reading habit
Books Editor’s note
It is awards season, and understandably authors and publishers are both excited/expectant and apprehensive/scared. Most recently, Damon Galgut won the Booker Prize for ‘The Promise’. In India, most major awards are releasing their shortlists and longlists: the JCB Prize, the TATA Literature Live! Awards, the Atta Galatta Book Prizes, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, and more. For readers, it is time to discover books worth devouring in one great gulp. It is the most wonderful time of the year.
A list of new releases
Fiction:
The Wife of Willesden: by Zadie Smith. Though it’s not strictly a novel, anything by Zadie Smith is worth celebrating. A charming, hilarious 21st century translation-adaptation of one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue’, this is Smith’s first time writing for the stage. But since we can’t watch it ourselves, we’ll make do with this edition, for nothing that she does is worth missing.
Harsh Times: by Mario Vargas Llosa, tr. by Adrian Nathan West. The Nobel Prize–winner fictionalizes the political turmoil in Guatemala in the 1950s, when a military coup supported by the CIA toppled the government. It’s a stark departure from Vargas Llosa’s last two novels, both much lighter in tone and content, as his latest deals with international conspiracies and conflicting interests during the Cold War.
The Odd Book of Baby Names: by Anees Salim. This marvellous cover was enough to entice me, but Salim’s books don’t need any extra help selling, for his prose will do the job just fine. At the heart of this novel is an eccentric king, who records the names of each of his offspring in the odd book of baby names. As he nears death, eight of his one hundred rumoured children begin to reckon with the burdens that come with their lineage. Combining comedy and tragedy, philosophy and playfulness, this is an ambitious work worth relishing.
Resolve: by Perumal Murugan, tr. by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. A new Perumal Murugan translation is always a publishing event. Marimuthu is on a quest to get married, but his path is laden with obstacles. He’s awkward and shy, lonely and deeply earnest, but despite a series of “marriage brokers, horoscopes, infatuations, refusals and ‘bride-seeing’ expeditions gone awry” this is not a comic novel. Soon, through Marimuthu, we reckon with caste, a skewed sex ratio due to decades of sex-selective abortions, patriarchy and inequality, making this an impactful novel looking sharply at deep-seated cultures.
Noor: by Nnedi Okorafor. A right treat for us sci-fi fans, Okorafor’s latest outing takes us to a near-future Nigeria. Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO, which, in her mind, stands for ‘Artificial Organism.’ That’s because AO’s body has a number of body augmentations, necessary because of the several disabilities she was born with, and the few more she acquired after getting into a car accident. But one day, something happens at the supermarket in her presence, and everything goes wrong. Now, she’s on the run in a world where everything is streamed and everyone is watched.
Non-fiction:
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: by Ai Weiwei. My own personal knowledge of Ai’s works has been limited, half-baked, just like my understanding of contemporary Chinese history. Through his astounding memoir, Ai is on a course to correct that for me, and numerous other readers just like myself. He writes of his father, a celebrated poet who was exiled under harsh conditions during the Cultural Revolution. He recounts his childhood in exile, his arrival in America and friendship with Allen Ginsberg, and his return to China as a human rights activist. There’s a lot to be learnt from this volume.
These Precious Days: by Ann Patchett. No one does the personal essay as astutely and stunningly as Ann Patchett. In this remarkable collection, she reflects on unexpected friendships—in this case, with Tom Hanks’ assistant, Sooki; the cherished relationships she has had with her three incidental fathers; reading children’s books and being enchanted by Kate di Camilo, and so much more. She is truly the queen of finding the universal in the personal.
Cancer, You Picked the Wrong Girl: by Shormistha Mukherjee. A memoir that goes to reinforce the power of humour during a difficult situation. Mukherjee was diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer, and she decides to tell her story by balancing the hard truths and emotional, physical struggles of the condition with all the times she laughed during the difficult process. It’s going to make you smile through your tears, but at the end of it, it’s going to make you feel a little bit braver.
Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life: by Alan Cumming. Anything that stars Alan Cumming is automatically elevated (fans of Eli Gold, please holler). His first memoir was a revelatory insight into the trauma he faced growing up. In ‘Baggage’, he chronicles his life in Hollywood, his nervous breakdown at a young age, his marriages—first to a woman and then to a man, and all the things he has learnt along the way to become the “happy, flawed, vulnerable, fearless middle-aged man” that he is today.
