Book Box | The Best Books of 2024
2 weeks, 3 days ago

Book Box | The Best Books of 2024

Hindustan Times  

2024 has been a mixed reading year for me. Books like Brotherless Night, a historical fiction set during the Sri Lanka Civil War, won this year’s Women’s Prize. Best Fiction - I discovered Angie Kim in last year’s best book lists, many of which featured Happiness Falls, which I loved. Best non-fiction 2024 Best Non-fiction - Every now and then comes along a book that changes the way you think, a book you wish you’d read years earlier. The Identity Project features in the New York Times World’s Top 100 books to read this year, more on this book coming up next week, along with a conversation with author Rahul Bhatia.

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History of this topic

Book Box: Are You in a Reading Race?
1 month, 2 weeks ago

Book Box: Are You in a Reading Race?

Hindustan Times  

Dear Reader, A view of a bookstore. Shortlist for the 2024 Women’s Fiction Prize Other reading deadlines come from our favourite communities – the book clubs. And there are many of these - the celebrity book clubs, the online book clubs, the offline book groups, reading communities like Gurgaon Reads or Juhu Reads that are mushrooming in every city. And …

Book Box | Fast-paced feel-good books
1 month, 4 weeks ago

Book Box | Fast-paced feel-good books

Hindustan Times  

These last few days, on trips from the market, my backpack has been bursting — butter and baking powder for apple crumble, bread, eggs, lettuce and tomatoes for sandwiches. Starter Villain Book 1 of 4: Starter Villain by John Scalzi: PG Wodehouse meets Douglas Adams in this snarky sci-fi story set in a start-up world where villains rule the world. …

Book Box | How to be alone
4 months, 1 week ago

Book Box | How to be alone

Hindustan Times  

I wake up alone to leaden skies. There’s Of Mountains and Men, Himalayan Circuit and Stern Reckoning, a book of Partition stories, The Last Mughal and also my favourite — his quaintly titled memoir Memory’s Gay Chariot. There are the books I read as a teenager during my summer holidays, here in Manali — The Dam Busters, a World War …

Book Box | My emotional reading journey through the Women's Prize shortlist
7 months, 2 weeks ago

Book Box | My emotional reading journey through the Women's Prize shortlist

Hindustan Times  

When I look at a literary shortlist, I want to read all the books on it. The books are set in different countries and times — River East, River West in China, Enter Ghost in Israel-Palestine, Brotherless Night in Sri Lanka, Restless Dolly Maunder in nineteenth-century Australia, The Wren, The Wren and Soldier Sailor in Ireland. I head for my …

Book Box | Meet Priya Narendra: The writer who loves badly behaved women
9 months ago

Book Box | Meet Priya Narendra: The writer who loves badly behaved women

Hindustan Times  

She was the girl with the American accent. I was awed to hear Priya had written Two Chalet School Girls in India, a book in my favourite boarding school series – the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer. I love ‘badly behaved women’ – those are the ones that make history, aren’t they? The first chapter I wrote – Juggernaut …

Book Box | FOMO and feasting at the Jaipur Lit Fest
10 months, 4 weeks ago

Book Box | FOMO and feasting at the Jaipur Lit Fest

Hindustan Times  

I can’t believe I am in Jaipur. The sessions of the day are over, but people linger on, carrying JLF cloth bags, taking pictures under a canopy of colourful streamers, chattering and drinking chai in clay kulhads. I meet a friend who tells me about the electrifying sessions of the day – Booker Prize-winning Paul Lynch with Prophet Song, Bonnie …

Book Box | Writers, it’s okay to be jealous
1 year ago

Book Box | Writers, it’s okay to be jealous

Hindustan Times  

Writers everywhere are talking about Cait Corrain. You’ll find evidence of cliques all over social media—writers gushing over excerpts of one another’s unpublished manuscripts, squealing over cover reveals, and posting selfies of group hangs at literary meet-ups across the globe," says the narrator of Yellowface, the literary thriller by RF Kuang. But in the world of the jealous writer, creative …

Book Box | A bookstore in New York draws attention to literary gems
1 year, 1 month ago

Book Box | A bookstore in New York draws attention to literary gems

Hindustan Times  

It’s Sunday morning in New York, and I’m sitting at the corner coffee shop, reading an interview with Annie Ernaux, last year's Nobel Prize literary legend. From there, it's a wild ride — a hired assassin, a girl in a tub — all converging on an Air France flight from Paris to New York. The narrative gallops through Putin's defining …

