Goodreads of December 2021

We pretty much did nothing in December, travel-wise. That was mainly because of tremendous office work, many of my colleagues resigned from their positions in favor of attractive offers and that put me on the hot seat.

So besides the office work, I was able to invest some time in reading. I read a total of 6 books out of which 4 were from Kindle and 2 from my beloved OPL (Omaha Public Library). Two of the books were from the period of Germany’s holocaust. Two were related to cooking and blogging and the rest two were of Indian origin.

7 Secrets From Hindu Calendar Art talks about the significance of each and every symbol portrayed in the Hindu calendar art with the associated deity. There are calendars of Lord Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Ardhnarishwar, Shiva family, Harihara, Brahma, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Bhudevi, Gramdevi, Durga Ma, and a lot more with the symbolic meanings of the art.

The author is a master of his craft that is clearly visible from his work. Highly recommended for those interested in Hindu mythology. It will give the reader a new perspective on symbolism in Hinduism.

Celebrated actor Ashutosh Rana’s debut novel Maun Muskaan Ki Maar is a collection of short stories based on his life experiences. Most of the characters in the stories are from Gadarwada, a small city in Madhya Pradesh, India.

The author used “Sarcasm” as the main theme of his stories and described the world we live in and the characters we meet on daily basis in a comical way. His way of writing is old-school and shows the influence of Hindi Literature.

Some stories from the book, I really liked are – “Lamchand Ki Lalbatti”, “Abhasi Kranti”, “Laathi Gali”, “Bispad Gudholiya”, “Dhappu” and “Shortcut/cut short”.

The author has great potential. Looking forward to reading more of his works.

The Complete Maus is unique in many ways. The author has done a wonderful job telling the horrifying story of the holocaust with the help of graphics. He narrated the true story of his father who survived the holocaust, in form of graphics where animals represent people i.e. Nazis(cats), Poles(pigs), and Jews(mouse).

The author’s interaction with his father, listening and recording to his father’s story, coping with his father’s intolerable, irritating behavior, everything is presented in the book right from the time he came up with the idea to write this book till its publication.

The story is engaging and brutally honest. The author’s father despite being a wealthy Jew suffers a lot just like other unfortunate jews in the holocaust period but manages to survive just because of his cunning, adaptability, and of course luck. The horrible description of concentrations camps, conditions of Jews and Poles, tortures, and atrocities were hard to read.

From the very beginning of the story, the author’s father is shown as a miser person, who loves collecting toilet papers, soaps from the hotels, who think twice or even thrice before discarding anything, who can’t waste a single piece of paper, who criticizes his wife for her expenses. Till the end of the story, his behavior becomes very justifiable to the reader. This reminded me of my father who also thinks twice before spending money and now I kind of understand why he is like that.

A wonderful book that must be on the bookshelf of every reader. This would be my First Pick of the month.

S. No.	Title	Author	Format	Genre	Rating
1	7 Secrets From Hindu Calendar Art	Pattanaik, Devdutt *	Kindle	Hindu Mythology	4/5
2	MAUN MUSKAAN KI MAAR	Rana, Ashutosh	Kindle	Short Stories	3/5
3	The Complete Maus	Spiegelman, Art	Book	Non-Fiction	5/5
4	Prep: The Essential College Cookbook	Morford, Katie Sullivan	Book	Cooking	3/5
5	Tears of Amber	Segovia, Sofía	Kindle	Historical Fiction	4/5
6	The One Hour Content Plan: The Solopreneur’s Guide to a Year’s Worth of Blog Post Ideas in 60 Minutes and Creating Content That Hooks and Sells	Kothand, Meera *	Kindle	Blogging	3/5

Prep: The Essential College Cookbook has a nice collection of cooking recipes along with some useful tips, ideas, and valuable information. The book is divided into multiple sections like Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, Snacks, etc with detailed recipes. There are also easy kitchen hacks, tools information, and the meaning of common jargon.

Unlike other German holocaust books, Tears of Amber has something different to offer. Most of the books written for this period are mainly focused on Jews and Poles who suffered the most.
But here the writer shed light on the suffering of German families who were dragged to WAR without their consent.

The story revolves around two German families, Ilse’s and Arno’s families who have to face hardship during the world war. Both have to leave their farms and their place for an unexpected, tiring, long journey. Their hardship, pain, and suffering have been perfectly portrayed by the author. The story is very engaging and keeps the reader hooked up.

Throughout the story, I was waiting for two families to meet which happens at the very end. I really loved the story and its characters mainly Ilse, Arno, and Janusz who were primarily responsible for giving life to the story.

Very well-written story. Looking forward to reading other works of the Author. This would be my Second Pick of the month.

The One Hour Content Plan: The Solopreneur’s Guide to a Year’s Worth of Blog Post Ideas in 60 Minutes and Creating Content That Hooks and Sells is a nice guide to blogging. The author talks about the blog content strategy, marketing, the role of social media, various apps useful to blogging, do’s and don’t, and other useful tips. The author also provided downloadable documents useful for content planning, blog posts calendar, and such other stuff.
It’s a very short and useful read for bloggers.

Have you got a chance to read any of them?

Happy Reading! Keep Traveling !!!