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My reading updates

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu

When you get two books in the same day for review it’s a hard choice to make. Today I received a two thrillers!! So it’s even more difficult. But I’m going to start with Ashwin Sanghi & James Patterson’s Private India first. I have to finish the review within seven days from now which essentially means I have to read a whole lot. 

P.S. My review of Private India is up on the blog and you can read it here. 

Up next will be The Devil’s Gate. It’s pending for some time now and I gotta finish it. May be by next week I should be able to finish it. I had started reading it sometime back and am somewhere midway. So I hope I can finish it off soon.

P.S. My review for The Devil’s Gate is up in the blog and you can read it here.


Kulpreet sent me his new novel Catching the Departed, its a thriller and  I’m quite looking forward to it. I read the excerpts and totally loved it. 



I bought this book The Last Man by Vince Flynn on my way to Kolkata. I was reading it all this while and was really enjoying it. I like all this army and CIA covert mission type thrillers. Now I have to take a break from that to accommodate other novels! That happens with most of my own list of books. 


After that will be Lily Zante’s new romance novel Honeymoon Blues. It’s the third installment of the Honeymoon series. I totally loved the other two books that she had sent across, so much so that I bought the new e-book on Amazon the day Lily announced its release!!!



So a lot of reading happening this side. I hope I can finish all of them in the coming few weeks.

Who are you reading currently??? 

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Things that I am despising at this moment

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Isn’t this thing called ‘data’ horrible??? Specially those monster excel files with thousands of rows of data.?? Me and numbers are a bad match, we sort of repel each other and it’s a long story. So when I have to spend my day sifting through all these numbers it’s just puts me off…. 

Currently I’m having to do some stupid data analysis stuff which is taking up so much of time and energy. How life is simple without these numbers. Doing pivot tables, sorting data and don’t know what!!! And it’s too boring. I somehow am not comfortable doing these :(. 


The other thing making me go mad is this Candy Crush. I’m stuck in this god forsaken level 201 and can’t go ahead. I’m trying for a month now but I am like frozen in that level. I have gone through all sorts of cheats and tricks but nothing is working. When will I cross this level???? 

The unavoidable traffic in the city. The thing that worries me most is the growing traffic situation in the city. I hate turning off the engine every few minutes, but you can’t help it our fuel comes at Rs 77.26 a liter!!! Forget about people not following traffic rules, when you are moving at 5kmph at peak hours nothing else can irritate you more. 

What all are you despising now??

That is exactly how I feel in traffic 


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Short Fiction – And then?

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
“My day has finally come…

Just a night more and I’ll be in my first office tomorrow morning….”

Samar had a smile on his face and felt nothing could stop him…

He picked up his bags and hailed an auto for the station.

The light wind brushed against his face… it made Samar calm… he felt the big city was awaiting him… just a bit more…….but the loud screeching break brought him out from his day dream.

“Careful….Oh my god”, screamed Samar at the auto driver who had collided with a two wheeler.

Samar at once got down to help the lady riding the scooty. She was down on the road when Samar reached her.

“Ohh god, she is bleeding…” he carefully turned her face towards him to examine the injury.

Blood was trickling down her forehead… she lay unconscious in his arms… Samar couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“And then???” a faint sound brought Samar back to reality.

“That is when I first saw your mother… and I missed my train… I stayed back in the town for your mother,” told Samar to his little son remembering the incident that made him meet the love of his life.


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This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.
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A horror film that went bad

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu

No it didn’t go bad as in it scared me or I felt spooky. I quite like watching horror movies, may be it’s that part of me which enjoys thrill, bloody gory stuffs. And there isn’t any that has scared me so far. 

Just a while back we were watching our Satyrday night movie in the home theatre. It’s a Hollywood movie called 1408 starring John Cusack. It’s based on a short story by Stephen King by the same title. 
Now you see horror movies with paranormal stuffs happening randomly, or have ghostly appearances, and then there are movies like this particular one which makes you think did you start watching a horror movie or a comedy!!!!! 
IMDb has given it a rating of 6.8 and I’m starting to have doubts on how they gave it any thing above that a 3 or 4 may be!!! 
It seems the director lost track of the story and then made something which he didn’t understand himself. We were quite tempted to stop it and start some other movie but I somehow wanted to watch the end. And now that it’s over I’m a little relieved. I can peacefully sleep in my bed and not on the couch. I was half asleep watching that god forsaken movie. 
If you have not already watched you saved 2 hours of your life. A Saturday night wasted I hope I have a good nights sleep at least. 
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Fiction & WritingFive Sentence FIctionMicro FictionUncategorized

Five Sentence Fiction – The Phone Call

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
She looked at the wall clock… it was 10:15… it was time but Shekhar had not left for work.

It would come any moment, thought Isha getting worried, today things could get messed up.

