Amodini's Book Reviews

Book Reviews and Recommendations

The Texan Spirit

Written By: amodini - Aug• 05•11

Fredericksburg Texas wine a bit

Fredericksburg Texas Wine Shop
Fredericksburg Texas feeling winey

Book Review : And only to deceive

Written By: amodini - Jul• 29•11

[amazon_link id=”B002PJ4IIO” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]And Only to Deceive[/amazon_link]Title : And only to decieve

Author : Tasha Alexander

Publisher : William Morrow

Genre : Historical fiction, Mystery

Rating : 3/5

Lady Emily Ashton is newly widowed. Having been married to her husband wealthy Lord Philip Ashton only a short while before his death in Africa, she knows very little about him; her having married him having been a matter more of convenience than of love. In mourning she finds her husband’s journal and learns about his penchant for collecting art and artifacts. As she delves deeper she finds herself interested in many of the same subjects and begins her own quest for knowledge.

With her burgeoning knowledge, she realizes also that the husband she never knew was deeply in love with her, and is distraught at the fact that she has not appreciated the man when he was alive. However when she discovers some notable pieces of art in her husband’s art collection, and discovers that similar pieces in the Museum are but copies of the originals, and that the Museum Curator is unaware of this fact, she suspects that her husband may have been involved in some shady deals. Her suspicions are further bolstered when her late husband’s friend Colin Hargreaves begins to ask her questions about certain art pieces her husband might have owned.

When Colin finds out that Emily is making enquiries of her own he politely asks her to stop her investigations for her own good. His warning, along with other unfortunate incidents unnerve Emily, but she resolves to continue on with the help of Lord Andrew Palmer. Will she be able to solve the mystery ?

Now, I picked up this book because of similarities to the Lady Julia Grey series. Both are set in Victorian England, and both feature intrepid young (widowed) women who attempt to solve mysteries in their households. However although the description on the back cover of this book looked interesting, it didn’t live upto that promise. The mystery itself turned out to be kind of tepid, and the character of Lady Emily Ashton didn’t grow on me. I found her petulant, wishy-washy in her decision making and someone who didn’t think things through before jumping to conclusions. Also, this is Victorian England, so women are expected to behave a certain way, in keeping with feminine decorum. Emily voices many times the fact that she finds this stifling and challenges some social conventions in her own way (much to the horror of her very traditional and annoying mother), but I didn’t find that the independent streak lasted very long, and seemed rather superficial.

I doubt that I will be picking up a sequel. If you like historical mystery novels featuring strong female leads, I’d recommend Deanna Raybourn’s writing instead.

The other Salman Khan

Written By: amodini - Jul• 23•11

You’ve probably heard of Salman Khan, the popular hero of Hindi films (If not, head over to my Movie Review Blog). Now here is another – Salman Khan of Khan Academy – the completely free virtual school. The first time I surfed to this website after hearing about it from a friend I was astounded that Khan and his team were offering all this for free. Khan Academy features hundreds of videos and practice exercises in Maths, Science, Humanities (History and Finance) and Test Prep (SAT, IIT JEE etc.).

The videos, all 2400 of them are made and narrated by Khan (who refers to himself as Sal) . With these videos, Khan Academy opens up a whole new way of learning. I cannot imagine the immense help these videos, when translated, would be of in educating impoverished children in countries like India where small villages lack basic facilities and teachers. This puts the power of learning in the hands of the user or motivated individual.

All this started when Khan started teaching his younger cousin. Upon requests from friends and family, he uploaded these to Youtube. With the response he got from Youtube, Khan Academy was born, and Sal quit his full-time job to devote himself to the site. Now he has received grants from Google and Bill Gates and other donations.

Note that this is not an ordinary “education” website. The videos are high quality and clearly narrated and explain concepts as well as worked out problems. A student, a class of students, a parent or an educator can track performance and concept understanding. There are also badges a user can collect – from Meteorite to Black Hole badges rewarding students for perseverance in listening and grasping concepts to being able to successfully solve a set of problems. My kids use Khan Academy for routine school Math and Science, but I noticed that in the Finance section there are also some videos explaining the Geithner plan, if you are so interested.

All videos are in English but volunteers are translating them to other languages, and there are several Youtube channels where these translated videos are available. Khan, who holds 4 degrees, seems filled with altruistic vision. CNN did a feature on this amazing organisation  :

Book Review : Orbit

Written By: amodini - Jul• 18•11

[amazon_link id=”1451631715″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Orbit: A Novel[/amazon_link]Title : Orbit

Author : John J. Nance

Genre : Science Fiction

Rating : 3.5/5

It was a coincidence that I was reading this book about the same time as the recent Atlantis mission was going through. Ironical really that I was reading about the future of space travel just as NASA space shuttle program was upon the brink of closure. Orbit by John Nance, who is the aviation correspondent for ABC, was published in 2006 and tells the story about a traveler on a commercial space jaunt in the year 2009.

