Welcome to Mailbox Monday, a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued.
I received some great books last week, and just like that my reading slump has gone.
First up, I am very excited to receive The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. This book has been all over the blogosphere and is apparently highly recommended for Gone Girl lovers. And since Gone Girl was one of my top reads of 2013, I literally jumped with excitement when this book was offered up for review. I am so excited that in all probability before this post comes up on Monday, I would have finished the book.
Update: That’s exactly what happened. I started and finished this book within the day. It’s extremely addictive and compulsive reading and I highly recommend it. Detailed review coming up later this week.
Last week, I finally crossed the finish line with Lajja by Taslima Nasrin, which is the last read in my plan of reading a trilogy of books based on Bangladesh, our neighbor to the right. After this, I want to focus on books from Pakistan, our left-hand side neighbor, and keeping that in mind, I selected Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid, and The Return of the Butterfly by Moni Mohsin. Both books are very different from each other.
Discontent and its Civilizations is a book of essays about art, religion, and politics, and a quick scan reassured me that these essays are very much up my alley. The Return of the Butterfly is actually a sequel to The Diary of a Social Butterfly – a book that I haven’t read, and which was very popular when it first came out. As the book title aptly conveys, the story is about a socialite’s life in Pakistan and is supposed to be a witty social commentary on the country as seen through the eyes of a well-heeled socialite. All three books came to me from Penguin Random House.
The last book on my reading list is Ananya by Shilpa Gupta. This book came to me from Rupa Publications. It’s a coming of age story of Ananya who gets pregnant as a teen and that’s pretty much all I know about it. When I casually browsed through it, it comes off a bit like Juno, and I think the book should be quite enjoyable too.
So, I am super looking forward to all these books, and you can expect to see them heavily featured on my blog the whole of March.
What books did you get last week? Which ones are you looking forward to reading? And have you read The Girl on the Train? What did you think about it?
