English Bytes – Book Review

Title – English Bytes
Author – Manish Gupta
Publisher – Penguin (2012)
Price – Rs 250/-

Though studied in English medium school, my love for language started only after joining corporate job as we were suppose to speak with ppl across the globe. When author contacted me for review, from blurb I thought it would be just like any other self help book and I never prefer reading them..To my surprise this book is unique in its narration and promise you a hearty laugh while learning nuances of English.

Author started book with his personal journey of convent education where English was rarely used and he got himself into difficult situation during his engineering days. He has explained in a story form different ways which helped him in mastering the language skill like first he started watching English movies and started speaking with his close buddies in English only. This technique can help you but to become perfect in English you need to be in company of those who are expert so that you can make them your benchmark .
Another such technique is use of mnemonic.

My Take on book – Though it comes in genre of self help book, you will never feel it while reading. ITs so interesting and engrossing that you may tend to like this as any other fiction book around. . It has something for everybody. If you want to learn English, this is excellent book and if you are pro then also its useful to brush up your skill. There are lot of words which we don’t use in our day to day conversations. Author has used humorous anecdote to start describing a situation and then has explained all possible difficult word associated with that scenario.
Lot of time while reading book we come to a point where a particular word is not clear and we hardly take trouble to open dictionary. The best thing in this books is Author’s footnote with detailed explanation of difficult word make it quite easy read and as claimed by author in blurb –
You will add 1000 word to your dictionary..It may help you to love the English language little more 🙂

Those who are sitting for GRE/GMAT/CAT will get huge benefit from this book.

About Author – Manish Gupta is a banking professional. When not crunching numbers he is busy engaging with and examining the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the English language. He also likes trivia, travelling, adventure sports, delving into human psychology, and giving professorial discourses to colleagues, family and friends, and practically anyone who can give him a patient hearing

Love is Vodka – Book Review

Author – Amit Shankar
Publisher – Vitasta Publishing (2013)
Price – Rs 195/-

Moon ..lovechild of famous senior editor of news channel Payal Malick and French dimplomat is cute crazy tall confused teen working as intern at advertisement agency. She is just like girl next door of her age, bored of her current BF and looking for true love and in between try and taste different forms of love. She is not happy with her BF Ash and find solace in her hot and hunky colleague Akash. Akash with his charismatic charm and poetic language stole moon’s heart and they spend lot of time eating and roaming in delhi. Sudden revelation about Akash’s past in a party take moon and akash on different paths.
And heartbroken Moon got attracted to her Ma’s boyfriend “Devil”. In addition to her Ma’s BF , devil is also moon’s boss at adverstising agency. He gave prestigious modeling assignment to Moon and took her heart away with a smile.
She also has a sweet relationship with her biological father and keep in touch with him through phones/webchat. He loves to send gifts online to moon.

Moon is also in touch with chat buddy Nikhil, who is seriously in love with bright and bubbly moon. She keep on coming in and out of love with different man and is confused abt true meaning of love or does true love really exist. Finally she got her true calling at end and she started doing things which give her real satisfaction and meaning to life.

My take on story – First and foremost..I love the protagonist name – Moon. She is very relatable character and author has described the teenage feeling quite well. She is using all form of social media and loves likes and comments on her FB page.She is confused about her feeling and doesn’t mind changing BF frequently if she is not happy with current one. We live life only once so it shouldn’t be to fulfill society and your parent’s expectation. Its your life and you should live it to fullest for your own sake.

I also loved the fact that women is ready to accept her own feeling and emerged as strong character. Author being a male has done excellent job in portraying female character with all her emotion and complex feelings. Comparison between vodka and love is quite interesting and has been portrayed number of times in book. Its typical metro read.

Certain lines I liked from book

I assumed myself to be different from other girls, in reality I was stupid, dumb vulnerable as any other girl

If love is all about freedom and honest expression then how can one associate it with loyalty?

Also some of title of chapter are quite interesting like –
Life is too short, Be different Be weird
Don’t be where you are tolerated, be there where you are celebrated
Don’t pretend, you live only once

My Rating – 4/5
After a long time I finished book in just two sitting 🙂 And now I am going to check author’s earlier two books.

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Epic Love Stories – Book Review

Title
Ganga and Shantanu – A love story written on water

Satyavati and Shantanu – A love story made possible by a son’s sacrifice

Author – Ashok.K.Banker
Publication – Westland
Price – 599/ – Set of 5 Books , 125/- per book

I never feel interested in reading mythology..never felt its my cup of tea. Read a lot abt Ashok Banker’s Ramayana series..some very good reviews from my blogger frens still never get courage to actually get hold of one of his book. Now when blogadda announce that his new series is up for review..i immediately applied and also got selected to review two books ( Ganga and Shantanu And Satyavati and Shantanu ).

