what came out of “false impression”

“…. and then, i held her while she wept.”

now i can move on; i have finished reading the book.

i love reading… fiction mostly.  but not all best sellers appeal to me.  i have read almost all of the standard list of authors that probably every average indian reads.  and even those authors, the ones still alive, dont write books in the same standard that they used to.  so it has turned out to be tough picking a book these days.  and not everybody likes the same kind of writing as you do, so it is also tough to get anybody to recommend new authors or books.

sometime back, i read “false impression” by jeffrey archer.  the characters and the circumstances were so contrived that i was curious to see if anybody even read the book to completion and if they did what they thought about the book.  so i started reading reviews of it on amazon and thus i discovered debra hamel!  here is a reviewer who simply hit the nail right on the head!  we all have favorites.  and debra hamel has become my first ever, favorite reviewer.

i totally agreed and identified with her sensibility and taste in books that it struck me - here is a way i could discover new authors!  i could just blindly pick books that she recommends in her reviews.  so i went through some of her reviews and made a list of a few books that i found interesting for which she had given 5 star ratings.

1. By The Time You Read This – Giles Blunt
2. No Time For Goodbye – Linwood Barclay
3. The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield
4. Remember, Remember – Sheldon Goldfarb
5. The Oxford Murders – Guillermo Martinez
6. The Distant Echo – Val McDermid

the second in the list is the book i just finished reading.  as debra hamel put it, it was “deliciously thrilling”!  after a long time, a book that i thoroughly enjoyed.  and the aptly titled “false impression” perfectly impressed upon me the philosophy that everything happens for a reason, and a good one at that, by indirectly leading me to a great reviewer which in turn led me to an exciting way of discovering new authors.

so i am off to the library tommorow for another from the list!

felt like a dream

i fell asleep yesterday night as soon as my head hit the pillow. but sometime in the middle of the night, i came awake to feel the earth shake. i remembered puvana chithi saying they had felt an earthquake around the time that the tsunami hit and were thinking that it must be an aftermath of something big that must have happened elsewhere. i thought something in the same lines and before panic set in i slipped into oblivion again. then what followed was a minor car accident and me getting hounded by the insurance company.

in the morning i get up and remember nothing that happened in the night.  i remember it all now because my collegue here asks another if he felt the earthquake yesterday!!! now i know the first part of my dream was not a dream at all… the 2nd part ofcourse was!

so there! i had my first experience of an earthquake, although a groggy one and thankfully a minor one at that!