Kip Dawson, a pharmaceutical rep has won the lottery. Or something like it – he has won a trip to outer space aboard a commercial space craft. When he decides to go on the trip, he angers his wife Sharon, who believes that he is putting himself in grave danger and risking the future of his family for what is essentially a pleasure trip. Dawson plows on ahead undeterred, even when he is informed by the Company that he will be the only passenger aboard, the other three paying passengers having been unable to fly. D-day arrives and the flight takes off smoothly. All is well until a small piece of flying debris crashes through the spaceship, kills the pilot and knocks out the communication with earth, leaving our intrepid hero, Kip, to fend for himself. Dawson, now for all purposes alone in the world, must figure out, sans help, how to get out of orbit and back to earth.

At first unable to believe that such an accident has happened, Dawson succumbs to despair. Then, he begins to fight back trying to recall the training and beginning to look for manuals which will help him get his house (or ship) in order. His efforts fail though when he misses the window time to remove the ship from orbit, and as he contemplates death by carbon-dioxide, he begins to record his thoughts on a laptop. Unknown to him, his musings are being published on the internet, via a remaining communication link. As people on earth begin to read his logs, preparations are also afoot for a rescue mission. Will Dawson ever get to see another earth dawn ?

This is the first Nance authored book that I have read, and if this is the kind of story he spins, I wouldn’t mind reading all the rest of them (12 in total). This is a good old fashioned yarn, well-told and nicely paced. Nance intersperses his writing with cleverly placed twists which keep one engrossed. Note that although this is the sci-fi genre the book doesn’t delve too deeply into scientific matters. The middle of the book did get quite emotionally heavy, as Kip alone in orbit reminisces about his family and his life. So although this book has a “space/science fiction” setting, this book can be enjoyed by everyone – not just sci-fi afficionados . The writing is simple and serves to convey the plot, and the emphasis is on the human story.

The story is told from Kip’s point of view and Kip is a hero you can get behind. Still, I do have to agree a bit with the Kirkus Review which pegged this book as being about “men doing manly things”. Kip is quite a hero, but he isn’t perfect – note the wandering eye and the lissome, leggy Diana Ross – I haven’t read many books where a married heroine would admire the physical attributes of a man. I wouldn’t say that this detracted from the book, although I’m a little miffed that Kip is not above reproach – a hero needs the 100% support of his readers.

This book will become a movie in 2013, it’s rights having been bought by Fox, and I can quite see this as the perfect candidate for a film, because – and this is my grouse with the book – it is a cliched story. Man goes into space – reluctant husband, not-great-father, uncaring son and comes back reformed and appreciating life and family, having realized the error of his ways.

Still a good read – recommended.

8 simple steps to move from Blogger to WordPress

Written By: amodini - Jul• 14•11

Here are 8 simple steps to ensure a smooth transition from a Blogger blog to a WordPress blog. This post assumes that you already have a domain name (myblog.com) and web host (one of the several out there : GoDaddy, Blue Host, DreamHost etc.)

  1. Install WordPress: On some hosts (like BlueHost), installing can be a one-click step, simple and easy. I recommend that you start off with the default theme which comes with a WordPress Install, which is currently twenty-ten/twenty-eleven. Once you have all the details you can always go experiment with a new cooler theme (not that twenty-eleven is not cool enough). Another thing to consider is where to install WordPress : at root level or in a subdomain. If you are going to be running more than one blog, better to create a subdomain instead of installing at the root level. This gives you the freedom to later to do other stuff in other subdomains and still differentiate one from the other. Note that most subdomains are mapped to subdirectories. For example, assuming your domain is “myblog.com”, your subdomains could be :
    • Research.myblog.com (physical location : myblog.com/research)
    • Hobbies.myblog.com (physical location : myblog.com/hobbies)
  2. Change to pretty permalinks : This lets you match the blog structure of your old Blogger posts, and helps in forwarding old links to their new locations. Go to Settings->Permalinks->Custom and enter
  3. /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

