Celebrating Women Everywhere | International Women's Day

I’d wanted to do this post for a long time now. Each year, March 8 would come and go, escaping my notice. FYI, I don’t live my life knowing what day today is. I deign to burden myself with such trivial information only when I’ve got no way around it. Illustrious examples include exam schedules and birthdays of best friends who are capable of burying me alive.

But I digress. (I really should make that my tagline.)

Here is a prized list of books (off the top of my head, thank you college-life) that celebrates women and shows us exactly what they are capable of.

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

Oh hell yes. I will not oblige you by giving you a description of this book. If you haven’t even heard of this book by now - ye who hath been living under a rock, rectify that mistake pronto. And for those of you who have heard of it but couldn’t be bothered to read it:

The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

A girl whose mother died when she was little runs away with their Black maid (who’s the only mother figure she’s ever known in her life) to escape her father (and the pissed-off racists), right into the arms of a sisterhood. There she is introduced to the secret world of bees, the Black Madonna and her mother. I love this book to shreds, btw. This had so much potential to turn into yet another civil-rights drama, but it is just a backdrop to flaunt the strength of women.

The Invention of Wings – Sue Monk Kidd

It really is about the inventions of wings in America before the abolition of slavery. It’s about two sisters as abolitionists and feminists and how they plunged ahead, despite the criticism they faced, even from fellow abolitionists. Bear in mind this is a loose account of the Grimke sisters, so no sceptics, these women aren’t fictional.

Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire – Elizabeth Wein

These books are a bust for traditional tropes of delicate, fragile women. This book celebrates the power of friendship and sisterhood even under the direst of circumstances. How the love for your best friends and the love for your homeland can equip you with powers you didn’t know you could have. Fair warning – it’s a roller-coaster ride, and not for the faint-hearted.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

Two women. Two different generations. Married to the same man in a war-torn Afghanistan. The bonds between them morph between rivalry, mother-daughter, and sister-sister. The beautiful yet incredible thing about this book it shows just how much a woman is willing to sacrifice because of the love for her family. Again, I’m warning you to keep a huge box of tissues at the ready.

Sold – Patricia McCormick

A thirteen-year-old Nepali girl gets sold for 800 rupees by her stepfather into a prostitution ring in India. Lakshmi happily goes along with “Auntie” thinking about the tin roof she can buy her mother with the money she gets by working as a maid in “The City”. This novel traces her loss of innocence with a narration that doesn’t give a lot of morbid details but is still harrowing. McCormick’s accounts of the shady underworld of prostitution will leave you livid at the injustice of it, and in wonder of the women who do more than just survive through it. How they stay even when there’s a chance of escape because staying means their families get to eat.

You have to fool yourself into believing that the things described in this book don't really happen to finish reading it.

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

A book that has survived the wrath of many narrow-minded people; a book that celebrates femininity in all its glory. A book that doesn’t shy away from saying the things that have to be said.

Out of the Easy – Ruta Sepetys

Screw it. I just tried to write a three-line-pitch without making it sound synoptic. What do I love about this book? A whole brothel full of prostitutes showering love on a seventeen-year-old girl in search for some answers. I have never seen so many women of so many different shapes and personalities. But they all equal in their capacity to love.

Saving Francesca – Melina Marchetta

At first glance, this book may not seem like a prime candidate for a seating on this list. It’s about a gang of badass girls in a boys’ school and how gradually they run the place.

God, I love this book.

The Seven Realms – Cinda Williams Chima 

A fantasy world run by a matriarchal government. Plotsy, shippity, and all things addictively nice. Need I say more?

one Girl – Gillian Flynn

I am including this book in the list because the list lacked some good female psychopaths. Who ever said girls were sugar and spice and all things nice? Heads up, female psychopaths are just as bad as their male counterparts. You get on their bitch-side, heaven help you.

A Song of Ice and Fire – George R R Martin

Daenerys. Arya. Cat. Sansa. Cersei. Don’t tell me your knees won’t give in front of these women who are capable of kicking your ass.

