Review: Bestseller

Author: Ahmed Faiyaz.

Genre: Satire, Humour.

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍫

Blurb:

Akshay Saxena, an out of work editor of a defunct literary magazine in the UK, is told to move to India for a year to help shore up the value of Kalim, an ailing Indian publisher.

Akshay finds himself in a job where he has to do the impossible. Angus Lee, the new owner of Thomson Lee Books, wants at least five bestsellers in the coming year, failing which the business would be wound up.

He has to find a way of making a success out of books he would never publish or would never even read. To complicate things further, he has to contend with motley crew of has-beens and misfits working for the publishing house as well as wannabe writers, dealing with their follies and derisive tactics, and battle his own affections for Zorah Kalim, the impulsive daughter of his former boss.

Will he succeed in bringing out that one ‘bestseller’ from his publishing house? And what about his own life and love in office? Find out in this riveting read.

Cover Review:

The cover is simple, a tad intriguing, but not enough to make me want to pick the book up. 

Book Review:

Bestseller is the story of a guy who ends up in an almost dead publishing house in India after the magazine he used to work for in London shuts down. And to make matters worse, his boss dies on the first day of his job. 

Akshay's story was hilarious and at the same time it reflected everything that is true about the publishing industry in India as well as Bollywood. 

Bestseller was a light read, the kind of book you can read over tea or while you're looking for an easy book that doesn't demand much from you.

My favourite thing about the book was that the romance was only a subplot and that there were better and more important things at play. I also appreciated how the author casually introduced a queer character. 

My least favourite thing could be the fact that the book was so short, but then again, I think it was better this way. 

If you're looking for a peek into the publishing world in India, reading Bestseller would be a good idea. You should also read it if you're looking for a good laugh. 

All in all, Bestseller was witty, short and I'd definitely recommend you to check it out. 

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Review: The Bespokist Society

Author: Jeremy Leibster. 

Genre: Humor, Fiction, Spoof. 

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍬

As the first travel book produced by the hugely influential Bespokist Society, this handy guide takes you to a London you’ve never seen: a London of challenging Etruscan restaurants, edgy branding parlours, emoji hotels and hidden Icelandic communities; a London where 8-ply toilet paper is a thing.

On the way, meet an eclectic band of inspiring Londoners - from scriveners to socialites via urban wordsmiths and coffee preachers - and see why London is now the global epicentre of Bespokist consciousness, community and culture.

The cover is simple and gorgeous all at the same time! I love the colour combination! 

The Bespokist Society was my introduction to 'spoofs'. I had to Google the word because I had no idea what it was. (For those who are as clueless as I was, a spoof is a mocking imitation of something, and it is light and good humoured.) 

The Bespokist Society was a spoof guide to London, and though it was extremely hilarious at places, much of it was meaningless for me. 

The reason being, that I live in India. I've never been to London, and though I've read books based in London, it just isn't the same thing, is it? 

So more than half of the times, I didn't know if a food item was weird, or if I did, I'd no idea why it was weird, because I don't know anything about English cuisine. 

So I guess the best audience for this book is someone who's been to London or atleast knows stuff about the English cuisine. 

But I did enjoy the parts where the authors interviewed the imaginary shop owners and stuff. It was absolutely hilarious. And so, I believe that the other sections will be just as hilarious for an apt audience. 

So if you're a Londoner, or have visited it, you should definitely pick this book up for some giggles and a good laugh. 

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Review: Duck Egg Blues

Author: Martin Ungless.

Genre: Science Fiction, Humour, Mystery.

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍫

PArdew yearns to perform his robot-butler duties but soon finds himself thwarting car thieves, helping track a fugitive, and even rescuing a puppy for a little girl. All this whilst avoiding being kidnapped and somehow contriving to keep his Master safe from thugs, government agencies, and sundry other surreptitious folk who for security reasons cannot here be named …and yes, there are plastic ducks, eggs which cause the blues …and yes, for blues read murder. Lucky for PArdew he’s connected to the Internet of Things.

