Books N Unicorns

'A Life of my Own' is a story that will take you on an emotional ride; sympathy, joy, anger, and pride, all wrapped up in this 168 page book. Shweta is pregnant for the first time post several years of her marriage, but her husband and in-laws force her to consult a doctor for the baby's gender reveal. Things go downhill after that and Shweta has no other choice but to protect her foetus from her torturing in-laws. Her journey is inspiring and written with honesty. The uniqueness of the plot was the conversation between the baby and God, where the inquisitive former would ask a variety of questions about it's mother and the people around her. Their brief chit-chats are pretty interesting as well. I appreciate the author's way of presenting her characters. As much I enjoyed reading the book, my heart sank down everytime there was a remark on female foeticide in India and the blind bias for a male child. We usually ignore this fact assuming it's a rural thing and

Till We Meet Again is the story of Aryan, a zealous young man who is ready to nurture his passion and win the world when a personal tragedy weighs him down with family's responsibilities. The author has blended emotions, family relationships, vengeance, hope and love in a praiseworthy way in this book. The hidden highlight of the book is the way the protagonist learns life lessons; finding his purpose in life from his sister Rhea, passion and desire from landlady Kavya, sacrifice from his mother, and power of family from his brother Rohan. This is the story of a boy's journey of becoming a man while facing unexpected situations and meeting vivid people. The book starts a bit slow, majorly because of the wide range of vocabulary which might reduce the reading speed as well. The book gains pace after a while and the plot begins to take an interesting shape. This is the book if you are looking for one with a deeper human emotion perspective and feel the words describing so mu

 My Words Will Find You is a poem collection by Amit Kumar Srivastava who is an orthodontist by profession. The book comprises of 36 poems with beautiful two-liners introducing the theme of every poem. The paper quality is very good and the poem collection can be finished in a single go. The poems I liked the most are: "How well they play the game Stabbing With Surgical Precision, appearing in your friend's name Curtailing the backdrop of vision, they make salt and sugar look the same." "Brooding over past is like Taking medicine for the disease you have been cured for Anguishing over future is like Taking medicine for the disease you fear will have." The book does need a bit of proofreading since there are a few grammatical errors. Some poems are very deep and beautiful, while some sound as if the poet made more effort into rhyming the words than trying to bring the sense out of the words. I was hoping more from the book because the

The Stationery Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali is one of my first few books of the decade, and I'm so glad I came across this book at my local bookstore.  This is one of books that stay with you for a long, long time. Marjan Kamali has poured so much love and pain and emotions in this book, it's almost impossible to finish it without teary eyes. The protagonists Roya and Bahman are a young couple whose romance starts and grows in a stationery shop belonging to Mr. Fakhri, who too has a small yet powerful role in the story. The narration, particularly of the Iranian lifestyle and households is remarkable and the reader finds her/himself in the streets of Tehran. All the side characters, including Zari, Mrs. Aslan, Jahangir, and Mr. Walter have been given enough and perfect amount of text space and power in the story. There's always something happening in the story and it's really hard for the reader to out the book down. The dilemma of relationships between Roya