Random Thoughts On Random Words by Rajeev Moothedath is an interesting eBook suitable for readers of all ages.
It is one of the eBooks launched by the Blogchatter EBook Carnival this year.
Book Title and Cover
The author has chosen an apt title.
The book cover looks bright,
colourful, and attractive, with many images corresponding to the topics covered
in the book. The cover design is by Tarun.
The Author
Rajeev
Moothedath (M.N.Rajeev) is a writer and poet. Formerly a corporate executive, Rajeev
retired from Hyundai Motor India Ltd from the position of AGM (HR). He is
involved with corporate training and writing articles and poetry. His three prose
and poetry blogs are-
www.rajeevianlinesandverses.blogspot.com
www.corporatepoem.blogspot.com
His
book in prose- “Straight from the heart –Thoughts and experiences of an HR
professional” was published in June 2015 by Cyberwit.net. His book in verse
“Corporate Poems- Straight & Simple” has been published on Kindle in
December 2019. His interview featured in the publication- "21st Century
Critical Thought" - A Dialogue with Post Modern Voices”. Rajeev’s poems
have been published in a number of national and international anthologies.
Book Blurb
“Random thoughts on random words” takes readers on an exciting journey of ideas, thoughts and experiences that are seemingly random, yet very connected to day to day living be it ability, boldness or ego .The exotic, exciting, at times roller coaster ride features diverse subjects such as creativity, death, love, motherhood, utopia, ending with a serene ‘Zen state of mind’.
I have been a regular
reader of the author’s blog, having discovered it some years on IndiBlogger.
Thereafter, I read some of the posts of the author for this year’s Blogchatter
A To Z challenge. For his maiden challenge this year, the author wrote “randomly on random words”. His words
and expressions and analysis reflect his sincerity, clarity, awareness, empathy,
erudition, interest, and goodness. I could connect with his posts and this
book.
The book has been divided into 26 chapters corresponding to his A
to Z posts-
The Chapters are-
1.
Ability
2.
Boldness
3.
Creativity
4.
Death
5.
Ego Talk
6.
Fast Food
7.
Greatness
8.
Happiness
9.
India- My Country
10.
Jokes- Fun, Laughter
11.
Killer Instinct
12.
Love
13.
Motherhood
14.
News
15.
Old Age
16.
Pet
17.
Quarantine
18.
Rest and Recreation
19.
Social Media
20.
Tribute to a Legend
21.
Utopia
22.
Visualization
23.
Wedding
24.
X Factor
25.
Yes to Life
26.
Zen State of Mind
With his rich experience in the field of Human Resources, the author deftly combines his management profession knowledge along with his creativity- writing and poetry skills. The author delves into his expertise and walks down the memory lane as he lucidly shares about people and incidents. I liked the memories shared and the expression skills of the author. The author shares pearls of wisdom from his HR career. This book has many useful tips and points that make us ponder.
“Giving a test to know the ability of Virat Kohli to play the Veena or one to test the cricketing skills of his actor wife may sound stupid. Yet we tend to do just that giving some general tests like IQ across the board. We now know these tests focus on some types of intelligence (Logical mathematical, linguistic) and leave out others like interpersonal, intra-personal, musical, spatial etc.”
“The ones who are not bold, find themselves unable to speak out in a departmental meeting. As one from a corporate background, I would suggest that it is the responsibility of the leader who is chairing the meeting to ensure that all voices are heard. He/she needs to do whatever it takes to achieve this objective whether by prodding, encouraging or preventing unfair criticism by others in the meeting. People also tend to take advantage of a person who is seen as 'weak' and unable to exhibit the minimum boldness in a situation.”
I found my thoughts in resonance with the
author’s. I too believe that- “a
rejection is not the end of the world. You have umpteen opportunities to
showcase your creativity.” Just like the author, even I used to find less
availability or access to the resources for publication. Having received
multiple rejection letters over the years, things are much better in the
digital age where content-creators have multiple opportunities and options for
publication of their works.
The author rightly states-
“Criticism has been that the quality of writing has gone down considerably with every Tom, Dick and Harry aspiring to write. In fact some speak in a derisive manner about poets/writers publishing their work in literary groups on Facebook.”
The budding poets and writers can be
enthused by learning about the author’s personal experiences. This book has mention about so many varied issues- poets, movies, athletics, books, near death experience (NDE), cricket, independence
struggle, laughter club, killer instinct, paparazzi, Covid19 etc.
It was great to find the Odisha
connection too-
“A tribal poet like LokKabiRatna, Haldhar Nag from Orissa who writes in the Sambalpuri dialect, would have been lost to the poetic world.”
Requesting the author to update the
spelling of Odisha as the said spelling change happened in 2011.
This is an apt book for publication. I
would request the author to consider printing this. But, here’s a request before
he goes for print publication- to check the punctuation and paragraph
justification and ensure that the chapter-6 begins on a new page, and
text-colour is updated to black in Chapters-18, 21 and 25, so as to be
consistent with the rest of the chapters of the book. In case an eBook version
is planned, the author must insert the hyperlink again for ‘Christianoplois’ on
Page-53. This reviewer had to face the same for own book as like the author, even
I took the content from my Blogger blog. Consequently, the links did not work
and I had to manually insert them again. We would not have to face this had we
composed our posts first on MS-Word (and then posted on our Blogger blog) and
used the same document for conversion to PDF.
The author gives interesting analogy and
movie and book references to express his thoughts. There are many inspiring
words, lessons, and quotes.
According to American civil rights activist, Dorothy Height "Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach the goals."
The author has interspersed some engaging
stories and some of his own poems to express his points. The book, ‘Random
Thoughts On Random Words’ is an interesting read on diverse topics and is motivational and spiritual without sounding
preachy.
Random Thoughts on Random Words eBook is available for free download here.
Thank you Anita for a very exhaustive review! Thank you also for pointing out the incorrect spelling of Odisha (Now how did this happen?!- A clear oversight). Your suggestions on text colours etc are well taken. Was attempting this space for the first time and I had simply copied most of the lines from my blog:) Once again a big thanks Anita! You have gone into the length and breath of my work thoroughly to come up with such a review.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. Glad you liked it.
DeleteIt was great to go through your book.
Best wishes for the print edition and for all your future works.
Hi I checked the text colours mentioned by you. I had deliberately given different colour to the title of poems included so as to not confuse readers between chapter titles and that of the poems.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's great that you have given different colour for the poem headings, Rajeev ji. It's nice to see and recognize them in the midst of prose.
DeleteThe text colour referred is the colour of the content-body in the given chapters. Some paragraphs are in gray there.
Thank you for the feedback. Will take care as and when it is published.
DeleteThis is such a great review Anita. I could truly feel that this book was a fun read for you :)
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot, Suchita :)
DeleteGreat to hear from you.
Indeed. This book is interesting to read.
book
ReplyDelete