2025, Week 31
Daytripper – Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá
Daytripper is a 10-part graphic novel series by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, later published as a single book. It follows Brás, a wannabe writer and the son of a renowned author. He writes obituaries for a local newspaper—work he finds dull but that turns out to be immensely popular.
Each chapter presents an episode from his life, and all of them end the same way: with his death.
The novel is profoundly moving, especially Episodes 2, 5, 9, and 10. It’s overflowing with emotion, insight, and quiet wisdom. The illustrations by Fábio Moon are wonderful.
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The Idiot – Elif Batuman
Finally finished this. It’s a slow, wandering novel about the mundane university life of Selin, a Turkish-American student studying languages. She chooses Russian, meets a Hungarian boy, and quietly falls for him.
Eventually, she follows him to Hungary, and the book becomes a series of everyday, almost uneventful episodes where she tries to figure things out.
Not for everyone, but if you can hook into its rhythm, it’s oddly satisfying. I listened to it casually, in quiet settings.
Some people compare it to My Struggle by KOK, but no—it never quite reaches those levels.
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Flesh – David Szalay
I’m still persevering through this one. It starts fast, with a punch, but then slows down considerably. Not much really happens after the first story.
There’s a lot of negativity about this book—possibly because it was Booker-listed, which always invites scrutiny.
Still trying to figure out where it’s heading, or if that even matters.
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Marcel Proust: A Life – Edmund White
Reading this biography alongside Proust’s novels was a good move. It adds so much context—like how Marcel was obsessed with girls in his writing, but we now know most of those “girls” were actually boys.
White explains how Proust wrote those dazzling elite conversations: he had his own literary salons at home, to the surprise of his parents. A lot of it was memory, mixed with fiction.
He was in circles with Colette, France (a Nobel winner), Oscar Wilde, and others. There’s definitely a KOK-style blend of life and art here, even if Proust came first.
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Authority – Jeff VanderMeer
This is the second book in the Southern Reach series, after Annihilation. The tone is completely different—more psychological, bureaucratic, slower.
The authorities are still trying to understand what happened in Southern Reach, but internal politics keep getting in the way. Everyone has secrets.
Jeff handles these layers of tension and complexity so well. Thats what I enjoy in writers.
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The Last Question – Isaac Asimov
Read this short story last night. Written in 1956—way before the internet—it’s about a machine built to answer any question.
Humans keep asking it the same thing: can entropy be reversed?
The story spans trillions of years and at the end of space and time, human minds dissolve into the machine, leaving it alone in the void. The answer finally arrives—but too late, with no one left to receive it. What Asimov pulls off by the end is something I truly didn’t expect.
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Foundation – Isaac Asimov
Started reading the Foundation series right after. I know the story—I’ve seen first season of the series too,—but it’s still fun to return to the classics.
Re-readability is one of its strengths.
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🎬 Malayalam Movies
Watched two films this week:
- Season – Lal in his prime. Still a treat to watch. The atmosphere and plotting are clever, though some scenes were poorly executed.
- Oppol – Picks up well in the second half, with Aravind delivering a powerful performance (he won a national award here and for My Dear Kuttichathan too). Balan K was strong as well.
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Both films were written by established writers. You can feel that nuance—even if the direction stumbles at times.
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📺 Series
Watching The Bear when time permits.
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🎵 Music
Revisited the Malayalam album Swapnam—a collection of beautiful, haunting tunes that are difficult to sing (and, I imagine, to write lyrics for). It’s likely one of Salil Chowdhury’s earliest works in Malayalam. While he later refined his style—where every word in his songs stands out—that clarity isn’t fully present here. The effort is visible, but the lyrical flow feels less polished compared to his later works.
This was also Vani Jairam’s debut in Malayalam music. A clip from one of her interviews led me back to the album.
Her rendition of “Sourayudhapadhathil…” is especially striking.