Book Review: The Name of this Book is Secret

The unusual name of the book though is secret (pun intended) and a 4-plus rating on Goodreads gave me the confidence to pick up this one. The story starts in an interesting way, where the author keeps warning you page after page to not read the book. At the start it feels exciting and gives a newness to the writing, but I wish I had paid some attention to it. Guess he was trying to play with the human psyche, and knew that people go ahead and do what they are asked to refrain from. Anyways, coming back to the story, after several warnings by the author to not read the book, which you happily choose to ignore, starts the plot wherein again the author tries to keep the thrill alive by not willing to talk much about the characters (though by the end of the book you realize it didn't make much of a difference anyways). He almost gets to a point where frustration creeps in with the constant 'I wish I dint have to tell you this', and 'I still warn you to not continue reading this' disclaimers!! And after so much hullabaloo about the dangerous secret, the reader would definitely expect something concrete and worth calling a secret, but the author fails to live upto his promise of delivering the same. 

What I liked about this book was the concept of 'Symphony of Smells' and the world of synesthestic people which I was exposed to for the first time. I knew this book was for children, but this one is strictly only for them. It gets very predictable as it reaches the end (though the author refuses to write a concluding chapter and wants us to do all the hard work for our own selves).

In fact while reading this book, I wished I had an adolescent daughter/son and also imagined myself narrating this story with all drama to her/him. 

All in all, I feel instead of announcing disclaimers about not reading the book, the author could have been more specific saying that 'If you are above 14 years of age, you read the book at your own risk, and don't blame me for the disappointment'. This way he could have shifted the onus of dissatisfaction on the reader, and this would have saved himself of some critically devastating reviews. 

But you now what, given a chance I do want to read the 4 other books in the pentalogy, somehow i'm still curious and am willing to take the risk of further disappointment. Funny but true!

Book Review: One Amazing Thing

Well, the initial plot seemed quite interesting where a bunch of people get trapped in a crumbling earthquake hit building, and then decide to share 'one amazing thing' or story from their life to divert their fearing selves from the catastrophic end they are ill-fated for.

The book starts well, and without wasting any time gets straight gets to the main point where earthquake strikes. I picked up this book for the 'one amazing thing' stories that the trapped people would be narrating. However, the disappointment starts with the first story itself, and continues to do so in the stories that followed, as I did not find any thing worth admiring in any of them. The stories lack drama, and while one or two of them were really boring, these everyday life stories had nothing in them worth calling amazing.  Also, I hated the fact that the stories were not narrated in the first person voice, and were written as if the writer is saying them. This made it difficult to connect to the characters and their feelings, and thus maybe failed to get across the 'one amazing thing' of their story. Infact, as the book progresses you get more interested in the main story about the survival of the earthquake victims, and the stories of the characters rather seem to be interfering. Also, the abrupt endings of the narrations and then the incomplete end to the book, gets even more frustrating. 

All in all, neither the intensity of their suffering from earthquake moved you, nor the emotions from the stories touched you. This was my first Chitra Divakaruni book, and I hope the next in my 'to-read' list -- 'The Palace of Illusions' does not leave me discontented.