HAIL MOTHER OF DRAGONS

The Perils Of Being A Fangirl

Here. This post is the raison d’être of my blog. This post is the one in which many of you will share a sense of camaraderie with me. This post will show you that YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE.

And that it’s okay to be obsessed. You know, as long as it’s not drugs, or sex, or underground cults. 

(Note: Does anyone know the gender neutral term for FANGIRL? And please don’t tell me it’s FAN – as far as I am concerned, that word is an umbrella term, not a synonym. And I beg your pardon while I treat this post from the view point of fangirls specifically – it’s a shame I don’t know more fanboys personally.)

1. Risk of Degradation of 20/20 Vision

Due to –

(a) All that late-night reading under your blanket with a torch, because you don’t want your parents to catch you up past your bedtime and risk unleashing their wrath in the corporeal form of THAT’S IT NO MORE BOOKS

(b) TV show marathons as a reward for academic excellence (which is code for surviving through exams avoiding all your guilty pleasures)

(c) Excessive social networking – especially when the other fangirl you’re with over the miracle called the Internet, is in another time-zone, depriving you of sleep

2. Catching Up On Deprived Sleep During The Daytime Especially During Class HoursAnd Zombie-Walking Through The Rest

Due to the above mentioned.

3. Lack of Non-Fictional Romantic Life

Reading too many books starring heroes of the fantastically perfect variety, or watching too many TV shows with the same category of protagonists can affect the average reader to such a degree of romantic sterilization of the mundane sort by raising par of male excellence. (Or if you swing the other way, then female excellence.)

4. Managing All Your Social Network Accounts

I swear. This is a talent that is gifted to a fangirl, upon her baptism into this community. How else do you explain the superhuman memory and multitasking capabilities involved in remembering all your ten thousand usernames and passwords, who you last chatted or tweeted with, and maintaining an unbroken comment thread to avoid any non-civil interactions?

5. Empty Wallets

For those of you out there, whose financial aspects are still governed by a superior authority of the parental sort, then you have limitations (like me) on how much merchandise you can own. You resort to pinning wishlists and loaded virtual carts on your Pinterest boards and bookmarks bar, and just staring at what could have been on your laptop screen. When that happens, you turn to –

6. Your DIY Skills and Photoshop Expertise

However deplorable they may be, we have that shoddy wad of bookmarks made by hands smelling of Fevicol, t-shirts we spent that last batch of fabric paint on, and folders (both digitally and otherwise) filled with our own edits and sketches.

7. The Need to Celebrate Holidays Unknown to Mere Mortals/Mundanes/Muggles

We have reminders on our mobile phones and of course, in case they fail, we also have the ever-reliable power of the online fangirl-hood to remind us when to eat only blue food or randomly scream DEATH TO DEATHEATERS or whatever.

8. Research and Intellectual Debates

We are never happy knowing what we already know. We thirst to read up on all the different versions of backstories of the various characters, the author’s perspective on how (s)he chose all the proper nouns in the book, and then unwittingly become party to raging wars on whether or not a particular character is a hero or a villain or other civil debates. If you’re talking about a TV show, then it goes without saying that unless and until we’ve dug up bloopers and the actors’ Wikipedia pages, we’re never going to attain closure.

9. Shipping Through Choppy Seas

This is mostly self-explanatory. The FEELS fuelling our primal fangirl instincts to keep calm and continue shipping canon and headcanon ships in the face of tempests exacts a heavy toll on our head in the form of acute headaches that only tear-stained pillows can cure. Speaking of which – 

10. Tears Both Shed And Unshed

I have always maintained that a significant percentage of the average global tear-level has been contributed by the tear ducts of fangirls. To cry, clutching the damned book in your arms or after watching that tragic final episode of a Korean drama series, is an occupational hazard.

11. HANGOVERS, MAN. Hangovers.

It’s not enough that we’ve been cursed to harbouring eternal feels for a series (book or TV), but we’ve also been damned with being left to our own devices to deal with that inexplicable limbo stage of our life that follows after the final episode or chapter. We then face the big question – WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

We feel as if we’re trapped in a tunnel, the vision of closure mocking at us in the far-off distance. Comfort Food, Comfort Reading selected passages, and Comfort Replaying selected scenes becomes the norm for some days.

