Tag: humour

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Review: The Rosie Project

Rating: 3.5 Stars

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion is one of those books that lie around for years, ignored and unread. I got this book way back when it was first published. Back then there were no signs of it being part of a trilogy! Unfortunately, during the last few years, my threshold for light romances has been really low. With so many other options available, this book seemed destined to remain unread.

This year, with the quarantines and the lockdowns, I decided to do something different, and read something light for Valentine’s Day. I don’t regret that decision. The Rosie Project is a fun read, with minimum mushiness, and a surprisingly relatable male lead!

Don Tillman is a geneticist in search of a life partner. He leads a very disciplined and scheduled life, and wants to find a woman who is compatible with his lifestyle. It might seem like an easy enough project, except Don is somewhat socially inept, and unable to gauge other people’s reactions to simple situations.

For Don’s world is systematic and organized. There is no place for unnecessary emotion and unexplained actions. Everything has a time and a place. This is why he needs a woman who will accept him for who he is and not cause undue commotion in his orderly life. Since he is a scientist, Don sets about achieving his goal in a scientific manner. He prepares an in-depth questionnaire to be filled by potential wifely candidates. He figures that this scientific approach will go a long way in saving time and effort which he would otherwise spend on ineligible women.

Rosie Jarman is not suitable for Don at all. For one, she is a smoker. Then, she is a vegetarian who eats “sustainable” seafood. Pursuing her has disaster written all over it. But Don is willing to shelve his project for the time being, and concentrate on Rosie’s Father Project. What follows is a hilarious courtship that gets out of the hands of both the protagonists.

The one thing that I didn’t really like in this book is how vague Rosie’s character is. Of course, the story tells Don’s perspective, but Rosie remains a peripheral character, even when Don is doing everything for her. You never find out the real deal with Rosie, and it leaves a discordant note in an otherwise good book.

After finishing the book, I realized that there must be people out there who are probably offended by the portrayal of Don. The book hints at him having Asperger’s or at least being on the Autism spectrum. Sure enough, I found plenty of unhappy people. For me personally, it is a light-hearted book, not a commentary on Autism. It is better to treat such books with the same light-heartedness, instead of taking them too seriously.

For me, The Rosie Project was a good rom-com, worth reading especially for the fans of this particular genre.

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Review: Salt And Saffron

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Salt And Saffron by Kamila Shamsie is a light-hearted book about family history, class divisions, prejudices and familial love. Shamsie has created a fictional aristocratic family, proud of its roots that go back many centuries. She has used this family as an example of the elitism and caste system deeply embedded in our culture in the guise of family values and pride.

The very name of the family, the Dard-e-Dils (the Heartaches), is so unreal that you know what will follow can only be satirical and tongue-in-cheek. This family, the Dard-e-Dils, is proud of its heritage and they love to tell stories, mainly about their ancestors. Most of these stories are about the “not-quite” twins. These “not-quite” twins have been born quite frequently through history, and have always brought about the downfall of this family.

Aliya is the main protagonist, going back from the US to her family in Karachi, by way of London. She last talked to her Dadi (paternal grandmother) 4 years ago when they had a massive falling out. After avoiding her for 4 years, Aliya thinks that it’s time to heal the breach. But first, she makes a stop in London to see her older cousin with whom she is very close. And it is there that her own story seems to take an unexpected turn. She not only finds herself attracted to a boy who might be unacceptable to her family, but also meets the Indian side of her family.

The Indian and Pakistani sides of the Dard-e-Dils refuse to acknowledge each other, and still carry old wounds from the time of the partition. Aliya learns something about herself during her meeting with her Indian relatives. This makes it even more imperative for her to go back home and figure out what she wants from life.

Essentially a love story, Salt And Saffron also takes a look at the deeper consequences of the Indo-Pak partition; the deeply ingrained prejudices that are passed down through generations in the form of class and caste. How family history is written through stories that become legends as time passes.

Kamila Shamsie is an excellent writer and it is hard to find fault in her writing. She takes very real elements from her surroundings and turns them into a riveting story. The only problem is that since this book is written from the perspective of a particular class, it might be difficult to relate to for people who do not belong to that class. However, this does not stop me from appreciating her craft and her command of words. She is definitely a master storyteller.

