Book Reviews - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: How to Forget by Meera Ganapathi

Just finished reading the most delightful book of ruminations made while taking short as well as long walks, HOW TO FORGET by Meera Ganapathi, HarperCollins Books. This book resonates, how it resonates! The reader matches step with the poet-author, accompanies her down her route, takes in the sights that float into her ken: a still-silver…

Book review: Lifequake by Tarini Mohan

The long way back She was young, all of twenty-three, standing on the threshold of a new life in Uganda, in a new job, having made new friends. Then, one evening, she gets onto a boda, a motorcycle taxi, along with a friend. The boda is violently rear-ended by a vehicle and the driver, the…

Book review: For No Reason At All by Ramjee Chandran

Cloak and dagger with a dash of silicon Ramjee Chandran`s debut fiction contains a cracker of a story. Written in the most elegant manner, infused with generous doses of wit, guile, dash and daring, the story is set in New Delhi when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister of India, when scams came under the…

Book review: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

JUST FINISHED READING: Shelby Van Pelt`s bestseller of last year, REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, Bloomsbury Books. We go to an aquarium in Sowell Bay near Seattle, and meet Tova Sullivan the septuagenarian night-time cleaner there; Tova carries her age lightly but the mysterious loss of her son in a boating accident more heavily. She is surrounded…

Loal, Kashmir by Mehak Jamal; The World with its Mouth Open by Zahid Rafiq

Just finished reading two books from Kashmir. Mehak Jamal`s beautiful ode to Kashmir, LOAL KASHMIR, 4th /HarperCollins Books. Loal in Kashmiri means love, longing, and Jamal has transcribed 16 accounts of love in a torn land. It makes for heart-breaking reading. We know the path of true love has never been smooth but here …

Book review: Ram c\o Anandhi by Akhil P. Dharmajan

If life was a film…. The first thing that strikes one after reading this book is that it could easily be made into a film. Not so coincidentally, the author, Akhil P. Dharmajan, co-wrote the script of the hit Malayalam movie ‘2018.’ In his author’s note, he calls this book ‘a cinematic novel,’ stating that…

Book review: The Oracle of Hate by Hamza Jalil Albasit

The anatomy of hate This story is an elegy for a city, Karachi, told through the prism of perspective of one family. An impressive debut work, it superbly melds the political and the personal, having its author, Hamza Jalil Albasit join the ranks of talented Pakistani writers who have made a name for themselves internationally….

Book review: Learning to Make Tea for One by Andaleeb Wajid

Growing with grief In the summer of 2021, as the second wave of Covid lashed the country, taking down so many people, tearing families asunder, Andaleeb Wajid, her husband Mansoor and her mother-in-law all contracted the virus. Andaleeb and her mother-in-law went into one hospital, her husband into another. Hospitalisation did not equal recovery in…

Book review: The Tiger`s Share by Keshava Guha

THE TIGER`S SHARE by Keshava Guha, India publishers Hachette. Sons and daughters, heirs and non-heirs, the seriously wealthy and the merely rich, the collecting of property in and around the capital city, class barriers, a glimpse into the lives of the now shrinking Anglophone liberal elite, societal snobbery, the overweening sense of entitlement, suffocating patriarchy,…

Book review: Becoming Bangalore by Roopa Pai

BECOMING BANGALORE, Hachette Books is the most delightful chronicling of a city ever. It`s a compendium of essays from Roopa Pai`s ongoing newspaper column on Bangalore; compact, engaging, insightful 600-word passages that pack in much information to both educate and entertain the reader. Things I learned after reading the book: *Why Bangalore`s trees bloom in…