I ship Jamie and Brienne from the ASOIAF (A Song of Ice and Fire) series so so much! I haven’t watched the GoT (Game of Thrones) series yet – except for season one – but the character arcs of these two people in the books is one of my favourites.
I tried to depict the scene where Jamie gives his sword to Brienne so that she could save the Stark sisters with a sword that was reforged from Ned Stark’s sword, Ice.
The description of this sword as given in the ASOIAF books:
The sword has black and red ripples through the steel. Its scabbard glitters gold and is decorated with a row of lion’s heads and smoldering red rubies. The pommel has a golden lion’s head with ruby eyes that shine like two red stars.
What’s your OTP? Um, what is an OTP you ask? OTP equals One True Pair/Pairing, meaning your favourite couple in any series or book or fandom. They need not actually be a couple in the story, but in your head, they make a perfect couple.
Based on the Peabody Award–winning podcast, this tech-filled adventure series pits intrepid Mars Patel and his outcast friends against a brilliant, enigmatic billionaire as they race to figure out why kids are disappearing from their school.
Mars Patel’s friend Aurora has disappeared! His teachers are clueless. His mom is stressed out about her jobs. But Mars refuses to give up—after all, his own dad disappeared when Mars was a toddler, before he and Ma moved to Puget Sound from India. Luckily, Mars has a group of loyal friends eager to help—smart Toothpick, strong and stylish JP, and maybe-telepathic Caddie. The clues seem to point toward eccentric tech genius (and Mars’s hero) Oliver Pruitt, whose popular podcast now seems to be commenting on their quest! But when the friends investigate Pruitt’s mysterious, elite school, nothing is as it seems—and anyone could be deceiving them. Slick science, corporate conspiracies, and an endearingly nerdy protagonist make this a fresh, exciting sci-fi adventure.
Praise:
Interweaving podcast transcripts, instant message threads, emails and newspaper stories, Chari deftly constructs a mystery that is strong in both plot and character. Mars’s friend group is as diverse as their unique abilities, and their teamwork and loyalty are unshakable. Based on the Peabody Award–winning podcast, fans of James Dashner’s The Maze Runner and Stranger Things will clamor for more of Mars Patel. —School Library Journal (starred review).
Author Bio:
Sheela Chari is the author of THE UNEXPLAINABLE DISAPPEARANCE OF MARS PATEL, based on the Peabody Award-winning mystery podcast. Her other novels include FINDING MIGHTY, a Junior Library Guild Selection and Children’s Choice Award Finalist; and VANISHED, an APALA Children’s Literature Honor Book, Edgar finalist for best juvenile mystery, and Al’s Book Club Pick on the Today Show. Sheela has degrees from Stanford University, Boston University, and New York University, where she received an MFA in Fiction. She teaches fiction writing at Mercy College and lives with her family in New York.
This book is based on a podcast, sounds fun already? Well, I don’t remember reading a Middle Grade book with an Indian or an Indian-American rep before, so the fact that one of the protagonist- Mars Patel is of Indian ethnicity was so relatable. The use of pronouns and also bullying someone with the wrong pronouns was subtly inserted into the story, but has made a mark. The book is like a fast paced thriller, the kind of which MG kids are sure to enjoy! I really wanted to see more of Mars’ mom, to get to know her. I loved the family dynamic and also the friendships portrayed in the book. Plus, it’s a sci-fi adventure, involving many little drones. I loved the book, can’t wait for the next book in the series!!
Ratings: 4/5
About the Show
The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel is a scripted podcast for middle-grade kids performed by middle-grade kids. It is a fun, high-quality serial mystery that can be described as Goonies meets Spy Kids meets Stranger Things for eight- to twelve-year-olds. It was selected as one of the top fifty podcasts of 2016 by the Guardian, was honored with a Peabody Award, and was nominated for two Webby Awards (Best Audio Drama and Best Sound Design/Original Music Score). The show is enjoyed around the world by kids and adults alike. Check out more about the podcast on www.marspatel.com.
Can you imagine staying put in your house for an undefined period? I think we all got to experience a bit of it, during the initial stages of lockdown due to the pandemic. But, was it the same as it was for the Jews during Nazi Germany, during WWII? Definitely not, not even close.
