the undomestic goddess - sophie kinsella

funny, hearty, endearing... boy do i wish that when i'm stressed out i could do the same as the hot babe here... she just walks out of her high powered job, and la de da..... ends up taking a job as a housekeeper? the girls who can't cook, clean or sew, learns with the help of gardener cum boyfriends mom... and has most people fooled for a while... till both her worlds clash.

entertaining... but personally i preferred the other books... shopaholic n sister...

lethal seduction- jackie collins

got this cheap in mph... served my bungled up journey well, finished it in... 6 or 7 hours. hehe ... does a good job of filling in the hours.

about 3 hot shot 29 year old ladies, the people they're involved with, and getting their own thing. part hollywood, party new york... not exactly funny, but as i said... fills in the hours pretty well.

hmm shall i get her other books going cheap? :)

gentle warrior - julie garwood

beautiful romance set in king williams time. the heroine is a golden haired beauty, who vows to avenge the murders of her entire family which she has witnessed. living out of doors, she stumbles upon a fallen lord, who needs her skills in healing, and lo and behold, upon recovery, he is the knight who vanquishes her enemy, though after he marries her, and both discover that yes! they do love each other. well alls well in this happy tale, enemy defeated, remaining family reunited, and hero and heroine live happily ever after.

nice to read a typical historical romance after a long time.

stonehenge- bernard cornwell

hmm.... set in ancient times where the sun god and moon god were still worshipped, and human sacrifices were still rampant,it tells the tale of rathrynn, ( the current location of stonehenge ) and its surrounding localites, the feuds and wars between the tribes, and how the temple dedicated to the sun god was built, the ruins of which make the stonehenge of today.

we see the daily lives of the warriors, priests, chieftains and builders, through the eyes of saban, a son of a chieftain, brother to a cripple who goes on to become a priest, and also a warrior brother who eventually murders his father for the sake of being chief. saban grows up, passes the rites of manhood, almost gets married but ends up a slave, and is then freed, to become a builder. the story goes through his life and shows how it ends. his loves, his struggles, hopes and dreams, and how he accomplishes the monumental task of building the great sun temple.

pandora- anne rice

truly scary in the sense that this is one vampire book which can bore me in some places. seriously, dude... mixing philosophy, ancient rome, egypt... with blood drinkers... gee.
think i'll stick to.... hmm.... christopher pike? though i read that ages ago.... as a teenager.

when the wind blows- james patterson

modern day sci-fi adventure... read about max, a brilliant, pretty, eleven year old girl who can fly... courtesy of wings... a genetically induced development by a bunch of unscrupulous doctors and scientists. she grows up in a lab/ school which is home to her and would not have known otherwise, had she not escaped... after the school was terminating certain projects... i.e. other fellow children like her.
she eventually befriends a dedicated veterinarian and an fbi agent who help her and others like her.
yup all the goody goody stuff. a catchy read.

the tent of orange mist- paul west

Scald Ibis is a 15 yr old teenager in Nanking, China, when China is taken over by the Japanese hundreds of years ago. Her own house is taken over by the Japanese, and she raped, along with the rest of the females all over China. Her mother used such then killed, her brother killed too. Of that she does not learn, merely that her family has disappeared ( her father, a learned calligrapher, put to the front ) and that now she is alone with other girls in a similar fate, to be "used" such by japanese troops till one commanding officer takes a liking to her and she is freed of her 'obligations'... only to learn to become a 'geisha', or rather, an imitation of the famous japanese geishas, those ladies who sing, dance, mime, recite poetry, pour tea, and organise events. In the course of her survival in the 'tent of orange mist', the new place her house has become, she actually meets her father... who is but the new houseboy in disguise; forced to turn a blind eye in order to stay alive and be close to his daughter. this takes a turn on him, as it does any father, and he is killed towards the end of the story, though, after he has his revenge on the japanese officer whose 'protection' his daughter is under.
this is a sombre read at times. half way through i watched this dvd, memoirs of a geisha- heard its book was better from a friend. hmm. might have preferred that!

a woman's place - linda grant

about catherine, a lady pi who goes undercover in a computer firm with her partner, to find out who is behind some suggestive messages being sent out. what they land into is some serious sexual harassment where she ends up the main target after another lady gets killed! a thrilling read. finished it the next day.

the testament - john grisham

john grisham lives up to his name in this one... nate is a hard, tough living lawyer coming out of rehab for the umpteenth time for a specific purpose.. his boss sends him all the way to the amazon jungle to find a missionary as she is the heir of an eleven billion dollar fortune which is being fought over greedily by her various previously unknown to her siblings, left to her by her apparently crazy/lucid ailing father who jumps out of a window to his death upon signing his will, or testament, and after having lost contact with the said daughter at her discretion.
set half the time in the brazilian jungle, this story is set to a slightly different tune than his other standard courtroom jail themes, and endeavours more to the human spirit. a good read.

butterfly weed

a patch adams story a 100 years ago...! sweet, with its own romantic tale built in... albeit.. a harrowing ending. could learn a thing or two, about medicine too! d guy can tell if u have pellagra, or worms, or an empyema, and treat u too! seriously, a delightful read.

sold down the river - barbara hambly

ben is a 41 year old liberated black... bought and freed along with his mother and sister when he was 7 years old, he goes on to become a talented pianist and a doctor in paris. upon his return to new orleans where he is robbed and is forced to foist upon his mom, he resorts to taking up an undercover job for cash to stay independantly, and also because his mom asks him to do the job... namely, to act as a black slave for the same white manager who used to be their master.... as a favour to him to discover who is sabotaging his plantation. ben undertakes the risk, and discovers many things long forgotten... what being a slave does to an individual, and he learns who his father was. this story describes the traumas that black people who are slaves have to put up with, their hardship and their struggles. not easy to read. not a very catchy writing style either.