Book Box: A trailblazing economist's memoir who helped build today's India
1 year, 4 months ago

Book Box: A trailblazing economist's memoir who helped build today's India

Hindustan Times  

I am at dinner. Send it to me, I can help you.’" Sixty years later Devaki writes this book, titling it in tribute to The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, explaining why she has chosen a brass notebook over a golden notebook. The Brass Notebook and The Golden Notebook Back to Devaki, who says, "I was never an influential academic …

Book Box: A Delhi Bookstore Crawl
1 year, 7 months ago

Book Box: A Delhi Bookstore Crawl

Hindustan Times  

I am back in Delhi. Mirza Afsar Baig, Midland Bookstore It’s Time Shelter the Booker prize winner, he says, handing me a copy of the book. I spy the first and second last books in two of the graduate-to-be’s favourite series - The Decagon House Murders and The Last Orphan and pick both up. The book arrives in less than …

Book Box: A Guide to Help Women Get Rich
1 year, 9 months ago

Book Box: A Guide to Help Women Get Rich

Hindustan Times  

I am standing outside the school gate, with a gaggle of mothers. I’ve written about Let's Talk Money in hacking your financial life, because, really, there is no better book on personal finance in India. Rand’s writing may be dated in its setting, but one must consider reading her work to get perspective on money beliefs and how they impact …

Book Box: How to Avert a Financial Collapse
1 year, 9 months ago

Book Box: How to Avert a Financial Collapse

Hindustan Times  

A few months ago, I attended a talk by Edward Chancellor. This IIT IIM alumnus takes us through his journey of reading — from Russian literature translated into Gujarati, in the libraries of Ahmedabad, to books on capital and risk, amidst the bourses of Bombay. USSR also used to convert many Russian language books into Indian languages and made these …

Book Box: The Goddess, the Writer of Science, and Women Who Fight
1 year, 10 months ago

Book Box: The Goddess, the Writer of Science, and Women Who Fight

Hindustan Times  

I’ve been preoccupied by images of goddesses. I’ve followed Saini with fascination ever since I read Inferior, her book on women and science. There are just so many good things to say about The Patriarchs, from the book’s fluency and flow to the unbelievable lightness of its erudition — but here’s a one sentence pitch instead — if you’d like …

Book Box: JLF Diaries
1 year, 11 months ago

Book Box: JLF Diaries

Hindustan Times  

We are sitting on the eighth floor, in a rooftop bar, overlooking the city of Jaipur. When she was ten years old, she began helping her elder brothers win kite flying competitions by making the best manjha coating kite flying thread with cooked rice, glue and glass powder. You can totally picture him in his childhood experiences of burrowing amongst …

Book Box: The Life-Changing Magic of Reading Plans
2 years ago

Book Box: The Life-Changing Magic of Reading Plans

Hindustan Times  

Last year, I read 130 books. Writing down my TBR, on Goodreads, on Google Docs and even as book screenshots on my phone, helped solidify my reading goals and make them attainable. Explore engaging reading themes: Join a book club and pitch them a theme – like reading the Pulitzer prizewinners for the last 5 years. Read The Year of …

Book Box: Racy Reads for the Holidays
2 years ago

Book Box: Racy Reads for the Holidays

Hindustan Times  

Fiction is the gateway drug to reading, says Neil Gaiman. But here, in 384 pages, I feel like I’m looking at the real story, the one they never told me, the one that happened off the battlefields of Troy. They have waited long enough for their turn.’ Book 4 of 5: Coming of Age Romance All the Right People. What’s …

Book Box: Best Book Club Reads of 2022
2 years ago

Book Box: Best Book Club Reads of 2022

Hindustan Times  

It’s mid December in Mumbai, with a whiff of the holidays, time to sit outdoors all weekend with book talk. And often, we ended up changing our opinion on a character or even on the book - ‘Hmm, you may have a point, I never thought of it that way.’ Sometimes, we were lucky to have an author join us, …

Book Box: Why We Need Memoirs — 1
2 years, 1 month ago

Book Box: Why We Need Memoirs — 1

Hindustan Times  

This is the story of an elegant lady in a silk sari who comes to tea. What was it like to deal with dacoits in Bokaro Steel City, to help expose the police excesses in the Bhagalpur blindings, to get a call early in the morning from the then Chief Minister of Bihar Laloo Prasad Yadav, we ask her? We …