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is a classic that most of us already know about. I got introduced to it through my school textbook, we had a short chapter about her diary. I may have mentioned it in passing about wanting to read the entire book, because a few days later, my mom gifted it to me.
This book is like a toned-down account of the atrocities of a war, as seen through the eyes of a teen. I feel blessed to be able to go out without the fear being seen, to just be able to look outside the window to smile at a passing stranger, to buy my own food and just wander around, to even use the internet and have an online presence! All of it that was restricted to the people living the Secret Annex, along with Anne, and the number of Jews hiding elsewhere.
A radio and a few trusted friends were Anne’s only connection with the outside world. Anne and the seven people whom she lived with would all gather around their radio during the news briefings- for a sign, for a hope that they would be free, and that things would go back to normal again.
Do I recommend this book? Oh yes, it’s one of those books that you just can’t NOT read! So pick it up when you can.
There’s even a YouTube series based on her diary by Anne Frank House. It’s a really short series with a very cool concept- instead of a diary, they’ve given a video camera in Anne’s hands and the story begins. Except for this camera/diary swap, rest of the incidents are true, as written in Anne’s diary.
I liked the book ‘When Dimple Met Rishi’ , but I loved its companion novel ‘There’s Something About Sweetie’; which is kind of surprising considering the fact that I tend to stay away from romance books.
There’s Something About Sweetie deals majorly with Fatphobia. But even if you’ve never been body shamed personally, there’s still so much you can relate to while reading this book. The desi rep is so accurate, especially the parents of both the protagonists.
In this sketch I’ve tried to depict the scene when Sweetie and Ashish meet for the very first time, and she ends up winning the duel- err, a running race. Oh yes, they start running the moment they meet.
I loved Sweetie’s zeal of proving herself, her strength and confidence through her secret Sassy Sweetie Project (although she couldn’t keep that secret from Ashish for long ).
The details about her athletic events and Ashish’s basketball matches were interesting too – which would be fun to watch on a screen. Which reminds me, there’s an upcoming Netflix series based on these books called Mismatched; so keep an eye for that, you guys!
Thank you Faguni for introducing me to Sandhya Menon’s books! Check Faguni’s blog for more South Asian recommendations.
After much contemplation and discarding n number of ideas for today’s prompt, I finally settled on this- wisp of hair and wisp of fire.
Let me take a moment here to introduce you all to my boy, Leo! Leo Valdez, the demigod son of Hephaestus (the Greek God of Fire and Blacksmiths) and the late Esperanza Valdez (a mortal). He’s sassy, he’s smart and he’s a person who I adore with all my heart!
When he was five, he drew a picture of a flying boat with a bronze dragon head as the masthead in crayon, but it was blown away by the wind. There were so many main characters in Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series, but Leo’s characterization attracted me the most. I know Percabeth rocks, but our seventh wheel here is no less.
If you are looking forward to reading this series, make sure to read the Percy Jackson and The Olympians series first to get acquainted with the Percy Jackson world.
‘But it’s a whale, Surabhi! A whale is a mammal, not a fish!!’
I know. Tell that to my brain though. Ever since I came across this prompt, I couldn’t get this image out of my head.
We hardly flinch when a pen falls from the table. We might roll our eyes when a book falls down. When a bowl of flowers fall, we might get momentarily worried, but we end up forgetting about it pretty soon. Have you ever wondered about a whale falling? From the sky?
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is one of my favourite reads ever. I read it at a time when I craved for an adventure, and this first book ended up providing me one! I am yet to read all the books in the series yet- still on the fourth part when I left some years ago.
It’s the perfect mix of adventure, fun, comedy, physics?, sci-fi (invented physics?). It makes you wonder and think and laugh. So grab your nearest towel (you’ll know why when you read, I promise) and hitch a ride to the galaxy along with Arthur Dent, our hapless protagonist.
This fanart was inspired by the following long quote.
“Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation …
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
‘I wanna tell others.’ ‘Plan, plan, plan.’ ‘But-’ ‘Plan, plan, plan.’ ‘I have been eyeing at this since the last three years, you know it!’ ‘Think it over, think it over’ ‘But I have some time this year!’ ‘You do?’ ‘Not exactly, but-’ ‘Plan, plan, plan.’ ‘Arghh, alright I’ll PLAN and then announce it to everyone!’.
This is a gist of the repeated conversations between my over-enthusiastic brain and my over-planning brain, for the last 8 days.
