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...