Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Opinion: Navigating life sans a smartphone

Surving sans a smartphone First, they said keeping your smartphone under your pillow at night carries radiation risks. So, I moved it to a nightstand a little distance away from my bed. Then they said don’t take recourse to the blue light of your smartphone on sleepless nights, so I`d switch on the bedside lamp,…

Book review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver, Faber Books. I came late to the winner of last year`s Women`s Prize for Fiction and co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. But migawd, I just devoured the book, all 548 pages of the contemporised retelling of Dickens` tale of institutionalised poverty and its impact on children, David…

Book review: Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

BROTHERLESS NIGHT by V V Ganeshananthan, Penguin Books. So, here is another `bearing witness` story from Sri Lanka, a wrenching tale that will stay with the reader a long, long time after they have turned the last page. The tale, narrated by young Sashikala Kulenthiran takes us year on year through the terrible conflict that…

Book review: The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota

Working class hero We are back in Sahotaland, in this his fourth book, The Spoiled Heart. His Booker shortlisted second book, The Year of the Runaways was about three migrants, the horrors that force them to leave their homeland and their struggles in the UK. In his next book, China Room, longlisted for the Booker,…

Book review: The Golden Road by William Dalrymple

THE GOLDEN ROAD by William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury Publishers. If I call this a real feelgood book and you ask why, I shall offer you the subtitle: How ancient India transformed the world, it says. And before you raise that skeptical eyebrow, let me remind you that this author could write the manual for the innards…

Book review: The Extraordinary Life of Max Bulandi By Sidharth Singh

Rock and rollercoaster This book will hold instant appeal for those who grew up listening to Elvis, The Beatles, Santana, then graduated to The Doors, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Who did drugs like tomorrow would never come. Who read JS…except, in this book it`s not the iconic Junior Statesman but a popular magazine called the…

Opinion: Do You Have A Special Friend?

I`m a big believer in that special friendship between a man and a woman who might or might not be connected to each other by ties of blood but are very definitely connected by ties of the emotional kind. This is a relationship forged over time, where they`ve seen each other through times thick and…

Book review: The Many Lives of Syeda X by Neha Dixit

Living under the radar Veteran journalist, prize-winning `shoe-leather` writer of many articles which have caught the startled attention of the authorities and the public alike, Neha Dixit`s first book is everything one would expect from her: an excellent piece of reportage. There is no soft immersion involved here. We are almost immediately introduced to the…

Book review: There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

One drop of water to bind them all One single drop of water. It falls from the sky onto Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king. From then on, it alters its structure but not its DNA, and enters the system of the other main characters: King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums, that self-taught genius who grows…

Book review: A Wonderland of Words by Shashi Tharoor

The tagline reads: Around the world in 101 essays. These essays are an `expanded and augmented` version of Shashi Tharoor`s `World of Words` column in the Khaleej Times wherein he parses the meaning of many an English word, a term, a concept, indeed of a fast evolving language itself. Stray thought: this is just the…