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Impractical Dreamer: Sweety Shinde

~ Doctor. Author. Mahabharata fanatic. Yoga enthusiast. Sanskrit learner. Chiku's (my doggie) adopted hooman. Love to unfurl with pencil sketching, Kishore Kumar & black coffee laced with Hazelnut syrup. Curious about the Mystique.

Impractical Dreamer: Sweety Shinde

Category Archives: Constructive Criticism: Book reviews

Book Reviews – Anybody can criticize; but Constructive criticism is an arrow well-targeted at bettering the author.

Book review: Let the Game Begin by Sandeep Sharma

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by dr sweetyshinde in Constructive Criticism: Book reviews, Debutante Authors

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

betrayal, book review, chess, kings, murder mystery, reincarnation, revenge, sandeep sharma, thriller

Seamless fusion of History with Mystery. Sandeep Sharma (author) weaves an intriguing revenge saga spanning over 4000 years.

Storyline– a spate of seemingly unrelated murders start unraveling once they coalesce into a common link. This kickstarts a tale of bitter betrayal and rousing rivalry between 2 warring kings of yore.

The author touches on myth (immortal Shamans), science (DNA replication, electromagnetic radiations) and philosophy (immortality, rebirth) to create an enthralling page turner.

Let The Game Begin by Sandeep Sharma

I liked – Breathless pace of story. Numerous twists around every corner. Unexpected death of a key character. Effective use of flashbacks and flashforwards between 2 timelines. One of the best written prologues in recent times. Amusing undercurrents of competition between CLAW, RAW and police force. Continue reading →

Book review – Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by dr sweetyshinde in Biography/Autobiography, Constructive Criticism: Book reviews

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bhagavad Gita, book review, hypnotherapy, immortal soul, near death, past lives, reincarnation, sankhya yoga, spirituality

Twitter review – With great expectations comes great disappointment.

First things first – the book is already a blockbuster seller. That relieves me from the sin of jeopardizing a newbie author. It also means the author can pull a Rhett Butler snarl upon my opinions.

So why am I reviewing it? B’cos a blog post is long overdue in my schedule 🙂

Premise– A blonde laboratory technician cum swimwear model Catherine (ahem!) is depressed. She is plagued by childhood demons, ongoing nightmares and an abusive married boyfriend. She turns up for hypnotherapy at Dr Weiss’s clinic and discovers a chain of prior births.

Catherine taps into 86 prior births in lurid detail, speaks foreign languages fluently for brief spans, finds past relatives reborn as current colleagues and generally re-falls in love with life instead of nitpicking over its brief grief.

Reincarnation-process

The novelty of the first 20 pages wanes rapidly as the process gets repetitive. Dr Weiss demonstrates more hand clapping and chest thumping than a sombre scientific approach.

To an Indian bred on the ‘immortal soul, mortal body‘ principle of Sankhya yoga (Bhagavad Gita), reincarnation concept is not a novelty. I was eager for the Continue reading →

Book review – Guy on the sidewalk

20 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by dr sweetyshinde in Constructive Criticism: Book reviews, Debutante Authors

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

author reviewer interaction, book review, communist idealogy, debutante author, Guy on the sidewalk, homecoming, hopes and plans, NRIs InfoTech, patriotism, return to motherland, USA and India

The eternal conflicts within NRIs of InfoTech world is depicted via the Book cover. It shows a sharp contrast between USA’s stark, sterile grey and India’s vivid bright colors.

Front-Cover_9789385523212

However, unlike the cover, Jay the protagonist narrates every American experience as brighter, prettier, richer and better than everything Indian.

As a result, his climactic yearning for Indian soil seems mildly contrived, since no specific event acts as catalyst, no tender relation (family, romance or friend) acts as a vital tug pulling him home and no warm memory harps upon his patriotism. He returns without any concrete blueprint except for a vague notion of social work.

{Author’s reply to above comment – Jay doesn’t need a concrete plan to go back to his motherland. The desire to be there for the country & parents, as directed by conscience in itself is a strong reason. He returned to India with more hopes than plans. Continue reading →

Did this book kill Govind Pansare?

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by dr sweetyshinde in Biography/Autobiography

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

govind pansare, Hinduism, political assassination, shivaji maharaj, swarajya

 ‘Devotees create a God out of a mortal – it absolves them of any responsibility to behave like their idol.’

– says Govind Pansare about Shivaji Maharaj, Tukaram and Dnyaneshwar.

In an eerie premonition, he second guesses their mysterious deaths too –viral fever, samadhi & flying chariot respectively used as elaborate cover-ups for their elimination.  Did he anticipate his own assassination too?

‘Shivaji Kon Hota?’ (Who was Shivaji?) is a slim (70 page) sharp analysis on Shivaji Continue reading →

Lemon Girl – Free download on Amazon Kindle

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by dr sweetyshinde in Constructive Criticism: Book reviews, Debutante Authors

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Amazon Kindle Giveaway, book review, Jyoti Arora author, Lemon Girl

My friend and co-author Jyoti Arora’s smashing novel is available for free download on Amazon Kindle.

Days: 26-27 Dec 2015

Link : http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PESCO8O

My review of Lemon Girl: https://sweetyshinde.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/book-review-lemon-girl-by-jyoti-arora/

Youtube trailor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDYql_cryT8

 

Lemon Girl book cover

Grab your chance! Keep the alarm on for 26-27 Dec 2015. Merry Xmas!

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