The year 1990 saw the release of Aashiqui, a Bollywood romance starring Rahul Roy and Anu Aggarwal as Rahul and Anu, two lovers trying to live their love while the world tries to bring them down. It was a runaway hit and its music is well-loved to this day. Yashesh Rathod pays tribute to this movie, as the title might suggest, in a new, short romance novella called Aashiqui Forever.
Category Archives: Book Reviews
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto | Book Review
Books with quirky titles like Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers have always caught my eye. They always have me rooting for them because come on! Who wouldn’t want someone quirky to win the day? I have had some success with this in the past, with books with quirky titles turning out to be some of the best I’ve ever read. And when a book starts with: “Vera Wong Zhuzhu, age sixty, is a pig, but she really should have been born a rooster,” take it from me it’s a sign of ensuing hilarity that remains unparalleled.
Fourth Wing (Empyrean #1) by Rebecca Yarros | Book Review
Every now and again, a book comes around that takes readers by the collar and pulls them in, making them obsessed with it. We see everyone gushing about it and praising it to high heavens. But then that crest begins to plateau and the disappointments start rolling in. The whole ‘Booktok lied to me’ and ‘Finally here’s an honest review’ thing starts, which is a rather questionable stand to take (a discussion for a different day, perhaps). The same thing happened with Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and I obviously wanted to get in on the action. One, because of it being everywhere and hard to miss. Two, because of that GORGEOUS cover! And I did read it.
Love That Story: Observations from a Gorgeously Queer Life by Jonathan Van Ness | Book Gush
Because of how truly fabulous this book is – not just because of Queer Eye or because of my love for JVN – I thought I should come here and tell you/gush about it. A rare 5-star for me this year.
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid | Book Review
Sometimes there comes along a book, like Carrie Soto is Back, that addresses such a specific set of issues and questions, that it makes you wonder why you’d never thought of it in detail before. Questions like: Why is it okay for a man in the public eye to be aggressive but not for a woman? Why is it okay for a man to be unsmiling and intense but when a woman does it, she’s labeled a b*tch? Why is it that an ambitious man is seen as just that but an ambitious woman becomes callous and unfeeling in the eyes of the public? And this sexism is turned around and slapped back onto the woman’s shoulders, calling it her overreaction, that she can’t take a joke.
Carrie Soto is Back is a smack in all these faces. Taylor Jenkins Reid, through Carrie Soto’s story, takes us through the unfairness that the world pulls out every time a woman takes center stage. And it is proof, yet again, that even though things have gotten a lot better, we still have a long way to go.
Heresy by Yashesh Rathod | Book Review
Yashesh Rathod, in his short, aptly titled nonfiction book called Heresy shares his opinions on a range of topics. I say ‘aptly titled’ not because I think what he’s saying is heresy, but because these are thoughts that to some will be nothing but heresy.
Cosmos to Consciousness by Sekar Manickam Retd IPS | Book Review
One thing that leaves everyone in awe is the utter vastness and versatility of the universe. Questions of where everything came from aren’t unanswered, but those of how it works are – at least some of them. Different cultures and religions across the world have their own explanations about why certain things like eclipses happen and how life came into being. In this new book called Cosmos to Consciousness by Sekar Manickam retd. IPS, he aims to explore many of these cosmic level topics, including quantum physics and mechanics, with a generous mix of opinion and fact.
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone | Book Review / Thoughts
If you’ve been on Book Twitter over the past few weeks, you’ll know that an account called Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood tweeted about a book called This is How You Lose the Time War. The tweet blew up, so much that there are now cosplays involving people holding up huge mockups of the book. This became, for me, a case of wanting to jump on the bandwagon, especially since I’d seen this book on a few lists by this point and made a mental note to get to it someday. The tweet came as a final push.
Life, Living & Livelihood: Short Poems on Life by Santosh Nair | Book Review
I’ve always been entranced with words and the way they come together to make rhythmic sense. When I wasn’t reading them, I was bringing them together, even as a child. My writing journey started when I was around 10 or 11, when I decided to start writing poems. I didn’t know Frost or Dickinson or Gill at the time. All I knew about poetry was that the lines had to rhyme. So it began, with me maintaining notebook upon notebook of these poems. And then came a time when I stopped. Maybe because I grew up.
Santosh Nair’s poetry collection, Life, Living & Livelihood: Short Poems on Life, took me right back to that time, to that corner, to the pages of that notebook.
Dear Girls by Ali Wong | Book Review
A few weeks ago, I borrowed Dear Girls from my local library, thinking about how Ali Wong was a badass woman, an inspiration, and wanting to see what she had to say. Dear Girls, her memoir, is a letter to her daughters in which she recollects things she’s done in her life. She warns them not to read the book before they turn 21 and I agree one hundred percent because boy, oh, boy, there’s some stuff that’s not share-worthy at all. Especially not to one’s daughters. But going into the book, I had some really high expectations – from the book, from actor Ali Wong, and from comedian Ali Wong, and from writer Ali Wong.
The Melodramatic Bookworm 