F?@k Knows by Shailendra Singh

Title : F?@k Knows
Author : Shailendra Singh
Genre : Non-Fiction / Self-Help
Publisher : Rupa Publications
Pages : 256
My Rating : 6/10
Reviewed For : Blogadda

Blurb:

 

Funny and candid, yet rich in insights on how to really live life on your own terms, this unconventional self-help manual is unlike any book around.

What do you want from life? Are you on the right track? Are you truly happy?
If your answer to these questions is F?@k knows!, then this book is for you.

Find the answers to life’s most important questions with the help of uber-successful entrepreneur, Shailendra Singh, co-founder of Percept and inceptor of Sunburn. Told with sparkling, flavourful and in-your-face humour, this book will advise you on how to:

• Find yourself (Because you’re probably lost. Admit it.)
• Follow your heart (Because if you don’t then you’ll die unhappy, you stupid f?@ker.)
• Achieve your goals (You know you want to.)
• Live life like you give a f?@k (Because...why not?)

Candid and thoughtful, F?@k Knows will show you how to really live life on your own terms, to do what you want to do and not what you have to do just because your father said so!

My Review:

So I have a confession to make & it is that, consciously I never ever pick up a self-help book. I rarely read them & less so follow them. My brief tryst with this genre started with “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” & ended with “The Alchemist”. In came along this read from Blogadda and I decided to give it a try & guess what?? I was not disappointed!! What sets this book apart from the others of its genre is that instead of being the usual boring & loaded with complex concepts, this a light and breezy read.

F?@K Knows has been written by Shailendra Singh, who has B.T.D.T. Been there. Done that. A sports marketing guru, an advertising whiz, a Bollywood producer, a shrewd dealmaker, founder of Percept Advertising – on first glance, one may think that he has it all sorted out. However, when twin tragedies strike in the form of his father’s death & his own near escape from death, the author suddenly finds himself asking some the most basic questions about his life. He then realized that he had been living it all wrong and did not want others to repeat the mistakes that he did. Hence, this book was born, where in 73 short chapters he talks about life’s lessons with humorous and interesting anecdotes.

The cover in all its bright yellow glory gets your attention where a man’s head surrounded by a multitude of choices is depicted. As you read the book, you realize that this cover is as apt as it can be since it’s all about the confusions faced by the youth of today. Happy or unhappy, lost or found, heart or mind – what does one follow when given a choice?? Well, I will leave that for you to discover as you read this book.

From the outset, this is a sort-of autobiographical book where the author has used his own experiences from personal &  professional life to give us lessons on life. The chapters are short, very random and that I think is the key to their effectiveness. The author does not use complex or flowery language, neither has he made an attempt to be preachy. He just narrates an anecdote from his life in each chapter in simple, lucid language & then goes on to point what he could have done & what he did instead. He had used everyday situations that all of us face from time-to-time & has effectively driven home the hard hitting facts about life. Though the writing is peppered with humor and the author makes light of every situation, this read will definitely make you stop & think about your own life.

The writer’s writing style is casual, humorous & witty. Thought provoking ideas are put across such that they are easy to grasp. The target audience here is the young crowd & people facing mid-life crisis. However, there is an overuse of the work “Fuck” & the read is laced with sexual anecdotes at some points. Needless to say, it might not go down well with some readers causing them to skip the entire read, terming it as fickle.

Definitely not ground-breaking but overall it is an entertaining read, about introspection, being lost, the road less travelled & self-discovery. Kudos to the author for the outright bold yet thought provoking debut effort.

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Men On My Mind by Radha Thomas

Title : Men On My Mind
Author : Radha Thomas
Genre : Fiction / ChickLit
Publisher : Rupa Publications
Pages : 270
My Rating : 6.5/10
Reviewed For : Storizen TV

Blurb:

A hugely entertaining novel about love, sex and adventure.

