Page 4 - Books
Immigrant worlds
If ever there was a book that begs, demands and screams for film adaptation it is American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
Booker Prize: Refreshingly diverse longlist with plenty of new writers
Like all other creative industries, publishing has been hit hard by the worldwide pandemic
 "Booker Prize: Refreshingly diverse longlist with plenty of new writers")
A big history for a long lockdown
Long lockdowns make for long reads and I was lucky to be able to procure this three volume set
Love, loss and pandemics
Cromwell insists the rules of families' self-quarantining apply to everyone
Gains in translation
Before 1914, there was no proper copyright legislation in India
The treasure of comfort reads
The ideal re-reading ritual should be of a book just smart enough to not irritate you, just deep enough to keep you engaged
Period piece pleasures
There are several novelists who have set their detective stories in this period when the freedom movement was taking roots in India
Drinking wine through a straw
Book launches are curious animals, a hybrid between earnest intellectualism and unabashed tamasha
Suvarnabhumi's legacies
It's not often that current news echoes one's reading of events of more than 800 years ago.
Yesterday's page turners
Fashions change, and it's difficult to pinpoint why many critically acclaimed and commercially successful writers fall off the literary map while others soldier on
Every unhappy family…
Summer in Baden-Baden is a reconstruction of the great and enigmatic Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's life based on his second wife Anna's diary
Books for our times
Ms Atwood quotes science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin to remind us that freedom 'is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one'
Audio books: Reinventing the art of story-telling in the time of lockdown
Audio books score over kindle and e-books as they permit passive listening and allow you to soak in the stories even as you multi-task at home
 "Audio books: Reinventing the art of story-telling in the time of lockdown")
Her voice amid lurking danger: Reflections on some feminist crime novels
It goes without saying that not all of the female crime novelists come out as feminists, and that some male writers can do feminist crime novels quite well.
 "Her voice amid lurking danger: Reflections on some feminist crime novels")
The adventures of Wyndham and Surrender-not
A few years ago, most pleasingly as it has turned out, have come the historical crime novels situated in India
As reality becomes surreal...
The fear is not only about the virus but also how humans respond to the challenge
Biographies and bias
A biographer can never get it even half-right. I mean, the facts may well all be there. But the truth? Now that's a different thing altogether
A unique book discusses Krishna and Vrindavan in contemporary times
Hawley draws a contrast between Krishna in Vrindavan and Krishna in later years, for instance, at the Kurukshetra battlefield advising Arjuna on the ways of the world or even later in Dwaraka
 "A unique book discusses Krishna and Vrindavan in contemporary times")
Rural students spend more in books, uniform, stationery than urban: Survey
Among those who were enrolled, drop-out rate was as high as 10 per cent at primary level, 17.5 per cent at upper primary/middle, and 19.8 per cent at secondary level, the survey added.
 "Rural students spend more in books, uniform, stationery than urban: Survey")
The best of 2019 from a voracious and eclectic reader's bookshelf
Though the author of Hindutva, savarkar was "hardly a practicing Hindu in the religious sense"
 "The best of 2019 from a voracious and eclectic reader's bookshelf")