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Sunday Disaster Story: The Over-Smart Blogger

A few days ago, I received some unexpected help from a well-wisher who had nothing to gain. She gave me some valuable advice and provided resources to help make my blog better. Before that, I used to update blog posts without giving any thought to numbers, or tracking the audience. No one had ever guided me in this way, mostly because I never bothered to ask for help.

It would have been fine if I had just followed her advice and refrained from trying to act over-smart myself! Unfortunately, I am not that person. So, as it happened, I decided to make my blog a bit more professional by switching the hosting platform. Previously, I had been held back because it seemed like a lot of money and it was my first time writing a blog. Now, I had 2 years’ worth of experience, and I thought I might as well try to increase my reach. Big mistake.

I’m not an IT person. Whatever I know about software is from 20 years ago I think, and a bigger person would have realized their shortcomings. Me, I thought what could be so difficult about it, and proceeded to implement my plan. Within 2 minutes, I managed to work out how to backup my work and copy it onto the new blog. So far, so good.

I registered with the new host, and somehow got it into my head that everything will run smoothly and I will never even know the difference. Then something happened, and I erased the whole original website, wiped it off the face of the internet! And try as I might, I couldn’t get the new version to work properly. I was in hysterics. It felt like 2 years worth of my work just went down the drain, and nothing was left anymore.

It took 2 days of banging my head against my laptop to finally get some semblance of a blog. My biggest achievement was that I managed to retain the previous data. I had written some 110 plus blog posts, all with pictures and proper categories and tagging. Thankfully, most of it was intact. I did lose all the pictures and am still in the process of attaching new ones to the posts, but by and large, the old blog posts are still intact.

For the last 5-6 days, I have been trying to learn the inner workings of this new blog, and I can’t say that I have been too successful. The images are giving me a lot of trouble, and I keep messing up the software by tinkering with its inner workings. I look up fixes and try to implement them. Sometimes it backfires, while other times I’m just unaware of what I have managed to meddle with.

I’m getting so much data feedback that I don’t understand at all, and I’m forced to think if it was worth all that trouble? Perhaps not. But I did learn a valuable lesson: if you want to go head-to-head with your software, find a comfortable place to sit. Your butt will be very thankful.

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Sunday Blues: Dream House Part Deux

When I wrote the blog post about the house of my dreams I had no idea that I was so close to achieving my dream. We were in the process of moving house around the time that I wrote the post, and all I could think of was how much stuff I needed to get rid of because even though the place was bigger, it has less storage space. My bookshelves have always remained a joke with my husband. He knows how sentimental I feel towards my books, and he’s not above making fun of my attachment.

When we first though about moving, my husband was full of plans to convert the family room downstairs into a gaming/ media room. I thought it was a good idea and accordingly thought up of how I was going to set it all up. I don’t like watching TV and find it hard to concentrate on anything while it is on, even if I’m not watching.

With all this planning going on in my brain, I had no idea what my husband had cooking in his head. The day before we were to start moving our stuff, I asked him which wall he wanted the TV mounted on, and he completely changed his tune! He insisted that he wanted his TV in the living room and nowhere else. I was perplexed by this sudden change in plans and asked him what was I supposed to do with this extra room that would now be useless. He told me to use it for myself and do what I really wanted to do with it in the first place.

I didn’t even get time to think things through before I was directing all the bookshelves into this room. As a result, all our bedrooms got a bit more spacious, and we managed to get all the books in one room.

This is how my dream came true and I got a study in my house. As a thank you to my husband, I fixed up his foosball table in the study too!

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Sunday Blues: Dream House

Growing up, my dream house always had the largest library imaginable. I didn’t know the number of rooms it will have, how big it will, or even if it will have a swimming pool or not. The most important thing was to have floor to ceiling shelves full of books, oh, and a ladder with wheels so that I could access all those books up near the ceiling!

As I grew older, I realized that it might not be possible to have such a library in the house and I might have to settle for a study full of shelves. I resigned myself to my fate and began looking forward to this dream study. I have to admit that in 40 years of my life there have only been two friends whose houses I have envied, both of them because they had a room full of books. I have shamelessly borrowed books from both the friends, and would have continued to do so had we not all gotten married and moved away from each other.

