The fault in our stars

            I am too old to read books for young adults I guess, but there are books which do not have the age limit after all. They are interesting for any age people - and one of such books is "The fault in our stars" by John Green. 

         The book has a lot of teenagers in it. There is Hazel Grace Lancaster, Augustus Waters, Isaac, Monika and many more (whose names we encounter through the book). However, it is not an ordinary book about their lives. They all battle different kinds of cancer.

           We start of with Hazel who is the narrator of the story. She has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer which in later stage spread into her lungs. She has to carry an oxygen tank everywhere with her. Hazel's mother makes her attend a support group because she thinks that Hazel may be depressed. During one of the meetings she meets Augustus. Gus is a cancer survivor and because of that he had his leg amputated, which effectively ended his basketball career. Augustus takes to Hazel the second he sees her and right after the meeting he starts a conversation with her. It turns out that they have quite a lot in common and very soon they become friends. And I will write no more here.

           I really loved the story. I listened to my audiobook a few times already and I am sure it is not the end. It made me laugh numerous times, and it made me cry even more. It made me think about time and its passage and the things I do with the years I have been given in this world. Do I make my best of it? Do I try to use every minute?

          The book made a great impression on me. I should look up more works by John Green for sure :) And I cannot wait to see the movie.

Some of the more beautiful quotes from the book.

Books to read

         A list of books (taken from the Internet with some additions from me) which I want to read :)

1.    Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2.    The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3.    Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4.    Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5.    To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6.    The Bible - Council of Nicea

7.    Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8.    Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9.    His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10.  Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11.  Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12.  Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13.  Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14.  Complete Works of Shakespeare

15.  Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16.  The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17.  Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18.  Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19.  The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20.  Middlemarch - George Eliot

21.  Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22.  The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23.  Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24.  War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25.  The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26.  Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27.  Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28.  Bracia Karamazow - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

29.  Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

30.  Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

31.  The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

32.  Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

33.  David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

34.  Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

35.  Emma - Jane Austen

36.  Persuasion - Jane Austen

37.  The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

38.  The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

39.  Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

40.  Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

41.  Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

42.  Animal Farm - George Orwell

43.  The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

44.  One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

45.  A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

46.  The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

47.  Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

48.  Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

49.  The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

50.  Lord of the Flies - William Golding

51.  Atonement - Ian McEwan

52.  Life of Pi - Yann Martel

53.  Dune - Frank Herbert

54.  Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

55.  Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

56.  A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

57.  The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

58.  A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

59.  Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

60.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

61.  Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

62.  Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

63.  Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

64.  The Secret History - Donna Tartt

65.  The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 

66.  Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

67.  On The Road – w drodze - Jack Kerouac

68.  Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

69.  Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

70.  Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 

71.  Moby Dick - Herman Melville

72.  Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

73.  Dracula - Bram Stoker

74.  The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

75.  Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

76.  Ulysses - James Joyce 

77.  The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

78.  The Inferno - Dante

79.  Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

80.  Germinal - Emile Zola

81.  Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

82.  Possession - AS Byatt

83.  A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

84.  Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

85.  The Color Purple - Alice Walker

86.  The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

87.  Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

88.  A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

89.  Charlotte’s Web - EB White

90.  The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

91.  Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

92.  The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

93.  Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

94.  The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

95.  The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

96.  Watership Down – Richard Adams

97.  In my Father’s House – Ann Rinaldi

98.  The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton

99.  Lucky Santangelo Series – Jackie Collins

100.    Vampire Academy Series – Richelle Mead
101. Black Dagger Brotherhood – J.R. Ward

102.     Tuesdays with Morrie -

103.    Angela’s Ashes -

104.     A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

105.    A diary of a young girl – Anne Frank

106.    The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

107.   Hamlet - William Shakespeare

108.   Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

109.    Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

110.    All quiet on the Wesern Front

111. The call of the wild

112.   Don Quixote - Cervantes

113.   Their eyes were watching God -

114.  The time machine – H G Wells

115.   Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 45
116.   H.G. Wells - The invisible man

117.    The perks of being a wallflower - Shephen Dibosky

118.    Shades of Gray - Jasper Fforde

119.     2001, a space odyssey – Arthur C Clarke

120.    War of the worlds – H G Wells

The Big Bang Theory

          I don't watch sitcoms very often because I prefere movies. However, once in a while I get sucked into one and I get curious about how the story develops. And so it was with "The Big Bang Theory".

        The story revolves around four guys: Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj and a girl Penny. 

       Leonard and Sheldon are roomates, who one day meet their new neighbour Penny. Leonard takes to her immediately. Later Penny is introduced to Howard (a sex maniac) and Raj (a very shy guy who cannot talk to women). All the guys are very smart scientists, who do research in various fields and work at the university.

       Penny becomes a friend of the boys and teaches them quite a lot about real life. They teach her about comic books,computer games and movies. In later episodes we meet Amy (who starts going out with Sheldon) and Bernadette (Howard's girlfriend and later wife).

       The sitcom is very funny and the subject (the scientists) is quite different from all other sitcoms there are.

The cast

Indian chai

               Tea is drunk in many countries. But nowhere in the world it is drunk like in India.

Let’s first say that Indians drink tea a few times a day. Especially when someone visits them or when they meet somebody new. "Before we drink it we may be strangers, but after drinking chai we become friends" one friend told me.

Making chai is quite simple. You take tea (usually leaf tea), water and milk. To make a glass of chai we take half glass of water, half glass of milk and for example two spoons of tea. You put all of this in a pot and boil it. After it boils we turn the gas of and let the tea stand and cool of a bit for around three minutes (an advice from my friend’s mother). During the cooking Indians usually add sugar. But if you don’t like sweet tea and you make chai at home you can omit that part. Or add sugar later.

Chai should be drunk hot. It always puzzled me since India is a very hot place even without drinking hot drinks. However, drinking it hot goes together well with the philosophy: we eat and drink according to our climate. When you drink something hot the temperature of your body rises and to cool it of you start to sweat. Thus, when you drink something hot – you get cooler. I have to admit that it makes sense to me now J

You can buy chai anywhere. In restaurants, tea shops, on street stands, bus or train stations or trains themselves. Drinking tea in a train is a great experience and I recommend it to everyone ;). You can have it in china cups, metal containers, tiny plastic cups or glasses.

There is something unique and beautiful in the way the tea is treated in India. It's such a special beverage drunk in a special way. If you ever travel to India try it or let someone invite you to it.

A metal cup with a saucer. Tea can be poured into the saucer to make it cooler

Tea in a usual, small glass

Homemade tea in a stylish cup

Tibetan chai with butter

Chai stand in Surat

Pictures by me :)