aditya's blog

As 2023 comes to a close, I thought of sharing some books I enjoyed. This year was interesting, as I ended up reading a lot of fiction compared to previous years. I think that great non-fiction helps us make sense of the world while great fiction helps us make sense of ourselves.

Friends who recommended some of these books, thank you and you know who you are!

The ones I relished are indicated with a 🫰emoji.

🫰The Man Who Loved Islands – DH Lawrence – I was struggling to finish a story that I had written halfway (yet unpublished & not telling why) and while reading this collection by DH Lawrence on a train journey, I had an epiphany for spaces and places that literature inhabit. It helped the story was set in a coal town with a railway track.

These places that literature builds can feel different to how they are. Long story short, I read the first story, closed my eyes and then could suddenly imagine my short story in complete detail. So in a way, this book is a favourite because it unlocked my ability to imagine and see a fictional place I made up in my mind and put it to paper.

The writing is just poignant and brilliant. Some of the words tug at your senses but hold you steady.

I am turned into a dream. I feel nothing, or I don’t know what I feel. Yet it seems to me I am happy.

DH Lawrence, The man who loved islands.

Smritichitre: The Memoirs of a Spirited Wife – Lakshmibai Tilak – This had been on my to-be-read list for a while. The life of the incredible Lakshmibai Tilak took me through some of the mind-numbingly terrifying routines and traditions of caste, misogyny and patriarchy in my heritage.

Laxmibai’s life was quite incredible. She was born twelve years after her grandfather was hanged in the 1857 revolt, her marriage to a man who was generous, progressive yet impractical, conversion to Christianity and then the battle with bubonic plague that had spread through western India. She often writes with pithy and humour at some terrible situations she endured.

While Tilak’s book is in Marathi, I preferred reading through the translated English by Shanta Gokhale.

🫰The greatest Telugu stories ever told – compiled and translated by Dasu Krishnamoorty and Tamraparni Dasu – Aleph Publishers have this wonderful short stories collection from different languages and regions across India.

Thanks to a friend with whom I was discussing interesting names and their meanings, the name of one of the translators “Tamraparni” stood out. Yes, I picked this book because the name of one of the translators meant “copper leaves”.

That quirk apart, the short stories all originally written in Telugu, really do give a slice of Telugu culture and tradition and society along with the good and bad of it. The book brings a slice of the culture and society, caste, class, religion and gender intersections through some stories, and I must say this was a great find.

I will probably end up reading other collections in Tamil, Marathi, and Assamese in 2024.

🫰Ghachar Ghochar – Vivek Shanbhag – The rags to riches story set in Bangalore, is really about wealth, status and society in general. The writing is crisp and clever and captures the angst and strain on relationships created by wealth and also some of the inertia caused by it. I read the English translation of a Kannada novel, and it was done well. I found reading this book very reminiscent of reading old Russian short stories by Chekov, Tolstoy and Gorky. Or maybe it just has to do with these subtleties that are lost even from a good translation yet are riveting stories of human relationships.

I am going to read Sakina’s Kiss by the same author in the new year.

Sir, you may want to wash your hand. There’s blood on it.

Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

🫰Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart – This is written with a lot of love. By a son about a very flawed mother who struggles with herself. The story at times becomes easy to guess and some of the events are heartbreaking and painful to read. The hopelessness brought about by social conditioning, alcoholism, poverty and abuse is not just captured by also explored in very grim yet at times with odd humour, that might feel out of place but is just correct.

🫰Lords of Deccan – Anirudh Kanisetti – The book is a great start to reading about the rulers of Deccan in Indian antiquity. The book starts with the rise of Pulakeshin I of the Chalukya Empire. It covers the rise of various empires from the south of India and traverses through the reign of Pallavas, Cholas, Rashtrakuts et al.

The book is great for learning about history and the cultural cauldron that is the Deccan, which spans Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Next up after this, I might pick up Manu Pillai’s The Rebel Sultans – From Khilji to Shivaji as it picks the timeline of the Deccan from where Lords of Deccan left.

🫰🫰The Paper Menagerie and other short stories – Ken Liu – These short stories by Ken Liu are some that I liked earlier but I re-read this book a month ago. The origami-filled magical reality of Paper Menagerie brought me to tears on this second read. The story is not sad, just extremely poignant and rooted. If you are reading this blog post, The Paper Menagerie story is a must-read! Hence the extra 🫰

We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others’ lives.

Ken Liu in The Paper Menagerie

🫰A Way with Bea – Shanteka Sigers – A short story featured in The Best American Short Stories 2021. The story is about a teacher who connects with a student. It covers self-doubt, a sense of distance, a sense of ethics and humour with very cleverly constructed storytelling with surprises.

Why we sleep? – Matthew Walker – I have struggled through sleep and found reading this book as a good starting point for learning how sleep can be healing and critical for long-term health and cognitive abilities. I do think the author makes some dodgy claims about making the connection between Alzheimer’s and sleep. The author writes with much empathy and understanding and is not very prescriptive. The book is more diagnostic than prescriptive, which I find is very respectful to the reader.

If you want a good foundation on the importance of sleep and the quality of sleep, this is a great book to get going.

The Stranger and The Myth of the Sisyphus- Albert Camus – In the year, I went through some low, sullen phases. Some of the making sense of things led me to reading and discovering The Stranger and The Myth of the Sissyphus.

Camus’s narrative creeps onto me sometimes and it shakes me. He gives no respite while taking on the human conscience with the razor-sharp knife of an absurdist. This is philosophy done well!

Intuition Pump and Other Tools for thinking – Daniel C. Dennett – I discovered Dennett while looking up some good lectures on the mind-body problem.

This has Dennett offering some great concepts on the working of the mind, and how human beings extend their limits of thinking through tools developed through evolution and social conditioning. He also takes a few forays into the concepts of free will.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy – A short story I have read several times in the past decade. I came across it through a movie called ‘Living’ adapted from a Japanese movie “Ikiru” directed by the legendary Kurosawa. Ikuru was inspired largely by Tolstoy’s short story. The story is of an aristocratic man with means and reputation facing his eminent death. It laments some of the empathy he receives from surprising places and disappointment from more familiar ones.