Neha's Notebook

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa The greatest risk in loving someone is that it always comes with the possibility of heartbreak. And heartbreak, hurts. Heartbreak is a passage that leads to one’s metamorphosis, and a person is changed forever. Days At the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa is a beautiful story of heartbreak, love, loss, and change. Looked from another perspective, it is also about the cathartic power of books. When I read this book, it stirred within me, a colorful palette of feelings and emotions. The first feeling I had when I read the book can be described with the word “vellichor.” Vellichor is an invented word that means “the strange wistfulness of secondhand bookstores.” In this novel, the protagonist named Takako is invited by her uncle to his secondhand bookshop in the Tokyo town of Jimbocho. He invited her on the accord that she was dumped by her boyfriend and colleague, and so she had to resign from her job to not get...

Wildly enthusiastic, passionate, frenzied, ecstatic. Read more posts related to  Vocabulary

Verity by Colleen Hoover Within the 336 pages of Colleen Hoover’s Verity, she conjures a world brimming with tantalizing romance and gripping descriptions. The novel drips with moments of suspense that are sprinkled skilfully throughout the content of the book. Chapter endings are exceptionally brilliant so much so that it leaves readers hanging on the edge of a cliff, salivating, hungry for more. Finishing the novel left me even more curious to catch a glimpse into the writer’s mind who has penned this clever text. In a captivating storyscape, the book paints a picture consisting of two writers – one famous and one struggling. The struggling writer, who is also running out of money, is hit by an abrupt twist during a publishers’ meeting as she is asked to write some books for the writer who is famous. She is told that the other writer, the famous one, has slumped into coma and cannot continue her book series anymore.   Carrying from there, the story rolls and...

  Zinger: A witty remark, or something that is lively, impressive, interesting, or amusing. Zizzebots: The marks on the bridge of one's nose, visible when one's glasses are removed. Zingaro: A gypsy or a wandering person. Zwieback: Crisp, sweet & toasted biscuit. Zoetic: Life, living, vital, alive. Zingiber: Ginger. Zenzizenzizenzic: The eighth power of a number. Ex: 2⁸. Read more posts related to  Vocabulary

A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf As I sifted through the paraphernalia of Virginia Woolf’s diary, I caught a glimpse into the mind and life of a writer. I peered into the vast lair of her restless mind and collected bits and bobs to accommodate in my own writing process. Some days, her diary bubbles with enthusiasm while other days she is feeling dark, depressed, and melancholic, often resting in her bed for days and days, reading a book and enjoying her favourite coffee, cigarettes, and biscuits with her husband Leonard. “If one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy,” she wrote in her diary. She also wrote about her nature walks, tea times, excursions on London city streets, her observations of people around her, and newspaper reviews of her books. She liked to read a lot. Woolf started writing diary in her young thirties and wrote till 1941. Her last diary entry dates to four days before she died of ...

Bugaboo: An object of fear, shock, or alarm. An imaginary source of fear. Wackadoodle: An eccentric, fanatical, crazy, wrongheaded, bizarre, or foolish person. Rapscallion: A mischievous person. Philistine: A person who doesn't like or understand the beauty of art, literature, etc. Boondoggle: An unnecessary, wasteful or fraudulent project. Grotesque: Strange or ugly in a way that is not natural. Gobbledygook: A language or a piece of writing that may sound official or brilliant, but is too wordy or meaningless, due to excessive use of technical jargon or complex words. Cattywampus: Going badly, awkwardly, in the wrong direction, or in the unsteady rhythm; disarray or disorder. Bumfuzzle: To confuse, bewilder, or perplex someone by mixing up things. Kerfuffle: Commotion, fuss, noise, chaos, disorder, excitement. Taradiddle: A small, petty, or trivial lie. Zoanthropy: A maniac, psychotic or mental disorder in which a person is in the delusion that they are an animal and acts like on...

Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change the World by Neil Gaiman Writers are artists who tootle along the tendrils in their brain to unearth stories that will stir their heart, and the hearts of people who read them. Equipped with a paintbucket consisting only of twenty-six letters, and just a sprinkling of punctuation marks, they construct new worlds and scenarios that immerse and absorb readers’ attention; a healthy distraction from everyday frenzy. “Art Matters: Because your imagination can change the world” by Neil Gaiman is a non-fiction book that describes the significance of making good art. Although the book is mainly about writers, its insights are also valid for other kind of artists as well, such as dancers, musicians, actors, painters, etc. Featuring expressive illustrations by Chris Riddell, the book is divided into three parts: Importance of libraries, making a chair, and making good art. Libraries, he says, are like safe havens that enable us to l...