KhepiAri

Book Review: Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan Quote: He leans in and kisses. He says he's missed me too. I know this is right. I know he's not going to be amazing all the time, but there's more amazingness in him than in anyone else I've known. He makes me want to be amazing too. June was an interesting month, I read up various kinds of books from non-fiction to rom-com to writing for children despite my lack of reviews here. I wanted to do a pride month reading list, but I got occupied. So I want to end the month with an LGBTQIA book. Paul grew up gay in a town that's accepting, where the gender boundaries have blurred. The homecoming queen is star Quarterback and a drag-queen by day. Paul is popular, loved and has two best friends Joni the quintessential girl best friend prone to fall for red-flag boys, and Tony a gay boy living with his conservative family. And there is Kyle Paul's ex-boyfriend Paul meets Noah in a bookstore, a newbie sophom...

Webcomic Review: Your Letter by Hyeon A Cho Quote: The letter contained the key to the rabbit hutch along with a note asking me to visit early in the morning. Sori-Lee a brave and kind middle-schooler moves to a new school in her old city from her grandmother's, after she stood up to bullies for someone, and facing bullying herself. In her new school, assigned to an unoccupied desk, soon she finds a letter addressed to her; containing names of her new classmates, school map and a clue for the next letter. From one letter to another Sori moves into a world that she can't explain. There is a witch gardener in school who offers her tea. She walks seven and a half steps with closed eyes and ends up finding a magical hideout. From ordering delicious food to school to jumping into the pond to retrieve the letter she and befriends Eugene Park. Eugene an archer is having a hard time concentrating on his sport. So they become partners to un...

Book Review: Tithe a Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black. Quote: Her hands felt very cold as she remembered the diner. What would it be like to be a puppet? What would it be like to watch your own hands disobey you? A book title I was pronouncing wrong for almost a decade now! I found Holly Black before I found Neil Gaiman, at the age of 15. Since then I have been trying to read stories she had written. Tithe is the story of a sixteen-year-old, Kaye, a blonde American-Japanese girl. Who grew up in clubs and pubs cleaning after her unsuccessful rock singer mom. Holly Black never sighs away from showing the dark, not so innocent and messed up world of teens. Kaye has dropped out of school, she smokes, she makes out, she works to keep her two unit family functional, and once she had friends from the faerie realm. The story takes a shift when her mom's boyfriend turns homicidal and they move back to her grandmother's. Kaye's life turns weird soon, she saves...

Graphic Novel Review: Persephone by Loïc Locatelli Kournwsky Quote: Oh great. Would little miss Botany care to fill is in, on what 'amazing plant' we are helping her hunt today? The answer to that my pet! Pop a seed and next thing you know, you're laughing so hard that you can't stop. Throw me the words 'Persephone and Hades', I will gobble up any piece of writing. So while looking for Persephone and Hades' art I found this graphic novel on Google books and I fell in love with it. This book is a very loose retelling of the Persephone myth, it is devoid of the romance element but definitely based on the snatching of Persephone to the underworld. Set in fantasy land, divided between the prosperous upperland Eleusis and the barren sun-bereft underworld Hades. A brief history of both the lands at the beginning sets the story in motion. Demeter is the strongest magician of Eleusis, who help end the war with Hades. The art is so dense, mangaesque, beau...

Graphic Novel Review- The Unwritten: On to Genesis by Peter Gross, Mike Carey and Vince Locke Quote: The source is people. Specifically, people who read a story and get something out of it. Maybe give something back, too. Somehow Wilson was able to turn that emotion into power, and draw on it. The cover art by Yuko Shimizu always sets the standard so high for the story inside that my heart dies a little when I find the pages to be filled with regular page layouts and panels. Tom Taylor finally frees himself from the tale of Moby Dick, now with Lizzie Hexam and Richie Savoy are about to steal Wilson Taylor's journals from an auction. The journals contain the truth about the power of storytelling made flesh and blood. Unwritten is a story that is too grand and at times too intelligent for its own good. The tendency to touch upon every other literary reference and pay tribute to stories makes it a scattered read. I loved the little trip to the Golden Age of ...

Book Review: The Graveyard Book Volume II by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell Quote: The midsummer sky was already beginning to lighten in the east, and that was the way Bod began to walk.  But between now and then there was life and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart wide open. The story begins from where we left book one, an eleven-year-old Nobody Owens looking for new friends and understanding how he came to the graveyard. The last three chapters are beautifully illustrated by David Lafuente, Scott Hampton, and P. Craig Russell, Kevin Nowlan and Glen Showman. I loved David's art the most, it was detailed with solid colours. Maureen Quilling's character design was exactly done the way I imagined while reading the novel. I love how Silas was fleshed out in the darkness, he looks as cold as his words are. He is so dedicated to the boy that he makes sure Bod gets some access to the ways of living, like sending Bod to a football game. ...

Book Review: Jasmine Days by Benyamin Quote: That's why I told you the story of the Imam. Poor Ali, he is an idiot who ran to the river to see the monster of his own fiction. If we don't see where a person is coming from, then all our education and experience is useless. In a Middle Eastern country, amidst the desert stands the City, full of immigrants from South Asia. In it lives rebellious Sameera Parvin, a Pakistani immigrant who works as a radio jockey. She is a crowd favourite, loves playing the guitar with friends and is content in the city that provides her identity and burgers. Her happy days began to crumble when her friend Ali an enraged Shia Muslim begins to tell her tales of atrocities the King and the nation has done against Shias. As the story unfolds we learn of inner politics of a nation, and a joint family: the Taya Ghar which is Sameera's place of grounding as well as emancipation. Sippie aunty and Aisha aunty present the di...

