And now, it’s my pleasure to announce that we are going to give away few copies of the novel ‘Stilettos in the Newsroom’ on BTL.
This giveaway event is going to be the first one independently organised by me. Previously, here, we had announced a joint-giveaway with ‘A Journey Called…’

Rules:

1. We will provide a link to a Google Docs Form at a later part of this post. Once you click on the link, you will be redirected to the form. And once there, you will need to fill out few interactive questions (Don’t worry, random stuffs.) for us. These questions were selectively set up by the author herself.

2. We respect privacy. Hence our decision to include the form. We know many readers hesitate to participate in these kinds of giveaways where they have to put in their email id within the comments section. With our form system, you will not have to provide your id in public. You will need to provide your mail id in one of the input boxes in the form. That way, once the contest gets over, we will be able to contact you over email. Sounds fun, right?

3. The deadline of this contest is 28th June, 2011. That is, you have exactly a month in hand.

4. Multiple entries are allowed.

5. A Facebook Event page has been created for this giveaway. Do ‘attend’ and also invite your friends, families and fellow book lovers to participate in the event. You can get it here: Facebook Event Page: Book Giveaway ‘Stilettos in the Newsroom’ by Rashmi Kumar

6. Last but not the least: The author has decided to give away three copies of the book. So, three of you can be the winners of ‘Stilettos in the newsroom’ at the end of the month.

So, what are you waiting for?

Hop in!

To be redirected to the form, PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK.

More details about the author:
The author on Facebook: Rashmi Kumar
The novel on Facebook: Stilettos in the newsroom
The author on Twitter: @Rashmi_Kumar
Author’s website: rashmikumar.in

In case you want to buy the book, follow the links here:

To get all the updates from ‘Between The Lines‘, the must visit place? It’s Facebook page: Between The Lines. Visit, ‘like’, explore!

Or you may like to follow this link:
Between The Lines

Promote Your Page Too

[N.B. Featured image courtesy: http://www.darcypattison.com/pr-notes/book-giveaway-contests/]

‘The tale of techies‘
‘…codes‘
‘Hitler vanished‘
‘Hawa Mahal‘
‘Napoleon vanished‘ et al.
When these words adorn the cover of a book, giving you the faintest hope that it must be the ideal techie-cum-murder mystery story you were in search for, ‘Hickory Dickory Shock‘ by Sundip Gorai surely fulfills your nerdy needs. When I took the decision to take up the book, never did I know that this killer combination is going to be my fodder. And at the end of the day, the book did not disappoint me.

‘Hickory Dickory Shock‘ has major protagonists in the form of Maninder Tuten Chatterjee, Geetika. Other characters like the bosses from the firm Shivan Computers play important roles throughout the story. Tuten Chatterjee or 210, as he is popularly called, is one of the most intelligently-crafted character in a novel in recent times. Few flaws here and there kept apart, 210 is the guy every geek wants to be. He finds codes as yummy as the burger in company canteen, random restaurant prices make him go week in the knees and make him find some pattern in them. His famous thinking of Mexican Nachos to form Fibonachos by wordplay gives the evidence of the type of guy he is.

The storyline makes the character show his multidimensional talent as well. The story revolves around the stealing of ‘LoRD‘, an innovative software built by the engineers of Shivan Computers. Worse, two senior officials from the company was murdered on the very day ‘LoRD‘ was supposed to have a successful launch in front of a very large audience, all of whom were either techies or journalists. 210 turns out to be one of the suspects. Some weird things also start happening in the company this time, and 210 takes the responsibility on himself, with the help of his love interest Geeks or Geetika, to unearth the mystery behind all these happenings.

Writing: This book is indeed a fusion of multiple genres – Murder Mystery/ Espionage/ Cipher trail/ Corporate war/ Indian history – all at once. To the uninitiated, it may almost sound like typical Dan Brown murder mysteries, with touches of geeky intelligence in the forms of anagrams, codes, and puzzles. And the author has not disappointed the readers in that aspect. A well-knit plot, intelligent storytelling, well-crafted characters – these you will be getting for sure from the novel. Writing is simple – with word usages that never make you feel out of the place, and simple sentence constructions with witty humor impressing you throughout.

Overall Rating: 8/10

More Details:
The author on Facebook: Sundip Gorai
The author on Twitter: @goraisundip
The novel on Facebook: ‘Hickory Dickory Shock’
Website: www.hickorydickoryshock.com

To get more book review and author interview updates from ‘Between The Lines‘, the must visit place? It’s Facebook page: Between The Lines. Visit, ‘like’, explore!

Love is in the air….not just those “love at first sight Romeos and Juliets” of our day, but even the mother dealing with a frisky child, the girl pampering a stray dog, or a boy trying to coax a cat…

There are several occasions when you simply wish for a camera, a spare moment to click such simple display of human expression- Now that’s what A wanderer defines as LOVE CORNERED.

We keep wishing to frame these moments, alas our mobile cameras don’t work right at the moment…

Hey! You can frame it still..In just 50 to 100 words.