And I will thank Ron Weasley to define what being a fangirl truly means (courtesy of Tumblr) – 

20 Things You May Not Know About Me

Once upon a time, in a pretty large town called Buttlazyville, a babe was born. Before long she was elected Mayor of Buttlazyville. The Mayor happens to be yours truly. The End.

There happens to be a reason for the above anecdote. Skylar @ Life Of A Random tagged me sometime in December LAST YEAR, and it took five months and an Easter weekend to finally inspire me to make a move and bring forth this post unto you, Bloggerverse.

1. How tall are you?

I am a 157cm (approx. 5’2”) high pile of awesomeness. Yes, I know that translates to “short” and if you read this post, you’ll know exactly how I’m dealing with that irrefutable fact.

2. Do you have a hidden talent? If so, what?

There’s something you should know about me. Any and all talents I possess are guaranteed to be known to all mankind (or I make sure of that). And when I say ALL MANKIND I mean people in my Freemasons circle (like I care about the opinion of anyone else). Ooh there’s Talent #1: Dramatic Exaggeration In The Name Of Poetic License. You should read my Twitter (or not).

What else? I can waggle my ears and wiggle my brows. I can say the Periodic Table up to 20 elements in my sleep. I can also tell untrue stories pretty convincingly – the few times I’ve tried to con people, BOY did they fall. (But I also happen to be pretty gullible, so I think it’s safe to say the last one comes at a price.)

3. What is your biggest blog-related pet peeve?

The right to answer this question would demand the prerequisite that you visit other blogs besides your own. I don’t. And that’s not because I have a bigger head than my butt, but because my college ensures I don’t moonlight my way out of the academic shit-pile they’ve dumped on us.

(But if you still want to hear it, I’ll repeat Skylar’s answer – it truly annoys me when people don’t reply to comments. Then again, I have as many followers as there are roses in the Sahara, so I may not understand the logistics of commenting on blogs with legions of followers.)

4. What's your biggest non-blog-related pet peeve?

People judging others. People judging me. Me judging everyone else.

5. What is your favorite song?

I do have a favourite song, but it’s kind of personal so I’ll just go with a small list instead (since I can’t pick one) that’s on loop in my head these days –

Antarctica – Hands Like Houses

Love Me Like You Do – Ellie Goulding (No, I haven’t seen the movie, I just like this lady a lot)

Elastic Heart – Sia

Runaway – Aurora

Beg For It – Iggy Azalea

No Good In Goodbye – The Script

Dark Side – Kelly Clarkson

Good Life – One Republic

…. And the entire OST album from the Korean series The Heirs

6. What is your favorite Etsy shop that isn't yours?

7. What is your favorite way to spend free time when you're not alone?

Movie nights, TV marathons, and Youtube. There, that’s time well spent.

8. What is your favorite junk food?

Oily, MSG-containing potato chips, spicy tapioca chips, jackfruit chips, ghatia – they all work. Fortunately for my heath, the above gif holds good for this question as well and I’m a bigger miser than an eater, which is why I’m still alive and healthy and not at risk of entering the Guinness Book of Records for heaviest person ever.

9. Do you have a pet or pets? If so, what kind, and what are their names?

Oh. You meant non-fictional pets? I have a fish tank in which the population is declining rapidly despite mine and my dad's best efforts. And some potted plants. The End.

10. What are your number one favorite nonfiction and fiction books?

SHUT. UP.

11. What is your favorite beauty product?

My Kajal-stick. That’s because the only cosmetically salvageable physical feature is my eyes and also because I look like I have jaundice (or something) without kohl underlining my eyes.

12. When were you last embarrassed? What happened?

You know, if I actually did keep a list of all the embarrassing things I’ve done – that are known and unknown to me – it could wrap around the earth’s middle THRICE. I’m sadly not even exaggerating.