Book Box: The Gifts of Reading
2 years, 2 months ago

Book Box: The Gifts of Reading

Hindustan Times  

Last month, at a book club in Bengaluru, we talked about giving books as gifts. To friends Man’s Search for Meaning,” said S. “Atlas of the Heart - this beautifully illustrated book by Brene Brown,” said D. In the end, in anticipation of all the birthdays and festivals coming our way, we walked across to the indie Champaca bookstore to …

Book Box: The Many Ramayanas
2 years, 2 months ago

Book Box: The Many Ramayanas

Hindustan Times  

It’s four stanzas of a river in flood, describing the things the river carries away, including a quirky image I never forgot of “a couple of cows named Gopi and Brinda as usual.” I reconnected with this poet a few years ago, with the posthumous publication of his journals. If you, like me, read primarily in English, here are three …

Book Box: How to raise a reader
2 years, 3 months ago

Book Box: How to raise a reader

Hindustan Times  

On a recent trip to St Petersburg, we fell in love with a painting. Because books will Stimulate your child’s imagination Expand his understanding of the world Develop her brain to better problem solve Improve his communication skills Give her a sense of ethics Increase his empathy As we celebrate International Literacy Day from earlier this week, on September 8, …

Book Box: Equal, Yet Different
2 years, 4 months ago

Book Box: Equal, Yet Different

Hindustan Times  

I am to meet with a storyteller and I have volunteered my house. They come from different corners of the city - Sion, Wadala, Malad, Malabar Hill and Mid-town, they’ve brought food and drink and copies of the storyteller's book. Stories from vantage points around ‘Equal Yet Different’. On Bad Bosses ‘My first boss was the worst - she’d summon …

Book Box: Gifts for Brothers, Sisters, and Friends
2 years, 5 months ago

Book Box: Gifts for Brothers, Sisters, and Friends

Hindustan Times  

When I was growing up, I had an impossible item on my wish list. Sibling Book 2 of 3: An Elder Brother to Follow Becoming. Read this riveting book for the power and hope of friendships in it, as the three friends try gamely to pull Jude back into life and living, spending time conversing and cooking together, experiencing life …

Book Box: How to fall in love with books (again)
2 years, 5 months ago

Book Box: How to fall in love with books (again)

Hindustan Times  

“Did you really read 100 books last year?” I get asked. A trip to a bookstore is a pocket of quiet reading time, it’s a crash course in the latest book releases, and when you buy books there, you are helping local bookstores stay alive. I talk to her at her Bethesda home, via email and phone, on reading goals …

Book Box: The beginner's guide to audiobooks
2 years, 6 months ago

Book Box: The beginner's guide to audiobooks

Hindustan Times  

When my daughter was 10, she started to mumble. Why you should read audiobooks ⦁ You will end up reading significantly more ⦁ It’s a great way to liven up tedious times like travelling or doing chores ⦁ Your language fluency, articulation, and pronunciation all improve ⦁ Listening to audiobooks helps reduce screen time ⦁ It can be a good …

Book Box: Celebrating Pride Month
2 years, 7 months ago

Book Box: Celebrating Pride Month

Hindustan Times  

Last week, I was walking through the streets of Brooklyn, when I saw a cardboard box thrown out on the sidewalk. Book 1 of 4: Essays Book 2 of 4: A cult book “As we waited at that street corner in the vivid, fiery air of late October, we stared dumbly through the windows at the autumn we’d forgotten, living …

Book Box: The book lover's guide to New York
2 years, 7 months ago

Book Box: The book lover's guide to New York

Hindustan Times  

When I was in school in Jamshedpur, students were forbidden from opening the glass cupboards full of books. For a more contemporary New York feel, go straight to Paul Auster’s mesmerising and metaphysical murder stories in his New York Trilogy. Book 4 of 7: Gangster Saga The Godfather by Mario Puzo and the Godfather films that are based on this …

Book Box | Seven provocative books for mothers
2 years, 8 months ago

Book Box | Seven provocative books for mothers

Hindustan Times  

Growing up in small-town Jamshedpur, my mother would bring me books. Also, a conversation with Zibby Owens, creator of the award-winning Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books Podcast. Must-reads: Book 3 of 7 The world’s draconian demands on motherhood show up in a striking new novel - The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. Moms Don’t Have Time …

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