Chat with Kamalini Natesan, a writer
‘Naked beneath the midnight sun’ written by Kamalini Natesan Good writing is scarce these days and when one knows a writer who has already impressed the world through her social media updates, one knows that a book written by her has to be worth reading. Kamalini Natesan is one such person who has the sort...
Readers, killers, and the extended queue of writers
Try and imagine a killer sitting on a bench at some railway station waiting for his victim to come. Not many will visualize this killer holding a book up and reading. Many will imagine furtive and restless glances, twitching fingers, uneasy shifting of the body, cold and disinterested eyes, and so on. The point I’m...
Battle for survival. Review of ‘Bestseller’ by Ahmed Faiyaz
Battle for survivalReview of ‘Bestseller’ by Ahmed Faiyaz No, this review isn’t about battles fought on the borders of a country but an interesting, fictional and a somewhat factually cursory glance of ways in which authors, publishers, editors, celebrities, journalists, and those in PR are invariably pulled together to define success. Publishing isn’t just another...
Yet another failed attempt by Chetan Bhagat
Book review.
'The Girl in Room 105' written by Chetan Bhagat.
When you take a closer look at the pedestrian attempts of Keshav Rajpurohit and Saurabh at solving a murder mystery you sometimes feel as if the writer was a curious mix of a genre-challenged Enid Blyton (that she never was) and a pathetically jumbled-up Agatha Christie...
The adrenalin rush of chasing a killer
Let me begin by writing that I stay quite near Paharganj and have walked through its lanes and by-lanes many times. The place is densely packed, is reputed to have the birth place of crime in the capital just round the corner, is full of hotels for back-packers with quite a few of them known...
One shot. One kill.
There are Bibles and then there are handbooks for everyone interested from making bombs to creating political conflicts. These can be long-drawn and full of jargon that the lay reader may or may not fully understand. It is the same with the art of being a great sniper. The best way is always to get...
On buying books
Buying books makes me happy and reading them makes me happier. There was a time when each visit to the bazaar and later to some mall meant we came back with a few new books every time. I completely agree with Mary Ann Shaffer from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, when she...
Twisted games of online predators
Twisted games of online predators Review of ‘The Wildcat’ by Taanya Sarma Imagine reading three books at the same time where between ‘Why I am a Hindu’ by Shashi Tharoor and ‘Woman to Woman’ by Madhulika Liddle happen to the one that I have decided to review first, that is, ‘The Wildcat’ by Taanya...
Conversations around art
Conversations around art Review of ‘The Book of Chocolate Saints’ by Jeet Thayil Jatin Das hasn’t probably read this book yet but what he said a couple of days back is relevant because he talks of the present having ‘no conversations around art. No one critiques it – there is no space to discuss...
Verzeih mir! This book isn’t just a thriller
Verzeih mir! This book isn’t just a thriller Review of ‘The Trail of Four’ by Manjiri Prabhu When you read a book where ‘shadowy shapes splashed with twilight orange’, interiors ‘scintillate under the stucco ceilings’, the banks of the lake has ‘lit torches perched like sentinels’, and one of the characters realises that ‘jealousy...
Curfew is never over
Curfew is never over Review of ‘The tree with a thousand apples’ by Sanchit Gupta Who would contest the idea of the ‘beautiful but tormented valley of Kashmir’ not being a part of India? But when Safeena, one of the prime characters in the book talks ‘about the people’ and asks if ‘the land...
Spent. And finished – is it?
Spent. And finished – is it? Review of ‘One Indian Girl’ written by Chetan Bhagat Radhika Mehta, who ‘makes a lot of money’, has ‘an opinion on everything’, and has had sex is the sort of person who has no inhibition in saying, ‘Why can’t women get a wife?’ With her as the protagonist...