  4. Move your posts from Blogger to WordPress. A useful plugin here is the Import plugin. Once you install it and activate it, you can import via Manage->Import tool. This will import text, images and comments. But it may not import labels, so if you have your posts labeled specifically you might have some more work here. When posts are imported, they all get published with the default category “Uncategorized”. If you do wish to change that default category, and you probably would, change it before you import your posts. Go to Settings->Writing->Default Post Category and change it to your preferred category.
  5. Import your posts : In the Import plugin, there is an “Import from Blogger” option, but that may not work for too many posts, or those with special html (like embedded images, videos etc.). A more reliable way from my experience is this:
    • Login to your Blogger account, and export your blog.
    • This gives you an xml file to download. Download and save and give it a descriptive name, say : myoldblog.xml
    • Next upload this file to http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/ . This is a utility that converts your blogger xml to WordPress xml.
    • This will give you a file of the type : “myoldblog_wxr.xml”
    • Now upload it to your WordPress install, from Manage->Import->Wordpress File

    If you now go to Post in your Admin Panel, you should see all your posts, with images and comments, and categorized to default category.If you now wish to reassign categories, download the “Batch Cat” plugin. This will, upon activation, let you assign/unassign categories a batch at a time – you can specify the size of the batch.

  6. Update your feed : Assuming you use FeedBurner, all your subscribers are currently subscribed to :
    • feeds.feedburner.com/myoldblog

    You would ideally like to not have your subscribers switch feeds. To do that login to your feedburner account, and edit your feed details. Change Original feed to specify the location you new feed, which will probably be :

    • http://myblog.com/feed
      This means that your feed is still located at the same address, but is updated to use the new content at myblog.com.
  7. Redirect readers from your old blog to the new one. Login to Blogger. Go to Settings->Publishing. Click Custom Domain, and enter the URL your new blog. Save. Now everything that was at :
    • Oldblog.blogspot.com

    Will redirect to :

    • Myblog.com
  8. Ensure that redirection works for older links : If you’ve setup your permalinks right then every page should redirect to it’s correct counterpart, ie;
    • Oldblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/this-thing-I-wrote.html

    Should redirect to

    • Myblog.com/2008/05/this-thing-I-wrote.html

    If your blog is in a sub-domain there is an extra wrinkle. So let’s say that you wish to redirect from

    • Oldblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/myreview.html

    To

    • Hobbies.myblog.com/2008/06/myreview.html

    Now being a subdomain, your blog is actually physically hosted at

    • Myblog.com/hobbies

    So the actual path to that would be :

    • Myblog.com/hobbies/2008/06/myreview.com

    Unfortunately blogger will not let you publish to a subdomain (Step #6) , so it will redirect to hobbies.myblog.com/myreview.com which does not exist. You will have to handle this in your new blog. Assuming you’re using Apache, you can do this via a rewrite rule . Example :
    # RewriteEngine on
    # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hobbies.myblog.com$ [OR]
    # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hobbies.myblog.com$
    # RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/myblog\.com\/hobbies" [R=301,L]

    Note that Blogger will show an extra page to readers to let them know that they are being redirected to a custom non-Blogger website. A little nasty but Blogger does not allow 301 (Moved Permanently) redirects. I can sort of understand why they don’t do this, but still nasty.
    There is also an alternative to the above method, and that is via the meta refresh, but the meta refresh is not supposed to be as SEO friendly. Both methods are 200 Redirects, which are not the same as 301 Redirects. 301 Redirects permit a seamless move which does not hurt your search rankings, while 200 Redirects do, in my experience.
    Also there is a very useful plugin call Redirection. Download and activate it and use it to redirect custom URLs, like those of static pages.

  9. All done ! Once all this is done, your blog should be up and running and you can now switch themes, and add useful widgets like Outbrain, Twitter to your blog. Remember to update your blogrolls. Do not delete your old blog. Although you cannot view it anymore via the Web, it still available for you to log into.
  10. You are all set! In your new blog, add a sticky post or header welcoming old readers to your new location.

While moving I looked around on the net and found these very useful posts – here they are for your reference :

Moving from Blogger to WordPress

Written By: amodini - Jul• 10•11

I recently moved both my blogger blogs to self-hosted WordPress installs. My movie review blog Amodini’s movie reviews which is now at :

http://film.fridaynirvana.com

used to be at http://hindimoviereviews.blogspot.com.

and this blog used to be at http://reviewroom.blogspot.com.

Now, just so I don’t forget all the steps involved and in the hope that this might help others who are contemplating just such a move, I will list out the thoughts and the actual steps involved in the move.

Rationale : For starters why would you even want to move from an already existing smoothly running blog ? Why move all posts, images, comments ? Sound messy and tedious right ? There are many reasons – the main one being more customization and control. Still moving might not be for everyone. Yes, with a self-hosted blog you do have more control, but if using WordPress, you have also to muck about it way more. Blogger blogs are pretty much hands off; you do not have access to internal files. All you can edit is the template. Still, Blogger is a nice simple, user-friendly interface which works great if all you want to do is write/post – you can be up and running in just a couple of minutes. WordPress allows you to customize, but you do have to get down and dirty in it’s internals.

