Book Review: Beyond school by Chitra Anand

About The Book:

Beyond School centres upon the weeks leading up to 17-year-old Shail s final board exams, as his world becomes a pressure-cooker and the weight of preparing for the exams sends him fleeing rebelliously in the other direction. Along with Shail s journey from boyhood to manhood, Beyond School vividly weaves between the narratives of four main characters, seamlessly uniting the past and present of Shail, his parents-Urmila and Sushil and his mentor-Gladys, in a story that is honest, funny, heartbreaking and ultimately, incredibly human.

About the Author:

Chitra Anand was born in Mumbai. She is a postgraduate in Physics and holds an Education degree. Beyond School is her first novel inspired by her journey as an educator.

My Review:
written in a lucid, and friendly narrative, the book seamlessly follows the story of Shail, a 17 year old, who is torn between his parents' expectations of him to perform well in Board exams and his own ambition to ace the soccer tournament.
Frog Books, an imprint of Lead Start Corp, Is churning great pieces. (Unconventional ones like The Devil's Gate). The writing is very real. And so is the plot. Very relevant. Very apt. Identifiable.
With just a little scope of improvement in editing, the plot and  story is ironically and undeniably tickling, heartbreaking at one time and so full of hope at another.
Above all it is so real, so bare and so open that one can almost dive into the book and look at things from Young adult's perspective.

Gladys' (mentor and teacher of the protagonist) character elicits a special, special mention. He character and its stort gives fodder for thought while simultaneously letting the plot seamlessly stretch, spanning two generations dealing with tgeur adolescence issues.  What Gladys is to Shail, her father was to her.
Her charcters probpem is quoted as "The girl worried: you needed to be nornal to exist peacefully in the school world-squint free eyes, twist less nose, correctly sized ears, unclipped lips, straight arms, stammer free speech, stupidity free brain ..."
Which makes us think, isnt this stuff we battle through our teenage. And then it strikes us dumb how real these stories are. Which is also the best part of the novel.

In the portrayal of Shail's skirmishes with his parents, advises lie with him for an untold gestation period and then at the least expected time, they come to fruitition.
His thoughts are an echo of this age of young-adult. When a teacher chides him calling him a terrorist,  he ponders why appreciation is never as intense as censure. And that such insults are too serious to get over, no panacea works for the wounded ego of the young-adult. No pacification, no compromise, no redemption.

More of such insights into the mind of people this age and more examples of how these are indeed our formative years, grab your copy. Although I doubt if this is temptation enough to buy a copy of ones own, but I would still have all school library shelves and all teachers and parents have a read.

Copies Available at all online stores:

1.    Flipkart:

2.    Amazon:  

Know More Inside Stories, Connect with The Author:

Twitter: @chtranand

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“This review is a part of The Readers Cosmos Book Review Program and Blog Tours.  To get free books log on to thereaderscosmos.blogspot.com“

Book Review: Business Doctors by Sameer Kamat

About the book:

Ivy League educated management consultant, Michael Schneider, gets hired by an unlikely client. A mafia boss wants to make a last desperate bid to revive his family business that spans across gambling, drugs and porn. A reluctant Schneider takes on the challenge to give the underworld organization a makeover. Join Schneider as he takes on the most challenging management consulting job ever!

• Publisher: Booksoarus (24 April 2014)

About the Author:

Sameer Kamat is among the best career counsellors in India. He also shares writing & publishing tips and ideas on getting self-published in India. The author is a multi-faceted personality. Hi earlier book Beyond The MBA Hype, published by HarperCollins, advises MBA applicants on the pitfalls and opportunities of applying to international MBA courses. Within 3 months of getting released, the first print run was sold out. He i the founder of MBA Crystal Ball, an MBA admissions consulting venture that helps Indian applications get into the top international MBA programs. He left hi Mergers & Acquisitions career and bid adieu to the corporate world in 2011 to focus full-time on the entrepreneurial aspirations. He serve on the Editorial Board of the Journal of General Management (UK), a leading UK-based academic publication that has a global readership.

My Review:

This is actually a four-and-a-half star from me.
This book peels its layers one after the other, and delightfully, to the readers' expectation and beyond, all layers are equally enthralling, if not more, and all of them have been woven to keep up the pace of the plot and simultaneously the intrigue and unalloyed attention of the reader.

Lets talk about the title first up. When the titles reads, "Business Doctors", it isn't just an oxymoronic play of words. It is for the reader to find out. And here begins a journey of the reader foray into the uncanny plot twists the story will take.
The story opens up with one set of characters and is carried forward by others.
Enter Stephen Woody: he makes killing look easy, he drummed his fingers to create a tapping sensation thereby building tension and suspense. In other words, he is an underworld boss.

