Deluged With Books Cafe

ABOUT MY OXFORD YEAR American Ella Durran has had the same plan for her life since she was thirteen: Study at Oxford. At 24, she’s finally made it to England on a Rhodes Scholarship when she’s offered an unbelievable position in a rising political star’s presidential campaign. With the promise that she’ll work remotely and return to DC at the end of her Oxford year, she’s free to enjoy her Once in a Lifetime Experience. That is, until a smart-mouthed local who is too quick with his tongue and his car ruins her shirt and her first day. When Ella discovers that her English literature course will be taught by none other than that same local, Jamie Davenport, she thinks for the first time that Oxford might not be all she’s envisioned. But a late-night drink reveals a connection she wasn’t anticipating finding and what begins as a casual fling soon develops into something much more when Ella learns Jamie has a life-changing secret. Immediately, Ella is faced with a seemingly impossi...

"He was like one of her novels, still unfinished and best understood in the right place and at the right time.." Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.  

Cakes and travel hadn't been this much fun. The Traveling Tea Shop  is filled with mouth-watering array of cakes and the charm of the picturesque New England landscape. If only it was like scrapbook and came with photographs, illustrations, maps and recipes then my reading experience would be complete. Laurie Davis enjoys her job booking tours and trips for their go-to website and she's just landed a huge deal with a famous television star, Pamela. It was the chance to scour the New England states and sample its local delights for Pamela's new cookbook. Yet even with Laurie's efficient skills, everything is not smooth sailing. There's the sassy Grandma, the punk rebel daughter and all the family drama in tow. Indeed, it was not all light and fluffy. Against the tea things and beautiful spots, trading baking recipes and marveling at local famous delights, there was a dash of angst and emotional upheavals which balance the flavor. I totally appreciate the dr...

Four Irish friends crossed the English Channel to disembark on the port of Calais. From there, they made a delightful curving line on the map visiting attractive towns of the French countryside, sometimes taking the expressway sometimes the long winding back roads. Written by one of them, France, the Soul of a Journey draws not only the impressions of new places and the foibles of travelling in groups but the in depth history and myths of each landmark and figure, giving readers the reflecting views of both the past and the present. Often, I would read of travels to France by landing on a plane or alighting on a train but this is probably a first that I read about travelling by car and touring spots along the way. It would have been more enjoyable if I had a map of France tacked in front of me while reading for it’d be easier to follow their course. This was a fun and insightful read, without the typical drone of endless descriptions of the scenery. Instead it was filled with...

Grace Sawyer arrives in Barcelona with her boyfriend to enjoy a few days of holiday and forget her musical career woes. But fate has other things in mind when someone from her past caught up with her in the form of her old childhood best friend and foster-sister Carrie Ann Gilbert. After the breakdown of their friendship fifteen years ago, Carrie Ann’s presence in Barcelona stirred up turbulent memories Grace had long buried. Now secrets start to unravel and relationships get tested. Was Grace finally ready to face the haunting of the past and fight the shadows of her old self? In this new suspense novel, the story start out slow and a little scenic under the heady magic of Barcelona before it simmers into a bizarre turmoil as things pick up around the middle. There was much psychological play involved as well as some orchestrated ploy to keep the thrill. The book seemed like a game within a game. Though I am not big on suspense, I enjoy a subtle mystery every now and the...

Two friends, Rachel and Gina travel to India on a holiday trip settling for a time in Kanyakumari. Being long time travel companions, they went sightseeing, made friends, and drank on drinks and sunsets on Sarada’s beach shack. But something seems not right. A week after, Rachel was off to Mumbai with Pravi, a friend they just met, and Gina keeps to herself. Meanwhile, letters dated years ago sent to Perelle by a woman named Sandrine juxtaposes into the scene. What was Gina hiding? Was it proper for Rachel to just leave without much adieu? Who is Sandrine? These questions are the root of this; I shall call it, ‘coming of wisdom’ novel which I as a reader also came into. It was quite unpredictable and unexpectedly making me wary in the foreshadowing of things. There is a certain awareness drifting between the words, a subtle dawning of things, tweaking my alertness and yet I couldn’t know which or what will hit me. Kanyakumari also narrates as a traveler’s journal. Each ...

It wasn't idyllic, not even close to romantic but Adam Gopnik's account of his Paris life seemed more affecting and pleasurable than any travel books I have read about this city. He sweeps the dreamy curtains aside and presents to us a Paris, not a city of love and not a city of dreams but, an everyday Paris, where you can really see yourself breathing and living in it. For half a decade, moving from New York, he and his wife along with their son lived the Parisian life trying to find their bearings on its intricate web. Gopnik's eloquence shows through on his writing with its sense of timelessness. Family and domesticity aside, he paints a subtle picture of a nostalgic Paris in the last years of twentieth century.

Yes, another travel memoir. Here, we journey to the narrow streets of Italy, on the dusty roads of India and the lulling waves of Indonesia. It is a woman's journey peppered with cravings to eat more, typical clumsiness and distractions, like failing to concentrate on a meditation and, lo, a possibility of love. Eat Pray Love  is also a meandering to self-discovery in which the author took a life-changing break and decided to fly halfway across the world to search for healing and peace.

It's the go to place. Often, things boil down to basking under the Tuscan sun, yearning for a new start, for an enlightened state, a reprieve from the buzzard or the banality of the day to day (considering the number of memoirs about moving to Italy). So I keep wondering there must be something under that piece of Northern Italy sky. Frances Mayes subtly illustrates her summers in her Tuscan villa in delicate prose and impressions, giving us an almost normal portraiture of the little activities happening in her town, Cortona. Some things are simple like picking herbs outside her kitchen garden for her recipes and digging up potatoes while others get a bit difficult like getting official papers and dealing with house builders among others. It feels nostalgic, as if the memoir has become distant memories sifted in the author's mind, reminiscing luminous moments from the remnants of her divorce to the time she bought the abandoned villa. From the details of her flower ga...

Travel memoirs are always a delight, don't you think? A little pile of it is actually growing on my bookshelf, a third of which are about France.  One of them  made it here earlier in the blog. In this book, Peter Mayle and his wife moved to France in an old stone farmhouse in the Luberon region. The English couple spent their early days bustling errands with their sporadic French, meeting neighbors, discovering the mystery of truffles, dealing with a half-finished home, harrying imposing guests who's a friend of a friend, facing local oddities and the typical culture shock. Mayle writes their adventures in a series of months, from January to December, and it gets more interesting from one chapter to the next. I think the winning streak of this delightful account is the author's rich wit and candor, with a talent of turning an almost disastrous moment into a hilarious comedy of errors.

Paris, whirlwind romance, cafes, and the everyday life of Parisiennes. It couldn't get any nicer than this. Then again, I must admit there are other far nicer books. That or I must have gotten tired of all these cliched memoirs of living in France (but that doesn't stop me from collecting books like this!). At some point, they would all sound a bit the same for me by now however Turnbull does still offer more it seems. This is but another interesting glimpse about the little traits and subtle differences of being an Australian (or being a foreigner) in Paris and of the little French eccentricities; like how exclusive they are in parties, how the women friendships go, Parisienne fashion, how they view cover letters (this was interesting!) and decorative dogs among other things. Of late though, I just cannot shake off that growing disquiet for certain tones in memoirs. Well, writing in first person has its own undoing, I guess, and this book is no exception. The fact that...