Book Reviews - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Aleph Books` City Monographs

Cry, the beloved city It is neither compulsory nor mandatory but I feel the need to make this admission: I am not an outsider. Though not of Kannada origin, I have been a resident of Bangalore/Bengaluru since the start of the 80s. That`s been over three decades, during which I have lived, worked, married, learned…

Book review: Pradyumna by Usha Narayanan

A karmic burden There is valour, cowardice, glory, shame, sex, lies and deception in Pradyumna’s story. What do we know of Pradyumna? That he was Krishna and Rukmini’s eldest born who, even as he lay in his crib, was snatched away by an asura. Taken deep into the netherworld, the boy grows up to be something…

Book review: Ahmedabad, A City in the World by Amrita Shah

This is more a brief take than a review. Ahmedabad, a City in the World by Amrita Shah (Bloomsbury).Gandhi`s chosen city. Ahmed Shah`s domain. Commercial stronghold. Textile treasure-house. Crucible for the diamond industry. Land of the Sabarmati. Home to the prestigious IIM-A. Hindu revivalist lab. A city brought to heel by a flamboyant strongman who…

Book review: Mrs Funnybones by Twinkle Khanna

Neat cute Mrs Funnybones by Twinkle Khanna (Penguin ) does that difficult to do thing: it sheds the baggage naturally accruing to a book written by a former starlet now star wife. What`s more, it sheds that weight while not repudiating a single fact of the author`s life and lifestyle. Meaning, it isn`t quite tales…

Book review: Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

Unboxed Writers We Write Stories. We Tell Stories. We Sell Stories. A phantasmagorical tale So I fell upon the latest book by the Master as befits a diehard fan and one who has avidly read all the pre-release breathless prose about how Rushdie had tweaked the ancient and eternally fascinating tale of `One Thousand and…

Book review: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Healing while walking Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed is not a fresh- off-the- press book. Wild released in 2012 and has been successfully made into a movie; the author has now branched out as a podcasting star with a `Dear Sugar` show online and of course, dealing with the multiple…

Book review: Aarushi by Avirook Sen

Lurid book jacket notwithstanding, Avirook Sen`s dissection of the trial of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, following the mysterious murder of their young daughter Aarushi, is an incisive piece of well, reportage. Sen has trimmed virtually all the fat off the bone but what remains still tends to baffle, bemuse, dismay the reader. The real revelation…

Book review: The Laughing Sutra by Mark Salzman

In his second book, a work of fiction this time, Mark Salzman does not quite pull off the Iron and Silk magic once again but no matter, The Laughing Sutra (1991) is an eminently enjoyable read, a smart blend of fantasy, adventure and Chinese history. It’s a neat tweak of the old Middle Kingdom fable…

Book review: Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman

Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman: This book sure has a lot of qi! This week I went back to a much-loved book, the memoir of a young English teacher`s two-year stint in Changsha, in the Hunan province of China. It was written in the late 80s and went on to become a…

Book review: To the Ends of the Earth by Ranulph Fiennes

Ranulph Fiennes and his amazingly intrepid team became, in 1982, the first to navigate the globe in circumpolar fashion, passing through both ends of the polar axis over land. The book is a fascinating account of this labour of seven years. Funnily enough, the best passage I found was not written by Fiennes himself. It…