Variety is the spice of life

One liner to begin a book review - Read the book wrapper! Second liner to continue - book padikarapo wrapper cover OZHUNGA padikavum (self note) at least author perai muzhusaga padikavum!!! After reading " The Widow" as a Jeffrey Archer novel and sharing a post about it as a Jeffrey Archer novel, i wanted to pick a different book by Archer to see if it was "any better" than "The Widow". En nalla neram, John Grisham en bloglaam padikrathilla. Or atleast any of his millions of followers. Illati court case aagi asingapatruka vendi irukum. Avvvv...oray the puppy shame moment. Enda unaku John Grishamkum Jeffrey Archerukumay difference therilaye neelaam book review podalamanu kekarathu nalla theriuthu. Irunthalum..yet another "hehe" momentnu thodachutu poga vendiyathay. How i ended up finding this is a thing in itself. When i was checking for the chronology of publication to "evaluate" (mmkum) if Archer wrote "The widow" before or a...

When every one were going gaga over the first part, i felt it would be more like art movie, considering the trailer and the snippets i saw. More of a malayalam movie in kannada. But when the second part came in to high praise from everyone, was more curious to watch and started off with the sequel and boy was i impressed!  Rishabh shetty - yaar saar neenga!! Enna oru performance!! In this age of violence driven movie where the more modern the gun and more gruesome the mode of kill, the only variety that people can think of as a story line, he goes on to make a movie, that has interesting twists naturally ingrown and considering the strong mythical background, makes for a fantastic movie watching experience. The locations, that are so rich in greenery, wonder where he found such place or was it all CG? with so much of fire and burn happening across the movie, wonder if it faced any challenge from environmentalists!! But that apart, was totally smitten by his performance and especial...

After almost 8 years since crossing the 1000 post mark, here we are at the next 500th milestone post. In fact i wanted this to be a thanksgiving day post which would've been apt considering that all thanks to this milestone was courtesy mainly due to Thala Ramesh and his "patronage" (aged patron nu padikapdaathu). But as usual, lighta late aaidichi. Still aairathil oruvar pola, namma thala, 1500 ilum oruvar. So happy to have managed this post and glad that he is still following this space enriching it with his wise words. I am literally awestruck by his comments to even the mokkaiest post and how his comments elevate the actual post and the thought process behind it. Thank you thala for being the solo source of inspiration behind all these posts. While the first 1000 took about a dozen years to reach, the next 500 have been quite slow, with the turnaround time for each post having grown more in duration and the volume having dropped to 5 a month from usual 6. Many a time ...

Movie reviews kooda nambidalam pola but online book reviewslam utterly unreliable. May be taste in movies is more relatable to a larger group of people as compared to books? While some enjoy the story line, many enjoy the pacing while there are people who look for literary essence, choice of words and language used. Book reading being a more niche group as compared to movie watchers, their choice of recommendations are quite unique to the individual involved as well. When i was checking for recommendations for thriller novels, this one came up and since Jeffrey Archer is someone i see as my English teacher was immediately into this book. It started slow, infact very slow. The pacing or the way in which the story was progressing was very unlike any of the Archer novel i had read before and considering that this was based on lawyer as a lead character, was kind of surprised at the content. At the half way mark was even wondering, if it was ghost written by someone else, considering the a...

I first heard of this term about 4-5 years back. FOLO being fear of being left out and FOMO being fear of missing out. In past few days, the articles and posts that i read on Linked in have made me FSLO, feeling so low, that i was actually FOWE, feeling overwhelmed with emotion.  FOLO as a word has several expansions, each one borderline different than other. Most of the people in tech industry have a fear of logging off - even and especially when on leave. The fear of missing out is more common among non smokers and non drinkers, who definitely miss out on close circle conversations, where the tongue is let loose by whatever is being consumed. You may call it insecurity or lack of confidence. But it is a problem that is existential. Mine is more of a different form of FOLO which is fear of living offline. The "online" aspect is more towards being in trend on the technology side and which means not just improving/learning on what is new in our area of work, but also across th...

Certain stories stay with us for a while after they are over. At times because of the ending. Sometimes due to the theme or the content. Quite a number of times because of the characters. This particular series stands out mainly because of the performances of every character involved, not just the leads. Even the minor one like the first wife of the villain or should I say the main character, who comes for just one episode though being mentioned throughout, leaves such a strong impression that, her presence via the conversations seems justified. The FBI guy who triggers the whole sequence in the leading lady which ends up in not just the arrest of the villain, has a minor role but like every other smaller characters has a powerful presence that elevates the entire setup.  What more can one say about the main guy, who played Nile Jarvis!! I have never seen an actor who shows up different in different lighting! He was so amazing in the closeup shots where only half his face had light...