Detective Don is an ex-cop living in a fast-urbanising Essex countryside, and he owns PArdew - all of which make him angry. PArdew’s algorithms cannot explain this, nor why his Master keeps being arrested for every local murder. Perhaps Police Inspector Helen is enamoured of his Master? Set in a very near future, PArdew’s existence is something of a surprise, even to the Professor at Cambridge University who ‘helps’ with their enquiries.

As the plot weaves together, Don discovers that behind one mystery there lurks a greater threat. No one is safe, not even PArdew…

I agree. The cover does not look even slightly interesting. I'm going to request the author to think about changing it. The cover does not do justice to the book in the slightest. 

Oh my God. I did not expect this book to be so good. Like, I judge a book by its cover, I admit, and I was sure this book was going to be a bust. 

Well, it wasn't. If you saw the genres, you'd have realised just how widespread this story is. There's humour, there's sci-fi and there's mystery. And all of it is well put together into a superb story. 

I mean, the main characters are a Sherlock-ish detective and his unwanted Butler Robot. It has got to be a fun read! And the best part is, the book is from the Robot's point of view. And even better is the fact that there isn't too much of scientific gibberish in there. 

It was hilarious to read the robot's 'thoughts' as he worried about not hurting people who were trying to kidnap him. 

The mystery was pretty intriguing and well written too, and I loved the ending! 

PArdew (the robot) and Simon (the detective) were fun characters to follow around as they solved the mystery and I'd definitely recommend this book!

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Review: Life Seemed Good...But...

Author: Richard Bell.

Genre: Satire, Humour, Short Story.

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫🍫

Blurb: 

A picture of life in and around the Mystee Forest as viewed by a variety of talking animals, strange characters, and the author's twisted perception of reality. Imagine a cross between Aesop's Fables and the Brothers Grimm.

Cover Review:

The cover piqued my interest, and it looks really funny with that jumble of characters.

Book Review:

Life Seemed Good...is a collection of short stories that are sometimes connected to each other while sometimes are not. 

Though the one common thing among them all is that they're all really humorous, sometimes sarcastic, but overall really funny. 

The stories give life to inanimate objects and make them do things that are hilarious, weird and thought provoking. Though I loved almost all of the stories, The Amoeba, The Wizard and Naked Christmas were my favourites. The Spud was pretty funny too, until it got serious. 

The best thing about these stories was that every one of them had some hidden meaning, and though I couldn't uncover all of them, it was sure a fun ride! 

All in all, Life Seemed Good...But...was full of sarcasm, wit an reading it was a whole lot of fun! 

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Review: Years Later On Facebook

Author: Jupinderjit Singh

Genre: Short Story, Humor. 

Rating: 🍫🍫🍫

Blurb:

This book is a collection of short-stories and Middles. It begins with the tale of a man who meets a childhood flame on Facebook. The story 'Safety-Pin 'talks about a career woman, who seeks to peep outside marriage. The range of stories takes you from voyeuristic men in a gym, and another in a train, to those taking on 'love jihad', you will find something that teases a thought. From the love story of two canines at the Indo-pak border to nature's effort to erase the borders through 'Peepal no 18'; to gun-firing in Poonch; to the serene silence of Ladakh, the book will offer food for thought to travellers as well. In fact, with glimpses of Istanbul, London, Kashmir and Rajasthan, these stories are sure to make an interesting accompaniment to your travels!

Cover Review:

The cover is a picture of a colour painting. Not really something I'd like to see as a book cover. 

Book Review:

Lets start off with the positives. The stories were funny, had a meaning and some of them were even quite impactful. 

The ones about the author himself were a lot more interesting than the others. They were funnier too.

The stories were all good and had a lot of potential. They could be better though. 

There were a lot of grammatical errors, from punctuation to sentence construction to the application of tenses. If the grammar had been better, I think I'd have given it a four stars rating. 

Some of the stories that I liked the most are 'Peepal Tree No. 918', 'The Pleasure of Giving', 'Of Ghosts and Printer's Devil's, etc.

All in all, Years Later On Facebook is a fun, light read if you can ignore the somewhat apparent grammatical errors and not-so-fun if you are irked by every single one of them. 

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