Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: A Legacy of Spies by John le Carre

This is more a brief take than a review of the book. If every bit of the buzz about the latest (and last?) le Carre is only about the fact that that he brings George Smiley back, well, it`s setting up the reader for something of a disappointment. Truth to tell, that’s not the only…

Humour: Where has the word `taken` gone?

Where has the word `taken gone? How the writer has stumbled upon a conspiracy to remove a key word from the English dictionary. Now I don’t for a minute want to ring any alarm bells. I don’t even want to imply that I have stumbled on a Yossarian-like campaign to slowly, inexorably remove words from…

Book review: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

This is more brief take than review of the book. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Pan Books. The May 1996 Everest disaster where eight people died in a storm that hit the mountain with force, is well documented in print and on celluloid too. Jon Krakauer`s account is very matter- of- fact, shorn of…

Feature: Do men read romance fiction?

Real Men Don’t Read Romantic Novels. Or Do They? I`m a writer, and my stories usually carry more than their fair share of darkness. I don’t know why, that’s just the way they are. Then, I wrote a romance, a light-as-air, sweet-as-rock-candy tale. And when that love story went out into the world a…

Book review: Until the Lions by Karthika Nair

He grew tall, he grew cold: Bheeshma blew into a typhoon, dark and vicious. A world where fools are born as king. …these men Were to remain sons, at best brothers- they could seldom grow into husbands, and never Fathers. Their own kingship, I can foretell, will be steered By possession, loss and carnage, Death…

Book review: Stuck Like Lint by Shefali Tripathi Mehta

This is more a brief take than a review of the book. Reading my friend Shefali Tripathi Mehta`s book, the evocatively titled Stuck Like Lint (Niyogi Books) was like taking a walk down a moss-hedged path in a secret garden. A contemplative walk, the surroundings lush and green, almost overwhelmingly so, and the branches…

Book review: The Designer by Marius Gabriel

A look-back at the start of the Dior phenomenon The Designer is an account of fashion at a time when Nazi – grey and American/Allied Forces khaki was the shade du jour. This is Paris in 1944, seen through the eyes of American Oona ‘Copper’ Reilly. Married to a promiscuous man and trying to…

Book review: Austenistan, edited by Laleen Sukhera

Jane in Jimmy Choos An independent writer, manuscript editor and author, the writer is based in Bengaluru. So here`s a peek at the gentler sex of a neighbouring country. This lot is anything but cowed down, abaya-clad, meek or demure. This lot wears Western couture with elan, are generally shod in Roger Vivier…

Book review: Veerappan, Chasing the Brigand by K Vijay Kumar

Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand by K Vijay Kumar. Rupa Publications. I wanted this book to read like a thriller, the author states in his Acknowledgments. And that is exactly what Veerappan… reads like: a bracing, fast-paced thriller that keeps the reader hooked and happy. It could be described as a crackling good yarn except, as…

Book review: Koh-i-Noor by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

This is more excerpts from than review of the book. Romancing this stone! Prosperity, long life, increase of wives and progeny and domestic animals, and the bringing home of a teeming harvest all attend on the use of a diamond well-marked in its points, clear in lustre and divested of bainful traits. …serpents, tigers and…