With her husband finally going out, she felt relieved, she sat on the couch and looked at the time… it was 10:30…

Like any other day, Isha was waiting for her phone to ring… she always felt good when this call came.


It was 10:35 when the phone rang… “I am impressed Rajeev, you never miss a day, but how did you know my husband was going out late… I almost thought we’ll get caught”, said Isha. 


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This post is for Lillie McFerrin Writes Five Sentence Fiction for the prompt WAITING.  

Also linking this to Write Tribe Pro Blogger Challenge as my Day 22 post
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My 12 Most Favorite Authors

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
When I saw Write Tribe’s Wednesday prompt I knew I had to write this. This week the prompt is to write your 12 most favorite things, it could be anything – food, books, or may be a fashion brand (I was very tempted to write on some of my favorite apparel, handbag and makeup brands, but I’ll keep it for another day J ).

Now I have written a lot about my favorite movies, songs, books, food etc etc in my previous posts. But today I want to write about my 12 Favorite Authors. I am crazy for some of them that I do not miss a single novel of theirs. Some of them are Bengali authors as well.

So here goes my 12 Favorite Authors – not mentioned in any order of preference


1. Dan Brown: The day I read The Da Vinci Code, I knew I was in love with the way he writes. It’s only after The Da Vinci Code that I read up his other works. The 24 hour storyline, the thrill that he offers, are all super thriller ingredients. I didn’t particularly like The Lost Symbol because at the end of it you feel a little disappointed. And if I had to rate among his works I’ll rate The Da Vinci Code, Deception Point, Digital Fortress and Angels and Demons as my favorites from his arsenal (in the same order of preference).



2. Enid Blyton: As a kid I remember being completely crazy about Famous Five, and almost had a parallel imaginary life of mine thinking myself as Georgina!! It was such fun then. I liked Noddyand Secret Seven as well but FF was an experience itself.




3. Robert Ludlum: For a thriller and crime lover Robert Ludlum is still a genius. The Bourne series, The Matarese Circle, The Matarese Countdown are some of my favorites. It’s just amazing to read the way he builds up the plots, the conspiracy theories. I love them.
4. Tom Clancy: I somehow am fascinated with all these thrillers that have this war and military backdrop. And Tom Clancy was a master of it. The Hunt for Red Octobercan still be a go to thriller any day.  


5. J.K.Rowling: I got into the Potter Mania much latter, only after I started enjoying the movies. May be after the second or the third movie I decided to read up the books, and yes that is an experience that I am very happy of. I can’t pick and choose which one I liked most though The Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets remain most engrossing for me.



6. Charles Dickens: I first read David Copperfield in my school book and I liked the little prose so much that I read up the novel. My dad has an amazing collection of novels himself. And I ended up reading Oliver Twist. Later on I loved Tale of Two Cities & Great Expectations. But I will never forget David Copperfield, I was so moved by his story!



8. Sarath Chandra Chattopadhyay (Bengali Author) – Though I am mentioning Bengali author, he actually needs no introduction. He is one of the finest authors that the world has seen. Be the way he built up the character ‘Srikanta’ or ‘Sabyasachi’. He probably is the author whom I have read the most. People go gaga about ‘Devdas’ but probably have not read other classics like ‘Datta’, ‘Pather Dabi’, ‘Parinita’ (now people know because of the Bollywood movie), ‘Dena Pawna’, ‘Boikunther Will’, ‘Biraj Bou’, ‘Bindur Chele’ and I probably will lose count. There isn’t a single novel of his that I have read and not liked. It needs maturity to understand the underlining thoughts and he is one of my most favorite authors.



9. Satyajit Ray: (Bengali Author) Yet again he doesn’t need an introduction. Most people know of him as the Oscar winning director, but he was also an amazing writer and specialized in writing detective thrillers and murder mysteries. His character ‘Feluda’ and ‘Jatayu’ are evergreen characters both of the pages and celluloid. I have read some 100 detective short stories of his.



10. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Now any thriller lover can never ever miss worshiping Sherlock Holmes and obviously the man who etched him. Sherlock Holmes is my all time favorite character and I can pick up the volumes and start reading over again any day.



11. William Shakespeare: One word – Genius. There is no other way I can explain. I might sound very old and classic lover type but William Shakespeare is and always will be a big influence in my life. So much so that I visited Stratford-upon-Avon to see the place he was born and brought up. In fact, my dad was more enthusiastic about that visit!



12. Frederick Forsyth: This list can never be complete without him. When I read The Afghan, I was instantly a fan of his writing. As I told you all these military action and covert operations excite me like hell. I loved his The Fist of God & The Cobra.

You might think why I didn’t include Rabindra Nath Tagore, but as I told you I am more of the thriller, murder war, covert kind of person, so I am not including him here, though I have read and liked many of his works.

Huh, pretty long post but my favorite authors deserve this length. So who do you like reading? Name you five favorite authors.



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