Over the years I have come to accept the fact that maybe I don’t really want a library. It requires too much work, and while I like my books organized and classified, I’d rather not do it myself. So it’s obvious that I need a messy study full of books in my life. Sadly, I still don’t have one. When we moved to our current place three years ago, I had definite plans on turning one of the rooms into a cozy little reading room full of books and easy chairs. Alas, my kids decided that they’d rather have separate rooms than let their mom move all their books to some other room.

And there you have it. My kids are the biggest hindrance to my dream library. They want their books to be close to them at all times. The other night I rescued 13, yes 13, books from the upper bunk of the bed where my second-born sleeps! His excuse: that he needed to have all these books with him because he never knew what he might want to read! facepalm It made me mad because he only goes up there when I turn off the lights, so what he’s reading in the dark, I don’t know.

When my husband told me a few days ago that we might have to move to another place, all I wanted to know was if there’s an extra room for my books. He just gave me that look and never answered my question. It doesn’t matter. Even if this new place has no library or study, I will not give up on my dream to have one some day. Maybe after one of the kids grows up and moves away? I don’t know, but I dream.

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Sunday Dispute: Is It Mid-Life Crisis?

I have been facing a dilemma. That of changing tastes and choices. I have always been proud of primarily being a detective at heart; a thrill seeker and a mystery solver, with a streak of adventure and a love for the unknown. There were a few years when this love was shared by another genre: Romance. Alas, that love affair only lasted for the duration of my teenage years. There were a few other friendships, but none as permanent and everlasting as the one between mystery thrillers and me.

This year, as I enter into my forties, I fear that my reading habits might be going through a mid-life crisis. The previously much-loved and adored friend no longer seems to hold my interest. Infact, I can hardly get myself to even look at a thriller any more. There are stacks and stacks of books staring at me, silently willing me to pick them up, their attractive covers screaming from Instagram accounts, their stellar reviews whispering sweet nothings into my ears, yet I feel nothing.

I have not found another favorite genre yet, but I’m looking around. All of a sudden I seem to have become more bold and daring, willing to venture into unknown worlds, rather than remaining a one-genre woman. It’s not easy. I would say it’s a lot of hard work. I keep thinking that if I read enough crap I might find something that will hold my interest for a longer period of time. Something with whom I can enjoy a long-term relationship.

But when you have been married for as long as mysteries/ thrillers and I, anything new just seems like a short-lived affair brought on by the advent of middle age. You have to give me one thing though. I haven’t stopped spending money on the darned genre. I still buy more thrillers than is good for my bank account, more than I can possibly read in this lifetime at least! It’s like a disease in my blood.

The more I write about it, the more it seems like the tale of a marriage going through a bad time. Maybe that’s what it is. We have been together for so long that we need a break from each other. Yeah, that’s what we should do.

Though we need to define the boundaries of this break. I don’t want to be left alone later on in life, telling anyone who would listen, “…but we were on a break!”

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Sunday Problems: The Boy And His Books

I have a teenager. He is an enigma. Just like all teenagers are to their parents. He is a lot like I was at his age, and he makes me appreciate my mom every day for putting up with me all those years ago. Like me, he needs to read just one more page of his current read, and like me, he is willing to forget everything else when he is in some other fantasy world. This makes for some interesting clashes between us.

Is there a name for the feeling when you’re in the middle of a rant about how schoolwork should come before anything else, and realize that you yourself were once in the exact same situation that your son now finds himself in? How do you keep your face straight? Do you leave the argument mid-rant? Or do you finish it off, all the while feeling like the worst hypocrite? Because if you’re honest with yourself, you still do the same thing when you stay awake all night to finish a book even when you know you have to get up early the next morning, and go to a very important parent-teacher meeting!

My love for reading was passed on to me by both my parents. Ever since I can remember, I have had some kind of books in my hands. It’s like a madness in all of us, and I seem to have passed it on to my kids. The eldest one has it really bad. He even has the same obsessive notions about books that I do. Like having the same editions for a single series, or thinking it the end of the world if, God forbid, a book cover gets a crease from somewhere, or needing to have a copy of his own even if he can borrow it from someone.

