Essays, reflections, and personal notes on the books I’ve read—and the thoughts they’ve left behind. This is not a space for reviews, but for resonance. You’ll find everything from ancient epics to thrillers, professional enrichment to classics. Some books made me pause. Others changed how I see the world. All of them, in some way, linger.
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan is probably one of the earliest “thrillers”. In the introduction to the book in my Collins Classics edition it is mentioned that Buchan himself called this book a “Shocker”. And it is one. Great pace in the narrative, spare language and crackling dialogues. The book is a slim…
The Little Black Classics 02 – As Kingfishers catch fire is a collection of poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Gerard Manley Hopkins (July 1844 – June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest. He innovated a new form of poetry – Sprung Rhythm. I like prose better than poetry. To add to that,…
It has been quite long since I read any classical literature. At the start of the last year, I had decided to spend the year reading Hindi Literature classics. While I did that for a couple of months, the reading shifted to other subjects. Now it is the start of another year. Keeping my…
In my post on the “Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman” I had written about how my reading choices over the past few years have been driven by what I need to learn. The pleasure of reading and discovering things organically had gone away. And inspired by the Four Thousand Weeks, I had decided…
In some of my earlier posts, I have mentioned that I buy a lot of books. I buy whatever catches my fancy and then several books on adjacent topics or genre. But I read based on either a project I have set for myself – a specific theme, a special genre, a collection or…
I am a long time fan of Jack Reacher and I wait for the latest Jack Reacher book every year. The books, the movies (ahem) and the series, I love them all. Even when I like someone more than Reacher himself in the story. As it happened in Reacher Season 2. This year was…
Starting in the early 2003, Shrilal Shukla wrote a column in the Hindi India Today magazine for a period of two years. These columns were a look at the contemporary news and a rumination on them. The book Khabron ki Jugali by Shrilal Shukla collects those columns. My previous post was also on a…
Satire: a way of criticizing people or ideas in a humorous way, especially in order to make a political point, or a piece of writing that uses this style Harishankar Parsai is considered to be one of the greatest satirists in the Hindi language. My previous post on Pagdandiyon ka Zamana was a celebration…
What happens when the normal legal route to get a task done is made difficult and inefficient? Harishankar Parsai Jee answers this question in his essay Pagdandiyon ka Zamana. People start taking the routes which are not normal and not legal, because the task must be done. And what happens when this practice is…
Earlier this year, around the time of new year resolutions, I decided that I want to spend this year reading Hindi literature. I have read a lot of books over the past three decades of my life but a concerted effort on Hindi has not been the case. This year, I want to correct…