Page 3 - Book Reading

Brief escapes

During the Covid-19 confinement, in the breaks from the laptop and the jhadu, pocha, bartan, kapda routine, The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse became a refuge of sorts, writes Aditi Phadnis

Locked down and empty shelves

Publishing has come to a virtual halt because the retail shops are shut and, as result, so are the large distributors

How the republic falls

If you want to understand today's politics, read novels about the fall of Rome. Populism is democracy's oldest and most enduring disease

Nobody likes lists

Everyone and their editor is convinced that we want to know exactly what they were reading this year.

Serial entertainers

Literary fandom in East Asia is certainly of a different, and usually more intense, quality than elsewhere

Without festivals

Those of us who look forward to book festivals will no doubt have to accept that this is going to be a lost winter

Immigrant worlds

If ever there was a book that begs, demands and screams for film adaptation it is American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

Bird watching with Sálim Ali

Our nocturnal friends, the pygmy owlets and shriek owls, are alas, fewer now than when we moved in first two decades ago

Western delusions

Mr Mishra points out that western liberal intellectuals are now sensing a serious challenge to the West-led world order, defined by democracy, free markets and globalisation

Hands across the border

Suketu Mehta makes a passionate case for the immigrant's right to free movement

Society, science & technology

This is a slim book but it requires your full engagement to understand the questions and nuances raised by each example

Suvarnabhumi's legacies

It's not often that current news echoes one's reading of events of more than 800 years ago.

Possibilities of escaping your room amid lockdown are endless. Read books

Who wants to read about disease, or be reminded of one's mortality, during a pandemic?

Time to read

It's possible you want to escape the reality of what's happening to the world - countrywide shutdowns, worry and concern, divided politicians

The DNF phenomenon

DNF is short for "did not finish". There is no more potent criticism of a book, of course, than to admit that you did not finish it