socialite evenings - shobha de

kinda crappy. modern day divorcee who finds herself independant in mumbai (bombay), india. her story, how she grew up with a traditional family, broke out, had friends, gossip gossip gossip, blah blah blah, married, how she ended up in her current situation, and how she rates and chooses her choices and opportunities. read it only as a time pass.

stripped bare - lowri turner

a modern day chick lit, different style from sophie kinsella. 3 ladies featured here... a 37 yr old hot babe with legs and plenty of style, along with her 4 kids, who is lacking a sex life with hubby dearest and can't figure it out till the end, a 35 year old chubby fireball with an adorable kid and a loser of a husband who falls for a lapdancer and has the nerve to tell her about it, and a 27 year old pretty youngster who has it all yet has to fall for a married man... despite it not working the past 4 years.
kind of a sob story... till the middle... then its pretty humourous, to see the ways the girls cope with one thing after the other... between the men in their life and their jobs and each other.
a fun, light, read. will keep you occupied if you're not picky. i enjoyed it :) after all, all serious books and no play makes raj a dull girl! hehe.

voodoo dreams - jewell parker rhodes

honestly, i was wondering if i should pick this book up or not. wouldn't want to be scared out of my wits! but reading it turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
marie is just a little girl, living with her grandmother in a little wooden house in the bayous in the late 1800's. they are 'free coloreds', a term she doesn't think about until she is older and sees other blacks who are slaves. she also leads a normal, happy go lucky existence in the swampy bayous with her grandmother, spending evenings listening to her granny singing. all questions about herself, or her mother, are met with silence.
a chance encounter with a stranger in the swamps when she is twelve persuades her that her granny is holding out on something, which she has been wondering about her whole life... "who am i". twelve is also when she has her first vision. her granny is convinced the strangers meeting is crucial to them leaving and going to new orleans, which they do, when marie is fifteen, in search of a husband.
new orleans is where marie gets married, has more visions, and gets entangled in a web of deceit that passes her off as a voodoo queen. incidentally, marie IS third in line to be a voodooinne, or voodoo queen. what she sees and hears and is capable of performing, usually when she enters a trance during performances staged by the man holding her literally a prisoner, are real. she is exploited such till she finds a way to stop, when her grandmothers and husbands lives are threatened.
the voudon religion, or voodoo as it has come to be known, is described as how marie understands it. how it came from africa, how it was practised by her mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother, and how it is a peaceful religion, that has been exploited by others who scare and intimidate people for their own means, is the gist of this book. the voodoo god damballah, the great god, is portrayed as a snake. marie, when she communicates with damballah, in a trance, writhes like a snake, and is capable of performing miracles. it also describes marie's gentle and beautiful relationships with her husband, and a white catholic priest. yes, in new orleans in the 1800's!
highly rated by whoopi goldberg, it is an interesting read, different from the usual, or the expected, while entertaining too.

sister of my heart - chitra banerjee divakaruni

a truly heart rending tale of two little girls, inseparable as only sisters ( yup, you guessed it, they actually aren't ) could be.
set in where else, india, it starts off with anju and sudha as babies... and ends with one being coveted by the others husband. hehe... just a viewpoint expressed, not that that's the whole gist of the story.
well, the gist is, being set in india, calcutta to be exact, it describes the girls growing up experiences, how they cope with ungainly and unasked for knowledge ( or rather, how one of them does ) and how it affects their relationship. from falling in love with the greatest love of their life ( a total stranger in a cinema, yup, its indian fiction, dude! ) to sacrificing their all.... sob sob... its really a most interesting read.
incidentally, chitra banerjee is the author of mistress of spices, which has recently been made into a movie starring d beautiful aishwarya rai ( yup, i'm a girl, and i was drooling! ) so... do go watch that, AND read this, k! much better!

the binding chair

the binding chair doesn't just refer to little chinese women with pretty, dainty feet wearing silk slippers... it describes the whole painful process of binding feet, through the eyes ( or rather, feet ) of mayli. thats just for the beginning. the story goes on to describe mayli's life in china, how she's married off early via an arranged marriage.... tries to go back to her family after the uncaring cruelty inflicted by her husband ( little does she know, all decked up in her bridal finery, that she is the heartless guys Fourth wife ) but of course, as families go, is Not met with outstretched arms by her mama or grandmama, so... mayli takes off after much planning... and after scouting china ( on d back of a slave... as with bound feet, she's incapable of even running away on her own two feet.... gotta be carried around ala running away! )... ends up in the infamous profession of all time.. yup she sells her body. mind you, only to whites... no chinese, after all thats done to her... duh... do you think she wants to see anymore chinese men, no way hoozay! even a girl down in the dumps has some choices, eh?
well... there comes her turning point.. not forgetting some heartache.. like an unwanted pregnancy... well the turning point is that this red headed white guy falls in love with her, feet and all, ( feet especially! the whole point, or rather, mayli's point, is that he doesn't see her as any different because of them! ) so well... they marry... and though she can't carry a child all the way through, she's been scarred.. her 'daughter' as close to her heart as can be, is her niece.
the story is told both through mayli's and her nieces points of view.... makes for interesting storytelling, as it actually starts with the nieces growing pains through childhood, boarding school, and how her infamous chinese aunt ( especially in those days, a century or two ago! ) influences her life, much to her mom's chagrin.
another thing, mayli is astonishingly beautiful! yup, even when she's fifty over! so... all in all... with this little summary.... hmmm too much to write already! maybe you'd like to read this book sometime, which has been grouped in a simlilar category as 'memoirs of a geisha'.