Fortunately for me, I’m pretty good at supressing bad memories. And fortunately for all ye that seek companionship in misery, if you’re willing to ignore the whole  Most Recent Embarrassment clause, I’ll regale you with an incident that I’ve made my peace with. (Meaning, I no longer feel the irrational need to bury myself alive ten feet underground).

I am undeniably, unequivocally clumsy. It’s like my feet have a mind of their own. So, for most of the time my feet are in contact with the ground, I have subconsciously reserved a portion of my busy brain to JUST CONCENTRATE ON MY LEGWORK. But, obviously Mr. Murphy wasn’t too happy that his law was being ineffective in my life. And, there I was in class one day, bending over to pick up my bag from the bench. I successfully picked it up, and threw it over my shoulders. I may have misjudged its weight and my shoulders weren’t ready to deal with it and somehow my feet tripped on the legs of the bench and suddenly I was falling backwards.

Now this is the craziest part. A sane person would grab on anything and try to pull herself upright before she actually landed on her ass. Not me. There was a bench right behind me so I thought I’ll just fall onto it and try not to look like I’d tripped but that I I’d purposefully sat on it. What I did not realize was that there was a guy already sitting on it.

And then there was this deafening silence while I leaped up from the poor boy’s lap and apologized profusely. He still hadn’t regained his power of speech when I ran from the classroom that had erupted in laughter and catcalls.

13. If you could only drink one beverage (besides water) what would it be?

Coffee, please. I have zero shame in admitting I’m a caffeine-addict.

14. What's your favorite movie?

15. What were you in high school: prom queen, nerd, cheerleader, jock, valedictorian, band geek, loner, artist, prep?

Not applicable to me – I didn’t study in the sort of high school Hollywood propagates. For the sake of, I’ll say nerd. But not a member of the nerd group that wears thick rimmed glasses and lugs around tomes of extra reading material, but the kind that sits around fangirling, pulling pranks on each other and then inexplicably acing through exams. Teachers love us, cheergirls hi-five us, and everyone acknowledges that we’re crazy and smart and aliens undercover.

16. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

Please. PLEASE TAKE ME TO HOGWARTS. I’M BEGGING YOU.

17. PC or Mac?
Pfft. Utility over fashion statements. PCs over Macs.

18. Last romantic gesture from a crush, date, boy/girlfriend, spouse?

I’m sorry, could you please hold while I refer my secret diary? Hang on – oops, sorry – But Dear Diary informs me I’ve got NON-EXISTENT ROMANTIC HISTORY so that’s that and let’s move on already, alright?

19. Favorite celebrity?

I have a thing for actresses who kick wizard asses, tribute asses and Erudite asses in reel life and regular asses in real life. Read Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley. And David Archuleta (that’s another story for another time, folks).

20. What blogger friends do you secretly want to be best friends with?

Hey, this is unfair, alright? First off, there aren’t all that many blogs that I keep track of and the ones I do, we’re already virtual BFFs. And there are others with wonderfully weird, crazily stupid, and bookishly obsessed bloggers that I do want to be besties with, but alas. My academic life ensures I don’t have time for socializing over the internet.

Phew. It's done. OMG THIS POST IS FINALLY DONE. Skylar, you awesome thing, thank you for tagging me and sorry for the delay. And all you amazing people out there - THERE IS NO SHAME IN TAGGING YOURSELF. Go on, do it, and open yourself up a little more.

 I dare you.

Bookish Guilty Pleasures and Other Scandalous Secrets

Since the Lenten season has finally caught up with me (REPENT ALL YE SINNERS) I decided I might as well walk that extra mile and ‘fess up all my naughty bookworm sins.

*minor hyperventilation episode*

Alright, here goes:

(Although most probably, by this time tomorrow I will be regretting this post so bad I might bury myself alive and never type another letter into the blogosphere.)

AS I WAS SAYING.