The place he operates from is called the Dungeon.
With his foot in handful of businesses like casino, porn industry et al, his business is going through a lean patch. Scratch that. His business is on the brink of ruin. He desperately seeks some professional advice.
His wife (mafia's wife) comes into picture and changes it.
That is all that can be said without spoilers. How she changes it is for you to find. Suffice to say, the way she changes the equations is very pivotal to the plot.

Another layer to the book is the insightful management gyaan on offer. Right from the consulting expertise to the human resource management lessons in the alleyways and lanes of the plot, everything happens in an uncanny way. And why shouldn't it? This is certainly not any regular consultancy client!

Another commendable part of the novel is that the author has done justice to each character no matter how trivial or pivotal the role or however long or short the duration of that role.

Humour has taken vivid forms and shapes. The most enjoyable read is between the pages of those chapters which are a demonstration of an unusual sort of people-management.
*Spoiler alert*
The transformation of criminals and miscreants into valuable human resources( still criminals) is just hilarity in leaps and bounds.

Best Lines:

Usually I list out the quotable lines here, but this time around I shall make an exception, and state  an excerpt, for the sheer wit and humor:

Woody was reputed and feared as a man who had 

uncommon strength when enraged. This was not just rumor 

– two of the men present in the chamber had seen their 

boss twist off the arm of a rival goon - mercilessly –

agonizing screams echoing from the victim, till the arm was 

just hanging off via loose tendons. Suffice to say the doctors 

could not sew back Woody‟s handiwork

My Judgement:

In this era of an abundance of books, if you do have to make a choice among a plethora of books, do read this for it is worth the investment in money, efforts and time, with returns in the form of an added vocabulary, a fulfilled reading experience and insights into the forms that management consulting can take.

Book Trailer:

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Book Review: Manhattan Mango By Madhuri Iyer

About the book:

Q. What happens when three ambitious, high-achieving, 20-something Mumbaikars become New Yorkers?

A. Madness.

Zipping through life’s ups and downs like a high-speed elevator during rush hour, buddies Shri, Shanks, and Neel hold on to each other, and their sanity, with a bro-hood bonding that chipkos them together, fevicol se.

Neel’s the driven hedge fund guy, with a weakness for scotch and women. Tam Brahm Shanks, a techie, falls for the "wrong” girl. Good Son Shri, a banker, holds a secret he means to take to his grave. Their intertwined lives buzz with high-voltage drama — explosive secrets, super-charged romances, and a-fuse-a-minute meltdowns.

There’s alcohol-fueled passion, Devdas style. Inter-racial hook-ups. Even a fake affair, because money can’t buy the real thing. When their skyscraper-sized dreams are tested, this “desified” saga of friends in Manhattan is like the city’s rapid transit express subway line. You won’t want any stops in between

About the Author:

Madhuri Iyer has studied O Levels from the London University and graduating in Applied Art from Sophia Polytech, Mumbai. She has worked as an advertising copywriter for agencies in Mumbai, Dubai and Canada, including FCB Ulka, Lintas Lowe, Everest Saatchi, Clarion McCann, and Cossette Canada. Her advertising career had spanned over two decades, culminating in a Creative Director job in Dubai. Presently, she consults for Induseye Inc, as a director.

In India,she has published work in the non-fiction category. She has written/edited the  4-WEEK COUNTDOWN DIET for Penguin India, with her own recipes and case studies, in collaboration with fitness expert Namita Jain. She has also edited fitness books for the Times of India Group, including a children’s fitness book and a home exercise instruction manual.

In the fiction genre she has written a novella, Pink Champagne, for Indireads, an online imprint. Manhattan Mango is her second work of fiction for the Indian and diaspora market

My Review:

Without any circumlocution, I will get straight to the point: Here's the thing about this novel: you will start reading it because you know its going to be chic, you continue it because you want to know what happens next in the lives of each of the characters, yes, every single one of them. And you end up willing to be in the novel as one of the characters and each time you turn the chapter, it is a different character that you want to be.
The whole aura of cosmopolitan, suave youngsters trying to become someone, and figuring out life, is so amusing.
Contrary to the blurb, the book is not just the story of Shri, Shanks and Nell, but equally of all other characters as well.
The best part is the plot: It is so unlike the cliched plots which tend to read like  happily-ever-after fairy tale. Here it is all believable and you don;t feel sad either, because it is happily believable, not the sugar-coated believable which we sometimes get so tired of reading.
So, well, yes, sure there's this "All's well that ends well" tinge to it, but it is so different from any other novel you will read.
Next best part is the energy in the novel. the author has done a commendable job to give life to the characters and scenes and incidents and whatnot.
And the characters are just so near-to-life, they are etched in a way to make the reader fall in love with them : the protagonists, and their spouses (or fake spouses) followed in quick succession by the typical Indian parents, who come with their own baggage of woes and complaints.

