"First Flight" - Textbook in English for Class X

"First Flight" - Textbook for English for Class X is a wonderful literature textbook for class X students. It has prose and poetry and most of the stories are extremely touching. One of them is the story of Nelson Mandela becoming the President of South Africa. 

"Ancient Delhi" by Upinder Singh

"Ancient Delhi" by Upinder Singh is a book about archeological findings and history of Delhi. It focuses on the various excavation sites around Delhi such as Purana Qila etc and the pots and structures found in them.

The book writes a great amount about the Ashokan pillars, the dynasties that ruled Delhi and the various protected and badly protected monuments.

The authors introduces the Anglo-Indian archeologists and discoverers and their work (and the commentary and criticism of their work). The historical findings are also compared with the folk memory and the story of Mahabharat (which says there is little proof to confirm the story, although the names of local rulers and groups match with the names from the Mahabharat). 

"Modern Short Stories" by Jim Hunter

"Modern Short Stories" by Jim Hunter is a selection of 15 short stories. It said modern but most of the stories were from the early 1900's. I did enjoy some of them but there were some which were hard to understand. The stories were by the authors from the English speaking countries like the US, the UK,  Australia etc

"Madame Burova" by Ruth Hogan

"Madame Burova" by Ruth Hogan was a surprise buy. I saw the recommendation while browsing amazon and it was super cheap (111 rs) and so I bought it. The book was quite thick (300 + pages) and it was printed in a biggish font, so  it seemed like it's going to be an easy fun read.

As I started reading, Ruth Hogan's writing style reminded me of my favorite Lithuanian writer's Jurga's Ivanauskaite's style and I was pleased. The more I read though,  the more confusing it got as there were many characters in the book and some events took place in 1973 and some - now.

I thought: "What the heck?!" and continued reading. So, I was in a puzzled state up to about 150th page but it started to become interesting as that's when I realized that the events of 1973 and now were one story (how stupid of me).

Then 150th page onwards it was very interesting and seemed like a "good book" and a "good story" and I feel like I had a lot of fun and learned a lot from it. I'd recommend everyone who's interested in a bit of a contemporary read full of people and relationships. Although it was fun though, it discussed some serious issues like racism, homophobia, gender equality issues and animal abuse/rescue.