I have a box set of The Lord of The Rings paperbacks that I really love. When he asked to read the series, I let him borrow it. I thought he was quite young for it, and sure enough, he got bored and couldn’t finish it. However, not only was he able to finish The Hobbit, he also enjoyed reading it. Ever since then, somehow he got into his head that he needs to have a copy of The Lord of The Rings in one binding. He kept asking me, I kept telling him no because we already have a set at home.

One day, he found a very nice paperback with the whole series in one binding, and got so fascinated with it that I just had to buy it for him. The book is so thick that it can be used as a foundation stone in the construction of the Two Towers! Just picking it up requires serious muscle. But the boy is happy. He has been reading it religiously, hasn’t even looked at any new books while he is attempting to finish this one.

At first I was surprised at his sudden interest in reading something he had failed at before. Then I realized that this interest was born after watching the LOTR movies. I have never liked movies based on books; I hadn’t even watched the Harry Potter movies until last year. But this in my eyes is the true success of The Lord of The Rings movies… making my son motivated to actually compare the books and the movies.

So now, I sit and wait for him to finish with the tome, so that we can give some attention to the science project due in a few weeks. Today, he finally told me that he is now reading The Return of The King, and I couldn’t help but give a sigh of relief. Now maybe I can get back to some important things myself, like getting a start on that Good Reads challenge that I took up the other day!

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Review: The Graveyard Book

Rating: 5 Stars

The Graveyard Book follows the adventures of “Bod” Nobody Owens, as he tries to lead a normal life, like all boys his age. Except, Bod lives in a graveyard, with his ghost parents, mad teachers, and a guardian who is neither alive nor dead. Bod is happy with his life; he is free to roam around the graveyard, discovering new things every day, playing with friends who never grow old, and having a good time in general.

This contentment with life doesn’t stop Bod from wanting to venture outside the gates of the graveyard and experience the real world. But he is not allowed to do that. The outside world is where the man Jack lives. The man Jack, who killed Bod’s real family, and who is searching for Bod to finish his task once and for all.

It seems to me that every book that I read by Neil Gaiman is better than the last, though Neverwhere has been a favourite since I first read it. The Graveyard Book seems to have taken over that place in my heart.

As always, the main character is so likable that you want to go on adventures with him and help him find his way in the world. All the other characters, from Bod’s adoptive parents, to Miss Lupescu, to Liza Hempstock (yes, there’s a Hempstock in every Gaiman book!) to all the other residents of the graveyard, are so well written that you cannot help but be amused by their antics. It is, however, Bod’s guardian, Silas, who stands out like a typical strong, silent hero from romantic movies. There is nothing romantic about Silas, except that he agreed to be the guardian of a small boy who had nowhere to go. Yet, his love for Bod is evident in everything he says and does. He is perhaps my favourite character from this awesome book.

The strength of Neil Gaiman is his ability to paint such vivid pictures with his words that it all materializes in front of your eyes. The Indigo Man, the Sleer, the ghouls, all come alive in the mind’s eye. The Lady on the Grey also makes a couple of appearances, and the Danse Macabre becomes almost real. As is evident, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

As soon as I finished, I gave it to my 11-year-old, and he loved it too. So, this is one book that everyone in the family can read if they like fantasy and dark humor.

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Review: Born A Crime

Rating: 4.5 stars

I was very sceptical back when The Today Show replaced Jon Stewart with Trevor Noah, a comedian from South Africa, who very few had even heard of. He’s still nowhere near Jon Stewart, but over time I have come to appreciate Trevor Noah for his own unique brand of humor and wit.

For the past few years, I have not been a short story person, even less, a biography person. So a biography written in the form of short stories was something I had to think really about reading. As it happened, once I started, I flew through the pages. The memoir turned out to be a lesson in South African history that is hard to find in any history books.

“In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.”

Born to a white father and a black mother, Trevor was illegal even before he was born. Forced to hide from public sight for the first few years of his life, he grew up alienated from other kids, hardly ever making any friends. That he chose to look back upon his life with humour and not bitterness, just shows how successful his mother was in bringing up a well-balanced human being under such adverse circumstances.

