Travel wishlist....Nungwi, Africa

Not quite resurrected

JR Ward is a God. No question about it. She has created a world of the most intimate, tender, tough, cool characters, with the kind of internal struggles and a masterly interactive dialogue that is unparallelled in her genre. It isn't realistic dialogue – do you know men who love to talk and examine their feelings? - but it is touching and what women want. Yet the latest book suffers from the worst malaise an author of repute can suffer: Lover Reborn's main storyline doesn't work. It's the exact fate of Lover Enshrined, where Phury and Cormia are just boring.

Here, Tohr (or Thor as Ward fans still insist on saying on her FB page, I thought Americans only had problems with Asian names, maybe they think Tohr is Arabic), is still in love with his dead wife, still mourning his unborn son, and in a matter of a few chapters we are to believe that he has fallen in love again. I think this is a modern day problem, where you are expected to love again and marry again no matter what, it's as though you are wanting in some way if you don't. Superficial much? Even the sex seems mechanical, and that, for Ward, is the coup de grace. But. I still love her work. There's a gritty, raw essence and deep values of loyalty and commitment that gets me going till the last page. There are new characters I've fallen for, like Xcor, and old characters that still set my heart beating faster, like Qhuinn and Blay. Layla having Q's baby was a motif introduced in the last book and one gets the feeling that Ward felt she had to stick to it although it really is a stumbling block to the developing saga but you get my drift? I am invested in these people.

This is the mother lode for a writer.

The arsenic-laced Indian reviewer

The longer I live in India the more depressed I get. It's not that this isn't an interesting country, with fascinating people and gorgeous architecture and beaches and shopping and food, it's just that I need my basics. I need paved roads, uninterrupted electricity and water, efficient garbage collection – and an intelligentsia that's, well, intelligent. I am brimming with angst because I've been following the reviews of a new book and this is what I learned: Every Indian review was either ignorant, sitting on the fence, or came laced, like arsenic, with the reviewer's particular baggage. It was all about, in other words, the person reviewing the book, not about the book itself. I wondered if I was reading too much into it, whether I should give the reviewers the benefit of the doubt, and then the international reviews started coming in.

Every single one has been a rave.

Whether it was The Guardian or the TLS, whether they were personal blogs or reputed sites, every single non-Indian review has been a rave.

Every single.....have I made myself clear?

This is just sad. What does it say about us, writers, journalists, readers? It says that we are children, in the worst way children can behave. We are uncomprehending, unreasoning, spiteful – not to be relied on. Not to be relied on to read a book and give a critical, honest judgement on it so that others can decide whether they want to read it or not. How simple is that? And yet it is not something we can do.

So this means that we can never, until we grow up as a nation, believe anything anyone says in the Indian media about someone's book, someone's film, someone's designs, someone's art, a new restaurant, a mall, even a personality profile in the feature pages.

Yeah. I'm depressed.

The Hunger Games

Numero Uno: Why does Miley Cyrus' BF have only five minutes in this movie?
2. A new but not really improved version of The Truman Show.
3. When Jennifer Lawrence trembles with fear right before the Games, you know why they're making a fuss about her in Hollywood.
4. Too much preamble before the Games begin.
5. Terrific actors from the teenage Amandla Stenberg to the seasoned Stanley Tucci.
6. The direction is as confused as the appallingly-produced Twilight series. Too slow, too little noir and too many questions left unanswered. Like if they had so little food in the territories, why didn't they fall on the feast on the train instead of delicately sampling it? 

Another one bites the breathalyzer..

With all the money celebs make, you'd think they could afford a driver. But no. They have to drink, drive and then crash into a cop car.
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20585014,00.html

Reading Room wishlist

Honestly, never dreamed I would be a bit of a geek but I do love my technology. And discovering new things on the Net, like I have with Pinterest. Here's why I love browsing it every day and discovering the most delicious images ever. And saving them! And gloating over them! And making plans about them! Yes, I can see it all getting a bit out of hand....

Va-Va-Gloom

Shebaaaa....Shebaaa....

Fifty Shades of (Bleak) Grey

As a huge fan of paranormal romance, I'm no stranger to erotic fiction which is great fun. So when I first heard the buzz about EL James' Fifty Shades I sang a Hallelujah chorus as I tripped to the nearest laptop and downloaded merrily away. Alas. This is why my mother taught me never to look forward too much to anything because the resulting thud of disappointment can be quite jarring.

Who is this little novella meant for? Thirtysomething housewives standing next to the laundry line with a ciggy dangling out of their lipstick-smeared petulant mouths, a dissatisfied meatloaf in the oven and a screaming toddler flinging food from a highchair? If you think that's a cliched image out of the 50s, I'd like to know what you think of this teenage dream alive and kicking between the pages of a book.

The hero is flawed, the heroine a virgin and just to modernise the whole, James throws in some sex toys, aka TMI. In the old days of Mills&Boon (a staple for all virgins), the formula was just that, without the sex toys. I know people (read romance fiction readers) don't change and I shamefully admit that the M&B formula can still float my boat but not when it is so painfully, haha, written. James has ensured that even if you only have a clutch of 'O' levels to your name, you can easily follow her simplistic style because it seems to be written from the point of view of a 15-year-old. (Sarah Honenberger makes that work in Catcher, Caught. Here? Not so much.)

Christian Grey is a CEO of who-cares-what, he's tall, gorgeous and has haunted eyes – really, what woman would not jump into the man's bed – and Anastasia Steele is lovely, shy and never felt the need to be bedded until etc etc. But, aye, here's the rub, when Christian speaks he speaks 'phlegmatically', when he's turning Ana on she sighs 'Oh my' and you wouldn't be surprised if she was pausing for a cucumber sandwich or two, and I do not mean that as part of their sensual arsenal but in terms of what a simpering Victorian Miss might do.

He has to have some BDSM going on and does sinful things with whips when he's not using his hands - and she is learning to like it.

Fifty Shades has perhaps five nice lines but in terms of why it is popular – this is a mystery. I can get my kicks from Stacia Kane and JR Ward, the gods of paranormal/erotic fiction, and I can re-read their dialogue and lust after their characters without a second thought. With Fifty Shades I keep thinking 'Why, God, why' and once you start thinking...God help you. Great fiction just lets you feel. That clutch at the throat first, then you let it sink into your consciousness.

Then again, maybe I can guess why Fifty Shades has caught the public imagination. Working women everywhere with busy husbands, or no lovers at all, may have very vivid imaginations to make up for what they're not getting at home. Christian and Ana work on the obvious level, but James has added a clever touch: She's made them have normal family lives, siblings and best friends so it seems that much more realistic. As in: Maybe, just maybe, this could happen to you.

James has also understood the need most women have for that something extra in their personal lives, which is where the Dom/Sub element of the book comes in.

It's the same reason why I've stopped reading Mills&Boons and have switched to its more substantial big sister; and she doesn't always need to wield a whip. In fact, erotic fiction like Fifty Shades pales in comparison to paranormal erotic fiction for the simple reason that you hardly, if ever, meet human males who are even vaguely interesting, either in real or unreal life. But if you're having dinner with Zsadist of Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood, with a scar slashing his face, his penchant for green apples and his tender, tender loving, hell could freeze over and you wouldn't notice. Of course hell will freeze over before you meet someone like him other than in the pages of a book, but you can't have everything.

Although these days, much as j'adore Ms Ward, my heart belongs to Terrible, Stacia Kane's incredible character from the Chess Putnam series who I keep beside my bed.

Just to remind myself of the standards I must hold.