Reviews and Comments

Read this right after finishing Rheea Mukherjee's other book, The Body Myth. This one is much more intense in terms of setting; most of the story takes place in a modern-day fascist intolerant India. A more satisfying read in that sense, although I found the previous book more gripping because it had a bit of a mystery too, whereas in this one it's more about reading on to figure out what happens next (and happened previously, but still).

I hadn't heard about Rheea Mukherjee before but happened to attend her session at the Bangalore Lit Fest and both the books she'd written so far sounded cool! This one's a romance novel but not quite; I don't usually read romance but recently got interested because I listened to an episode of Brooklyn Public Library's "Borrowed" which is all about them.

"The Body Myth" is (and I quote from the cover) about the fetishisation of illness but it's also generally about (I no longer quote) love and relationships in complicated situations.

This was a cool read! I don't know enough about the Russian revolution to make the connections with this being possibly a satire and all, but the story itself is...hilarious and thoughtful at the same time? And the end was cool too, but I'm not going to tell you about that ;)

Finished this at Cubbon Reads on Saturday morning; luckily I'd brought along the next book to start on!

Started reading this morning on the metro home from a friends place. It's so dense, but in a good way: there's so much information to take in at every sentence, and at the end of it you end up with a rich, vivid picture of everything that's going on (and has been going on)!

Started this yesterday, as the backup book I was carrying when I finished Octavia Butler's "Spinning Silver", and...wow. Just as @verglas@books.theunseen.city warned me it is totally weird! I've read the first three stories so far and...I don't know how to describe them. They kind of take very normal situations, but stretch them till they're not normal anymore, and if you think about it the situations are not normal at all, but when you get dropped into it it all happens so naturally it feels like they are?

Finished reading this yesterday and it's so good! I don't know how much to say without giving spoilers, but it's so much more nuanced than just "good vs evil" because it tells the story from so many different perspectives.

It's all first-person, but the narrators keep changing. It's also interesting how the author writes the narration in such a way that, by reading a bit, you can figure out which character is speaking at the moment.

The book started by referencing a fairytale, and having read all of it I'd say that it's lived up to its initial promise of being a fairytale but also not.

Interesting looking book that I got a good deal for at Blossom's ;)

Finally managed to get my hands on the sequel to Parable of the Sower!

Started reading this on my Kobo on the metro ride home from Blossom's (where I unfortunately didn't get around to buying any books 🙁 mainly because I already had The Parable of the Sower, from my last Blossom's visit, still on my to-read stack)! It starts very fairy-tale-y but in a gritty, "this is what life is actually like, child" way. The only reason I'm not more hooked is that I'm half-hoping to lay my hands on a physical copy.

Finished it last night. Well that was intense 😳 it's quite disturbing but it's also got a lot of stuff (all her ideas) developing which don't come to fruition, so it looks like there's more coming? Now I need to read the second part, which I just realised exists!

Took an illness to finally make me start reading this >.< I've been wanting to for so long though, so I'm glad I finally did!!

Carried this to my cousin's house to finish reading 😉

A few years ago, @wickertongue@writing.exchange compared my writing to that of Borges, so I thought I'd better read at least some of the latter's work 😅️

Definitely worth it. The first story, with a title that I cannot remember, is really cool and thought-provoking! I'm looking forward to dipping into more 🪣

Whoa, this went much deeper into languages than I expected! In a good way. This is probably something I'd want to come back and re-read; there's a lot of material that I haven't fully absorbed in the first round :P