Critique: Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou

July 11, 2019July 11, 2019 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

Until I read over 50 pages of the book, I didn’t realize what was so uncomfortable about the read. There was something off-putting about the book I couldn’t get my finger on and forced me to read more and research more about the book. Maya Angelou was 81 years old when this book was published. That’s 81 years of wisdom she is trying to impart to her readers, which is a good idea. Unfortunately, the book reads like 150 pages of preaching, of someone lecturing me on the rights and the wrongs with an insufferable tone of; having gone through it all’ and knowing it all. I’m certain these stories could still be looked at for inspiration from someone who has seen more of the world than I have but the tone and communication of it leave much to be desired. I also noticed the innumerable ‘humble brags’ littered around the book in completely unnecessary places, and perhaps that added to the fire. Here are the opening lines of three such opening lines in chapters:

“Many years have passed since the American Film Institute gave a tribute to William Wyler, one of Hollywood’s most prolific and prestigious directors. I, as a member of the Board of Trustees, was asked to participate in the ceremony… Of course I was flattered by the invitation and I accepted.”

“Recently I had an appointment with four television producers who wanted my permission to produce a short story I had written.”

“In the early seventies I was invited to speak at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem…”

I’m not sure about you, but for me this read was quite intolerable and I was glad for the short text.

Ever since I read Hornyby’s Polysyllabic Spree I’ve tried to stay away from reads I didn’t enjoy, but this one was short and I had to figure out everything I despised about it and rationalize my hatred. I would strongly encourage you to stay away from this read if you have anything else on your read list. This one might be worth the least of them all.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Find me here on Goodreads.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

July 1, 2019March 17, 2022 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

A book from all the way back in 1954 that struck my heart red hot today as I trembled and shook, turning the pages in absolute fear, completing this read.

This book brought me to tears and it took me a while to bring myself back to reality. What starts out by being a rather playful narrative of kids lost on an island awaiting rescue takes a number of dark turns, and one of them struck awfully. The incidents escalated to their tremendously dark end, and the I felt myself breathe in panic alongside the characters as I ran, wept, hurt and hid in my fears. I wish the characters had been made more relatable through a scale of grayness instead of making them the very extremes of their traits, but that was a creative decision that still did work and hurt me enough to bring me to my knees internally as I begged for mercy from the pain that haunts the book through eerie events and troubling reality. I do agree with a number of other reviewers that some of the author’s decisions made it easier for me to extract myself from the pages, and it wasn’t as troubling or real as it could have been – but what it was by itself is quite a potent shock and I felt myself walking the world of Ralph and Jack as I turned the pages and finished the book in one sitting.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

Lover of books and on the look out for books that made you linger on the pages, thoughts or troubles of worlds far away, unreal or terrifying. Find me here on Goodreads and let’s talk more books!

A Poetry Slam

June 18, 2019March 24, 2022 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

Let’s slam poetry.

And I mean that quite literally.

You see I’d never understood the whole point of poetry,

I mean, making words rhyme? How hard could that be?

You put a B after C and a D and an E,

Things seem to take care of themselves- to me.

But that’s not even it, there are these ‘distinct’ types,

There’s rhymed and unrhymed, then prosed and versed,

Aren’t these terms interchangeable first?

Odd laments and loud odes are all separated with silly names,

Everything so categorically distinguished when they seem to mean all the same.

Oh! And Shakespearian scripts had these incredibly long sonnets;

Which were somehow cheated into being just 14 lines of text.

Odes and Octaves, Haikus and Hymns,

They term it all poetry, no matter what way it’s put in.

So when I came across this new type called slam poetry:

I found it quite interesting, it really did amuse me.

There are so many things wrong about the whole notion of verses,

And I’m trying to be polite here, trying to hold back my tongue on some curses.

But when similes charge unnecessarily like armed soldiers at playgrounds,

It terribly disarms me, I’m pretty sure the logic just isn’t sound.

We have oxy-morons which provide a dull gleam just before

The sun sets to destroy all light with a metaphor.

Next, repetitions with the poet writing the same word again and again and again,

What profound enlightenment from the third do we gain?

Also, the personification of objects- isn’t that a schizophrenic absurdity?

And given a million days I will never comprehend a hyperbole.

Worse still are the atrociously administered alliterations;

They make one question the wholesome concept of poetic licence.

And yet sometimes just sometimes, the words string together.

