Its only June and I have completed my Goodreads 2015 reading challenge of reading 15 books this year. I set only 15 because I thought I wouldn’t get time to read much. But I did ( *grin* ). ok, here are the books I have read since January:

1. Nightfall (The Vampire Diaries: The Return #1) – L.J. Smith     
2. The Vampire Diaries DC Comics #1    
3. The Vampire Diaries DC Comics #2  
4. The Vampire Diaries DC Comics #3  
5. The Vampire Diaries DC Comics #4  
6. The Vampire Diaries DC Comics #5   
7. True Betrayal – Nora Roberts 
8. The Ramayana – R.K. Narayan 
9. Lajja – Taslima Nasrin      
10. World’s Best Boyfriend – Durjoy Datta    
11. The Mirror Crack’d from side to side – Agatha Christie 
12. Rage of Angels – Sidney Sheldon     
13. Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy #1) – Richelle Mead 
14. A Walk to Remember – Nicholas Sparks 
15. Medea – Euripides 

(P.S. the ratings are according to the rating system formulated by Heena Rathore P. of The Reading Bud )

I know that the list has too many vampire fiction, but what to do ? I love them.

I won’t review the books in the conventional way they are because I am awful in writing reviews. So I am just going to share some opinions regarding them.

I read The Ramayana and Medea only because I had to for my Additional English exam. Medea is much simpler than Sophocles’ plays and short too. But it isn’t meant for me. Regarding The Ramayana, Was I reading for my own interest then maybe I would read “Sita” by Devdutt Patnaik rather than R.K Narayan’s version because in my opinion Patnaik’s version is more critical and I would rather be more critical on mythology.

Coming to my favourite The Vampire Diaries I liked L.J. Smith’s and the TV versions more than the DC comics version. The comics have all new story but they couldn’t grasp my attention as much as L.J. Smith and the TV show could.

When I read Vampire Academy for the first time I got bored. Actually it was my fault. I was stereotyping the novel, comparing it with other vampire fictions that I had already read, like the Twilight Saga and The Vampire Diaries series. When I discussed my views with one of my blogger friends, she advised me to first watch the movie. I really liked the movie, unconventional but really good. Then, I tried reading the book again, and its equally good.

The same thing happened with A Walk to Remember, I was bored on my first attempt. On my aforementioned friend’s advise, I tried again and I just loved it. At the end, my tears betrayed me but I sincerely felt for Landon and Jamie from within. I really enjoyed my first attempt of Nicholas Sparks’ writing.

True Betrayal, my first Nora Roberts book, loved the way the relationship between a mother and a daughter who meet after 20 years has been portrayed. The daughter was told throughout her childhood and adolescence that her mother was no more but actually she was in prison, found guilty of murder. The story is basically about how Kelsey (the daughter) confronts the truth about Naomi (the mother), tries to understand Naomi’s point of view about the murder case she was involved in and the reason why she kept her existence a secret, rebuilds her bond with her mother and at last proves to the world that Naomi wasn’t a cold-murderess but had killed in self-defense. Not only the basic story was beautifully depicted in words but also gave a good insight about thoroughbreds, derbies and everything that happens in the business of horses (Naomi had a horse farm and sent her horses for derbies); something I didn’t have the slightest idea about.

In World’s Best Boyfriend, there was nothing out of the box but I enjoyed the love-hate relationship of Dhruv and Aranya.

Lajja is based on a true story, the Babri Masjid riots in Bangladesh, but somehow it felt little bit of a drag to me. For pages together there were a list of names of some random Hindu people who were tortured by the Muslims, of  some random Hindu areas that were ransacked, burned or looted. Much less was told about the Hindu family which was given some limelight in the story.

I was planning to try Sidney Sheldon’s works when one of my friends advised that I could try Rage of Angels because it wasn’t Mills and Boon-esque like his other novels. And its actually good. The story depicts the protagonist as a strong minded lady, never afraid to face the world, a tactful lawyer, lawfully manipulating the law in her favour.  She is sensitive not fragile (her fragility was projected only when she lost her son). I like when women are depicted strong, determined, at par with men, not just as mere eye candy.

The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side is my second book by Agatha Christie but first of Miss Marple series. Miss Marple is old, not as active physically like the other well-known detectives, but mentally she is more active than normal 70 year olds (According to the novel “At Bertram Hotel” her age is aprrox. 74), she has a remarkable memory power, always has an incident in the present to compare with a parallel incident in the past, and the past maybe a long time back. Its really sad that there are only a few female detectives in the literary world, crime fiction fans need more detectives like her.

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