Two books about death—Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov and Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li—were the highlights of my reading over the past few weeks. Gospodinov looks at his father’s death with a quiet serenity, understanding it as a natural process, yet still searching for ways to live with the pain. The […]
One Battle After Another is a grand-scale, darkly funny film that skewers American hypocrisy. It’s satire at its sharpest—mocking one of the world’s most powerful yet absurd countries and its chaotic political system. And yet, for all the detestation it attracts (these days even from Indian far-right voices), the U.S. has also nurtured some of
How Reading Mediocre books affects thinking and writing and in turn weakening a solid foundation Malayalam literature always had
Adrian Tchaikovsky continues his prolific streak— it feels like every six months there’s something new from him. This time, it’s The Hungry Gods, set in yet another post-apocalyptic world filled with talking animals and birds. Was it as good as Shroud? For me, the answer is no. But with Tchaikovsky, there’s always something fresh to latch onto—some concept,
I had tried The Trees by Percival Everett before, but couldn’t quite get into it—largely due to the audio narration. I faced a similar issue with James, his clever retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That said, I finally revisited The Trees, and I’m glad I did. It starts off in Mississippi as a
The most impactful reading of the week was Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands. The sheer fact that British India once spanned from Lebanon to Burma is staggering. What’s even more mind-blowing is the idea that it was the narrow-mindedness of Indian leaders, who envisioned a future India aligned with their religious ideologies, that ultimately shaped the
It’s that part of the year when I slowly move toward bigger, more serious books—the kind that demand time and patience. Re-reading Proust was a project I’d planned for 2023 but never got around to. Now I’m reading Within a Budding Grove, the second volume of In Search of Lost Time, I knew this, But
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
Edmund White was one of the greatest readers ever. I’ve read a few of his books, and for the past two months I’ve been (slowly) working through The Loves of My Life—a rather graphic gay memoir. His Boy trilogy was wonderful and among my first reads in this category. Of course, being American, he’s largely
Another week went by and I have finished another stack of books – six to be precise. You could call it a reading marathon—except I read multiple books at once, so it’s more like a slow-motion sprint across several tracks. 2025, Week 21 Books Finished six books this week, all in English. First in