Sometimes, when everything is silent, these words scream loud and clear.

The flick of our hips when reading Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Women?

The shock when the Ancient mariner shoots the albatross in the blink of a second.

Ernest Henley’s ‘Invictus’ can pull a limp man up to stand,

While ‘If’ can change one’s every sinew every strand.

We can wander all we want, wander lonely as a cloud,

Or choose to walk the road less travelled by,

Poetry will still catch up by the arm, turn us around and speak out loud.

Tell us to just listen, then the verses will explain why.

Because it has never been about making ends round right.

It’s just bringing what’s left out to light.

The rhyme scheme, the arrangement, they just let things be.

Because poetry is a lot more than what we see.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
From 2016, published in Feeds NITT

Lover of books, puzzles, dance, art, sports and coffee to get through them all! Find me on Goodreads here and do follow my blog if you like it.

The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

June 6, 2019June 6, 2019 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

I put off writing this review since nothing I write would comprehensively describe how awestruck I was at every sentence stitched and perfected by Rowan Phillips. Calling this just another tennis book is an insult to the epic work of poetry that it is, but that was all I’d known about the book when I picked it up. There are some words, lines and entire pages I will forever carry with me for the melody of the words with the tennis ball bouncing in a corner to give us the rhythm. If you’re a lover of tennis, and a lover of good writing (or one of the two), pick this book up. This has been the single most memorable work of art in the world of tennis, a position I had previously wholeheartedly awarded DFW’s String Theory. The two books are incredibly different and yet strike similar notes, with the authors using their prowess in writing and exploiting their readers’ love for the sport to definitively capture their places as possibly the best tennis writers ever.

Thank you Rowan Phillips for this magnificent work and for making me love the sport even more.

Here’s one example of the verses from The Circuit. I have over a dozen pages saved and wish I could share them all but am choosing to restrain myself so you have the opportunity that I did to dive into the book and listen to the song yourself.

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Source: The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey by Rowan Phillips, preview from Google ebooks

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Here’s me on Goodreads!

Vegetarian Walks NYC: Ramen in Upper West Side

March 26, 2019March 17, 2022 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

Background:

There are ample options for vegetarians in NYC, and the number is steadily growing thanks to the increasing inclination towards veganism here. The difficulty of finding these restaurants that offer scrumptious, mouth-watering options for us though is at its ever high peak. Crawling through the infinite websites and ancient blog articles to figure out options for vegetarian plates is excruciatingly painful, and put that together with an annoying, hungry omnivorous friend screaming ‘you take too long to decide’ in your ear, and you’re more likely than not going to choose the first restaurant that has one vegetarian dish – probably ending up in an expensive meal of greens, fries or a watery excuse for ramen with more mushrooms than you’d ever want floating around in the broth. After innumerable such experiences, here’s my small attempt at making the journey a little simpler for you and the next vegetarian with my Vegetarian Walks- a series of curated lists of restaurants that can satisfy your craving for a flavorsome plate without getting you broke.

Ramen:

This staple dish from the land of mochi and sake is mouthwatering, and yet at too many ramen restaurants we end up staring down a bowl of a watery broth with a few vegetables sticking out. Don’t give up though, the city currently possesses bowls of vegetarian ramen with the perfect amount of heat, thickness, ingredients and flavor to make the bowl memorable as you walk back home with a content stomach.

Upper West:

Jin (82nd and Amsterdam):
(Price: $$)*
I cannot begin to describe how much I love their Vegetable Japanese Curry Ramen. It is a shame that this dish isn’t served in the West Harlem branch. One look at the bowl should give you an idea of the wide diaspora of flavors we are dealing with here!The carrots, broccoli and corn add so many layers of texture to the steaming hearty bowl of ramen. I personally love the red pickled onions which somehow bring an Indian flavor to this bowl. Add the lime for a bit of zest and you have in front of you an immensely rich dish to enjoy.

