Beauty of the book: Life or Death by Michael Robotham

The actual review of the book, Life or Death by Michael Robotham, will be in another post. This is just how I stumbled upon the book and what made me read this awesome book!

I seldom read novels by authors who are unknown to me. Sidney Sheldon, John Grisham, Jeffery Archer, and Frederick Forsyth are the authors I adore. I have also read all the books of Dan Brown and Steig Larsson. Ken Follet, Robert Ludlum, Arthur Hailey, Wilbur Smith, Robin Cook, etc., are the many other authors I have read. I am yet to hook on to Agatha Christie and the mystery novels by JK Rowling, though they are part of my library. The reason I am giving information about all the other authors I read is to give an idea of what sort of authors I prefer and read.

Just by pure chance, I stumbled across the book of Life or Death by Michael Robotham. I had never heard of Michael and I would have not bought this book until I read the book description in an eCommerce site: “Why would a man escape from prison the day before he's due to be released? Audie Palmer has spent a decade in prison for an armed robbery in which four people died, including two of the gang. Seven million dollars has never been recovered and everybody believes that Audie knows where the money is. | For ten years he has been beaten, stabbed, throttled and threatened almost daily by prison guards, inmates and criminal gangs, who all want to answer this same question, but suddenly Audie vanishes, the day before he's due to be released. | Everybody wants to find Audie, but he's not running. Instead he's trying to save a life . . . and not just his own.” The description was intriguing enough for me to add it to my library. The description also made me to start reading this book even though I had planned to read this at a later point of time.

My initial idea was to start with this book and read it until the new John Grisham novel was delivered. I would then have put this book on hold and finish off John’s new book and then resume with this book. Alas, all my plans went for a toss. What began as a 2 hour stint continued till I finished reading the entire book. This is how fantastic the book is. I sacrificed sleep, television, news paper, and other routine exercises to complete this book. I can say that my time was well spent.

Go grab this book without fail!

Half Girlfriend by Chetan Bhagat

Have you ever read a Bollywood movie without songs? Yes, you read my sentence correctly; reading a Bollywood movie. I just did! I have also rated the movie as 2.5 stars. You see, I am a very generous critic like the most popular news paper of India. That folks is how I would review Chetan Bhagat’s new book, Half Girlfriend.

The book (not novel, not story) starts with the main character visiting the author. We see a flash back, not necessarily in black and white, followed by the continuation of the book. The start was somewhat good, and I was wondering whether this is the first book, not related to Chetan’s life, which is engrossing. Alas, it was not the case. The book is monotonous with a lame romantic thread and expected twists and turns specifically suited for our 100 crores blockbusters. The sequence of events is like this: boy meets girl, girl dumps boy, guy meets gal, gal leaves guy and then the typical Bollywood happy ending (it is the same boy/guy and girl/gal; I used different words to indicate their aging). You can actually visualize some of the characters (only Alia is in the cast as of now) who have been finalized for this movie.

Regardless of the book’s popularity, every book by Chetan has been adapted in to a movie. We even got to see Sohail Khan in One Night at a Call Center (this is the worst book by the author, according to me). But with the new book, it seems that the author himself has taken great pains to write a move in a book format. Buy this book at your own risk (it isn’t risky to buy or read, but the statement makes sense when you finish reading the book). Look for the best deals before you buy one. I seriously got this book at a throw away price, during the slugfest of e-commerce portals. Try your luck to get the cheapest deal. Do not blame your luck for reading this book.

Give you feedback on my review in the comments section!