Reviews

 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 ...

 There are books we read to learn something new, books we read to solve a problem, and then there are books we pick up simply because we need a little warmth. The Little Book of Good Things! by Bhavya Doshi belongs to the last category.                                             In a world where we are constantly encouraged to achieve more, work harder, be more productive and chase bigger goals, this little book offers a different perspective: perhaps happiness is not always found in the next big achievement. Sometimes, it is already hiding in the small things we overlook every day. Published by Hay House India, the book contains 112 pages of short reflections accompanied by simple, minimal illustrations. Rather than being a long, complicated self-help read, it is designed to be something you can open whenever you need a little encouragement or perspective. What Is The Li...

 Sometimes a book finds you at exactly the right moment. I first came across Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason while scrolling through Instagram, after seeing it recommended by book influencer @nonauppal. The title immediately caught my attention, but what made me curious was the idea of a woman whose life seems ordinary from the outside while something much more complicated is happening quietly within her.                                             Meg Mason, the bestselling author of Sorrow and Bliss , returns with a novel that is funny, uncomfortable, tender and deeply interested in one of the strangest human experiences: being lonely even when you are not completely alone. Who is Sophie? Sophie Pattison is 37 and going through a difficult period of her life after the breakdown of her marriage. She works behind the scenes at literary festivals, surrounded by writers...

 William Wordsworth is one of the most influential poets of the English Romantic movement, and his poetry repeatedly returns to one central idea: human beings become spiritually poorer when they lose their connection with nature . Among his most powerful poems on this subject is “The World Is Too Much with Us,” a sonnet written in the early nineteenth century. The poem expresses Wordsworth’s frustration with a society increasingly dominated by material possessions, commercial ambition, and the pursuit of wealth. While people spend their lives trying to acquire more, they gradually become disconnected from the natural world around them. The poem is particularly relevant today because Wordsworth's criticism of materialism can easily be applied to modern life. Smartphones, social media, consumerism, professional competition, advertisements, and the constant pressure to achieve can leave people mentally exhausted while making them less attentive to the simple beauty of the world. The ...