Was surprised to see such a short book. Its only 75 pages.
Ganga and Shantanu
Mahabhisha king of ikshwaku clan went to pay homage to lord brahma. Ganga queen of all rivers on earth also came to pray her homage to lord brahma.Typical love at first sight scene from bollywood happen and he fall in love with beautiful Ganga. Lord brahma felt offended by these lovebrids and gave curse to live one mortal life on earth. Same time 8 Vasu also went to a trip and steal the holy cow on persuasion of wife of duoy. They also got curse to spend one year of mortal life on earth and duoy has to spend one fulllifetime in mortal form. Mahabhisha took birth in form of King Shantanu and got married to human form of goddess Ganga and story continues with love lust and betrayal by ganga. Ganga is dutiful wife but has to sarcifice her children year after year. Bound by his vow to not question Ganga, Shantanu never asked any question but couldnt stop himself when ganga gave birth to their 8th child. Ganga gave answer to all his question but left him afterwards.

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Satyavati and Shantanu

Second book ( Satyavati and shantanu) starts when shantanu return to his capital found a tall young man waiting for him. This man was his son Devarata who later on become a great king of Hastinapur. Shantanu still misses ganga and during one of his hunting trip met fisherman daugther Satyavati on ferri ride and lost his heart. He want to marry satyavati but got down by demand from her father ( fisherman king panchmani) of giving throne of hastinapur to son of Satyavati instead of his elder son devarata. Devarata got to know about this and took two vows to get back his father’s love. He later got famous as Bhisma after taking these vows.

My take on book ;-> First thing – While reading book TV stars who portrayed these character were coming to my mind 🙂

We have read the Mahabharta stories from our elder during lazy afternoon after school hours..but this is fresh take on old stories with modern-day outlook and language. However there is a lot of lust involved in language that you keep on wondering is this true love or just body desire of God and Goddess. I wish author has added some of his creative take on old stories. We know these stories by heart and just adding physical attraction touch doesnt make it an intersting read.

Other Title from the Series ->
Satyavati and Shantanu
Amba and Bhishma
Devayani, Sharmishtha and Yayati

About Author -> Ashok Kumar Banker is internationally acclaimed epic reteller whose work is published in 56 countries.His writing is used as a teaching aid in management and educational courses worldwide. His e-book venture akbebooks.com is India’s first best-selling e-bookstore and e-publisher. Ashok is 48 years old and lives with his family in Mumbai.

My Rating – 3.5/5

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3’s A Crowd – Book Review 2

                                                                                           

 

 

 

 Title : 3’s A Crowd

Author:    Vijay Nagaswami

Price:        INR. 250/-

Publisher: Westland

   This book is 3 rd in series by Chennai based relationship counsellor Vijay Nagaswami. His earlier two books “24* 7 Marriage : Smart Strategies for good beginning” and ” The fifty – 50 Marriage : Return to intimacy” dealt with some tips and tricks abt surviving in marriage in era where divorce are ever increasing.

3’s A crowd deals about understanding and surviving infidelity. Quoting from back page

ITs a myth that only men have affairs.

Who do you think they are having affair with ? It’s not only the aggrieved partner that needs to  understand and survive infidelity. The perpetrator too is sometimes a victim of affair.

Book is divided into two parts 1) Understanding Infidelity 2) Surviving Infidelity

 First few chapter explains how affairs are so common these days specially in middle and higher socio economic class and its like everybody has a token in their hand and waiting for their turn. Author has included several stories about couple who think they are just fren and sharing some 50 sms and 20  mails and few hours on call everyday  is perfectly normal frenship 🙂 Every line is followed by a story of affair..most of the time ppl think they are casual frens and soon they start feeling emotionally attached.

There are several examples of couple who found their spouse in relationship with colleague and it was so easy to track them down coz of sms/phone bills/email etc.  He also covered e-affair in which couples havent met but are actively involved each other through internet.  And there is something called “peer pressure affair” ( I actually laughed out loud after reading this 🙂 ) How ppl look for affair just to get out of image of ” party pooper “

Second part which cover surviving infidelity deals with trauma of aggrieved and transgressor patrner and later how to survive the bandwagon.

My take on book – I got this review copy from Blogadda. When I showed my interest in book, i didn’t realise that this in nont fiction book. I hardly read any non-fiction so at first moment i repented when I got review copy but it was not disappointed at all. I liked the fact that author has not looked those in affairs as villian and made book interesting with lot of short stories probably from his clients 🙂

My Rating – 3/5

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at  “http://www.blogadda.com

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