Payal Dhar's Blog: Writer's Log, page 10

Review #10: My Brother’s Wedding

Insane. Hilarious. Nerve-wracking. Noisy. These are just some of the adjectives that can describe an Indian Wedding. Andaleeb Wajid’s My Brother’s Wedding is all about the insanity, hilarity and other things that ensue when Saba decides to blog about her brother’s upcoming wedding.

What starts out as a promised chronicle of a ‘typical Muslim wedding in detail’ gets a little more complicated when Saba suddenly finds herself embroiled in a little romance of her own. Then there is Ammi fretting about doing things Just Right, Abbu alarmed at the way the family coffers are diminishing, her siblings being decidely peculiar, her best friend getting at her for not taking her writing seriously, it’s no wonder that Saba wants to bury her problems in the anonymity of cyberspace.

Read the full review here.

~PD

Review #9: The Year It All Ended

Reviewing a book by an author you’ve worked with is a path strewn with thorns. So when I started reading Kirsty Murray’s The Year It All Ended—my very own autographed copy, thank you very much—I’d decided that I wouldn’t say anything at all if I didn’t like it. But as it turns out, it was exactly the opposite: it’s a lovely book that I want to tell everyone to read right away!

A coming-of-age historical young adult novel can be a difficult combination to pull off, but Kirsty has done a sterling job of it. Read the full review here.

~PD

Review #8: Miss Carter’s War

Miss Carter’s War by Sheila Hancock was sent to me for review by Sunday Herald, the Sunday supplement of Deccan Herald. Now, Sheila Hancock is not a name that rings a bell, but upon discovering that she was married to John Thaw, immortalized (for me at least) as Inspector Morse on the TV series, I was much excited. And also for the fact that this was her debut novel—written at the age of 82.

Miss Carter’s War is an extraordinary piece of work, the sort of book that stays with you long after you turn the last page. Not only does it effortlessly span six decades of one woman’s life, it shows us just how extraordinary being ordinary could be.

Rather than repeating myself, here is the link to the my full review for Sunday Herald.

~PD

Review #7: Asus G551JK Republic of Gamers laptop

The beautiful beast: Asus G551JK gaming laptop. (Photo: Asus)

The best thing about being a tech writer is that you get gadgets to play with. Unfortunately, you have to give them back eventually. Be that as it may, ever since I found out—and this was eons ago—that ‘gaming laptop’ is a real thing and not a figment of my wishful imagination, I’ve always wanted one. So when the Asus G551JK was offered to me for a couple of weeks, I was beside myself with joy.

The G551JK is one of Asus’ Republic of Gamers series of gaming machines. And this is a beautiful beast. The red-and-black colour combination is stunning and the brushed-metal outside is complimented with a red Asus logo that illuminates when the computer starts up, which is a nice touch. The red-backlit keyboard—with the W, S, A, D keys highlighted with red bevels—makes you want to turn off the room lights right away. The screen and keyboard have a matte finish, a welcome change from the usual glossiness. I’m told that the machine comes with an Asus gaming mouse and headset, but these were not included in my review unit.

Let’s get the specs out of the way: the Asus G551JK is powered by an Intel Core i7-4710HQ 2.5GHz processor going up to 3.5GHz with Turbo Boost, with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. This is complimented by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX850M graphics card with 2GB of DDR3 RAM. There is a 6x Blu-Ray optical drive, card reader, HDMI port and three USB ports. The screen is a 15.6-inch full HD IPS LCD screen, with a maximum resolution of 1920x1080px. All of this weighs in at an hefty 2.7kg, but then, I would use it to set up my gaming corner and not lug it about everywhere.

From a user perspective, the G551JK was comfortable to use. Having small hands, I’ve often had a problem with laptops much smaller than this one, with things being hard to reach, especially during gaming when quick reactions are key. With this machine, there was enough space to rest your hands and reach the right buttons and trackpad comfortably. The keyless trackpad—that is, no dedicated right- and left-click buttons—was particularly impressive. It is multitouch, with tap-to-click enabled and nicely responsive.

The laptop comes preinstalled with Windows 8.1 and starts up really fast. I tested it out with Hitman: Absolution at ‘ultra’ settings, not because the game has heavy demands, but because I’ve been consumed with finishing the game and since I’d been playing it recently, I could easily compare. Well, the performance was fantastic. What few hiccups there were were in no part to do with the hardware (hint: you need to run it in Windows 7 compatible mode). The machine zipped through Absolution and made no bones about my incessant loading and reloading. The screen is fantastic, including the viewing angles. Mention must be made about the cooling fan—effective and quiet.

The only place that the Asus G551JK was found wanting in my limited use was battery life. In normal circumstances, that is, non-gaming, it gave me about three hours. Even my three-and-a-half-year-old MacBook Pro can easily beat that. The capslock indicator is another thing I had a problem with—a tiny light towards the bottom of the machine that indicates if capslock is on is a bit too subtle for convenience.