You’re a girl from the land of the Kamasutra. And everyone expects your love skills to comprise the acrobatic, the inventive, the superlative. You try, of course, to game- ly meet the baffling requirements of the men who walk in and out of your life. But how much can you really do, when your investments yield minimum returns and maximum weirdness? When your mothers words keep ringing in your head: You need at least five men to fulfil you, sweetie. Remember Draupadi?
From starry-eyed crushes to lustful longings, from Catholic convents to raucous nightclubs, from boarding-school bloomers to the Open Butterfly g-string, from lov- ers to stalkers to philanderers Radha Thomas takes you on a crazy ride through Mumbai, Delhi, Beijing, Rotorua and New York, in the age-old quest for The One. A wickedly funny and flirtatious book about that mysterious thing called love, Men on My Mind is a delicious mix of sex, adventure and discovery that you must not resist.

My Review:

The search for the “Elusive Mr. Right” has provided quite some fodder for a few delightfully dishy reads in Chick Lit and has proven to be a successful formula for many a RomComs. As the name suggests, ‘Men on my Mind’ is quintessentially the journey of a young, innocent 7-year old who has her moment of epiphany when she eavesdrops on a conversation between her mom & her aunt. Wherein, her mom explains to her aunt that every woman needs at least five men to fulfill her & goes on to describe each man & his usefulness in detail. Armed with this knowledge, our girl starts off the journey of finding her Mr. Right from this tender age. What follows is a series of humorous/embarrassing/painful incidents as she experiments with a series of men from possessive loonies to pathetic kissers to drug addicts to two timers. But she never loses hope, takes it all in her stride and shinnies her way through the dangerous minefield of BFFs & boyfriend to ultimately find The One who would eventually makes her toes curl & nose tingle over just a smouldering stare!! The fact that India is the land of Kama sutra & Draupadi who needed five men to fulfil her is used expended & employed by the author to elaborate on our heroine’s various shades of grey.

The cover depicts pair of legs with shoes in one foot & heels in another which perhaps depict the transition of the protagonist as she globe trots from the chaste environment at a nun-dictated boarding to across the seven seas in search of True Love. This and the other elements on the cover page (guitar, martinis and so on) give a kaleidoscope view of her social life & her various sexcapades.

Men on my Mind is a frank yet unblushing chronology of our protagonist’s experiments with men where she only has knowledge that is borrowed from BFFs or read in M&Bs or drawn from fantasies or learnt from her own past experiences. Although she studies in the celibate environment of a convent, it leaves her lusting more than ever & describes the various perils that she undergoes to start her voyage with boys. After her schooling, her family shifts from Mumbai to Delhi & she has her brush with men in the capital city. Yet “The One” remains elusive. Finally she is packed off to the States to live with her aunt & do something in her life other than finding boys who would be ready to deflower her virginity. Initially, the debauchery might be a little too much to take but as the book progresses, you develop a sense of solidarity with the heroine as she juggles with more than one relationship at a time, loses her BFFs as easily as her men and has one night stands without any regrets.

When I started with the first chapter I thought that it was a memoir of sorts. However, as the novel progressed, I found it to be a well paced, candidly penned story. In addition to the character of the protagonist, the secondary characters (or more accurately – the various men in her life) are all well developed. However, there was an overload of men that tended to seem a bit of a drag towards the end. The ending, too, seemed a bit abrupt as if rounded off hastily which may leave the reader unsatiated. Of course, after following our heroine’s journey tediously from one loser to another the reader would always want a full blown account of the elusive happy ending at the end. But, since this is the first part of a trilogy, I guess the author has purposely kept it a secret & built up the suspense for the second book. All in all, this is a light, funny read which can be breezed through in a single sitting.

(The review copy has been provided by Storizen TV. This review is entirely my own personal & honest opinion. I do not receive any kind of payment or monetary gains for my review.)

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The Bankster by Ravi Subramanian

Title : The Bankster
Author : Ravi Subramanian
Genre : Mystery, Thriller
Publisher : Rupa Publications
Pages : 364
My Rating : 8.5/10
Reviewed For : Blogadda


Blurb:

Bankers build their careers on trust, or so everyone thinks, till a series of murders threaten to destroy the reputation that the Greater Boston Global Bank (GB2) has built over the years. Who is behind these killings, and what is their motive? Is the banker at GB2 fast turning into a bankster? Or he was always one?

