My Lil’ Book Corner

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” 
― Cicero

I love books. They were my first love…they still are. And I will have to thank my Maa for that. Thanks, Maa! Books have always been an integral part of my life since I can remember. I always preferred to take a book and find a corner to read it, without any disturbance, over any other activity – that’s what I did in most of my summer & winter holidays as a child.

For my coming days, I dream of setting up a library, or at least a room, full of my favourite books. I have plans to fill the walls, from top to bottom, with those books. Wouldn’t it be lovely to spend my ‘me-time’ in that room, inhaling the bookish smell and heading off to a faraway land, watching the lives of some fictitious characters from close quarters? A room like this maybe, eh?

“I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fade out, the real world evaporates. I’m alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.” 

― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

I had started this blog as a place to put down my random rants on all things around me. As with many other things, I started sharing my thoughts on books I read and some bookish rants too. And with this, I came across many like-minded book lovers, with love for similar kind of books and authors. Also, I got to know about many books which maybe, otherwise, I would not have been aware of. So this page is dedicated to all those people who stop by my blog and are solely interested in my bookish thoughts, reviews, and rants. Also, this page will be the place I will refer my friends to when they need my opinion on a book – to buy or read or gift. In my blog, I do not rate the books I read; I simply put down my thoughts on it – positive/negative/things that had touched my heart. I hope this effort of mine will help someone in some way .  And isn’t it wonderful to exchange views and thoughts on some wonderful books you have come across and want book lovers like myself, not to miss?

My Lil’ Book Corner is my place of reading, reviewing & recommending books and anything to do with books. I read books on romance, thriller, travel, mythological or historical backdrop, short stories, chick-lit and once in a while some non-fiction too. In fact I read anything that engages me till the last page. However, my first preference is always fiction, I love to get lost in a world of the author’s making. And hence, I prefer to read one book at a time – living the lives of the character as I make my way through a book till the end.

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” 
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Do come back for regular updates! 🙂

