Shobhaa De

Awesome and beautiful socialite Shobha De is not only a charming lady , but, a mother with a difference. Her effort to keep her many children aware of the right thing to do, think and her letters show a genuine effort. some of the experiences she had undergone have provide a ring of familiarity to many of us as readers. Her letters awake interest and provide an insight to the life of rich and famous.they are real persons with feelings all the humans experience and troubles many of us are show more spared of. there are no sparks which can tell she is a genius. But , it shows us she is a mother - and a woman who wants her children are spared of any mishaps . she wants them to keep up with the traditions and rituals. wants to bind the family in one unit. I personally wanted to know and find out how she interacts with her step children and how many letters has she written to them...etc. trying to see what is not obvious. but, she stands acquitted. show less

I bought it some time ago as a promotional offer – 3 „chick lits” for a very symbolic price. “Bollywood Nights” is the first book which I read from the pile I bought.

At the beginning I thought it will be just very typical easy book, nothing really special. Mather together with a beautiful daughter are coming from Madras to Bombay to fight for the career for the daughter – she should be an actress, a very popular actress. Mother used any opportunity to move forward, without show more thinking about her daughter at all. And she succeed – through different steps – to make a star out from her daughter “Sweetheart of Millions”.

But the daughter is doing a lot of mistakes – starting relations with wrong guys, finding wrong friends and so on. Finally, she decide to stop with this life and change it to more “usual” one. There are many decisions in between, but finally somehow she is coming back to India and the industry. There are plenty of threads in the book – the relations with parents, sister, husband, small daughter, lovers, work as the actress, role of woman, emotions, India, feeling of being an outsider and more. There are quite some difficult questions asked in the book, on which we need to find answers by ourselves.

There is also an interesting description of the movie industry in India – how it’s working, how the people behave, how are the relations between different people involved in it and so on.

Additional value of this book are the descriptions related to India – to its’ cities, villages, people, culture, food, religion. It was very interesting for me to find all those informations.

One thing which bother me during the reading was usage of plenty of non-English words in the text. I assume it’s Hindi, but as I don’t know it I can’t be sure. And that decreased my understanding of this book.

But besides this one detail I quite liked the book as a whole. For sure it was better than I expected from this kind of books. It’s not a bad book ;) show less

How marriages work and why they fail....
Marriage is an adventure, says Shobhaa De, celebrity writer, devoted wife and mother of six. It's about trust, companionship, affection and sharing. It's also about learning to cope with your partner's moods and eccentricities. Not to mention the delicate balancing act between parents, children, friends and a career, and the sometimes overpowering need to get away from it all.
In this delightful book on society's most debated institution, Shobhaa De show more writes about how and why marriages work – or don't. With her usual disregard for rules, she reinvents tradition and challenges old stereotypes, addressing all the issues that are central to most Indian marriages: the saas – bahu conundrum (how to escape the role-trap and enjoy each other), the need for honesty (aren't some secrets better left secret?), the importance of romance (no, expressions of love are not unmanly!), and not any less important, how to recognize the warning signs in a hopeless relationship and run before it's too late.
Fun, savvy and, above all, pragmatic, this is the ultimate relationship book for all those who want to make the adventure of marriage last a lifetime. show less

Mom had tickets and wanted me to go with her to watch a young lad play cricket , who would later on go on to be The Wall. I had been doing Madame Agatha Christie almost alphabetically and wanted something lighter, cosier for the Sunday. So refused the cricket invite and picked this book up .

To save the long trauma, It was awful and made me sick. The story and the narration, if one can actually find them in it. This was the first book I abandoned in my life and I cant put into words how show more guilty I felt. Moreover I could never forgive myself for having missed the cricket for this trash.

This was more than a decade back. I have never even dared to try her again. And even now, I think I cant ever bring myself to read a Shobha De book, yes, for the book’s credit, I must say, I am yet to find a worser book published. show less