1.  I USED TO BE A TWIHARD – up until the second book happened. That is not to say that I’d read Twilight and then waited a year to get New Moon and filled all my days in between fangirling excessively. It means that while I was reading Twilight, I shipped Bella and Edward so very physically, with my head intermittently spinning very ludicrous fantasies involving me kidnapping Edward for myself in his Aston Martin (WHAT A RIOT I CAN’T EVEN DRIVE A BIKE) and then when the second book happened (all the four books had already been published by then so there was no time spent hanging on a cliff) I hurt my head a lot because I was busy head-desk-ing. By the time I’d finished Breaking Dawn, I’d decided I was anti-Twilight and would spent the rest of my life spewing acid on the topic. As it so happens, that is not the confession – I was merely setting the scene. Remember when a partial draft of Midnight Sun leaked on the Internet and we all read it? Well, guess how many times this so-called anti-Twihard read it. No? OK, is SIX a decent number? Or how about how many times I wished the whole book would be published soon? Did you know that INFINITY could be a number?
2. Following up on #1, I HATED STEPHANIE MEYER. Please note that I was in the ninth grade when I was going through a phase called BOYS ARE SHIT AND ALL THINGS NOT NICE (I dunno why – no guy had ever done anything to me – I used to be a pretty extreme t(w)een). Then I saw the cover of The Host (ON SALE!!!!!!) and read the blurb and bought it and read it and read it and read it and read it … and kept the fact that I might no longer NOT HATE Meyer a secret till I realized I was being a two-faced bitch.
3. I used to pride myself in the knowledge that I DON’T READ CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE. As people ticked off books they had read, I would mentally scoff at them when I classified them as POOR READING CHOICES or NOT LITERARY ENOUGH. (How much do you already hate me?) Then I discovered The Mediator and Jinx and Airhead by Meg Cabot and attained enlightenment.
4.  I JUDGE BOOKS, THEIR AUTHORS AND THEIR FANBASE. (I wasn’t trumpeting that point; I’m stripping myself bare. Go on, judge me. I basically asked for it.)
5. Despite whatever I say and feel about how erotica is basically literary porn – I enjoy a good SPICY SCENE from time to time. (OH GOD.)
   
6. Hey, genuine doubt: Do you, at any point of time, while in the process of shipping your ship in your head after a good book or a Tumblr post or – y’know – randomly, (un)consciously replace the hero(ine) with yourself? (please say yes, please say yes)
7. … Maybe I should stop.

Sunday Swoons (or The One With All The Colourful Ships)

Yes, I am –

a) Alive

b) Aware that today isn’t a Sunday

c) Fully conscious of the fact that this post was supposed to have happened two weeks back

By Skylar Finn 

If you didn't know already, Sunday Swoons is the weekly feature where Skylar @ Life of a Random and Briana @ Reader, Writer, Critic talk about normal swoon-y stuff everyone can relate to.

But Briana and Skylar were very understanding (for which they have earned mountains of virtual chocolate) and extended the deadline for linking this sorry too-late post of mine. But surprisingly I had a lot to talk about this – Diversity in Literary Relationships.

While Skylar tackled diversity in races and Briana talked about diversity in religions – (which you should totally read) I am going to mix it up.

There aren’t that many books that I can claim to have read which feature diverse relationships. These are some books that feature ships in international waters but don’t have their love life as the plot –

1) The Legend series – Marie Lu

Marie Lu did an amazing thing with the ethnicity of The Republic. She says that since it is set in a post-apocalyptic world, people should have mixed ethnicity. While Day is dominantly Mongolian, June is a mix of Native and others.

2) Heroes of Olympus – Rick Riordan

LEO AND CALYPSO. JASON AND PIPER. (And if Miss J is to be believed – NICO AND WILL)

3) The Kane Chronicles – Rick Riordan

CARTER AND ZARA. SADIE AND ANUBIS (who happens to be the Egyptian god of death with kohl-rimmed eyes and if author is to be believed DROP DEAD GORGEOUS AND HKUSFSIGFAZADSEY)

4) The Mediator series – Meg Cabot

JESSE AND SUZE. SUZE AND JESSE. JESSE AND SUZE. JESSE AND ME SUZE.

