When le Carré died in 2020, he was believed to have been the greatest spy novelist of all time. Writing in the heydays of the Cold War, realism was his forte and all his works were marked by a sense of pathos and tragedy. Over the past few years, the British writer Mick Herron has … Continue reading Herron’s Slough House
The 1930s was a remarkable decade for Indian writing in English. Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and R.K. Narayan’s Swamy and Friends were published in 1935 and Raja Rao’s Kanthapura followed in 1938 – a year before WWII. Last month, I picked up Raja Rao for the first time and tackled Kanthapura, The Cat and Shakespeare … Continue reading Raja Rao
Joe Studwell’s ‘How Asia Works’ is a seminal work examining the different trajectories adopted by the Asian countries in the aftermath of the Second World War. India doesn’t figure in the scope of this work. The focus is mainly on Northeast Asia (Japan, Korea), South East Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam) and of course China. Studwell … Continue reading How Asia Works
As I had written earlier, I began the year with John Cheever’s Journals. I’ve never read any of his works before and only knew him as the master chronicler of the American suburban life. ‘Chekov of the suburbs' was how the literary world tagged him. After reading his journals, I now see him as someone … Continue reading Excerpts from Cheever’s Journals
Lepidopterology. What a beautiful word. In case you don't know, it refers to the study of butterflies. Earlier today, I chanced upon the philosopher Nigel Warburton’s piece on the aesthetic case for butterfly preservation – a quirky short piece that got me thinking of the most famous lepidopterologist of all time – Nabokov. I began … Continue reading Butterfly connections
I started collecting comics sometime in 2018, got slightly serious in 2019 and then got stonewalled by the pandemic. Thankfully, in 2023, I managed to be more disciplined. (The plan is to begin a lending library dedicated to comics. So if you’re in Delhi and interested in exploring comics and graphic novels , do get … Continue reading Best Comics of 2023
Some of the best Non-Fiction (in no particular order) I read this year: The Moral Case of Fossil Fuels (blogged earlier) A Conflict of Visions- Thomas Sowell (blogged earlier) The Untethered Soul - Michael Singer. I've read a lot of books on zen/spirituality/meditation/CBT. But Singer's book still made me nod my head in agreement. The … Continue reading Best Non Fiction of 2023
I haven’t been reading much fiction since the pandemic and this is something that I should remedy in 2024. Most of what I picked this year was good. The ones that stood out for me (in no particular order): Age of Vice by - Deepti Kapur (blogged earlier) I'm a Fan - Sheena Patel (blogged … Continue reading Best fiction books of 2023
During this era Singapore Airlines, a government company, ran a centerfold advertisement that featured an Asian woman of somewhat vague ethnicity. She could have been Chinese, Indian, or Malay. She stood in a misty, impressionistic setting, looking out at the reader demurely, holding a single water lily. There was no information about the airline’s fare … Continue reading Bananas, Beaches and Bases
A friend of mine spent the previous two years in Penang as part of an international consortium in the business of designing and fabricating semiconductor units. Being an avid sketcher and a photographer, I got to see glimpses of the city through his posts and updates. Though I knew next to nothing about the place … Continue reading Discovering Penang (through books, how else!)