And then there is reality sprinkled all over in its bare, unaltered, unalloyed form. Their lives are not ALWAYS happening and fun, it is also interspersed with secrets, societal burdens, and intermittent periods of joblessness, no matter how hard they try to evade them.

They embrace the mess,and then struggle to disentangle from it.
I am gonna stay on the lookout for more from the author and from Fingerprint Publishers, because this novel was amusing throughout.

Best Lines:

Lets give you a dose of this enervating novel. At a point where all characters are battling one problem or another here is how it has been described:
"Battling a booze ban and betrayal, all at once, was enough to test anyone's limits. Observing them, an outsider would have concluded that someone near and dear had recently died."

My Judgement:

Get a slice of this mango: cosmopolitan, energetic, relevant!

Book Launch Video:

Watch these videos for some spicy bites from the book!!!

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Book Review: Anti-social Network by Piyush Jha

About the book:

When college students across Mumbai are murdered one after another in gruesome ways, inspector Virkar from the crime branch is called in. As Virkar investigates, he stumbles upon a ruthless gang of young, tech-savvy miscreants who use social networking sites and the Internet for blackmail and sextortion. But how are the two cases linked? And who is the mastermind behind these killings?
As the case grows murkier, the computer-challenged Virkar finds himself greatly out of his depth, chasing a killer who always seems to be one step ahead and a group that soon trains its sights on him. He must race against time to unmask the gang and to find the murderer before his reputation is ruined forever. Thick with suspense and layered with grit, anti-social network brings to you inspector Virkars toughest case yet.
From the bestselling author of Mumbaistan and compass box killer comes the third riveting instalment in the Mumbaistan crime-thriller series. The story once again features inspector Virkar, who is now a popular protagonist amongst readers of crime-thrillers. Anti-social network will appeal to fans of the authors books as well as find new ones

About the Author:

Piyush Jha is an acclaimed film director, ad filmmaker and the author of the bestselling novel, Mumbaistan and Compass Box Killer.

A student political leader at university, he pursued a career in advertising management after acquiring an MBA degree. Later, he switched tracks, first to make commercials for some of the country’s largest brands, and then to write and direct feature films. His films include Chalo America, King of Bollywood and Sikandar.

He lives in his beloved Mumbai, where he can often be found walking the streets that inspire his stories.

My Review:

Now, it might seem an exaggeration, but its not: I read the novel, cherished it and really likened it to the mystery thrillers penned by Satyajit Ray. Yes, the details and the plot, and the plot twists are so remarkable that I was compelled to see Feluda aka Felu Babu (the protagonist of Satyajit Ray mystery books) to Inspector Virkar. It is almost as if its Feluda in his contemporary incarnation.

What this novel eventually turned out to be, which is what I really liked about the novel, was the fact that it did not simply follow a trail to unearth or uncover a series of evidence and witnesses in order to reach a conclusion, it also had a very important and different tangent to it: the angle which apprises the reader of how real the threats of privacy and security are, in this age of internet-addiction. It explores the extent of brutality and antipathy that crimes like blackmail, sextortion, and fraudulent impersonation can acquire. This generation, which has often been victimized by crimes perpetrated in/by the virtual world, shall forever be grateful to Jha.












Another part of this riveting novel to look out for are the descriptions of murders and their figurative meanings as are revealed later. I really hope that with this integrity and observation skills, Inspector Virkar becomes an enviable character, and the author, a pioneer of this hitherto unexplored genre of thrillers.

A group of college students gone morally decrepit. A psychologist with an nondetachable place in this equation. A police system of complacency. A hacker, who retains "ethics" in his activities, and deploys his talent to the help of Virkar.

How a seemingly solid, foolproof, in-frangible, expert network evaporates, coagulates and coalesces on the altar of one woman's revenge and another man's incessant pursuit of a way beyond the deadlock, while the threads of evidence refuse to weave into a meaningful something, is at the core of this novel.

With its arcane description of the repugnant crimes, an insight into the threats posed by the virtual world, and an underlying manifestation of a troubled, frail teenage psychology, this book is totally totally worth the time and money spent on it. The crisp, accurate narrative which has, to the delight of the reader, no verbosity, is a major puller. A LOT of use of colloquial phrases might be a slight put-off, and I hope the next edition may carry footnotes explaining the same.

And yes, another character to watch out for, Naina, sarcasm personified!

Best Lines:

Lets give you a dose of the macabre murder mystery:

"The knife was incredibly sharp. She had intended to take only a trial swipe, but the blade sliced through the flesh with surprising ease.
My Judgement:
This thriller is packed with undying suspense, layers of mystery, and an enchanting plot setting, that will not let you put it down."

Book Video:

Watch this video to dig deeper into the secrets of the book!

The book was received as part of Reviewers Programme on The Tales Pensieve

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