You Can’t Be Serious: by Kal Penn. I realize my non-fiction list is basically all memoirs today, but from among my picks I didn’t know which one to let go, so I just kept them all. However, Kal Penn’s memoir is probably what I’m most excited about. This deeply candid account is made of funny, ridiculous, astonishing, unexpected, and heartfelt stories from Penn’s life as he embarks upon “a surprising journey that has included acting, writing, working as a farmhand, teaching Ivy League university courses, and smoking fake weed with a fake President of the United States, before serving the country and advising a real one.”
Quick fixes, aka a few varied recommendations
A few weeks ago, I promised a bunch of my favourite spooky reads. Today, I fulfil that promise. To clarify at the very outset: spooky doesn’t only mean ghosts or elements of the supernatural here. It’s essentially everything that disturbed me, raised the hairs on my arms, and compelled me to sleep with the lights on at night. Read on, at your own peril...
We Have Always Lived in the Castle: by Shirley Jackson. No list of spooky titles is complete without the mistress of horror, Shirley Jackson. Most of you don’t really need an introduction to this classic, but for the uninitiated: the narrator Merricat, her older sister Constance, and scatter-brained uncle Julian live on the outskirts of town in a big, old house, persecuted and ostracized by the locals. That’s because someone poisoned their entire family with arsenic six years ago, mixed into the family's sugar bowl and sprinkled onto blackberries at dinner. All seems to be going as normal as it could under the circumstances, when an unexpected visitor turns Merricat’s life upside down. This is a masterpiece, a blueprint for so many horror novels to come, and will remain in the annals of literature as one of the greatest horror novels of all time.
A Head Full of Ghosts: by Paul Tremblay. Speaking of blueprints, Tremblay’s modern classic is an homage to a number of horror greats, while remaining wholly original. 14-year-old Marjorie is behaving very strangely, and the doctors don’t know what’s wrong. Soon, their house is struck by inexplicable horrors with Marjorie at their centre, and the family turns to a local Catholic priest, who recommends an exorcism. Struggling with the financial instability in light of these events, the parents decide to invite a film crew into their home, and agree to turn their lives into a hit reality TV series called The Possession. That’s when everything goes wrong. Years later, Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry, who was eight at the time, takes centre-stage, and as she recalls those events from long ago, a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is revealed. This really, really scared me.
The Turn of the Key: by Ruth Ware. Another loose retelling, this time of Henry James’ ‘The Turn of the Screw.’ Rowan Caine arrives as a nanny at a beautiful “smart” home in the Scottish Highlands, ready to look after two little girls. Little does she know that her stay there will be full of disturbing events slowly unravelling, including but not limited to the inexplicably malfunctioning technology that wakes the household with booming music, or turns the lights off at the worst possible time—ending in a horrific event she is not responsible for. But then who is? I would definitely recommend you don’t read the blurb on the back of this one. Just sit back and be shocked by each little (and massive) surprise.
Nailbiter Vol. 1: There Will Be Blood: by Joshua Williamson (Writer), Mike Henderson (Illustrator), Adam Guzowski (Colorist), John J Hill (Letterer). This one has more gore and shock, exacerbated by its visual medium and assisted ably by the overall plot. It’s the story of a little town called Buckaroo in Oregon, which has given birth to sixteen of the world’s vilest serial killers, and where NSA Agent Nicholas Finch is racing against time to solve a related mystery that’ll help his friend, but he’ll have to partner with the infamous Edward “Nailbiter” Warren to do it, who has one of the grossest and most horrifying MOs of all time. What could possibly go wrong?
Night Film: by Marisha Pessl. Ah, this novel. It’s one of those rare books that give me the warm-fuzzies because of what a great reading experience they are, while simultaneously chilling me at their mere memory. 24-year-old Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse. Journalist Scott McGrath doesn’t believe it’s suicide, like everyone else does. As he investigates, he comes face-to-face with the legacy of Ashley’s father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror film director Stanislaus Cordova, a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years. Things only get more bizarre, more twisted as McGrath falls further into the cursed history of the Cordovas.
Note: Reading Habit is curated by our book editor Anushree Kaushal. Want to send along recommendations, feedback or just say hi? Email her at kaushalanushree@gmail.com.