Curry Ramen Bowl — Vegetable Curry Ramen @Jin Ramen Upper West Side

Jin Ramen West Harlem (125th and Broadway):
(Price: $$)*
Vegetable Ramen: Since this is the bowl that convinced me that vegetarian ramen could be delightful, I might have some inherent bias. That said, I love this gigantic portion of piping hot ramen with its miso broth. They also have a choice of Shoyu broth that I’ve never tried owing to my love for the former. It’s a disappointment with the soft boiled egg since they’re all seasoned in pork stock, but the poached egg add-on is good too. The edamame here isn’t the best I’ve tried, but overall it is a solid option when you’re craving a tummyfull of the ramen heat. It is an enormous bowl, so there’s never a need for any side or dessert after! They also offer another bowl of vegan coconut based ramen which I’ve never ventured into, but it’s touted to be really good!
Additional Pro: Located right below the 125th Broadway 1 train stop: Makes your commute to your ramen experiment more comfortable!

Rai Rai Ken (132nd and Amsterdam):
(Price: $$)**
If you’re a fan of soy sauce, the Vegetable Miso Ramen would serve you brilliantly. It’s thick and flavorful with crunchy vegetables and corn added into the mix. It’s thick and flavorful with crunchy vegetables and corn added into the mix. Another bowl you could order is the vegetable Yakisoba (Japanese Stir Fry noodles) that packs a punch! Once again, do be wary of the overdose of soy sauce and garlic that make and break the dish.
They also serve excellent vegetarian gyoza, so don’t forget to order the side when you’re here. Edamame, shishito peppers, their picked vegetable fried rice and sake are other sides you could happily look at ordering. Packs quite a good deal for vegetarians!

Picked Vegetables Yakisoba at Rai Rai Ken

Shishito Peppers at Rai Rai Ken

Naruto Ramen (100 and Broadway):
(Price: $$)*
Once again, they do have ample options for vegetarians between their Miso and Shoyu vegetarian ramen specialties and the vegetable gyoza, fried rice and the regular shishito peppers and spicy edamame. The miso broth is quite light and thin, which for me needed quite a lot of chilli and garlic seasoning on top. It definitely is a solid option for a vegetarian if you’re in the area and the vegetable gyozas are a delight. I’ve also heard raving reviews for their meat based ramen so if your friends drag you to a ramen here, fear not- you do have a dependable bowl of ramen waiting.

Ramen bowl — Vegetable Miso Ramen at Naruto Ramen

Happy Slurping!

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

* Price picked from collective Google map reviews
** Price estimated from menu and comparable restaurants

Bridge of Clay, a masterpiece delivered once again

January 6, 2019March 17, 2022 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

How someone can write a book to follow The Book Thief is by itself a shock to me. Marcus Zusak, however, didn’t settle with simply publishing another work. He created Bridge of Clay- a phenomenal work of art that takes the reader on infinite journeys as he stitches together his majestic tapestry of an ode to Clay Dunbar.

When he wrote The Book Thief, what struck every single reader as a stunner was the personality of the Grim Reaper. No amount of its description is going to do justice to his way of personifying Death as not only witty, but coupling that with a humorous, curious creature that you’d end up admiring over every word in the massive work. What does he do with Bridge of Clay, now? He demonstrates that he can make any regular mortal as fantastic as he made Grim Reaper in (what was once believed to be) his one masterpiece. He makes Clay Dunbar immortal through his words, through his movements, his thoughts and his silence.

I’ve never read an author who uses silence as much as he battles with words. Bridge of Clay firstly is a quiet book. Even in the anecdotes of five feral young boys fighting fist and heels over a game of monopoly, Zusak so beautifully establishes immense maturity and a depth of wisdom painting it in the background of a dying woman in the fore.

Bridge of Clay isn’t a thriller, yet it creates cliffhangers at the end of every single chapter. Not with stupid acts of bravery that leave the protagonist hanging off his nails in incredulously idiotic situations, the creator of Leisel and Max does what he does best to leave readers haunted until they flip the pages- building immensely potent emotional cliffhangers and breaks the narration with a second timeline; much like the tool employed in his first masterpiece.

To me, Bridge of Clay was every bit a masterpiece as The Book Thief, in its own vein, in its own individual regard. To me, it was the humor from Achilles, Telemachus, Hector and Rosy, the emotion constructed carefully around distinctly unique brothers, the awkwardness in the murderer’s talks, the thought behind naming of every single chapter in the book, the poetic depiction of emotions and the world of the Dunbars and the bridges made of 100% Clay.

To me, this was an epic of a novel and I personally hope I don’t have to wait another decade for Zusak’s next marvel.

With this fantastic start to the new year, I’m hoping to finding more incredible reads in 2019.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Here’s me on Goodreads!

