Published by Particular Books / Penguin, 2013, 252 pages. Writing and typeface are things we take for granted, almost as if the letters, punctuation signs and symbols we use have always been around. So it’s good to have someone remind us that behind these characters is a long and interesting history. Keith Houston picks a …
On a Lighter Note… The Things that People Use for Bookmarks
What do you use as bookmarks? As someone with a large collection of bookmarks, I am fairly traditional about what I use to mark my place in a book. But according to AbeBooks, people use all kinds of things, including a baby's tooth, a diamond ring and a marriage certificate from 1879! Read on...
An Andamans Story
The Last Wave—An Island Novel: Pankaj SekhsariaPublished by HarperCollins, 2014, 304 pages.Review by Usha Raman I had the pleasure this last week of engaging in conversation with Pankaj Sekhsaria, author of the new release, The Last Wave: An Island Novel (HarperCollins, 2014). The conversation was part of the Hyderabad launch of the book, a story …
The Danger of a Single Story
I have been meaning to put this on for a while because I think everyone will enjoy it! "It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is …
The Book of Night Women: Marlon James
Published by Riverhead Books, 2009, 415 pages. A haunting, brutal story about slavery in Jamaica in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Book of Night Women tells the story of Lilith, and of Montpelier, the plantation she grows up on. The story is told in Patois, from Lilith’s point of view. This is …
Night Vision: Kendall Hippolyte
Published by Peepal Tree Press / TriQuarterly Books, 2005, 67 pages. The blurb on the back of this collection of poems from Kendall Hippolyte, a Santa Lucian poet, says “He writes in sonnets and villanelles, in idiomatic dramatic monologues that capture the rhythm of Caribbean speech, blues and rap”. This juxtaposition of the formal and …
An Ideal Boy: Charts of India
Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2001, 120 pages. Review by Imran Ali Khan There are images and then there are words, or is it the other way around? I am never quite sure. But a good way to ‘instruct’ is to say it without spelling it out, and so it is with the Indian Charts …
Suroor’s Favourite Books
Here's the mise en scène with my top 15 books—I know it was supposed to be 10, and believe me, I tried. The books I selected are the ones I love, and go back to often. Books that give me comfort, make me think, or simply make me laugh out loud. There were many more …
Heresy on a Book Blogging Site, Or: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
@suroora, this one's for you! And for other photophiles among this group of bibliophiles! Discovered on Swiss TV news yesterday evening: choose your top 10 books, add a bit of "mise en scène", photograph and share. This is the brainchild of an independent bookseller in a small Swiss city (started in the run-up to the …
Continue reading Heresy on a Book Blogging Site, Or: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Adiós muchachos: Una memoria de la revolución sandinista—Sergio Ramírez
Translated from Spanish by Stacey Alba D. SkarPublished by Alfaguara, 2007, 320 pages. Published in English by Duke University Press Books, 2011, 264 pages. This is the story of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, written by someone who—in the late 1980s—became the country’s vice-president in the Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government of Daniel …
Continue reading Adiós muchachos: Una memoria de la revolución sandinista—Sergio Ramírez
Talking About Books 