I’m thinking of, strike that, I’m PLANNING to participate in Jake Parker’s Inktober Challenge this year! @jakeparker created @inktober in 2009 as a challenge to improve his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. It has since grown into a worldwide endeavor with thousands of artists taking on the challenge every year.
What? Do I hear some boos? Well, let me finish. Since I’m doing this challenge on my bookstagram, I’ve decided to turn these into bookish prompts. So it’ll be #BookishInktober2020 for me.
I’ve not done ANYTHING of this scale on my bookstagram (book-instagram) or on my blog ever, so trust me when I say this – you wouldn’t want to miss out! Subscribe to my blog, sign up to my mailing list, count the days until 1st Oct., and buckle up for a ride!
There’ll be mini-reviews along with the sketches. Someday I’ll talk about the scene that I’ve sketched, or at times I’ll delve full-on into my favourite parts of the book/series. So even if you don’t enjoy art so much, you can still take away these mini-reviews, giving you a peek into some of my favourite reads over the years and hopefully it’ll help you add up some books on your TBR list.
This series will be starting 1st Oct. & will end on 31st Oct. There will at least be one post per day on my booksta feed and blog throughout October. Extra posts only when I have some review to post or something entirely other than Inktober.
I’ll try and post around 8 pm (IST) each day but might be late at times, as I’m neither a professional artist nor a professional writer, so things do take time.
Thanks for reading everything so patiently, I CAN’T WAIT FOR OCTOBER!!
I read Dark Tales as part of a book club. It’s one of the first book clubs that I have participated in – ‘Women In Literature’ club, where we read one book per month by strong women authors. The club is hosted by two lovely women- Aritri and Mridula (@theliquidsunset and @ecstatic_yet_chaotic respectively, on Instagram). Dark Tales was the ‘Book Of The Month’ for July. Had it not been for this club, I don’t think I would ever have read it, looking at its title and the genre. But I’m glad that I did read it.
I have stayed away from watching horror for a very long time now. The last horror or paranormal movie that I remember watching is ‘ When a Stranger Calls’, when I was about 12. My entire teen was a story of ups and downs- except it was mostly downs. I had a really bad spell of low self-esteem, less-confidence, etc. for more than a decade. I only realized that I was suffering from it after I came out of this spell, feeling better than ever. I’ve never before touched a proper horror book in my life- except for some children-horror books. I found myself too weak for this genre. I hated it when horror and psychological thrillers in some way, triggered my worst fears and made me even more self-conscious. But currently, I am in a much peaceful mental space than I have been in the past many years, so i thought about giving this book a try.
Dark Tales is a collection of 17 short stories. Each story brings forth a different element. I won’t say that I really liked all these stories, in fact, I liked very few of these stories for their plot. But the fact that I was able to read this genre, after all, made all the difference for me. The book isn’t a regular spooky kind of horror, to be upfront, except a couple of stories. It’s a very subtle kind of horror- the kind which we see and observe in our everyday life, albeit a bit exaggerated with certain kinds of emotions and plot twists. My review could be biased based on three grounds: I’ve read very few classics, and liked even fewer; this is my first proper horror book; and also I don’t remember reading a collection of short stories like this before.
The author’s portrayal of emotions like fear, anger, etc. is so real that it haunts us even when the story isn’t spooky. It is said that Shirley Jackson, in reality, had lived a very sad and terrible marital life and these feelings did come spilling out very evidently through her stories. It’s as though she wrote a small part of her life in each of her small stories.
In some of the stories like ‘The Good Wife’ and ‘What a Thought’, the author plays with the mind of the reader till the very end and then drops a sudden plot twist. Making us believe in the flow of the plot initially, but ending in quite unexpected manner, like deceiving the reader itself!
Her style of writing changes twice or thrice by the time we reach the final story in the book. There was a case of Unreliable Narrator in the story ‘Paranoia’ wherein the protagonist was being stalked the entire time and we as readers, felt like walking in his shoes. The entire story was on uneven grounds, there was no firm narration to it – making us paranoid about which character to actually trust.
The foreword by Ottessa Moshfegh gives away some spoilers in the very beginning but it also perfectly summarizes and comments upon the stories and the writing style of the writer. This is one of those books where the foreword shouldn’t be missed at any cost. It was very necessary to set up the background, before the readers dive into the book.