In sum, the user experience was extremely satisfactory. At Rs 82,999, it is not bad value for money. If you’re on the lookout for a gaming monster, you could do seriously worse than snag this one.

RATING: 8/10

~PD

Review #6: Cross and Burn

Resurfacing after a holiday and a bout of illness with a review of Val McDermid’s Cross and Burn. This is the eighth installment of the Carol Jordan and Tony Hill saga, even though they spend most of this book resolutely avoiding and refusing to talk to each other.

If, like me, you’ve long lost your patience with the unappealing and unconvincing drama that is this relationship, then what will interest you more is the serial killer that is running riot in Bradfield, picking off women who look like Carol Jordan. But now that the crack team that Jordan once led is broken and shattered, who will pin down this killer?

Read the full review here.

~PD

Another candle to the cake

Time to add another candle to the cake. It’s another thing that the cake might bake itself with the heat from those 2,000 candles. Speaking of cakes&dmash;that’s three cakes in three sentences (well, four)—it’s a homemade one this year, baked by my father. Not enough space for 39 candles, though.

It’s a different birthday in another sense as well. For a change, I’m away from home, spending it with my parents and extended family in Kolkata. This is partly accidental, since it coincided with a four-day weekend, but it’s put my granny in a very good mood and given various other relatives a reason to eat, drink and make merry (not that they need much encouragement).

Right then, so I won’t pretend very seriously to take stock of 2014. The truth is, I don’t remember too much of it, it was such a blur. I had two books out, got one new nephew, and went to Germany and Singapore—that’s not a bad tally. (And I did not finish writing Amazing Grace, so Marie may pull out my nails slowly if she wants.)

What do I want to do in 2015? Well, here are five things:

Stay enrolled in some class or another, be it Zumba, Urdu reading group or swimming.
Write (finish) at least another novel.
Write one short story a month (Gargi, feel free to prod me with something sharp!).
Crochet a shawl. Don’t laugh—I managed an entire baby blanket in 2014.
Finish Amazing Grace.
Redo the design of this website.

All right, that was six things, but I’m old and I can’t count any more.

~PD

Reviews #3, #4, #5: The Tamanna Trilogy

I met the author Andaleeb Wajid at Bookaroo in Delhi last November and was most excited to find that she had written a time-travel series. We got talking, with me hoping I could pinch an idea or two on how to get my Satin series out of the time-travel mess I’ve created, but then I made an even more exciting discovery: she is a terrific baker too.

Her three Tamanna books are about a 16-year-old girl who accidentally ends up in 1982. And subsequently—need I spell it out?—complications result. Click for detailed reviews:

Tamanna Trilogy #1: No Time for Goodbyes

Tamanna Trilogy #2: Back in Time

Tamanna Trilogy #3: Time Will Tell

DISCLAIMER: It’s a complete lie that I started reading the Tamanna Trilogy to get into Andaleeb’s good books so she’ll feed me brownies the next time I’m in Bangalore.

~PD

Year 2014 in blogging

How popular was Writeside.net in 2014? Well, now that I have the Jetpack plugin, I get to see all sorts of stats without doing much of the hard work that it needed earlier. Turns out, 2014 saw over 7,000 visitors from no less than 106 countries!

It’s quite likely a lot of people ended up here by accident and I hope they went back at least slightly entertained. Does my 52 Weeks of Reading and Writing project throughout 2014 have anything to do with this popularity? Hmm, who knows.

Click on the image to read the full report.

~PD

Review #2: Queen of Ice

It’s a bit early in the year to be cheating, but what the heck. So what if this isn’t a review written specifically for Writeside.net? I worked really hard on it for GoodBooks. The book in question is Devika Rangachari’s Queen of Ice.

The easiest way to make a teenager disappear is probably to hiss “historical fiction” at him or her. One could blame the education system for making history a litany of names, dates and what places used to be called before they became the places we know. Or, one might shake a fist at the drab, didactic fare that exists in the name of historical fiction in India. Which is what makes Devika Rangachari’s book stand out like a bar of rich dark chocolate in a bowl of celery sticks.

Since Devika Rangachari is known for her fondness for—and ability to put away a vast quantity of—chocolate, I felt this was an apt opener for a great book. Read the rest of the review here.

~PD

Review #1: Nirmala and Normala

We all know how much Bollywood loves the twins-separated-at-birth story line and we’ve all taken perverse pleasure from these movies. So when a couple of writers team up to poke some fun at it, the result is a hilarious juxtaposition of reel and real life.

The author–illustrator team of Sowmya Rajendran and Niveditha Subramaniam are well known for the young adult novels Mayil Will Not Be Quiet and Mostly Madly Mayil, the diary of the irrepressible Mayil. Thus, when Penguin asked me if I’d like to review a copy of their graphic novel Nirmala and Normala and, of course, I jumped at the chance.

Click here for the full review.

~PD