When Karan Panjabi, press reporter and ex-banker, digs deeper, he realizes that he has stumbled upon a global conspiracy with far reaching ramifications a secret that could not only destroy the bank but also cast a shadow on the entire nation. With only thirty-six hours at his disposal, he must fight the clock and trust no one if he is to stay alive and uncover the truth.

Spinning an intricate web of lies, deceit and treachery, bestselling author Ravi Subramanian, a master storyteller of financial crime and winner of the Golden Quill Readers Choice Award, returns with his most gripping thriller yet.

My review:

Well, to start with this is my first review for Blogadda & when I received a signed copy for review I was absolutely chuffed!! Tearing open the cover (literally!), the first thing that jumped out to me was the cover of this book. It’s throws off an uber sinister vibe depicting our “Bankster” with a briefcase in one hand & a pistol in another standing at what appears to be our own Mumbai’s Queen’s Necklace & with a plane rushing out in the skyline.

Moving on to the author, with three best selling thrillers on banking already in his kitty, Ravi Subramanian continues to keep the readers on the very edge with this Bank lore. To be honest, I have never read Ravi Subramanian before so I did not know what cracker of a plot was awaiting me!! But now after reading this financial thriller, I intend to visit each of his reads...

So the plot kick offs in Angola where a covert CIA agent seals off an arms deal in lieu of blood diamonds. The author then takes us to an episode in the past in Kerala where a resort owner is falsely accused of a crime that he has not committed. Laying down these two brief but essential blocks, the author steers the plot to his home ground – yes you guessed it right!! – The Greater Boston Global Bank (GB2) in Mumbai. At GB2, the author acquaints us not only with the power games (which turn as twisted as the plot proceeds) but also with a sundry of characters. With people in power trying to usurp even more power by manoeuvring each possible opportunity for their own gain while heady & young Relationship Managers trying to climb their way up the corporate ladder by any possible means, GB2 is fast becoming a breeding ground for rivalry & competitions. However, the “who wins it-who loses it” mood at the bank is hampered by a series of murders & it’s long before someone really starts connecting the dots & voila!! A pattern emerges. This is when, Karan Punjabi – the ex-banker, who is now the Financial Editor at The Times of India, steps in & opens up the Pandora’s Box as he unearths the real reasons for the death of GB2 employees.

So basically we have three plots, one with a CIA agent whose work is to strike deals for his agency. Second plot revolves around an aging man’s lone struggle in Devikulum, Kerala against the government. After the horrors of Chernobyl (Russia) & Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (Japan), Krishna Menon wants the government to come clean on the environmental impacts of a Nuclear Plant set up in Kerala & the measures taken to avoid history repeating in India!! Thirdly, we have the carnage going on at GB2 which, on the face of it, are deemed as suicides. Do you get a connection???? Of course, you didn’t & you aren’t even supposed to & neither did I!! But you have to hand it down to the author for not only weaving these three seemingly disjointed plots together seamlessly but also doing so with an edge. However, the absolute smasher of a plot is written in the last 75 pages of this book, where the hunter becomes the hunted & it is revealed who indeed holds the strings!!

The plot is spanned across diverse locales – from Angola to Kerala to Mumbai to Vienna – and as you dart from one locus to another, you will experience what is known as a rollercoaster of a ride!! Also, each character in the plot is relatable, since the author brings out the most basic human instincts through them. Greed for more power, backstabbing, envy, moral bankruptcy - just to name a few!! The plot can be compared to a big game of chess where you don’t know who is a pawn & who is the king till the end!!

Fortunately I received this book on a Friday & before I knew it I was done with over the weekend!! I never realised how I breezed past the bulk of the book!! And I can say that for non bankers like me, the author provides an interesting insight into the banking world - all neatly packaged & beautifully presented replete with its corporate twists & turns where loyalties keep changing every second. The only point that did not go well with me was that at the end not all the characters were given the right attention which left me kind of unsatiated. But other than that, this book is a Total Blockbuster..oops...a “Bankbuster”...

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