My ratings: 4/5 ⭐
If you do decide to pick this book up sometime, it isn’t at all necessary to complete it in one shot. You can read the stories separately as they are completely independent of each other. If you are someone like me who has never ventured into this genre before, but would like to someday – this book is a good one to start with. It has just the right amount of darkness and spookiness for a beginner.
— Suri
Is there a genre that you always seem to run away from? What do you think about horror stories?
In the last couple of weeks, two of Luna’s closest people have texted her, asking her how she was doing, all of a sudden. After a bit of talking, both of them confessed to having seen her in their dreams – but it wasn’t a good one, in both the cases. Typically, Luna is not the kind of person who goes looking for answers – answers to whether these dreams were signs, that something terrible and tragic was to befall upon her! She believed in none of this nonsense.
These two dreams were seen and experienced by people who did not know each other at all, but both of them knew Luna pretty well individually. When Luna had heard the first dream (God was it sad!), all she did was assure the person who saw it, that she was doing well and there was nothing amiss. What else could she do? But when she heard the second dream, curiosity caught hold of her. “You were chased by a serial killer, with some kind of a weapon in a very lonely street, where everything looked dark; and I stood there helpless and crying” – she remembered her friend saying on call. What if these indeed are signs? What if someone is trying to give her hints via her loved ones, to safeguard herself? Suddenly, she wanted to know more.
Luna’s thoughts were interrupted by the loud volume blaring from the speakers of the television. Since the past few days, the local news channels and newspapers are filled with news articles about a runaway psychopath. The eye witnesses claim that he always carries with him a very clean, sharp and jagged knife. He’s suspected to be responsible for multiple murders in a nearby locality, but the authorities have found no reliable proof yet. If it were in Luna’s hands, she would never have wasted her precious Sunday morning surfing news channels, but currently the remote was in her brother’s hands, so she didn’t complain. She had to unwilling listen to the psychopath’s tale for like the 200th time since it first started surfacing!
Having a bad dream is terrible, Luna was wondering, but waking up with a bad dream and then REMEMBERING it, is the worst!We have to carry that dream with us the entire day, slogging wearily to ward it off; but instead we rather unknowingly, analyse it and picturize it again and again, on a loop. Slowly, we tend to become so anxious that there’s a constant feeling of dread looming above us, like a silent, floating cloud, she concluded.
How I wish that I could tell the seers of such dreams, thought Luna, that dreams are nothing but fragments of our own anxiousness, forming images and stories in our subconcious mental space. But could I tell them that? she asked herself, No way! But why not? She pressed on, maybe, because, in a way, I too wanted to believe otherwise?
After having their breakfast, her brother turned off the television, finally! thought Luna, to have a late-Sunday bath. After he was gone, Luna turned back to reading her book, which she wanted to finish in time – for her online book club discussions. The doorbell rang. Luna wondered who it was – they had very few visitors ever since the lockdown started. She peered through the eyehole, he seems to be some stranger, maybe a new courier man? Luna wondered. She opened the main door. Standing before her was a man approx. 5 ft 4 inches tall. His beard was unshaven and moustache was unkempt. “How can I help you?”, Luna asked him. But he spoke no words. All he did was point downwards. As she couldn’t see what he was actually pointing at, Luna opened the safety-door to have a clear look. Turns out he was pointing at his right wrist, in which he was holding a clean, sharp and jagged knife, that was glistening with some drops of red on it.
2 am in a city, during lockdown, feels completely out of place. Except for the sound of crickets and frogs, I can now hear absolutely nothing.
Mumbai – fondly called as the city which never sleeps; is now sleeping. It feels that not just the people residing here, but the city in itself is suffering from the disease. I hope she heals well and wakes up sooner from her nap. People are waiting for her to heal, the railways are waiting, the airplanes, the local businesses, the big multinational companies; everyone is counting on her.
On another occasion, it would have felt way better- to experience the silence within a city, the calmness and the fresh air to breath. But under the current crisis, it just doesn’t feel good.
Get well soon, Aamchi Mumbai (literally, ‘Our Mumbai’). And also, get well soon, Mother Earth.
— Suri
What are Quarantine Musings? Just some random, trivial, light-hearted (or maybe even deep?) thoughts that pass through my mind during these lockdown days.
TwinkleSpark 