UPPER CRUST – the magazine

One of my favourite things to reach out for to pick me up is the magazine Upper Crust.

In fact if I may say its one of the best kept secrets and you are unlikely to know about it until you come across it accidentally because a) there are only four issues in a year, and b) it is not circulated like other magazines. So the few issues printed and given to stores are normally sold out like real fast.  (The best way to ensure you get a copy is through subscription, and now if you are an NRI they also deliver to foreign shores)

Notting Hill – the movie

I just completed watching Notting Hill for the nth time on one of the movie channels that does repeats regularly, and, naturally I had to write about it.

It’s hard not to like the film, and having seen this so many times I think its one of the few films that can give one so much pleasure and relaxation as it did when you saw it the first time.

Dick Francis

I discovered Dick Francis much later in life and it took quite a bit to get to like him.   But once I did get a hang of him, it was hard not to consider him one of my favourites.

I do not read intense stuff like what comes in Oprah’s reading club nor a fan of classical literature. (In fact books like ‘to kill a mockingbird’ and ‘Color purple’ used to leave me rather depressed and frustrated). My preference has always been popular pulp fiction. In fact I dig anything that is an easy read – preferably the faster I can finish it the better – which means my brain is not taxed much, and yes, usually these books also help me fall asleep. 

Elizabeth Gilbert and ‘EAT, PRAY, LOVE’

Imagine you are an editor/ publisher and get a request for a book – where the author asks you for a major advance. An advance to spend a year travelling across the globe. Those travels would include a mix of sun, sand and lagoons, as well as one of the most expensive locations in the heart of Europe, and there would be one of the muckiest places somewhere in between.  And then, there might be a book about all of this somewhere after the end of the year. Would you buy into this pitch, however less or well-known the author was?

Well the world, at least millions of readers like me, shall forever be grateful to this kind soul who approved this request for it produced one of the most brilliant, literally life-changing books ever – EAT, PRAY, LOVE

Oprah...

Some of my best learning's have come out of watching the Oprah Show. However, most of it would be serendipitously, for the majority of Oprah’s shows didn’t interest me – from makeovers, the book reading club, some odd American celebrity that I didn’t know anything about, and then the episodes which I hated the most – Oprah’s giveaway programs where you just simply hated everyone lucky enough to be in that audience!.  Clearly it was mostly targeted mainly/ and only to Americans.