The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault

Mesmerised by every loop and every curve; every word, of the letters stacked up high on his desk every night. Letters that didn't really belong to him, but words that felt so close to home he could hardly tell what reality was anymore. Stolen during his morning routine of sorting through the post, saved for his bedtime story, only to be steamed shut and delivered as though nothing had happened, during the next round of morning post.

Trapped in the thoughts of people he would never meet, Bilodo becomes entangled and dangerously fascinated with the conversation between one long distance couple, spoken through the beautiful art of haiku. He lives through their lyrics, feasts on their words. Curiosity churns to chaos, boredom bordering on obsession.

This unsettling yet charming story about love and loneliness, is quite unlike anything I have read before, and whose unusual characters and brilliantly addictive plot still continue to reside in the rooms of my mind.

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown by Jeff Kinney

This book is the 13th book in the magnificent Wimpy Kid series about Greg Heffley and his family. It is about when it snows so much that there is no school and there is a war with snowball fights and big battles between the lower part of Surrey Street and the top of the hill where Greg lives.  

It is super strange that at the beginning of the book it is scorching hot and it is in winter. Later during the war there is a lot of snow. I couldn't believe that Gary the weather forecast guy still kept his job because every single time he got the forecast wrong. Crazily once he said it was going to be sunny weather and it actually snowed three inches.

What was quite cool is they described the goat man who lived in the woods. He was scary but we never saw him. 

I liked the bit when Greg and his two brothers got a blanket for Christmas. They all wanted it at once, so they had to make a blanket schedule to say when everyone could have the blanket. At first I thought it meant Manny, Greg's younger brother would get the blanket the whole time.

At the start of the book it was so hot they were told at school not to wear shoes inside and then they started playing with their socks. It was funny that every one was playing around with their socks so the socks got put in a box.

It is a really good book and I have already read it two times.

Reviewed by Isaac (Aged 8)

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From the Corner of the Oval Office by Beck Dorey-Stein

You know when you tell yourself you're only going to read one last chapter, yeah... let's just say that didn't quite end up happening. One turned to two turned to four turned to the end turned to what on earth do I do know? From the Corner of the Oval Office, is an incredibly compulsive and fascinating story about one women's accidental career in the Obama White House. Time zones, heartbreak, friendships, glamour and gossip, stuffed into suitcases and unpacked across the world in countless hotel rooms, world leader summits, and bars.

Beck Dorey-Stein offers an intriguing and sometimes painfully embarrassing account of what it was like to work as a stenographer for the Obama administration, all thanks to one suspiciously vague craigslist ad that she randomly stumbled upon in her slumber of unemployment. The West Wing, Oval Office and Air Force One become more than just a fancy name she's heard and turn into a jetlagged, luxurious, crazy chaotic reality, where running alongside president Obama on a treadmill, in various hotel gyms around the world is apparently a thing.

This captivating, hilarious and dangerously addictive memoir, will have you screaming yes we can at the top of your lungs, and will be one you simply cannot put down.  

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

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Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

Maya Aziz is a teen you wish you had met sooner. A voice and a story that desperately deserves to be heard and deeply matters.

Love, Hate & Other Filters, follows the life of a 17 year old Muslim American girl, lost and trapped in the many intersections of her life. On one hand she is expected to be a “good Indian daughter”, a life comprising of college close to home and a suitable Muslim boy, given the golden stamp of approval by her mother of course. But then there's the life she's always wanted, a life of living in New York and pursuing her dreams of film school. Oh and perhaps also, just maybe having a chance with a boy she's always known and liked from afar. But then again these are all nothing but dreams, and dream all she like, for her life is about to turn into just the opposite.

Maya's world is shattered and upturned when a terrorist attack strikes a nearby city, the main suspect sharing not only her religion but her last name too. Her community and the people around her become distorted and blurred, her family living in an unwakeable nightmare of hate, discrimination and islamophobia.

This heartbreakingly honest account of what it means to grow up Muslim in modern America, is much needed and incredibly raw yet beautiful.

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

Happy reading! 

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