~~Books that I read in 2014~~

So, 2014 has not been a year of reading for me as 2013 was!!

 

Why? Multiple reasons!

 

Travel Time:

I normally read during the travel to & from office as that’s the only time that I can manage to allocate to this wonderful hobby of mine! But this year, I spent 75% of my travel time checking FB and replying to Whatsapp messages! Sigh, not very proud of it!

 

Weekends:

Reading on Weekends & Working Moms just don’t go together! Take my word for it! By the time I realize its a weekend, its already Monday morning!

 

Weekdays:

Apart from travelling & working, weekdays are spent trying to squeeze in dinner time with the family amidst the daily 1 – 2 hour program status calls @ onshore hours (OnShore/Offshore calls are not new to me, but well, every known aspect in life needs to be re-defined after you have had a sweet little baby)!!! I have attended so many calls during onshore hours (offshore nights) this year that when, once in a blue moon, I don’t have a call to attend & I relax on the sofa to spend some extra time with my daughter, she takes her sweet revenge by just not believing in me.. At the exact designated time, she pushes me into an empty bedroom, hands me the phone and points me to the laptop, smiles sweetly and locks the bedroom door from outside so I can have a peaceful imaginary status call….I am left all alone in a dark bed room to feel the working mom guilt all over again!! With nothing else to do & no inclination to read after the fresh guilt trip, I switch on my laptop to double check if I have, by any chance, missed some important call

2014 Book reading challenge:

 

I was participating in this challenge hosted by a fellow blooger & though I chose my books for the challenge pretty soon, I was not convinced with my selections and this led me into book-hunting & book-purchasing spree like never before Instead of book-reading, I spent most of my time on research and purchasing them

 

All reasons stated and done, I am still proud to have completed atleast 20 books this year!! Believe me, it was not at all easy with so many things going on!!

 

Okay.. now for the list!

Book	Author	Rating
Polka Dots, Pony Tails and Purple Pouts	Amrita Anand Nayak	2/5
Chanakya’s Chant	Ashwin Sanghi	3/5
The Gift	Cecelia Ahern	3/5
Memory Maker	Cecelia Ahern	3/5
The Girl in the Mirror	Cecelia Ahern	3/5
The Half Girlfriend	Chetan Bhagat	2/5
Wuthering heights	Emily Bronte	3/5
The difficulty of being good	Gurucharan Das	3/5
Northanger Abbey	Jane Austen	3/5
Bhima – Lone Warrior	MT Vasudevan, Nair	4/5
Adultery	Paulo Coelho	2/5
The one you cannot have	Preeti shenoy	2/5
Like it happened yesterday	Ravinder singh	2/5
Who will cry when you die	Robin Sharma	2/5
Gently falls the bakula	Sudha Murthy	3/5
The day I Stopped drinking Milk	Sudha Murthy	4/5
The Old Man & his GOD	Sudha Murthy	4/5
Delhi OMG	Vinod Nair	2/5
Collected Stories	Rabindranath Tagore	4/5
The post master	Rabindranath Tagore	4/5

 

P.S:- Books are not listed in the order they were read, but are grouped by the author!

P.S.S:- Books that I particularly liked and would recommend are in bold

~~If I were a GUY~~

After scratching those brain cells for almost 4 years & 4 months – I finally made up my mind to honor the tag by Dani (we are the bro-sis duo of my other blog space :P) to come up with this list of ten things which I would love to do if I were a boy/guy. All my life, though there have been times where I have wished for an elder brother, there has not been any defining moment or instance where I seemed to have thought “Ah, I would have done that if I were a boy” – It was pretty difficult for me to gather my thoughts for this post – which probably also explains the long long long delay in getting it published!  

So here it goes, the top 10 things that I would like to do if I were a guy!

1)   Try hard to not clean up the house… let the clutter be! Revel in the unspoken happiness by dumping the wet bath towel on the bed!

2)     Sport a french beard & go play football :P  

3)     Ride(no, not pillion, silly) a borrowed (do I have to explain why? :P ) bike to know what that “kingly” feeling is all about & continue to proceed on a 

road trip (if the bike is still intact, that is!)

4)     Smoke a Cigar, Rhett Butler style :P  

5)     Watch a horror movie in a theatre… ALONE…

6)     Watch “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham” and not cry at the boundless emotions brimming in the movie!   

7)    Go on a shopping trip with mom/aunt/girl buddies and try to understand that even if the purchase is meant for self, I DON’T GET TO CHOOSE! When the once-eager-to-impress-salesman has no more interest to show any more varieties, When every variety available has been analyzed with a microscope and yet nothing has been selected yet – try hard to UNDERSTAND that they want only the best for me & smile (no, not the “annoying” one, but the “understanding” one, and very importantly, remember to smile at the shopping buddies & not the salesman) –  use the smart fone and refer them to another store just round the corner!

8)    Enjoy a lone trip with just a backpack & a map!

9)    Eat as much as I want with no one asking me to watch those calories!

10)  Snore, Snore, Snore & Snore some more!

Well, I know, that all these mentioned above can be done by anyone & not necessarily only guys (okay, may be, the French beard part of point number 2 is an exception), But well, nothing else came to my mind even after thinking about it for about 4 years now, so I had to settle with this!

Also, being a GIRL or a WOMAN doesn't always necessarily mean that she cannot do things that only a GUY can do! If the world lets her, and if she has that inner strength, she can do anything, in much better ways possible & if she doesn't do it, there’s a reason to it & most of the times, you probably don’t want to know it :P

With that note & with this new year just beginning, I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2015!

Stay Safe, Stay Healthy, Stay Happy 

P.S:- Am still finalizing on my new resolution list for this year .. so well, letting go of the old ones for now :) (yes, blog-week-athon posts, bye bye )