When starting up a Blog it is hard to imagine how it will grow, or how it will turn out. Will you love writing/posting just as much two years from now, or will it have lost it’s sheen ? Most of us are in this boat – me included. Six years ago when I started out my blogs I was in the present with no thought of ever moving etc. If you do have a clear plan in mind, you’re ahead.

It is important to note her that Blogger is not a self-controlled website – it is a service you use. Just as you use this service to write genuine posts, there are many others who use Blogger to do (illegal) spam marketing. There are many blogs out there which do nothing but scrape feeds from genuine blogs and post them off as their own, their only objective being to sell adspace alongside. And because of the spam blogs (splogs) that have sprung up on Blogger, Blogger makes it very hard for you to just simply redirect your traffic from Blogger to another website. Thus, Blogger does not allow permanent (301) redirects, so if are worried about your page-rank and popularity, moving might mean having to rebuild that popularity almost from scratch. Plus, if you do want to make the transition, make it sooner rather than later – moving hundreds of posts and making sure they all are reachable, and having the aesthetics look just so takes some work.

For starter choose a domain name and a host where you will actually upload your installs. Now that you have the basics, you’re ready to move. Will post actual steps in the next post – watch this space.

Sticky Post : Welcome to Review Room’s new home !

Written By: amodini - Jul• 05•11

If you are being redirected here from Blogger, don’t panic. This is the same old Review Room at a new web address – FridayNirvana. Feed subscribers, you are getting new content already. Update your bookmarks please, and scroll down for regular programming. Check back often !

Book Review : One of our Thursdays is missing

Written By: amodini - Jul• 01•11

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing: A NovelBook : One of our Thursdays is missing
Author : Jasper Fforde
Genre : Sci-fi, Fantasy
Publisher : Viking
Rating : 3.5/5
Source : Publisher ARC

“One of our Thursdays is missing” is the sixth book of the Thursday Next series. I read the first and adored it; it seemed like the perfect mix of literary sci-fi, fantasy (or suspension of belief if you prefer that), and a nice twist on the good vs. bad plotline. If this is your first introduction to the Next series, I’ll tell you now that you should be reading this stuff in order. Jumping in at the 6th book might be a bewildering experience because Fforde offers no explanations or back-story – either you’re in it or you’re not.

Still, here’s a primer : Thursday Next is our intrepid SpecOps officer, SpecOps being a special unit given to investigating crimes of the Book World.  The Book World is a sort of alternate universe where “written” characters play out their book-roles. Thursday has the special ability to be able to travel in and out of Book World, but she actually belongs to the “Real World” – i.e.; the one which you and I inhabit. In this 6th installment of the Next Series, Book World is being remade from the Great Library Book World to a Geographic Book World. Written Thursday lives on Fiction Island, and Fforde has a nice little map in the beginning of this book to help the navigational details sit in your head. This is what written Thursday sees when she awakens inside the Remade BookWorld :

“Unlike the RealWorld, which is conveniently located on the outside of a sphere, the new BookWorld was anchored on the inside of a sphere, thus ensuring that the horizons worked in the opposite way to those in RealWorld. . . .I noticed too that we were not alone. Stuck on the inside of the sphere were hundreds of other islands very similar to our own, and each a haven for a category of literature within.”

In “One of our Thursdays is missing” RealWorld Thursday has disappeared, and “written” Thursday (i.e.; the one from Book World) is trying to find her. So there are actually two Thursdays and one of them is missing – hence the title. Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction, two neighboring genres in the Book World seem to be unable to get along with each other, chiefly because of the trouble Racy Novel’s leader Speedy Muffler has been causing. Muffler’s dissatisfaction stems from the fact that Racy Novel has been declared a member of the Axis of Unreadable along with “Celebrity Bio” and “Misery Memoirs”. When he threatens to hurl a dirty bomb into Women’s Fiction, Peace Talks are initiated, and Next is to lead them. When she disappears with just a week to go for the Talks, “written” Thursday suspects abduction or worse.

Unlike the first book “The Eyre Affair” where RealWorld Thursday traveled into Book World to battle a fictional enemy Acheron Hades, this time around written Thursday must travel to find the genuine article, a process which involves being shot across by a cannon and processed by many Textual Sieves, to land into the RealWorld – “a brutal and beautiful place, run for the most part on passion, fads, incentives, and , mathemantics” and visited most often for things beginning with c : cooking, copulation, Caravaggio, coastlines and chocolate.

