I had just brought the children up from the garden and spotted a gorgeous sky with a bright orange orb sinking through it. It reminded me of my breakfast of fried egg on toast. How I love to jab the jiggly yolk and watch it run down. I was dying to do that with the sun.
I couldn’t capture it fast enough and soon the golden glow that covered the whole sky turned into night.
I’m linking this to Skywatch Friday where you can see other skies from around the world.
Happy week all!
It was getting on to 7.30 and I was just winding up . For the past three hours or so, there were 20 three year olds running around the house as their mummies and nannies chased after them and I was exhausted! As I picked up the last streamer, the lock on the front door jiggled and my husband entered with a distinctly triumphant and excited look in his eye.
“What’s up?” I asked surprised to see him so up beat after a long day at work.
“I’ve got tickets to the 9 o’clock show, ” he said brandishing two movie tickets in my shocked face.
Now that really was a first. Movies were not on top of his list and definitely not a priority on a Thursday. I had never expected a surprise like this – almost a “first day, first show”.
This was in the days of Video cassettes, before DVDs, BluRay, and HDR and Home Theatres. Besides, watching movies was rare what with Baby’s and Hubby’s schedules taking up most of our time. As for going to the theatre? Ha! That was already a thing of the past.
I quickly stuffed the streamer into the bin and rushed off to get ready. This was an occasion that was special in more ways than one. Not only was I going to see “Out of Africa” on full screen, but also going to a movie with Hubby after two whole years!!!! I quickly pulled out the saree that he’d got me from his last trip to the South, one that I’d been saving for a special occasion, splashed on my Eau de Parfum, put on my face, my highest heels and stepped out clutching on to his arm lest he vanish or scoot off.
On the way to the theatre, I kept quiet, not wanting to spoil the mood with any unnecessary barbs or sarcastic comments that I have a tendency to shoot off ( e.g. How come you managed to get tickets? What happened to your business calls? Did you get free tickets? )
At 8.30 the traffic was pretty thin and we reached the theatre in no time at all. There were lots of people outside – Robert Redford still was a heart throb and Meryl Streep was also a crowd puller so after we parked the car, Hubby Dear gave me a hand as we climbed up the steps.
He continued holding my hand (let me stress that we’re not into PDA, so this was quite unusual) as we went up the stairs to the Dress Circle. He kept holding it till we were shown to our seats. Gallantly he let me go ahead and after we were settled, set off to get some pop corn to munch. It was going to be a romantic evening after all.
Half way through the movie, just as I was beginning to feel mushy with the romance simmering between Karen von Blixen and her dashing Big Game Hunter, unfolding in the panoramic beauty of Africa, he groped for my hand and whispered, ” I want to show you something”.
“Here,” he said, “Feel lower. It’s hard and sharp.”
I nearly gagged when he said these words.
“Be careful,” he said as I felt a nail on his seat, “You’ll tear your sari when you get up!”
Feeling the pointed nail, I began to giggle. He gave me a strange look. As our eyes met, he began to laugh. And the people around us hissed to make us keep quiet. We continued to laugh silently, holding hands as we watched the movie.
“This post is a part of #LoveAndLaughter activity at BlogAdda in association with Caratlane.”
Recently I find that everybody on the net is into Book Reviews. Of course I exaggerate when I mean everyone, perhaps it is just the bloggers I am actively interacting with are professional book reviewers. I wonder if this is the Universe’s way of telling me to read more.
But honestly, there are all kinds of book reviewers out there – ones who are serious critics and actually give a technical appraisal while there are others like me who are just plain, ordinary, every day readers who give their opinion on whether they liked the book or not.
While I find Book Clubs boring, I love doing Book Reviews and have been doing them for years back in the day when the Free Press Journal was a well respected newspaper in Mumbai’s news-stands. Alas, news-stands are slowly vanishing as are people who read print media. People are so rushed for time that unless and until it is worth their while, they won’t bother to read a word more than necessary. It is no wonder then that book reviewers via Goodreads, Amazon, Flipkart and other platforms are doing great business.
With most newspapers going on line and book reviews being done by professional book reviewers, amateurs like me have had to resort to the Internet to get their opinions on books published.
I found Blogadda a great platform to do book reviews on, particularly since it introduced me to a whole new genre of literature that I was unaware of – the Indian novel. So I was happy when they accepted my offer to be a regular reviewer. However, Blogadda has recently changed its book reviewing policy. In the olden days, I got the book, read it and reviewed it, submitted the review and that was that.
Recently, Blogadda insisted that I had to post the review on Goodreads and Amazon as well.
When I linked up my Blogadda review to Goodreads, I was told to submit another, fresh review, one that was unpublished so I had to re-do another review. I didn’t mind this too much as it was a challenge how to say the same thing in different words without it sounding like a cut and paste job.
But when it came to AMAZON, the site refused to accept my submission until I was a registered customer. Now this is downright thuggery as far as I am concerned.
My own personal experiences with AMAZON have been pathetic. I was once gifted something via AMAZON and the delivery which should have happened in 3 days took over 4 weeks! It also took many phone calls and emails and eventually I got the parcel with the label washed off with squiggly, barely legible scribbled address on it.
The second experience wasn’t any better – my daughter ordered a gift for a friend and after the promised delivery date which never materialised, she was told ( after many many phone calls) that the product wasn’t available. Is this what you call professionalism?
To enable me to post my review on AMAZON, I had to buy something online through them and only then would they accept my book review.
Like most reviewers, this is a labour of love : I am not getting anything for writing a book review and while I enjoy reading and even writing about it, surely AMAZON would understand that I am doing them a favour. The more book reviews they get for a title, the more likely they are to move it off their shelves. And considering how reluctant people are to accumulate dust collectors these days, book buying has become a rarity. Most people prefer reading them on their Kindles or at best borrowing them from libraries.
Come on. It’s just a scam!
The corollary :
How genuine are book reviews then? Are book reviewers really giving genuine peeks into the book? Are they actually reading the books they review?
Twenty- five Seven 