1. Mark of Athena, House of Hades, Blood of Olympus (#3, #4 and #5 of Heroes of Olympus) by Rick Riordan
I'm finally done with Percy Jackson! As elated as being finally freed from Circe's magic island! Or like getting a sock from my master! ("Dobby is free!"). Just reaffirms that I'm neither young anymore nor an adult if it even comes to that. I'm going to treasure the information from the books though, just like I usually do with Dan Brown's (Lost Symbol still sucks). I could see Leo Valdez ending up with
2. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
This was a painful read for the first few pages (around 60-70) and if the cover didn't have Douglas Adams' name, I wouldn't have believed that he wrote it. Once Dirk Gently (Svlad Cjelli?) enters though (somewhere near halfway point), this was such a breeze. I absolutely loved the "holistic" explanation of fundamental interconnectedness of things. And of course Electric Monk was great as well (only interesting aspect in the first 50 pages for me). The book was supposed to be based on Doctor Who series and it might have been a bad idea to pick it up without having any knowledge on Doctor Who or its concept. Funny in parts, but don't compare it with H2G2 as it would only lead to disappointment. 3.5/5
3. Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana by Devdutt Pattanaik
For a book that is titled Sita, I'm disappointed how little we see of her (compared to my own lofty expectations). I heard great things about Pattanaik and raving reviews of his books (especially Business Sutra and Shikhandi) but this felt a little underwhelming. Might be because of all the things I hoped to find. I was hoping to see a lot of character exploration compared to traditional Ramayana tales (the book did come with "retelling" on the cover) and a different take on certain incidents than what we traditionally hear (same incidents but different point of view, if you know what I mean). But this turned out to be just an amalgam of several different versions found from India to East Asia. I already knew around 90% of the tales in the book and I'm thankful to Pattanaik for the remaining 10% :). I have similarly lofty expectations on Chitra Divakaruni's Palace of Illusions (known story from Mahabharata but with a different take) but now I'm afraid if it wouldn't reach to my expectations. 3/5
4. A Damsel in Distress by PG Wodehouse
I wanted to take a break from Jeeves & Wooster as well as Blandings series but that ended up as a no-Wodehouse-March. So I promptly went ahead and bought a standalone book Damsel in Distress in Apr. There's nothing much to talk about the story as we all know how Wodehouse stories are (at least those who're familiar with the author) but the humor is great in parts. A little underwhelming again (boy, how many times did I use it already?) as one of the characters resembled Bertie Wooster, one of them resembled Lord Emsworth (including the sister!), one of them's like Efficient Baxter - so it was like reading a hodgepodge of J & W, Blandings. But it may also serve as an excellent introduction into the Wodehouse world for those who never read his books. I can never bring myself to rate any Wodehouse anything less 4/5 but this is somewhere around 3.5.
5. The Big Four by Agatha Christie
Christie is back after an absence in March! And it was underwhelming again! (at this point you are perfectly entitled to shout at me - your head is underwhelming!) Certain important parts resemble Conan Doyle's Holmes so much that if both the authors were born in 1980s, there would have been law suits accusing plagiarism. Instead of (usually) the one villain, we get four different villains in this one and considering that goodreads tells me this is #7 in Poirot series, I'm gonna assume that Christie wrote this fairly early in her career; and she couldn't handle four villains concept adequately. Guess it wasn't really a bad idea to stay away from Christie for a month. 3/5
Apart from the full length books, I also read a lot of short stories recently -
These are all 4/5 unless specified otherwise -
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl - My first Dahl. The ending was a bit predictable but Dahl is a master story teller. Kept me hooked throughout.
The Interlopers, Open Window by Saki (H. H. Munro) - Two more with unpredictable endings.
The Verger by Somerset Maugham
Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff
After Twenty Years, The Cop and the Anthem, The Ransom of the Red Chief, The Princess and the Puma by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) - Is there a better writer than O. Henry when it comes to stories with unpredictable endings?
The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells - Spooky! And creepy! In the County of the Blind, One-Eyed man is the king. Well, don't be so sure about that.
The Call of the Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft - My first Lovecraft! And it was amazing. And extremely creepy. This is the first book where Lovecraft introduces Cthulhu and it actually comes only in dreams (mostly) but it's such a scary thing! Imagine something that is huge and resembles a human, an octopus and a dragon. And it has the ability to come into your dreams and screw your mind up. Sometimes it may also feel like meeting you in person and inviting to its home so that it can wreck you. After reading this, Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald made more sense btw.
Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff - I'm not gonna shower much love on Wolff's Bullet in the Brain but man oh man, this one's so brimmingly excellent.
Shatranj ke Khiladi by Munshi Premchand (hindi) - Whoaa, great read!
The Last Question, The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov - Asimov with a bit of philosophy and also sci-fi. Great reads!
Uncle Fred Flits By by PG Wodehouse - Re-read this three more times after initially reading it in Feb (I guess). Continues to be funny and none of the characters (err, mainly Uncle Fred and Pongo Twistleton) resemble any famous ones from J & W or Blandings. I'm planning to read more Uncle Fred till I get sick of him and throw Wodehouse away for a month again.
A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf - It didn't make any sense to me. Somebody help?
A Telephone Call by Dorothy Parker - What is this, a monologue? Or a rant? Was expecting some funny stuff from Parker (who reviewed Twilight several decades before it came out - This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown away with great force!) but this went on and on and on and on. I pictured the protagonist as the woman from Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. So if any of you read the Parker story and watched Hitchcock's movie and see any sense of resemblance, I'd be glad. I already feel like I'm losing my sanity and have become El Loco.
Abandoned projects - On Writing by Stephen King (29 pages), Atonement by Ian McEwan (7 pages). (adding them here so that I'd at least be ashamed and motivated enough to read them next month)
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