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badrihippo@biblio.thekambattu.rocks

Joined 1 year, 11 months ago

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Hippo's books

To Read (View all 6)

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Success! Hippo has read 36 of 12 books.

The Gruffalo (2009) No rating

The Gruffalo is a British children's picture book by author Julia Donaldson and illustrated by …

A cool picture-book story about a very smart mouse! The illustrations by Axel Scheffler are awesome too. I picked this up for a good deal at the (newest, third) Blossom's 😉

finished reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Fangirl (Paperback, 2015, Edições Chá das Cinco) No rating

Another "stayed up till midnight to finish" read! I started this on a bus, took it to Cubbon Reads on Saturday but still had a few chapters to go, and then finished when I got home late in the night (post-dinner). By the time I was done, it was 1:15 AM and the 31st of December :P

The plot was a pretty typical high-school/college romance, so nothing special there (I could kind of make out from the beginning, so it's not even a spoiler). But the fun part is all the fanfiction references and how fanfic plays such a large role in the protagonist's life!

Parable of the Talents (Paperback, 2019, Grand Central Publishing) No rating

Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of depravity. Taking advantage …

Stayed up all the way till midnight to finish this - it's that good! A great sequel to The Parable of the Sower, which resolves a lot of questions, raises new ones, and sticks to the original theme while coming up with its own structure and storytelling style as well.

Parable of the Talents (Paperback, 2019, Grand Central Publishing) No rating

Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of depravity. Taking advantage …

Now that the books in queue before this have been read, I've started on the sequel to Parable of the Sower! I'm a chapter in and it's already gripping.

It was a good thing I started after a break actually; it sets me more in the mood given how the story has started. Not going to say more to avoid spoilers, but will publish a spoilerwalled post in a bit. In the meantime, just remember that if there's a bit of a gap between you reading these two books, that's okay ;)

Current Show (2017, Penguin Books India PVT, Limited) No rating

Sathi is a young soda-seller in a run-down cinema hall in a small town. Ill-paid …

Started reading this while inside a BMTC bus waiting at a signal, which was quite the mood! Incidentally, I also finished it while on a (different) BMTC bus soon before my stop arrived.

This gives a nice slice of life of the not-so-well-to-do; there's no plot exactly but as you read you do get invested in the characters and whatever ends up happening to them next (or what they do about it)

The Girl Who Kept Falling in Love (Hardcover, Penguin Random House) No rating

Kaya is addicted to love. The very fact of being loved seems to be proof …

Read this right after finishing Rheea Mukherjee's other book, The Body Myth. This one is much more intense in terms of setting; most of the story takes place in a modern-day fascist intolerant India. A more satisfying read in that sense, although I found the previous book more gripping because it had a bit of a mystery too, whereas in this one it's more about reading on to figure out what happens next (and happened previously, but still).

The Body Myth (Hardcover, HAMISH HAMILTON) No rating

Thirty-two-year old Mira is a schoolteacher who has spent the last year coping with the …

I hadn't heard about Rheea Mukherjee before but happened to attend her session at the Bangalore Lit Fest and both the books she'd written so far sounded cool! This one's a romance novel but not quite; I don't usually read romance but recently got interested because I listened to an episode of Brooklyn Public Library's "Borrowed" which is all about them.

"The Body Myth" is (and I quote from the cover) about the fetishisation of illness but it's also generally about (I no longer quote) love and relationships in complicated situations.

The Heart of a Dog (Paperback, 2008, Vintage) No rating

A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by …

This was a cool read! I don't know enough about the Russian revolution to make the connections with this being possibly a satire and all, but the story itself is...hilarious and thoughtful at the same time? And the end was cool too, but I'm not going to tell you about that ;)

Finished this at Cubbon Reads on Saturday morning; luckily I'd brought along the next book to start on!

The Heart of a Dog (Paperback, 2008, Vintage) No rating

A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by …

Started reading this morning on the metro home from a friends place. It's so dense, but in a good way: there's so much information to take in at every sentence, and at the end of it you end up with a rich, vivid picture of everything that's going on (and has been going on)!

Cursed Bunny (Paperback, 2021, Honford Star) 5 stars

Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring …

Okay, so I've finished this book and the best way I can describe it is that it's like the book version of Love, Death + Robots for those who've watched that show. Which is weird, because the way I would otherwise describe Love, Death + Robots to someone is "the show version of a short-story collection"!

All the stories are weird, but I'd say the later ones are maybe...slightly less weird? And they all leave something to think about. Also, for a few of them I noticed the endings aren't explicitly stated; they're left to your imagination but at the end of the story there's only one plausible conclusion that your imagination will be able to come up with.

Finished this on the bus on the way to Tabletop Thursdays/Board Game Night at Lahe Lahe in Indiranagar! It helped me not feel frustrated when the bus stopped in the traffic, …

Cursed Bunny (Paperback, 2021, Honford Star) 5 stars

Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring …

Started this yesterday, as the backup book I was carrying when I finished Octavia Butler's "Spinning Silver", and...wow. Just as @verglas@books.theunseen.city warned me it is totally weird! I've read the first three stories so far and...I don't know how to describe them. They kind of take very normal situations, but stretch them till they're not normal anymore, and if you think about it the situations are not normal at all, but when you get dropped into it it all happens so naturally it feels like they are?

Spinning Silver (2018) No rating

Finished reading this yesterday and it's so good! I don't know how much to say without giving spoilers, but it's so much more nuanced than just "good vs evil" because it tells the story from so many different perspectives.

It's all first-person, but the narrators keep changing. It's also interesting how the author writes the narration in such a way that, by reading a bit, you can figure out which character is speaking at the moment.

The book started by referencing a fairytale, and having read all of it I'd say that it's lived up to its initial promise of being a fairytale but also not.