Category: Recommendations

All recommendations, of whatsoever nature, are tagged thus.

Categories
Recommendations Watchlist

Movie Review: The Inugami Family

The Inugami Family (Japanese Movie)
Year of Release: 1976
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Based on the Book: The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
Recommended for fans of: Gothic, Foreign Period Dramas, Eerie Mysteries, A touch of Horror, Brilliant Plot, Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Some time back, Words & Peace had recommended The Inugami Curse and I’d wanted to read the book ever since. I decided to take the shortcut when I accidentally discovered there was a subtitled movie adaptation too.

It’s a superb plot. The patriarch of the Inugami family clan dies, leaving behind several competing successors and a really crazy will. I don’t think it’s giving away spoilers to say that the will goes along the lines of “If A dies, B gets the property. If B dies, C gets the property….” It’s like the dreadful old man was setting them all up to murder, starting with A! Along the way there are some red herrings – the challenge is to identify which ones are red herrings and which ones are not.

Continue reading “Movie Review: The Inugami Family”
Categories
Books Music & Poetry Recommendations Watchlist

Tri-Monthly Wrap-Up/ Mini Reviews

Is “tri-monthly” the right word? June, July, August — loads of books and shows that I discovered and even liked (wonder of wonders)! Interestingly, in pretty much all of these, I also found that the blurb or the trailer had been misleading. Here’s a (long post) wrap up.

Castle Barebane by Joan Aiken

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

A rather strange and underrated historical fantasy work set in the 1880s involving a “road trip” from New York to Scotland. The journalist heroine sets out to help her odd brother (and also escape her marriage). Then she finds herself embroiled in a blackmail plot and with her young nephew and niece in tow. This book really defies genre and age groupings. The suspense is slow to build-up, the “fantasy” part is very, very subtle. I even thought there was some LGBTQ representation in this 1976 book. Also historically accurate, as can be expected from Aiken.

Why didn’t they ask Evans?

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A very quirky new adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s more complex mysteries. This cryptic question changes every time: Why didn’t they ask Evans? Why didn’t they ask Evans? Why didn’t they ask Evans? Wait at least till Episode 2 for the show to really get going.

Continue reading “Tri-Monthly Wrap-Up/ Mini Reviews”
Categories
Books Recommendations Watchlist

Mini Reviews & Recs: Feb through April 2022

Work in the past 3 months was like Godzilla. I read very little, and got nowhere on the 10 Million Reading Challenges that I had over-ambitiously planned. But I binged on mystery and detective stuff a lot, and here are a few things that kept me going.

Continue reading “Mini Reviews & Recs: Feb through April 2022”
Categories
Best of List Books Memes Recommendations

If you like Time Travel

Here we are, combining Top 10 Tuesday with… time travel! The first time I came across time travel was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, in which miserly Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

Since then, I’ve become something of a time travel fan. I’ve also discovered that there are two schools of thought. One school believes that through time travel you can change the future. The other school believes that the future is inescapable, through time travel you can only change the paths to that future.

Let’s take a look at 10 (or more) books that use innovative devices for time travel.

Continue reading “If you like Time Travel”
Categories
Books Memes Recommendations

Who am I?? Top 10 Books on the Amnesia Trope

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday meme hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week, we are looking at books on our favorite trope, and the first one I could think of was: amnesia. Somehow, I find the loss of memory to be very closely linked to the loss of identity, and reclaiming both seems like a major victory.

(Source)
Continue reading “Who am I?? Top 10 Books on the Amnesia Trope”
Categories
Books Recommendations Watchlist

January 2022 Wrap-Up / Mini-Reviews

January saw work at the office pile up, but I still managed to get in a lot more escape reading and watching. Here are some of the books and shows that I like particularly and I hope you’ll give these a shot as well.

Continue reading “January 2022 Wrap-Up / Mini-Reviews”
Categories
Books Recommendations Watchlist

Mini Reviews / October 2021 Monthly Wrap-Up

In the last week of October, I probably read more books than in the past 3 months. So I’m really hoping that my reading/ blogging blues are finally over. There’s a lot to record and catch-up with, all those blogposts that I missed — still need to get up to speed there! In the meantime, here’s a bunch a mini-reviews / reading wrap-up for October 2021.

Continue reading “Mini Reviews / October 2021 Monthly Wrap-Up”
Categories
Books Recommendations

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

I once read that the cuckoo leaves its eggs in other birds’ nests to avoid the effort of raising its own young. Imagine the duped bird’s shock to find that the egg hatched into some other species!

And so in Cuckoo Song, young Triss wonders if she is a cuckoo among the crows. She’s just had an accident that no one wants to talk about, but she knows she’s changed. For one thing, her memories are hazy and detached. For another, she is so hungry all the time…

Continue reading “Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge”
Categories
Memes Miscellany Recommendations Watchlist

Ten Recs for Halloween

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, we have a Halloween Freebie. Well, it’s a freebie, so I’ve put together some random (mostly) book-related videos and articles that I really liked recently. Hope you’ll enjoy these too!

Continue reading “Ten Recs for Halloween”
Categories
Books Recommendations

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

About The Forgotten Garden
Published: 2008
Book Tropes: Foundlings, Time Hops, Family Secrets, Mysterious Houses, Australia
Recommended for fans of: Susanna Kearsley, Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, Possession by A. S. Byatt, The Thirteenth Tale by by Diane Setterfield

Forgotten Garden was the first book that I decided to read from my Fall 2021 Reading List — since that was the book most people recommended! It turned out to be a very engrossing read, and managed to get me out of my reader’s block.

Continue reading “The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton”