Top Reads

When one thinks of World War II, there is a certain imagery that comes instantly to mind. Like the deathly concentration camps, Dunkirk, D-Day, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the skeletal remains of European cities, etc. Western cinema and Hollywood have done its bit to aggrandize the heroics of the allies and to create a list of top recall in the world’s mind. However, in the stories of grand battles or unimaginable horrors, it is easy to…

No other book fits Around The World for Argentina more than The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey, written by probably one of the most famous & influential Argentinians ever. The travelogue and memoir by Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was from a time many years before his revolutionary days. Ernesto and his friend, two young, privileged doctors, embark on a road trip on a bike across South America to find the soul of the…

“I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. ” ― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red With that opening line, My Name Is Red pulls you straight into one of the most unique murder mysteries I’ve ever read. While multiple narrators pick up the thread of story telling, the first chapter is a banger, narrated by a body at the bottom of a well asking you to figuring…

Genre: Books Can Heal “I don’t think it really matters whether you know a lot about books or not. That said, I don’t know that much myself. But I think what matters far more with a book is how it affects you.” ― Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop To recover from this awful experience above, I needed something familiar and cozy, like a novel set in a bookstore. Days At the Morisaki Bookshop…

Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Genre: Scary Future Let me start with the disclaimer: I only read Ready Player One because I really enjoyed the movie. It imagines a futuristic world where the have-nots escape the drudgery of their existence by living in OASIS, a virtual cyberworld, where they can be anyone or anything. The possibilities are endless. And in this future world, somewhere in Ohio, in a tottering city of trailer parks,…

Review: All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Murderbot Diaries Series #1) Genre: Introverted Robots “And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.” ― Martha Wells, All Systems Red The Muderbot Diaries is my 2024 sci-fi discovery. The Hugo-Nebula-Locus winning novella, All Systems Red introduces to our reluctant hero, an artificial construct that calls itself…

It’s that season of the year. Snowy evenings, foggy mornings, and early sunsets. Shadows on the streets. The quiet in the house with the radiator buzzing in the background. The quiet outside as everyone stays in avoiding the cold. The quiet everywhere. Winter is the time for ghosts to come calling. I know Halloween month is for spooky stories, but where is the fear in silly costumes and golden autumn light. No, it is the…

“Sooner or later…one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.” ― Graham Greene, The Quiet American Brighton Rock was my first exposure to Graham Greene, and it wasn’t pleasant. I found it quite morbid, but the writing appealed to me. I chanced upon ‘The Quiet American’ while staying at a friend’s place and picked it up because it was a slim book and I could get through it in a few days.…