Neha's Notebook

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner As I closed the book after reading it, the book left me with a lonely feeling. The world presented in the book was so immersive and intriguing that it had such an effect on me. I did not want to leave this world once dived into it. The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner is a bestselling historical fiction novel based in the setting of London. It is a story of 3 women, and countless other women who desired to take control of their lives. The novel presents the story of three protagonist women character named Nella, Eliza and Caroline. While Nella is a 17th century apothecary, Caroline is a present-day aspiring historical researcher. Nella has a shop in which she secretly sells poisons to the women who want to get rid of the men who have betrayed or wronged them. She works hard to brew every poison working day and night in the disguised corner of her shop. She has only two rules – that her poisons will never be used against any woman...

  Autumn is arriving.   There are crisp leaves about to fall, and drift into whispery breeze, sending spooky chills through the space.   This is the best time to read all those fantasy and spooky horror books.   Coraline is one of these books featuring a marvellous storytelling and spooky chilling scenes.   Coraline is the story about a girl who sets out to explore the other side of a door in her house. On the other side of the door is a world that is as enticing to her as torturous. On this other side, she encounters her ‘other mother’, her ‘other father’ and everybody’s ‘other’ version. Before she becomes a part of this ghostly world, she needs to find some lost souls, some hearts and the key to the mysterious door.   I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. In this video, I share seven insights I learned from reading the book!   #1 Be an explorer. #2 The braver you are, the more you will see. #3 Being brave doesn’t mean...

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird is a bittersweet fiction book, narrated by the character of a girl named Scout Finch. The book elaborates the story of her day-to-day experiences, while her father, who is a lawyer, fights a case against a white man who has blamed a black man for abusing his daughter. Mr. Finch, while he fights this case, teaches several lessons to his children, Scout and her elder brother Jem, during the course of the book. I thoroghly enjoyed reading this book, and in this review, I share life lessons I learned from the book. #1 The fineness of an individual doesn’t stem from their bloodline but from their integrity. Lead a life of integrity. #2 Talk to people about what they are interested in, more than what you’re interested in. #3 Never give up based on the criticisms from people. There will always be people who will try to bring you down. Keep fighting even if you know that you will lose. #4 Treat everyone as an equal...

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown For once, picture a religious cult in your imagination. A cult that follows secret rites and rituals. Then picture a man joining the cult and masquerading as the member of the cult but only to infiltrate it and dig out its mystical secrets to become powerful. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown is a fiction novel depicting the story of a cult named as the Masons cult. Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology and Dan Brown’s signature protagonist character stumbles upon this cult quite all of a sudden. Robert’s friend, Peter Soloman, is the head of the Masonic cult. One day Robert received a call from Peter’s assistant inviting him to give a lecture in an event going to be held in the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. He also requested Robert to bring a package with him, a package which he entrusted to him many years earlier. But as soon as Robert reached the venue, he came to know that the call was a hoax and the man posing as Peter’s assis...

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall Most of us humans like stories. In fact, we love stories. But why and how do we seem to love them? For science, that may still be a puzzle. Nevertheless, our understanding of the human mind leads the way to the insight which streams in the backdrop while we’re immersed in a story and our mind is processing, forming connections, feeling emotions, rewiring neural pathways and churning information presented to us through the story. The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall takes us through an immersive wordscape that is peppered with oodles of metaphors, pointers, insights, and lessons, pertaining mostly, to the topic of storytelling. The book features an interesting embroidery woven together with the intricate threads of researches related to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and various other sciences. Encapsulating several stories-within-stories and pop-modern terminology, the book ...

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown Human Mind is the Greatest Supercomputer! In the material nature, which is composed of five elements, anything and everything is a mortal entity. Never immortal. The elemental energy, as it moves through the dimension of time-space, it changes several forms along the way. And therefore, each form is but only a transitory and mortal entity. The duration for which a particular form lasts, may vary from one form to the other, but there is a certain truth about every material form. That is, at one point in time, it is going to disintegrate, collapse and dissolve into its breakdown. This fact about the world of material objects carries a 100% probability. Now, what about the world of non-material objects? Objects, such as, thoughts… Even these appearances we call as our ‘thoughts’ are nothing more than wavelets arising out of an ocean of gigantic memory – a memory which gets programmed in our human system, as we navigate a variety of exper...

As the name suggests, a Paper Town is a non-existent, phantom and fake town, as if made of paper. The literal meaning of the term ‘Paper Town’ refers to a metaphorical name given to a fake place that has been embedded in a map by the map’s creator, in order to protect the copyright for their map. Sometimes these are called as the ‘copyright traps’. People and companies that create or design maps, typically insert one or multiple Paper Towns in their maps, so that if someone steals, copies or plagiarizes their map, they will be instantly caught, because, a Paper Town has no real existence after all. This novel, Paper Towns by John Green, brings into action, an animating storyscape set forth in a town zigzagging along the city streets of Florida and featuring a bunch of interesting characters, primarily a batch of school-going teenyboppers studying in Winter Park High School and about to finish their school years. The novel is an invigorating work of fiction, mainly combining the themes ...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson Every mystery has a beginning and an end. And every mystery leads to the end of some or the other search. While some mysteries lead to the hunt of a treasure or a secret, some others lead to an understanding or a realization, an insight or an observation. In the same vein, some mysteries lead to the unfolding and revelation of something which causes us to wonder and wish, that it’d have been better if the pandora’s box of this mystery would have remained locked shut forever…because to glare at the revealed discovery, is probably too astronomical an appearance to assimilate all at once. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrson too is one of those mysteries that is as spine-chilling as intensely appaling. It is a heart-thumping jigsaw puzzle sketched from a labyrinthine storyline of several interlinked mysteries, revolving mainly around the lives of the characters Mikael Blomkvist (a journalist and part editor...

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Death. Imagine what if death was a person. And this person could speak. Imagine if you could hear it speak, and all of a sudden, it opened its mouth and began narrating to you, a story about a girl; a girl who was a thief, a thief who stole books… The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, is a historical fiction novel. The novel is written in a third-person narrative. But even more interesting an aspect about this narrative is its narrator. The narrator here, is not a human. Rather, the narrator is ‘death’. Yes! In this novel, the narrator is none other than the character of Death. Death narrates the story of a girl named Liesel Meminger. But the story is not only about this girl who relishes words and steals books. The story is also about a small street called Himmel Street, in a small town of Germany, precisely during the rule of Adolf Hitler, the Führer. The story is also about the people and the children and the families living in the boxl...

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Swaying and pulsating with pipey-hot spice descriptions, syrupy-emotive narrative, portrait-worthy characters and beautiful storytelling, The Mistress of Spices is a novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakurni, the Indian-American writer and poet. Tantalizing, enchanting, charming and bewitching, the novel is a work of fiction, most-appropriately falling into the category of magic realism fiction. But apart from all things magic, the book also ripples with romance, and croons with the fragrance of feelings like courage, intuition and following one’s heart. The novel, fundamentally is rooted in the connection that plays between human mind and the psychological healing power embodied in different Indian spices. The Mistress of Spices is a novel depicting the story of a young woman who is born gifted with certain magical powers. The story takes the reader through a spectacular journey of how she navigates the discovery of her magical pow...