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'.