- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden is children’s classic about a young, spoiled girl who finds herself orphaned and is sent to live in a large mansion of her nearest relation- an uncle. Here she finds herself without any servants to listen to her whims all the time and so she starts spending time outside in the garden. She makes new friends and evolves as a person while living in the mansion. Though it’s just a fiction, the book has a theme of how our thoughts shape our reality and might even come off as a bit motivational. - City of My Heart by Rana Safvi
This book is a collection of four texts pertaining to the era of the last Mughal ruler in India and the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny, translated into English by Rana Safvi. The first three texts are about the court and the way of life during Bahadur Shah Zafar, with similar contents and thus can feel monotonous when read one after another. The last text, however, Begamaat ke Aansu tells horrendous accounts of the various prince and princesses who had to run hither and thither to save their lives in the aftermath of the mutiny and the successive arrest of Bahadur Shah Zafar by the British. Their stories are worth knowing about if you are interested in history. - Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Tuesdays With Morrie is not your classic self-help book. Albom shares his conversations with his old professor Morrie who is suffering from a terminal illness. He visits his professor on Tuesdays, hence the title, and they talk about life. The professor shares what life has taught him over the years. Some of these life lessons just seem to be universal.
I won’t call it a must-read but it’s definitely a book worth reading. - My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
My Man Jeeves is the first book in the Jeeves series by P.G. Wodehouse. Here we meet Bertie Wooster’s butler Jeeves who is an amiable character from the start. He seems to be really intelligent and clever and has a solution for every problem. He has an amazing sense of fashion and gets angry when Mr. Wooster does not pay heed to his advice about clothing. Despite everything, he is extremely loyal to Mr. Wooster. The book consists of eight short stories, a few of which doesn’t have the character of Jeeves and I truly missed him in those stories. The general plot of every story begins with a confounding problem either in Mr. Bertie’s life or one of his aristocratic friends and acquaintances. Then a solution is offered (by Jeeves in the stories he is present) which often looks very clever in the moment but later turns out to bring more trouble for the characters and laughter for the readers, then Jeeves comes up with a final solution which leads to a happy ending.
Read at least one Jeeves story, for being acquainted with Jeeves, one of the most renowned butler in literature, would surely be a pleasure.
Book Reviews- November 2019
Published
Under Transformation 