Book Review: My Pet Human by Yasmine Surovec Quote: It took me a while to master "the look," but it's essential to getting what I want from humans. And let's just say, I always get what I want. I mean, who can resist this face? I'm adorable! Meet Mr. Independent nameless cat, who knows it all! He knows how to avoid animal control, how to get scraps from cooks at restaurants, climb tries and avoid human toddlers. And oh he loves boxes. The blurb of the book is what made me part with my money. A cat seeking a human pet: who must feed him a lot of treats, give back rubs, supplies boxes, plays with him and loves him Infinitely. Soon this independent cat befriends two humans who have just moved into the empty house at the end of the line. Curiosity get hold of him, he ends up becoming the little human's only friend and her mother soon warms up to him. They give him baths, feed him tuna and cuddles, and he in return claws meows in the night and shove...

Book Review: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Quote: I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too? The first time I came to learn about the existence of this book happened when I skipped a school day and stayed home and found the cinema adaptation airing on my television. I was thirteen and the protagonist of the story was thirteen. Melinda and I, we just connected. And I fell in love with Kristen Stewart's portrayal, I really wanted to scoop her up, protect her and marry her then. That was also the first time I really understood the reason for every daughters' mother's fear and concern. I asked my best friend to watch the movie the next day, who soon made an interesting observation about Melinda's ex-best friend Rachelle not being dumb and blinded by love for a boy to forget her reason and thought process. And it taught us one lesson we never forg...

Book Review: Mokusei by Cess Nooteboom and Adrienne Dixon Quote: Whether he had been asleep for a long time or not, did not know, only that he had dreamt that he was still in the aeroplane high above the ocean, on the way to her. An eighty-five pages long tragic love story of Arnold Presser, a Dutch photographer and a Japanese model, Sakoto. My soft spot of anything remotely related Japanese got me this. Originally written in Dutch, the book has a promising beginning. Opens with a conversation between a diplomat De Goede and Presser. The conversation between both brings out the difference between observation, expectations, and reality. To Presser, Japan is the land of beautiful gestures, kimonos, Mt. Fuji, Basho's Haikus and Hokusai's paintings: a Japan devoid of pollution, consumerism and expanding modern cities. While De Goede explains this very idea of Japan and it's culture in the heads of visitors ends up repulsing them of Japanese culture as their expectat...

Book Review: Poonachi by Perumal Murugan and Kalyan Raman Quote: ONCE, IN A village, there was a goat. No one knew where she was born. The birth of an ordinary life never leaves a trace, does it? Even so, her arrival was somewhat unusual. The story of an orphan goat, given to an old man by a giant, whom he calls Bakasuran. Named Poonachi after a kitten his old wife once had. You open this book and you woosh past it in one sitting. Animal Farm meets Female Dalit Narrative meets the Golden Geese story. It's a love story, a tragic love story with some tropey classic scenes, but it is the love story of goats. After a long time, it's a book I thoroughly enjoyed as well chocked on. The language so caring, lucid and sensitive that it comes out as a witty because it is paralleled with the harsh life of a female goat. The animals in the story think, feel, question the working of society. The nameless old man and old woman are as human as they could be, their economic ...

Since the age of three my legs have loved paddling, first it began with a red three-wheeler. I would sit on a tri-cycle and give ride to dolls. Well since that tiny age I had great taste in women, be it artificial or real hence the last ride was reserved for the most beautiful woman made of plastic. The Rapunzel inspired Barbie in pink, she too loved travelling around with a trustworthy chauffeur. Her long blonde hair riding the breeze and the auotist giggling down the sun-soaked veranda in the afternoon. After that ride to the sunset, the owner of the doll behaved like a typical rich father from Bollywood movies of 90’s and made a hue and cry about seducing his innocent daughter. The only problem is, the true patriarch and villain of my life has been one woman, who has been named in this blog too often. The graduation from tri-cycle to bi-cycle took few years. Eventually I got the jackpot between my legs in fourth grade. Ever since then there has been no turning back, t...

Attempted Flash Fiction:- belongs to rightful owner, PC- Google There are days when I fall under spells; today was one freshly lit afternoon that had charmed me. I was seated on my coarse blue seat and looking out of the window. I was under two spells. My feet rested on the empty seat opposite to mine, my black slippers cowering under its vacant space in the shadows. The green outside was rushing past my vision and the sunlight was making it hard for my eyes to keep staring outside for long. It was one of those days when rain had wiped off the dirt from sky and the smell of wet earth was numbing all other senses except the olfactory glands. My fellow passenger on right was fast asleep; her toes curled in dreams, her knees pulled to her swollen chest and her face half hidden in white dupataa, blocking the sunlight. As the train kept gushing on her tracks, I saw her body getting swayed softly on the blue berth. The mauve kurta and jeans she was in highlighted her outlin...

At twenty two, people had written poems, lead revolutions, bled for love, fought for country, worked for NASA, found new medicines for incurable diseases or simply roll on bed snoring, their life off in a blissful bubble like me. I turned twenty two, yes it seems strange to accept that I am far from my teen years, but I did, do I look older, refined and appealing to the opposite sex or the same sex? No! To them I appear a short girl jumping in ripped trousers here and there with nerd glasses on. Before I turned twenty two I took a self challenge- To Complete the Fictions of Haruki Murakami translated in English.  Here is a part from the long self interview. I had a dream or maybe I was in a place where all my personalities meet and talk, a parallel universe. In this place the Twenty-two years old me, was being questioned by the Blogger Me. The two selves of mine were seated in a big room, the interviewer was wearing t-shirt, green harem ...