These ships do go into their diverse backgrounds, but it is not the case in point –

1) Prisoner of Night and Fog – Anne Blankman

Gretchen Muller is German and Daniel Cohen is Jewish. Throw them against the backdrop of the Third Reich and you get your plot.

2) The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

Lily and Zachary Lincoln Taylor - they are so made for each other – with all the hurt and anger inside and out – and you’re like - 

And you sigh when they finally do.

3) Eleanor and Park – Rainbow Rowell

There’s your diversity – right there in the title.

4) Ghosting – Edith Pattou

Anil’s girlfriend is the Official Most Beautiful. And he is still surprised by that fact. But then he meets Max with her camera and shyness and he is unsure about how to proceed along those lines. He also talks about the kind of expectations he has to meet, courtesy of his family of doctors. Then tragedy (aka the plot point) strikes and … I’m not telling anymore.

Now I’m not going into explicit detail, but here’s the deal – short and sweet. Here, where I live, when you marry a person, you marry his/her entire family as well. You aren’t allowed to date, have any sort of romantic relationship, live under the same roof before marriage (society hyperventilates around that sort of talk), or divorce – marry – repeat. Your parents fix the deal for you – with which you can agree or disagree. Obviously, DIVERSITY IS A HUGE NO – NO. (There are a lot of pros and cons with this and I am NOT going to talk about it – I just set the scene here). I can predict winds of change brewing though. Slow but sure enough.

Now we all know what happened to Adam and Eve and the biblical forbidden apple.  This Forbidden Apple Syndrome has reflected a lot in Indian literature (but even more so in Indian cinema, especially for hormone-driven teens) so there’s no shortage of diverse couples (or as diverse it’s practically possible). Here are some examples (that I have read) with links to their Goodreads blurbs -

• How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life - Kavya Viswanthan
• 2 States - Chetan Bhagat                      
• The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
• Bend it like Beckham – Narinder Dhami (YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE RIGHT? JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS)

>
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(Crap, I can’t think of anything else. Since my knowledge in general chick-lit and Indian –English lit is limited, I have failed in compiling a trustworthy list. )

This post has gotten absurdly long. I’m stopping.

What do you think? All those in favour of more colourful ships? 

The Book Gif Tag

Andie at Metaphorical Musings tagged the not-so-giftastic me, and I took it up because I'm running low on dares this week.

And plus, it was fun updating my gif-cabulary. :)

The Great Gatsby

Yeah, alright. That ending need not have happened though.

The Color Purple 

The gifs say it all. What a book.

The 5th Wave 

My very dependable source tells me I will not like it because - 

Too much of futuristic novels, and they all start sounding similar.

The Time Traveler's Wife

I didn't like it. Yes the time traveling is unrealistic, but this book made it sound like an impossible genetic illness that breaks all physics laws. The nerd in me finds it unforgivable, sorry.

The Assassin's Curse

I haven't read this, so I looked up the blurb, and here's my verdict:

The Knife of Never Letting Go 

Stayed way past my bedtime to finish this one.

There was a lot of this - 

Patrick Ness happens to be a MAGICIAN with words.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Another not-yet-read-it, so I checked it out on GR and - 

Need to get my hands on this one.

A Game of Thrones 

I would have really really enjoyed it if - 

There wasn't so much beheading

 And how many DETAILED GRAPHIC sex scenes am I supposed to tolerate?

The Maze Runner 

Haven't read it, but watched the movie trailer and now I'm vaguely interested.

If I Stay

It was alright, up until the last scene when I leaked one tiny tear.

But I love Chloe Moretz, so I'm definitely watching the movie.

I know, I know, fans - please don't kill me.

I tag - 

Tansie at Totally Tansie

Ella at Once Upon A Bookish Time

Crazy Caro at Crazy Utopia

and anyone else with time on their hands.

The ten books are:

Peter Pan

The Help

Throne of Glass

Divergent

Twilight

The Mortal Instruments - City Of Bones

The Mediator

Legend

13 reasons why

Pride and Prejudice

If you would like a different list of books, feel free.