How to Be Happy- Eleanor Davis

October 26, 2018October 28, 2018 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

‘How to Be Happy’ is a collection of graphic short stories that speaks about the disillusioned beliefs of happiness we glorify today with just the right amount of abstractness to take away the author’s obviously cynical stance. The book hence ironically talks about how not to be happy instead, spewing sarcasm while speaking through the voice of the society’s happy and blessed.

Aim: Being Happy
Societal Procedure:

Eleanor Davis in How to Be Happy.

I put off writing this short piece long enough to let it simmer in the back of my head, because of the sheer difficulty I had in comprehending a number of these panels and pieces in the book. It is an abstract piece of graphic novel, and the first one of its genre for me. I thoroughly enjoyed a few panels, and with some I felt myself sink into depths of cynicism as to what it could possibly represent.

On grief in How To Be Happy.

In all, a book I would recommend for exactly three distinctive, deep pieces that I felt resonate with me and if you read this book and find yourself connecting to something else I’ll understand that the book is as abstract and captivating as intended to be by the author.

An extremely short read I’d propose best suited for a lazy reader’s bedtime story or a quick break between work. A few of these panels have the capacity to strike iron red-hot, or go completely unnoticed depending on your moodiness. Perhaps that’s what makes the book as complicatedly abstract as I found it!

If you’re intrigued, here’s a short interview with the author Eleanor Davis on the book. This is a book I’d suggest if you’re interested in venturing into an unfound genre and decrypting the possibly profound messages, but if that’s not what you’re looking for- maybe it’s best you stay wary of How to Be Happy.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Book lover with constrained hours for reading on the lookout for recommendations- feel free to find me here on Goodreads and share your thoughts!

Restart Reading- Of Books That Make You Fall in Love

October 4, 2018October 15, 2018 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t know I would fall in love that night.

Had I, I certainly wouldn’t have stumbled into bed in tattered old shorts and a disgruntled demeanor. He was shocking – he caught me off guard and he never stopped charming his way through the two hundred odd pages of P. G Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City. The wittiness of Wodehouse explodes out of every word he utters, and there’s something about the disarming intelligence and defiant charisma he struts around with that caught my attention.

“A very long, thin youth, with a solemn face and immaculate clothes, was leaning against the mantelpiece. As Mike entered, he fumbled in his top left waistcoat pocket, produced an eyeglass attached to a cord, and fixed it in his right eye. With the help of this aid to vision he inspected Mike in silence for a while, then, having flicked an invisible speck of dust from the left sleeve of his coat, he spoke. “Hello,” he said.”

And thereby hangs the tale.

I recently read Mike and Psmith, my last first read of the Psmith series and recognized the bitter-sweetness of having completed the book and having completed the last time I’d pick a Psmith book anew. It struck me strange how close connected I’d become to this character, and how the poster industry has zero resources to placate me here (if there are any good graphic designers reading this, perhaps I could interest you in a great little product for the readers like me!)

Some books give you exactly what you’re looking for – a character to fall in love with, a plot thick as blood, a world you instantly want to move to (Whose doors are open as long as you stay loyal to it), a dystopia you struggle with and later vehemently respect or live in horror of – whatever you are looking for! And the largest challenge we face here is getting your hands on such a book, or worse – picking up a book if you dropped the last one weeks, months or years ago.

Psmith, to me, was a recommendation made by a friend who I suspect had no idea of the colossal effect it would have on me. There are a few books that made me throw aside months, weeks (and on one occasion – even years) of non-reading that I struggled through, and perhaps this might help you jump out of your reading slack and find yourself a great read to kick start your reading again:

Pick up a comic book. Treat yourself this time- BUY one:

V for Vendetta: Perhaps not the most conventional approach- jumping in with a comic book. I might even have invited a few arguments about the nature of reading I was talking about but if you look closely, read intently and see between the panels, this book is all you need to throw you into an avalanche of spirited reading.
Watchmen – If you’ve already seen the movie and not read the book – I am sorry for you. The book surpasses the movie in technique, vibrancy of colors and uniqueness in panels- things that the movie makes us forget even exist. If you haven’t read the book, do pick it up. It’s worth the cost and will make for the best smiley face you have in your book shelf.
Maus: This is on the more serious side, and perhaps I should think again before throwing this into the same mix, but if there’s one book that I can count on would make you read more books, it’s Maus. Designed by Art Spiegelman with the narration of his father and Holocaust survivor, this book devoured everything I knew of comic books and threw open a whole new world of books and graphic novels.

