Reviews

 There are books you read, close, and move on from. And then there are books that leave little pieces of themselves sitting inside your head. You finish a chapter, put the book down, and somehow you are still thinking about a sentence hours later. You notice yourself using a word differently. You start looking at your own habits from a slightly different angle.                                                That was my experience while reading Sophie Staring at Me by Meg Mason . I went into the book expecting a story. Instead, I found myself collecting little ideas from it—especially one new word, warping , and a thought that has been difficult to shake: “I’m fine” might be one of the most load-bearing lies in the English language. And somewhere along the way, the book also made me think about something I had never quite put into words before: Reading is the orig...

 There are some books you read because someone recommends them. And then there are books that somehow seem to find you at the exact moment you need them. For me, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig felt like the second kind.                                                                       [Amazon: Buy/Read The Midnight Library → AMAZON AFFILIATE LINK ] I picked up this book because the idea sounded fascinating: a mysterious library between life and death where every book contains a different version of your life—a life based on a different choice you could have made. But what stayed with me wasn't the fantasy of travelling through alternate lives. It was the question underneath it all: What if the life I am living right now isn't the only life I could have had? And perhaps even more importantly: What...

 Some books entertain you. Some books teach you something. And then there are books that simply sit beside you when you need them most .                                           The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy is one of those books for me. I picked it up expecting a beautiful illustrated book with a few thoughtful conversations. I didn't expect its simplicity to stay with me long after I had finished reading it. There is no complicated plot to follow and no dramatic story arc. Instead, we meet four unlikely companions—a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse—and travel with them through conversations about kindness, loneliness, courage, friendship, love, vulnerability and finding your way through difficult moments . And somehow, those simple conversations say things that we often struggle to say to ourselves. A Story About the Things We All Carry The boy i...

 Some books entertain you. Some books disturb you. And then there are books that quietly stay inside your mind long after you have finished the last page. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman belongs to the third category.                                                 Originally published in French in 1995, the novel is a strange, haunting and deeply philosophical work of speculative fiction. The English edition was translated by Ros Schwartz . Rather than giving readers a traditional dystopian story filled with explanations, action and neatly resolved mysteries, Harpman gives us something much more unsettling: a world where almost every question we naturally ask is left unanswered. The story follows a young, unnamed girl who has spent her childhood imprisoned underground with thirty-nine other women . They are guarded by silent men and have no unde...

 Some dramas entertain you. Some make you laugh. Some make you cry. And then there are dramas that quietly stay with you even after the final episode has ended.                                                 Crash Landing on You is one of those dramas for me. At first, it seems like an extraordinary love story between two people who could hardly be more different. A South Korean heiress accidentally lands in North Korea and meets a North Korean army captain. What begins as an impossible situation slowly becomes a story about love, friendship, family, sacrifice, loneliness, destiny and the strange ways in which people enter our lives. The drama originally aired from December 2019 to February 2020 and has 16 episodes. It combines romance, comedy and drama, with Hyun Bin, Son Ye-jin, Seo Ji-hye and Kim Jung-hyun in the central roles. But after watching it, I don't ...