It all starts when the JAID (Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department) calls upon written Thursday to find out why a novel, which was traveling across the BookWorld sky, has broken up and scattered it’s graphemes right into a scene from another book. Aiding her in the investigation, is Thursday’s clockwork butler Sprockett, who displays emotion with a mechanical arrow – it can point to Worried, Thinking, Doubtful, Peeved etc. Not aiding her are the Men in Plaid (MiP) – a seemingly corruptible version of the Jurisfiction Police.

While I’ve got to say that Jasper Fforde displays an amazing creative skill, with lots of detail thrown in, this novel didn’t work for me as “The Eyre Affair” did. The plot is rather thin, and characters not well developed enough to hold interest. Fforde’s writing is humorous but the focus is, from what I could see, on word-play; this book is way too punny for it’s own good. I didn’t get much of a “feeling” for Written Thursday, who is the main protagonist here. Yes, she is modeled on the RealWorld Thursday, and strives to prove herself as capable her as her inspiration. She also suffers from angst and worry and pines for companionship and Next’s RealWorld husband and kids. But other than these facts I know little about Written Thursday, and I can’t root for her like I would like to.

Fforde ffans will probably like this, but newbies prepare for much literary wordsmithing.

How to get smart : Bring BQC back

Written By: amodini - May• 31•11
Cadbury Bournvita Book of Knowledge (v. 14)This is a Google-dependent world. What you don’t know is on the World Wide Web, and it’s yours for the searching. And when all knowledge is right there at your fingertips, available with a few taps on the keyboard and a few clicks of the mouse, is there then, any need to store it in your head ? Yes, there is. Knowledge deepens world-view. The ability to appreciate various cultures comes from the knowledge of their music or food or language. The appreciation for a work of art or literature comes from the knowledge of the author and his/her philosophy. And above all, the motivation to learn comes from the knowledge of all the varied disciplines that exist in the world.

It is a pleasure to meet well-read, knowledgeable folk who can talk passionately about what they know. Such people generally know so much because they were motivated to learn more. While all of us are intensely curious at some point in our lives, a requirement to learn during the younger years can expose us to the various opportunities that exist. Even a glimmer of a fact or theory or musical composition might be enough to spur a young mind into overdrive.

As a child and a tween I have taken part in many Quiz Contests, mostly academic, the kinds that used to flourish in Indian schools. And I’ve enjoyed watching them. Watching contestants pit themselves against each other in well-ordered mind battles has been a lot of fun – edutainment at it’s best. Bournvita Quiz Contest hosted by Derek O’Brien and Quiz Time hosted by Sidhharth Basu were two of my favorite shows to watch on Indian television. The BQC ran for many years – here’s something from the Cadbury’s website, a little out of date, but still :

The Cadbury Bournvita Quiz Contest, which started airing on April 12th 1972, is India’s longest running national school quiz contest. Starting out as a contest held in cities, and then on radio, the contest currently has been running for over 10 years on satellite television. It has over 500 episodes to its credit, and today the contest directly reaches more than 11,25,000 students, in 4000 schools across 66 cities and 7 countries – UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Nepal and India.

It seems eons ago, because this quizzing culture seems to be fading out of the schools and the mindset, and I’m not sure why. There’s been KBC, but none besides, which seem to keep the balance between information and glitz and glamor. BQC and Quiz Time were pretty low on the glamor, but high on entertainment. It would be good to have them back, which is why I’m supporting the “Bring BQC back” movement back. I received a mail from Rahul sometime back, with information on this and I paste a paragraph from his email below :

This started off about 2 months ago and the response has been amazing, with almost 160,000 people wanting BQC Back. It started off as something simple – an experiment of sorts. They are also sending out banners to people who want them – so far 85 people have written in asking for them. If you want your banner or if you have any suggestions on how we can spread this movement together you can email them on bringbqcback@gmail.com! Let’s start the golden days of BQC again!

Indeed, bring back clean, wholesome, entertaining and non-regressive programming  back on TV! Bring back BQC !

The Great Big Book Give Away

Written By: amodini - May• 18•11
PhotobucketLove books ? Reading your idea of heaven ? Think nothing is better than a good book ? Well then, welcome to the club ! Yup, there’s a club for that. It’s on Facebook, and it lists numerous books and how you can get them for free. No, no catch, no tricks, no reading the fine print – this is the Book Give Away page and it lists a whole lot of Free Book Give Aways. All you have to do is ask.

If you host book give-aways please become a member and list your own give-aways. If you’re on FB, go ahead and like it. And spread the word. It really is a good thing.