 A. My thoughts on books I had read (since 2012):

1. Aruni Kashyap – The House with a Thousand Stories
2. Shriya Garg – Take one More Chance
3. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni  – The Palace of Illusions 
4. Sid Bahri – The Homing Pigeons
5. E.L. James – Fifty Shades of Grey 
6. Manish Gupta – English Bites 
7. Preeti Shenoy – 34 Bubblegums & Candies
8. Vipin Behari Goyal – Tall Man Small Shadow 
9. Madhumita Mukherjee – The Other Side of the Table 
10. E. R. Braithwaite  – To Sir, With Love 
11. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – The Mistress of Spices
12. Durjoy Datta & Nikita Singh – If It’s not Forever. It’s Not Love. 
13. Clark Prasad – Baramulla Bomber
14. Sheila Parker – The Spirit Within
15. Anmol Rana – Seven Days without You
16. Preeti Shenoy – The Secret Wishlist
17. Faraaz Kazi & Vivek Banerjee – The Other Side
18. Lestine – Unbowed
19. Gillian Flynn- Gone Girl
20. Priyanka Sinha Jha – Supertraits of Superstars
21. Nilesh Shrivastava – No Man’s Land
22. Dorothy Koomson – The Flavours of Love
23. E. B. White – Charlotte’s Web
24. Anandaa – A Cupful of Aha!
25. Vipin Behari Goyal – Maya in search of her Tantric Father
26. Sumeet Jain – Life is a Pack of 52 Cards
27. Various Authors – Potluck : A Literary Collection of the Critique Group
28. Sreemoyee Piu Kundu – Sita’s Curse – The Language of Desire
29. Various Authors – The Milk of Female Kindness – an Anthology of Honest Motherhood
30. Sarika Pandit – Bucketlist of a Traveloholic 
31. K.B. Jensen – Painting with Fire
32. John Green – The Fault in our Stars
33. Ratna Vira – Daughter by Court Order
34. Vipin Kumar – The Bluest Marble
35. Shobhan Bantwal – The Full Moon Bride
36. Harper Lee – To Kill a Mocking Bird
37. Temsula Ao – Laburnum for my Head
38. Varun Agarwal – How I braved Anu Aunty & Co – Founded a Million Dollar Company
39. Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games (#1)
40. O’ Henry – Best of O’ Henry
41. Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea.
42. Rikin Khamar – The Lotus Queen
43. Siddharth Dasgupta – Letters from an Indian Summer
44. Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol
45. A. B. Chakrabarty – Split Second
46. D. Sathwik – In a Feeling Named Love
47. Rajesh Parmeswaran – I Am An Executioner: Love Stories
48. Pinky Acharya – Tat Tvam Asi
49. Anurag Anand – The Legend of Amrapali
50. Sriram Karri – The Autobiography of a Mad Nation
51. Jojo Moyes – Me Before You
52. Markus Zusak – The Book Thief
53. Salil Desai – The Murder of Sonia Raikkonen
54. Santosh Avvannavar – Title is Untitled
55. Liane Moriarty – The Husband’s Secret
56. Santosh Avvannavar – Surrogate Author
57. Rishad Saam Mehta – Hot Tea Across India
58. J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
59. Santosh Avvannavar – God’s Table: The Last Supper
60. Rupa Bajwa – The Sari Shop
61. Santosh Avvannavar – Black, Grey & White
62. Kishalay Bhattacharjee – Che in Paona Bazaar
63. Kunal Nayyar – Yes, My Accent is Real
64. Ruskin Bond – Delhi is Not Far
65. Twinkle Khanna – Mrs. Funnybones
66. Rohit Sharma – 12 Hours (e-book)
67. Parishmita Singh – The Hotel at the Other End of the World (graphic novel)
68. Mulk Raj Anand – Greatest Short Stories (e-book)
69. Samanth Subramanian – Following Fish
70. Saraswati Nagpal – Draupadi: The Fire-Born Princess (a graphic novel)
71. Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None
72. Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveler’s Wife
73. Anita Krishnan – Fluffy and Me
74. Harsh Snehansu – Mango Chutney
75. Jean Sasson – Princess
76. F. Scott Fitzerland – The Great Gatsby
77. Sonia Bahl – The Spectacular Miss
78. Jhumpa Lahiri – Unaccustomed Earth
79. Malala Yousafzai – I am Malala
80. Ruskin Bond – The Blue Umbrella
81. Ruskin Bond – Season of Ghosts
82. Mitra Phukan – A Monsoon of Music
83. Rachel Joyce – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
84. Ruskin Bond – The Room on the Roof and Vagrants in the Valley
85. Kristin Newman – What I was Doing While You were Breeding
86. Blogadda.com – Six Degrees
87. Rachel Joyce – The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
88. Sarnath Banerjee – Corridor (a graphic novel)
89. Paula Hawkins – The Girl on the Train
90. Scott Haas – Those Immigrants!
91. Neil Gaiman – Coraline
92. Bhaskar Chattopadhyay –  Penumbra
93. David Michie – The Dalai Lama’s Cat
94. Marjane Satrapi -Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return
95. Rachna Singh – Band Baaja Boys
96. Twinkle Khanna – The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad
97. Ishani Malhotra – Until I Met You
98. P G Wodehouse – Ukridge
99. Stieg Larsson – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
100. Jatin Hazarika – Shadow Behind the Throne

B. My bookish rants –

1. Forgotten joy 
2. Bookish Hangover 
3. Which Species do You Belong to?
4. Tinkle Tinkle Little Star
5. My First Reading Challenge
6. There is something about this smell 
7. What makes a book good or bad?
8. Books & Wine
9. A New World
10. Do you mark the lines?
11. Mark Downs
12. Why do you love it?
13. Archie will die??
14. Take that!
15. My Best Books
16. Challenge completed!
17. Looking back at 2014 – A Bookish Journey
18. What’s in a Name?
19. A Hangover

C. Bookish challenges, memes, etc. I am a part of (since 2013) –

1. WWW Wednesday hosted by MizB (the host discontinued it from 2015)
2. IQR Challenge 2013, 2014, 2015 hosted by The Tales Pensieve
3. This Week in Books hosted by Lipsy of LIPSY LOST & FOUND.
4. 2016 Monthly Motif Reading Challenge

P.S. (1):- Coming Soon: I am trying to compile a list of all the books I have read till date, which is going to one huge task.

P.S. (2):- I am still a paperback/hardcover girl…yes e-readers haven’t impressed me as yet. UPDATE: I have started reading e-books on my iPad but still prefer my ‘real books’ any day 🙂