Books I have been reading in 2025

1. After Dark (アフターダーク)— Haruki Murakami

I sort of think that all Murakami books are meant to explore one emotion and this one is being chased or hunted. 'After Dark' is in the 'magical realism' genre which is one of my favourite genres. I like it because it means the stories are grounded in real struggles while at the same time the author is able to be cerative and use supernatural elements and the world around the characters to get across their point better without having to worry about being unrealistic. The books also sometimes have a dream-like or otherwordly quality to them.

I like Murakami books because of how creative they are and this one is a unique spin on Sleeping Beauty. It's a short fast-paced book which describes events taking place in a single night, capturing what Tokyo is like between dusk and dawn. Like a lot of other Murakami books, it explores sleep and dreams (and some other darker themes) and features a lot of music, but it also has some new topics like sisterhood. The ending was quite nice.

I enjoyed the book and it's quite nice as a standalone— however, it's not as good as my favourite book by Murakami; 'Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage' (色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年), and some aspects of After Dark even felt a little bit repetetive after having read Colorless...

On another note, I was watching 'Dark' recently (A German TV Show) and I couldn't help but think the disturbing Time-Travel Room in Dark is just like the one described in this book.

2. Emma— Jane Austen

Coincidentally, I happened to have watched 'Clueless' just a few days before picking up this book. I didn't realise Clueless was based on Emma until I had already read a good portion of it. Maybe I made some kind of subconscious connection between the main characters (I had some vague notion of what Emma was about) and that's why I chose to read it.

I really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. This book was a little different— it was definitely an entertaining and fun book (the riddles!), and very progressive in many ways, but also a bit disappointing in a moral sense. I'm not sure that Emma's progress in terms of character development by the end of the book is actually progress— and I don't know if that's intentional from Jane Austen or not.

3. Earthlings— Sayaka Murata

4. Hindoo Holiday— J.R. Ackerley

5. October Junction— Divya Prakash Dubey

I read it to help with my Hindi learning, because it uses very simple language and I surprisingly found it very comprehensible. But aside from that, it is one of the worst books I have ever read...

The book has neither any substance nor is it at all entertaining. The plot and narrative are unimaginably bland and boring. Every character is the same; some sort of attempt to be cool and sarcastic/witty. Pages of filler that have nothing to do with the story, just the author trying to hit a word count— dialogue after dialogue of characters discussing travel plans and logistics interjected with random 'deep' monologues from the author that don't actually mean anything. It's not even like other bad books I have read where it at least felt like the author LIKES books and writing. It reads like something written by chatGPT.

I don't know how someone can have the energy to write SIX books like this. I think Divya Prakash Dubey was just doing his best to churn out some formulaic bestsellers (exactly like Chitra, one has to wonder if the character was based on himself). I completely fail to understand how this book became famous and WHY people like this; it's of course okay to not want to read 'literature' and to just want something fun to read, but this book doesn't even do that. There are much better options.

6. The Bell Jar— Sylvia Plath

7. The Song of the Magpie Robin— Zafar Futehally

Biography written by Zafar Futehally, a famous Indian Conservationalist and relative of Salim Ali. The book mentioned many places which were very familiar to me (Bombay National Historical Society, Raman Research Institute etc.) or places I had just recently visited (Sanjay Gandhi National Park), which I have never experienced before in a book. He was a major figure in most of the major conservation organisations in India, so it was a good overview of the history of conservation in India and also to get a perspective on conservation from someone on the 'inside'; he talks both about the science and politics involved.

Of course he was also a bird lover and, aside from the interesting facts he mentioned (which was made doubly enjoyable by actually being able to recognise these bird names through my interest in bird-watching), it was nice to hear about his approach to birding— more focused on enjoying seeing the same bird repeatedly and taking joy in observing their habits rather than chasing seeing as many species as possible. I am thinking of looking at some of the editions of the famous periodical he ran— 'Newsletter for Birdwatchers'.

I bought books 3, 4, 6, 7 (from this list) as well as 'Convenience Store Woman'— another book by Sayaka Murata I had already read— in a single trip to Blossoms (a book-store), so when I finished this book I was quite pleased that I had actually finished reading all of them.

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man— James Joyce

James Joyce is famously hard to read, and I felt the same way. Lacking a lot of the historical and cultural context also made it difficult. I think it would definitely be worth re-reading slower and with an annotated version; I really loved the parts that I did follow and feel that the book has a lot of meaning and content and treasure hidden away in the parts that I didn't-- or in the symbolisms I didn't catch.

I don't know if this description of the plot is quite accurate, but the book is partly autobiographical, and follows the life of Stephen Dedalus (Stephen Dedalus is also a character in Ulysses) as he develops from a young innocent schoolchild grappling with injustices and feeling somehow different from the rest, to a teen sunken deep in sin and struggling with defining his beliefs and role regarding religion, to a young man with a deep desire to express his love through writing and who is consumed by his thoughts and strong opinions on politics and religion; all with the backdrop of the rising tensions and Irish political climate of the time.

A lot of passages are written in a stream-of-conciousness style, which I would say means they are often meant to convey a feeling rather than necessarily make logical sense. The Irish poems are gorgeous, and my favourite section was probably the extremely vivid chapter-long description of hell and his subsequent fear and stumbling confession at the Confessional. Here is a (famous) poem from the book:

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

9. The Lost World of Hindustani Music— Kumar Prasad Mukherji

10. Musafir Cafe— Divya Prakash Dubey

See October Junction review. Just a terrible, terrible book from start to finish, and sends a terrible message as well, when October Junction at least sent a (kind of) good one. Completely useless read except to laugh at with friends.

11. Boat Builders of the Coromandel— Balasubramanian Dhandapani, Denis Vidal, Gopinath Sricandane

This book describes the exact process of boat-making used by the boat-builders of the Coromandel coast, their lives, why they do what they do, and some of the authors' personal anecdotes from their time with them. The research was funded by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) and was conducted over several years. It was a very short book (with a lot of nice pictures), almost like a long article, and can be comfortably read in one sitting. I thought it was a bit repetetive but still had a lot of content and was certainly very interesting.

One of the surprising things mentioned was that the community has neither been building boats traditionally for multiple generations nor is this done for any kind of cultural reason; they have taken it up recently only because it is economically profitable. Hence, the techniques used are a curious mix of modern and traditional; chosen purely by whatever is the most practical. Another interesting fact was that not much is planned beforehand and a lot of measurements are decided and adjusted on the fly-- which is very impressive given how large these boats are, practically ships!

I also enjoyed the explanation of the actual boat-making process; they went quite in depth describing how wood is acquired (and the economics involved), parts of a boat and how they are made, types of frames etc., the process of caulking, and what and how the other items such as sails etc. are fitted-- even a description of the methods used to first launch the boat (a surprisingly difficult task). Also, how the work is divided and how it takes place in tandem, and the system in place in the community for new boat-makers to acquire these skills and for all this to go through succesfully.

12. The Elephant Vanishes— Haruki Murakami

13. A Movable Feast— Ernest Hemingway

14. Dreams of Tipu Sultan — Tipu Sultan!

15. Kamba Ramayana— (it's complicated)

16. Howl's Moving Castle&mdash — Diana Wynne Jones

17. House of Leaves — Mark Z. Danielewski