Reading is the most prolific activity in my life right now—outside of work. I keep finding exciting new reads, and I’m deeply invested in this. This year has been fantastic in that sense. Same goes for music.
2025, Week 23
Books
Finished The Psychology of Secrets — a real page-turner, by Andrew Gold. The author dives into everything from murderers and pedophiles (including how Germany once placed street kids with pedophile guardians), to non-offending pedophile couples wanting to raise a child, to the secretive madness of Scientology (they tried to train a woman to be Tom Cruise’s girlfriend—wild). He talks about cults, state surveillance (China is leading that game), social media celebrities, and introduces us to the world’s first blogger, who’s still at it. His journalistic skills come through everywhere.
Restarted Ohio by Stephen Markley, right as The Deluge, his latest, became available on Storytel. His disjointed narrative style really works for me—great for audio too.
Nearly finished The Guermantes Way. Honestly, I was bored the first time I read it, but this time I’m paying attention—and it’s a whole different experience. Also started Edmund White’s book on Proust, after he sadly passed away last weekend.
Went back to Knausgaard, suddenly. Read a portion of Some Rain Must Fall (My Struggle Book 5), followed by The Third Realm, and finally started Fatherhood, which I’d never gotten around to. Why the return? I came across this quote on Twitter:
“his actions are mysterious to me and yet sovereign. Whether he suffered or not isn’t something I wonder about. My father was a king without a country, and who cares for a king to sufter? That he died a clown, his nose reddened by blood, in his mother’s arm- chair, changes nothing. To me, he will be king until the day I die. He comes to me still in dreams, in all his former splendor, the terrible ruler of the basement, for insights are worthless to the subconscious; it’s like one of those boxes filled with crushed ice in which they transport living hearts, kidneys, lungs, livers, from the hospital where the donor died to the one where the living body waits. In this box, from which dreams rise in the night, dead emotions live on outside the body in which they once grew, and there among them my father still reigns.” from My Struggle 6
I also continued The Eternaut, the graphic novel. It’s silly fun, and I just reached the teleseries (final) scene. But reading Blankets was something else—an emotional journey. Craig Thompson has been a favorite ever since Habibi (which I read over a decade ago). Blankets is a masterpiece—no wonder it has a cult following.
There are a few other books I started, couple of them are memoirs, more on them soon.
Hareesh’s Malayalam short story Thoonilum Thurumbilum was a winner, he was in his elements throughout.
Articles
AI can’t match the human art of translation
Zadie Smith: On Killing Charles Dickens
Movies
Still trying to finish Babylon (2025), the much-maligned flop. Honestly? It’s not that bad.
Enjoyed Predator: Killer of Killers, the animated film. Solid fun, great action sequences.
Music
David Gilmour, the absolute legend – Comfortably Numb, Live in Pompeii (2016)
Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven (Heart cover at Kennedy Center) — the cover that made the band cry.
(Remember Murali from Nithinte Pusthakam? He introduced Nithin to all these bands. This was one of his favorites.)
Bonnie Raitt – I Can’t Make You Love Me
Sarah McLachlan – Possession
Yes, people—envy the ’90s kids.