“LOVE CORNERED“ is now jointly organized by BETWEEN THE LINES, MUSINGS OF A WANDERER, REFLECTIONS and A JOURNEY CALLED…

Musings cornered a love and framed it in a tram…come along and frame little love corners and share your stories at the “discussion box of the FB page”.

The top 5 best answers…get free copies author signed copies of Musings of a Wanderer. One you are done, invite others to share a tale too :) in just 50-100 words :)

Important Details:
The best 5 short stories will be selected and will get featured in “A journey called…” and the names of the winners will be declared right way. So what’s your story- you got a month to submit tales. Event closes on 17 June 2011.

Visit Musings of a Wanderer right now!!!!

If you want to buy this book, all you have to do is to follow this link:

To get more book review and author interview updates from ‘Between The Lines‘, the must visit place? It’s Facebook page: Between The Lines. Visit, ‘like’, explore!

Or you may like to follow this link:
Between The Lines

Promote Your Page Too

Anyways, this post is to mention the books I have read till date (the total time limitation being up to 31st May, starting from 1st April). I will surely love to make some add-ons with one-two more books in my paltry list, but with burdens of exams and stuffs over the shoulders, don’t think too much should be expected.

Anyways, the books that I have only reviewed for BTL (Between The Lines, this blog) is up in this list. Am not mentioning another one which I could not, somehow, manage to put up a review of. I will add it to this list with the requisite link, only when I will be able to make justice to the same.

In order of appearance on BTL,

1. ‘The Long Road‘ by Dr. Vivek Banerjee
2. ‘She broke up, I didn’t‘ by Durjoy Datta
3. ‘Stilettos in the Newsroom‘ by Rashmi Kumar
4. ‘Musings of a Wanderer‘ by Shreya Chatterjee
5. ‘Trapped Wings, Open Sky‘ by Nisha Arppit
6. ‘Urban Shots‘, edited by Paritosh Uttam
7. ‘Hickory Dickory Shock‘, by Sundip Gorai

There is also a review of ‘The Namesake‘ done in this time span, but since it’s a re-post (as mentioned in the post itself), it surely won’t suit here. Hence, omitted.

Though this challenge had nothing to do with author interviews, but I will still like to mention the interviews of the authors that I have done in the given time for BTL – will help me to look back to the time span.

In order of appearance on BTL,
1. Faraaz Kazi, author of ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’
2. Preeti Shenoy, author of ‘Life is what you make it’
3. Bhavna Rai, author of ‘Fate, Fraud & A Friday Wedding’
4. Chandraprakash Mohata, author of ‘Patyala Down de Throat’
5. Dr. Vivek Banerjee, author of ‘The Long Road’
6. Rashmi Kumar, author of ‘Stilettos in the Newsroom’

To know more about the ‘Book Reading Challenge 2011‘, this is the place you need to be redirected.
FAQs here.

More Details:
The Reading Challenge on Facebook: Book Reading Challenge 2011
BRL on Facebook: BookReaders Lounge
IMB on Facebook: In my Bookshelves

To get more book review and author interview updates from ‘Between The Lines‘, the must visit place? It’s Facebook page: Between The Lines. Visit, ‘like’, explore!

Or you may like to follow this link:
Between The Lines

Promote Your Page Too

Editor: Paritosh Uttam
Format: Paperback
Language: English
ISBN: 9788187330448
Pages: 224
Price: Rs. 145.00

Though not the best around in terms of quality, ‘Urban Shots‘ by Grey oak Publications is undoubtedly one of the most talked about short-story collection in recent times, thanks to the viral marketing and publicity stunts by the publishers. With the new wave hitting the Indian publishing market like never before, short story collections like this brings fresh air for us voracious readers. Following the way shown by the ubiquitous Chetan Bhagat, most of the latest publications around our country are either novels with plot surrounding college-romance-based-cliches or novels mostly plotted with the IT industry as the background. A poetry collection, as I have reviewed one last week here, or a short story collection, in this scenario, is very welcome.

‘Urban Shots‘, edited by Paritosh Uttam, is a collection of ’29 urban tales by 13 writers’. Paritosh Uttam, the author of ‘Dreams in Prussion Blue’ and the writers whom he has managed to get contribution from for this book are few well-known names as well as novices in the modern Indian writing scenario. The preface is well written by Rohini Kejriwal, an aspiring writer and blogger from Pune.

Interestingly, the stories in the book have been divided into five different sections, namely Relationships, Love, Friendship, Angst and Longing. As a preparation for writing this review, I have been contemplating for few days regarding my approach to the review, and it seems reviewing it on the basis of these divided sections will be easier and at the same time, interesting enough for the readers.

