Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 DHOOTHA (Season 1) Cast : Naga Chaitanya, Parvati Thiruvothu, Prachi Desai.  Genre : Supernatural,Horror, Suspense, Thriller, Macabre, 2024-watched.  Director and Writer : Vikram K Kumar  Watched Medium : Amazon Prime Video  My Rating : 9.5/10 😀😀😀😀😀 Crime gets reported to the relevant parties before it actually takes place and the future is something that cannot be altered because it is written by a ghost!! One of the best I have ever watched. Kept me hooked from the start till the end!  Very thought provoking and nerve wracking experience. Makes us wonder at what point the real infiltration of lies and politics started happening into journalism in our country. Journalism is supposed to be a field filled with people who uphold the values of integrity and truth but for quite a while, spreading fake news has become the norm, for the benefits of certain corporate parties. This web series shines a light on the devastation that could result from the work o...

 I Fell In Love with Hope  By Lancali  Published Year : 2022 Page count: 420 pages  Genre : Contemporary Fiction, Hospital, Death, 2024-read.  Rating : 2.5/5  Verdict : Boring. More than boring, its depressing.  Not only does the narrator kill off a couple of her "true" loves, she does away with all the other kids too - making this way too depressing to stomach.  This is just an awful book which is drawling, constructed on a weak plot - but the author shows promise. She has potential. She can write. I would be checking out her future works for sure despite this massive debacle of a work. I think this book could have been salvaged if it wasn't so long. Under 200 pages and it would have been fantastic! But now, with over 400 pages, its a nightmare read. Most of the time, we either spend reading about their adventures in and out of the hospital or how they fall sick and spend time in surgery / treatment.  Probably my review is going to be harshe...

 At Night All Blood Is Black  By David Diop  ( Winner of International Booker Prize 2021 ) Published Year: 2018 , English Translation : 2020  Page count: 145 pages  Medium used : Paperback  Genre : War, WW1, Mental Illness, Psychological Fiction, Brutal, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 The last two pages offering a conclusion to this powerful story on the brutality of war, functioning of a human mind and soul have knocked the breath out of me. They made me think - and think deep I did. I read and reread some passages to understand how strange and misguiding the narration has been to my understanding! While I have been assuming it to imply a certain thing, all the while it was telling a different and hidden story. The small tale, coming at the end, about a fickle princess(Fary Thiam) who falls for a lion sorcerer(Alfa Ndaiye) is the key to untangling this mystery. It adds a lot of gravitas in making an interpretation of the narrative. My understandi...

Tales from the Cafe  Series : (Before the coffee gets cold #2)  By Toshikazhu Kawaguchi  Published year : 2017 Page count : 150 pages  Medium Used : Kindle Paperwhite  Genre : Time Travel, Fiction, Magical Realism, Contemporary, Emotional Drama, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I have not read the part 1 in this series and so I am not aware what the foundation is laid for this book. There are some unmistakable references to the first book here and I can understand that all the rules are explained in this book as well,  creating a rich tapestry of background information. This is not a hardcore science fiction novel. This book focuses on a message that helps people deal with loss, failure and death in a novel way. When someone dies and leaves a beloved person behind, the person left should try to move on and be happy instead of being moored to a lost past because that's what the dead person would want them to do. Their happiness is a gift from the happy and...

A Pair of Blue Eyes  By Thomas Hardy  Published Year : 1878  Page Count : 435 pages  Medium Used : Paperback  Genre : Classics, Drama, Romance, Fiction, Timeless, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Thomas Hardy has been one of my all time favorite authors. Though this book is not as famous as some of his others, it didn't disappoint. With a thumping heart, I neared the conclusion to this tale. So much - well being of hearts and souls of multiple characters - is at stake. The last pages, I had to fight my impulse to jump to the last page and see the end. This was the third book by Hardy and was written in the late 19th century. But I think a lot of its nuances apply even to the current day. He  teaches an important lesson to young people who idealize love and their partner without knowing this thing in advance : that we don't know whom fate puts in our path before we meet them. If we knew that our Mr.Perfect or Miss Perfect is going to show up in our l...

 The Fury  By Alex Michaelides  Published Year : 2024  Page Count : 289 pages  Medium Used : iPad Pro Genre : Mystery, Murder, Suspense, Whodunit, Fiction, 2024-read.  Rating : 4/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟 I liked this story. I liked the narrative style. I liked the way it triggered the juices of my own inner detective. Everything happens but it is not really happening. What seems on the surface is not what is on the inside. Good people turn bad, bad people become good. What we see is not what we get. Its a convoluted and garbled nonsense that makes absolute sense once everything is said and done. Highly recommend!  Just when we are settling down for there being no murder, a murder happens and someone gets locked up for life for it. This is a story of recounting a crime of passion and betrayal, getting rid of the one person who was loved like means everything!  Getting into the story a bit, an ex-actress invites her friends and family to a getaway on an island in...

 No Longer Human  By Osamu Dazai  Published Year : 1948 Page Count : 177 pages  Medium Used : Paperback  Genre : Speculative Fiction, Good Prose, Lyrical prose, 2024-read Rating : 5/5 🌟 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ For such a short book, the story carries immense weight on the mind of an impressionable reader like me. This book speaks to readers of all ages, genders and is as pertinent to the current times as it was when it was first published!  A lot of people go through what the narrator had fought to escape all his life - a sense of purposelessness and an abyss of inner void where he can't form any sort of meaningful connections with people around him. It gets to the point that he starts referring to everyone else as human beings as if he isn't one too! And for him, these comparisons and observations which marginalized him started very early on in his life. He is too bashful and shy with everyone that he deeply fears them and prevaricates. He compensates this lack of real conn...