Fictional worlds don’t need to adhere to the laws of nature and logic. The sky can send down a rain of flowers when a beloved character dies. A person can develop a friendship with the ghost of the man he killed. Time can go in a circle. One Hundred Years of Solitude is filled with many …
A nice side effect of being a business student is that it made The Restaurant at the End of the Universe an even more hilarious read than what it would’ve been otherwise. I’m referring to a part of the story known as the ‘B’ Ark, where our protagonists stumble across millions of alien management consultants, …
Disclaimer: This post might not make a lot of sense to most readers. It is mainly written to document some key insights that I want to take away from a book, for self-reference in future. My love for Harper Lee magnified after reading Go Set a Watchman. The book addresses a topic that is extremely …
Slaughterhouse Five is miles apart from anything else I’ve read, as all great books generally are. It’s easy to overlook its brilliance, though, since much of the essence is concealed behind layers of subtlety. The opening line reads: “All this happened, more or less.” Picking a madman as a narrator opens up several interesting possibilities …
I haven’t explored Bengali literature much and that has always bothered me in a consistent, nagging sort of way. My knowledge of Bengali is limited to 12 years of schooling, Satyajit Ray, and few other novels and short stories. I believe time is better invested in learning one way of doing a particular thing instead of multiple ways …
Ah, if there is one character that would describe my concept of an ideal human being, it would be Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. His perfection, sadly, confines him to the pages of fiction — more specifically, to a child’s narration of a simplified version of the world. The real world comes with the …
I’m nearing the end of Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky is my (new) favorite author. Being in love with his works is like being in a disastrous relationship — you know you’ll go insane if you stick around, but you stick around anyway. I’m a little concerned about my mental health. I’ve returned the book to …
Someone had mentioned to me that Catch-22 is a funny book, but didn’t care to mention funny in what way. I picked it up expecting a light and humorous read to go along with the heaviness of the other book that I’ve been reading — Crime and Punishment. After a few chapters, I realized that I …
I finally read The Catcher in the Rye which had been on my to-read list since, like, forever. The novel has a somewhat controversial image (several shooters, including the guy who killed John Lennon, had claimed to have been influenced by the book). Let me begin by stating what I knew about this book before …
Long back, I had stumbled upon a short story by J. D. Salinger on the internet. A short story, I feel, is a nice way of getting acquainted with an author’s writing style. The story was titled A Girl I Knew. It unfolded pleasantly under the narrator’s matter-of-fact tone and subtle humor, until the girl was introduced; the writing took …