Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Babur Khan – a hard-lined jihadi who enforces strict Sharia laws and promises to get rid of the Poppy pashas and infidel Americans –is also hunting for the Kohinoor to ensure that India doesn’t get its hands on the document.Continue reading
Have you ever stopped and noticed the amount of negativity we are surrounded by? It’s in the media, movies, television…sometimes it comes from our family and friends…and of course, there’s all the negative self-talk in our heads. It’s crazy and chaotic, it tells you that what you have is not enough, that you need to try just a little harder, work a little bit longer, look better than your best…run, run, run….harder, faster, more!
“The moment the lawyer opened his eyes he knew he’d be tired for the rest of the day. He wasn’t sure whether he’d heard it on the radio or read it in the newspaper, but he’d come across a specialist who described sleep in terms of cycles. Often the reason people are tired, the specialist explained, was not due to insufficient sleep but rather a sudden awakening before the cycle had run its course. The lawyer did not know anything about the cycles – their duration, their starting point, their ending point…”
Starting slowly, languidly, Kashua sketches the plot and characters in broad, bold, sweeping strokes.Continue reading
It’s a new year! And a new year means that it’s time to set new resolutions.
Photo Credit: Brett Jordan via Compfight cc
But we’ve all set resolutions with the best of intentions only to have them fall away by the wayside within a month. And for this reason, a lot of us have simply given up on them. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Resolutions aren’t about setting goals and then beating ourselves up when we can’t achieve them.
We’ve all of us set goals
“Lose 10 kgs in time for the annual beach vacation. Which is in, like, 2 months!”
Or thought about plans that we want to achieve
“Buy an island in Greece”
But how often have we thought about how we want to feel?
Eh?
Yeah. Think about it. Now, quick: How do you want to feel?Continue reading
While the coffee brews…get to know a bit about Naina Madan.
When you land on her blog, you’re greeted by bright, happy colors and a lovely header done with cool fonts and a really cute graphic of a girl on a bike.
Naina shares little slices from her life in a chatty, relatable tone. Even if you don’t generally like reading personal blogs, you’ll be drawn in by her writing style.Continue reading
When Ruth picks up a piece of flotsam that has washed up on the beach near her home in British Columbia, little does she know that her life will be changed. For in that package, which at first glance looked liked a jellyfish, is a Hello Kitty lunchbox with a diary, a bunch of old letters in French, and an old watch.
The diary belongs to 16-year old Nao Yasutani, who wants to write the story of her 104-year-old anarchist, feminist Buddhist grandmother. But she ends up writing about her life, the unimaginable ijime (shame) she faces in school, tidbits of Zen wisdom from her grandmother, and the sheer heartbreaking despair of life – both she and her father want nothing more than to commit suicide.
As Ruth is drawn into Nao’s world, she finds herself spending all of her spare time trying to track Nao down. She desperately scrolls through information online to try and find out if Nao or her family feature in the tsunami casualty list; she runs a number of searches to try and corroborate some of the stories from Nao’s diary; and in her quest, she forgets that a decade has passed between the time that Nao wrote the diary and it washed up on the beach near Ruth’s home.Continue reading
Can I let you in on a secret? I have seen the devil, and I know its name. Come closer, so I can whisper it in your ear.
{ NetGalley }
Really. It is the devil! Because every time you promise to be good, to not get tempted by another book you simply have to read and to hell with all the other books that are piling up alarmingly on your to-read pile, there it is, with a shiny new book that you just cannot resist. And so you succumb, over and over and over again.Continue reading
This is a guest post by KB Hoyle, author of The Gateway Chronicles. Enjoy!
Because sometimes it’s more fun to hear from the readers than the author, I interviewed several of my teenage readers this week the day after the release of book 5, The Scroll. Blaine and Jennifer are ninth-grade girls, Keisha is an eleventh-grade girl, and Terra, who came into the room just as I was asking the last question, is in twelfth grade. With the exception of Keisha, these are all girls who have been readers of The Gateway Chronicles since I first self-published them, before I was signed by TWCS Publishing House. They are also current creative writing students of mine, so they really have the inside track!Continue reading
Stir Fried Chicken
I love cooking over the weekend. After 5 days of typical Indian food – roti, vegetables, lentils – I crave different cuisines. And though the weekend is the only time I cook, I don’t always want to make something elaborate or experimental. One-pot dishes bursting with flavors and color are my favorites at those times.
One of my go-to dishes is this absolutely yummy Stir Fried Chicken. I combined elements from a couple of different recipes and added a few touches of my own. The result – simple, wholesome, nutritious, and quick!
Before we begin, a couple of notes:Continue reading
I tend to read chick-lit and short stories as “fillers” between two heavy books. Chick-lit because they’re light and generally feel-good stories. They rarely linger with you too long. Short stories, on the other hand, are always a joy to read. A few pages and the story is done. Perfect for times when you’re feeling kinda restless and not in the frame of mind to read an entire novel. (That happens very rarely around here, but it does happen!) Final Cut by Uday Gupt is a collection of longer than usual short stories.Continue reading