All through the book, the one thing that comes across loud and clear is Trevor’s love for his mother, and his acknowledgement of the sacrifices she made not only to have him, but to keep him as well. It is the story of a mother and a son, and their struggle to overcome all difficulties.

Despite all this, the book is not gloomy or depressing. It is in turns, funny, poignant, and heartbreaking, but not bleak. It makes you think, and it gives insight into the lives of a nation that is thought to be doing alright since the dark period of the apartheid ended. What everyone closes their eyes to, is the destruction apartheid left in its wake.

“People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, ” And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.”

It boggles the mind how a handful of people, outnumbered by the natives five to one, managed to rule over the country, simply by dividing them and making them fight each other. This is the history that I want to know about. There is a lot in this book that resonates with me as a Pakistani too. After all, we may not have had it as bad as South Africa, but our country is also a product of colonial rule. Oh, and our parents also believed in not sparing the rod!

There’s a very funny story about Trevor’s friend Hitler, and it’s also a lesson in perspective. My son read the blurb and asked about it, and as I told him, I realized how valuable a lesson it is for him to learn! The book is full of such instances where you stop and think . About racism, about division, about language barriers, and about opportunities.

What I really want to do now, is to get an audio book, because I have a feeling it will be better in Trevor’s own voice.

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Sunday Relationship: My Kindle and I. It’s Complicated.

I have a habit of complaining about how I don’t have enough space in the house for my books, and how my shelves are always disorganised. It’s more showing off than an actual concern, I think. However, people who don’t know me think it is a very serious problem, one that I want a solution to. And they have just the right solution for my problem!

The most obvious and easy solution is, of course, to start reading e-books. Get a Kindle, they say. Like I just came out of my cave, and have no idea that there are such things as electronic books now! To all those people, I’m not from another century. I have been reading “e-books” as they’re called, since my teens!

Of course, back then there were no handheld devices, and to read a book, you had to sit on a chair and scroll through the text on the computer screen. I have been crazy enough to do that. I sat all night in my chair to read Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire on my PC. And that is a huge book if you remember. So, I have nothing against reading electronic versions of books.

Except that I had to go get the hard copy of the book as well, because there are times when I want to read some part of it again, and it was a hassle to look for that particular part in the electronic version. Since this is not a problem any more, with iPads and tablets and Kindle coming pretty close to the size of actual books, difficulty of access is a moot point now.

Still, you have to admit, scrolling down a screen is never going to be the same as flipping the pages of a book. I have a habit of playing with the edge of the page while reading, because I’m impatient and want to turn the page as soon as I read the last word. As a result, every time I read something on my Kindle, I invariably turn the page before finishing the previous one, which leads to a lot of back and forth, and a lot of frustration.

Oh, did I forget to say that I do have a Kindle? I got one last year for my birthday, after a lot of grief from my husband. The poor guy has wanted to get one for me for years now but knowing how crazed I am, he never dared surprise me with something I might not be too crazy about. So, finally, last year I gave in, and got a Kindle Voyage which seemed to be a better option for me.

Unfortunately, I have only managed to read two books on my device in the last 1.5 years! Firstly, because I have a Middle East account on Amazon, and it keeps telling me that the book I want is not available in the Kindle Store, and secondly, because it irritates me to no end that I cannot flip the pages over to see how much of the book is left. Or, if it’s too boring, to cheat and read a bit of the ending to see if it’s worth it to read all of it!

Then, there’s this whole insane thing about smelling the books. Yes, I know. All bookworms do it. At least the ones I know do. Just like some people love the smell of petrol, I love the smell of books and bookstores. Apart from smell, there is the weight of a book. A light as air device can never fill the void of a big heavy book in my hands. I can not put weird and funky bookmarks in a Kindle either. Just another one of my eccentricities.

My dear Kindle, I love you very much (after all you didn’t come for free, did you?), but while you’re like a newer, shinier car, my old car is still the first love of my life. I cannot leave my first love (that’s my books) for the new one, though that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. Love, T.

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