That's In My Library!

2020 is a year that does not stop giving. With people all over, burdened with multiple simultaneous tragedies, this is not a year that anyone alive is going to forget easily. However, we need to find comfort in the fact that things could be a lot worse. The world is a strange place right now, and it does feel like the world as we know it has ended. We will have to embrace ourselves for a new normal whenever we get the chance to get back to our routine.  Thankfully though, many books have dealt with this already- albeit in different ways. Dystopian novels have been around for many years, intriguing us with varying kinds of end-of-the-world scenarios. These are surreal stories of oppressive regimes, genetic control, apocalypses, and are just as gripping as they are terrifying.  Here is a list of five of the most notable books of the genre. Whenever you feel the need to  escape to another more disturbing world, pick up a book from the list below: 1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bra...

I got to reading Born to Run because it is highly recommended, and a considerable number of reviews available online call it a must-read. I agree with them to the point that this book could inspire people to take up running, and to even turn towards a healthier diet- with chia seeds and such mentioned at a number of places. However, how amazing a book do I really think it is? It was not satisfying trying to read it as a novel because it seems like a patchwork of several magazine pieces glued together. And I could not consider it a journalistic account due to its excessive claims, misleading statistics and analyses, logical inconsistencies and plain odd errors. Having said that, though, the book has a fun core of semi-mystical lost knowledge and its tone, written as someone who is continually discovering ancient legends, made the book enjoyable. The author, Christopher McDougall, is an American magazine correspondent and he writes about the Running tribe of Tarahumara in M...

Jasmine Days is a translated work of fiction. It was originally written by Benyamin in Malayalam in 2014 as  Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal,  and translated into English by Shahnaz Habib. It came under my radar after it won the inaugural JCB Prize for Literature in 2018, but I only got around to reading it very recently when I heard of its sequel, The Al Arabian Novel Factory.  TL;DR- Jasmine Days was compelling enough to make me want to read the sequel, at the earliest. The Jasmine revolution started with the self-immolation of a street vendor in Tunisia. This soon turned into the Arab Spring and went on to spread to Egypt, Libya, and Morocco. Jasmine Days is set in the  City ( the author deliberately never clarifies the name of the city or the country where the story is based out of) in the Middle East roughly around that time, and covers the riots that take place under the garb of politics, nationalism, religious conflicts, and the physical and mental...

BORN A CRIME Stories from a South African Childhood Born A Crime is Trevor Noah narrating his own story- about his life in South Africa under apartheid to the country’s lurching entry into a post-apartheid era in the 1990s. In essence, the book is a lesson of the inequities of the past and a warning for what is still possible to happen again in our world. But it isn’t heavy-handed; it’s fun, insightful, and very compelling. Not contrary to his Daily Show monologues, the book is filled with humor and biting social commentary. The title of the book was the first thing that intrigued me. For those also curious, he explains early on in the book-  “On February 20, 1984, my mother checked into Hillbrow Hospital for a scheduled C-section delivery. Estranged from her family, pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was alone. The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child...

This review was originally published at Critical Edges . A lot of work by their editors went into moulding the manuscript into its current form. TURMOIL AND TRANSITION Higher Education and Student Politics in India Campus politics in India has increasingly been getting attention in all spheres- academic and otherwise- recently. With students at multiple universities protesting and going on strike for varied reasons ranging from fee hike to challenging the proposed citizenship act of the country, it is an exciting time as a researcher (or even an enthusiast) to observe, read and write constantly. One of the earliest writings providing a good understanding of the said came out in the 1960s- a time where post-independent India was redefining itself in multiple ways. Student unrest was rampant on the Indian campuses in the sixties; and several studies have been published which probe into the socio-economic background of the student leaders, attitudes and value patterns...