, visions and prophecies..lot of stuff.. This book is probably one of my most swiftest reads..I finished it in under 24 hours. The author definitely has a skill with words and sentences..and some of her insights into spirituality and God are very astute and evolved..left me amazed. I am saving some notes from this book for later reading and they are bang on with my own beliefs. :)  Coming to the story,  its about a woman Marie who has not been gifted with looks and demeanor of a female but God has different plans for her. She is born out of rape by a royal king and after her mot...

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...

A Discovery of Witches By Deborah Harkness Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Witches, Vampires, Fantasy, Time Travel, 2022-read. Rating : 4/5 Took me a long time to cover this one. But that's because of other commitments and engagements  in my life. What should I say about this book? When I started it and read a few pages, I wondered if I made a mistake picking it up. I thought it is going to be a trope vampire - witch romance story that's going to getting exasperating with time..but the reviews and ratings on goodreads are high..so I kept reading on. And my patience and faith eventually paid off. Its not a regular story as we read but one that has quite a few surprises up its sleeve..along with some shocks too. It has some blend scenes of Harry Potter and Twilight as far as I could recognize but they are altered to fit the plot. Coming to the story, Matthew is a millennium old vampire who has been waiting on the fringes of time and wiling his time as a professor ...

The Women of Troy (2021) Pat Barker  Rating 3/5  Genres : Historical fiction, ancient Greece, Achilles, speculative fiction, women, 2022-read.  This book is a sequel to The Silence of Girls by Pat Barker and covers the story from where the part 1 has stopped. This book - the plot,  character development and the pace of the story - just felt okayish. I remember - even if it was quite sometime in thr past - the first book in the series was really amazing..then ofcourse it had the mighty Achilles while this book has not one single notable character in itself. It's a bit boring..on the whole.   Achilles is dead. The Trojans seem invincible and the Greeks very likely to taste defeat. Odysseus makes a plan for deception of the Trojan Horse with greeks hidden inside. Pyrrhus - son of Achilles - comes to avenge his father and take on his glory. The starting scene in the book has him  huddled within the horse with the other greek soldiers as it gets pull...

The Secret History  By Donna Tartt  Rating 5/5 Genres : Historical fiction,  Greek history, Dionysian, Mystery, Murder, Fiction, 2022-read. A group of students of Ancient Greek - in their pursuit and experiments of recreating Dionysian-like loss of self control and touching the other worldly experiences commit a heinous crime - they kill a random farmer on his land.  In their attempt to hide it and escape the noose, commit one more murder - of their boisterous and blackmailing friend/team mate. Though they seem to escape the scrutiny of the authorities that eagerly brush aside the event as an accident,  their own collective conscience and burdened souls catch up with them. Each goes down a spiral of their own..does it ever end? Is the end only the death of all those involved except the master mind behind the murders from the start? Its an unstoppable reading marathon for me. I just couldn't put the book down. All the Greek lore got to me very viscera...