I have selected the stand-outs from each section, and they are mentioned as given below:

Section 1: Relationships
Total seven stories have been included in this section, with the contribution from the likes of Kainaz Motivala, whose face adorn the cover of the book (“the ‘Wake Up Sid’s Tanya chick, you know!” – somebody introduced her to me like this), Paritosh Uttam, the editor of the collection and Ahmed Faiyaz, one of the founding members of the Grey Oak Publishers and the writer of ‘Love, Life and All that Jazz’.
Stand out number: ‘Liberation’ by Malathi Jaikumar and ‘Notes of discord’ by Paritosh Uttam.

Section 2: Love
This section consists of five stories on love, as the section title mentions.
Stand out number: ‘Serendipity’ by Paritosh Uttam

Section 3: Friendship
Total five stories have been included in this section with new names like Prateek Gupta, Kunal Dhabalia, Sahil Khan etc. contributing.
Stand out number: Not any of the ones, really.

Section 4: Angst
This section, undoubtedly, is the best of the lot. And I can go on and on about how well framed the stories are, how well portrayed the characters in each of the stories are, and how much I have liked analyzing each of them.
Stand out number(s): This lot has six stories in it, and five different writers contributing them, as a welcome change. Malathi Jaikumar comes out with yet another mind-blowing story in the form of ‘Just Average’. Other than that, Vrinda Baliga’s ‘Stick Figures’ and ‘Dialects of Silence’, editor Paritosh Uttam’s ‘A cup of tea’ and Hasmita Chander’s ‘The enlightened one’ are well mentionable.

Section 5: Longing
This is the last section of the collection, and the best story, in my opinion, comes out from this section. Total five stories from four writers are collected under this, with names like Bishwanath Ghosh, Kunal Dhabalia, Naman Saraiya etc.
Stand out number: Undoubtedly, Bishwanath Ghosh’s ‘Women in love’.

Overall impression: For us short story fanatics, this collection was a welcome change from the numerous novels of almost-the-same-plot that we go through on a daily basis. Our hats off to the Grey Oak Publishers for coming out with this idea. Also, wishing here all the best to them for the success of their second short-story collection ‘Down The Road’!

Best story of the lot:
Top three, in order, according to us:
1.‘Women in love’ by Bishwanath Ghosh
2.‘Serendipity’ by Paritosh Uttam
3.‘The enlightened one’ by Hashmita Chander

Overall Rating: 8.5/10
[N.B. Normally, the rating procedure followed by me applies for the novels, since I get to review them mostly. But with short story collections like this around the corner, we are working on devising a procedure of rating them too.]

More Details:
The editor on Facebook: Paritosh Uttam
The book on Facebook: Urban Shots
The book on Twitter: @UrbanShotsBook
The book on publisher’s website: Urban Shots

In case you want to buy the book, all you have to do is to follow the link given below:

To get more book review and author interview updates from ‘Between The Lines‘, the must visit place? It’s Facebook page: Between The Lines. Visit, ‘like’, explore!

Or you may like to follow this link:
Between The Lines

Promote Your Page Too

‘Trapped Wings, Open Sky’ by Nisha Arppit is a novel set in the foreground of high profile jobs in MNCs. It’s a story of a girl who fights the patriarchal society with all her strength. A book written well, with characters interesting enough to get quite a hang of, this debut novel by the author has got tremendous capability to make readers like it thoroughly.

The major protagonists of ‘Trapped Wings, Open Sky’ are Preet (the girl mentioned above), her ubiquitous roommates Komal and Sneha, Aman, her guy crush; and minor protagonists in the form of Preet’s bosses. Though I mentioned them as ‘minor protagonists’, but they are ones who made Preet fight their methodologies, lecherous approaches – which in turn, made here come out as a stronger woman at the end of the ordeal. Aman has been portrayed as the guy every girl dreams of marrying. In the process of her fighting the system, Preet starts to acknowledge Aman’s support, and in turn expect a stand behind her from Aman’s side. She realizes that she has fallen for him. The writer has done quite a good job running the different problems in the lives of all the three women, (Preet, Sneha, Komal), in parallel, with ease. Preet has been characterized as the woman with a strong will who is willing to travel places, fight goons, break clichés of the unwritten social rules regarding everything related to a girl’s life.

‘Trapped Wings, Open Sky’ by Nisha gives the reader an opportunity to look into the female psyche intensely. The story of Preet’s life, along with the timely intervention and proper moulding of the other characters in the plot makes the novel a really good read.

Writing: The book starts in a way which can confuse any reader. With two separate stories in two different chapters with no relation between them, ‘Trapped wings, Open sky’ may have a different starting, but the way the author has managed to build up a momentum from there on, and continue it till the end of the story is quite commendable. Not too wordy, simple sentence building, flavors of innocence intertwined in between – this book is surely a recommended read.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

More details:
The author on Facebook: Nisha Arppit
The novel on Facebook: Trapped Wings, Open Sky
Author’s website: http://www.nisharp.com/

In case you want to buy the book, all you have to do is to follow the link given below:

To get more book review and author interview updates from ‘Between The Lines‘, the must visit place? It’s Facebook page: Between The Lines. Visit, ‘like’, explore!

Or you may like to follow this link:
Between The Lines

Promote Your Page Too