Pick up a thriller:

Devotion of Suspect X: This one is easy, you’d get through it in a few hours and you’d come out of a fiction stronger and a book ahead of where you were yesterday. Isn’t that the kind of motivation you’re looking for?

Pick up a strange new world of fiction:

If you’ve read Harry Potter, pick up The Song of Ice and Fire (and maybe the next book will be out before you complete the 6!). If you’ve read both, pick up Foundation Series by Asimov. If you’ve read that as well, give me a few months and I will read a new series of books and revamp this bit for you.

Or maybe the classic everyone else keeps rambling about:
1. Animal Farm: You’re going to love this. It’s less than a hundred pages long and you can flaunt your knowledge of Communism as Orwell saw it for the rest of your life. It’s that simple. And you’d have read a great book whose ideology will stay with you for your lifetime and that’s always a plus.

2. 1984: I know it isn’t conventional to name two books by the same author but they’re both so good! And they’d both as likely stick with you and make you read more books so…

Read something depressing?

I don’t judge, and I love my great share of depressing books and dystopian worlds. Here are some that shook me off my core and made me slag in my walk and hunch my shoulders in an attempt to curl up inwards for days.

1. Bell Jar: Sylvia Plath was always a mad poet who killed herself sticking her head in the oven to me. After this read though, I started to see reason in her stances to the extent that they drove me mental. To date I have the Fig Tree up on my wall, and it’s an immense source of inspiration if you’re looking for someone to tell you you’re not alone- that we’re all mad in our own statistically insignificant ways.

2. When Breath Becomes Air: Of course you’ve heard about it before. A recent release, New York Times Best Seller and an instant worldwide phenomenon in books, this is one you’ve seen on Goodreads and Facebook reading groups dozens of times. Here it is again to perhaps give you that last push for you to go order it on Amazon.

And finally – oh well – here go all my cents:

Pick up Nick Hornby’s Polysyllabic Spree.

Nick Hornby is an obsessive reader with an eccentric number of favorite genres and this book is literally his ‘Stuff I’ve been Reading’, where, quite rationally, he’s dropped all the books he’d never recommend us to read and stuck to the great great recommendations. This book churned me out of my reading slack and gave me a long list of books that went straight to my ‘To Reads’ on Goodreads to guilt me into reading. If you’ve stuck with me and read till this part of my article, you definitely will love that book.

Beware though- it could get you depressed about the number of books you’ve read so far.

If you’ve liked my recommendations so far, and want to discuss some of them or even better- some new books with me, here’s my profile on Goodreads.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

Thoughts: Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

September 7, 2018 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

There are countless reasons why we love books- some of my favourite times, people, worlds and words are (quite unfortunately, if you think about it) from the fictional pages from books written eons and miles away from me. The most poignant of thoughts, concise of arguments and blatant of truths through my life have been aggregated through books. While that paints a picture of a bibliophile, I should add here that I am a very very regular, sparing reader who’s had a history of bad recommendations being handed over. That’s not the reason I am writing this now, though.

I found love when I read Wodehouse’s character Psmith and felt despair, shock and disbelief as I read through the creative masterpiece that The Book Thief was to me. When I read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, I found myself.

The protagonist Jean Louise Finch (Scout) is a 26 year old who had stayed blinded to the realities of the world until the course of the book takes over. She had failed to recognize the disparities the color of skin paints upon one, and stayed ignorant of even her close family’s stances and nature. I found myself echoing every emotion she felt- from the tom-boyishness that kicks in harder when she hits ‘womanhood’, to the way she staggers under the weight of the newfound knowledge of living in a world so broken. I could go on and on about this book, and I am sure I would do exactly that in the coming weeks but for now, I’m going to let Harper Lee’s masterful words take over- in the hope it will get you to pick up the book or start a conversation about it.

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

““A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”

“You said, in effect, ‘I don’t like the way these people do, so I have no time for them.’ You’d better take time for ’em, honey, otherwise you’ll never grow.”

“I thought we were just people. I have no idea”- Scout on race, color and identification.

On accepting a harshly thrown invective, Atticus calmly stands his ground and reasons, “I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it’s not true.”

“I need a watchman to lead me around and declare what he seeth every hour on the hour. I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.

I need a watchman to go forth and proclaim to them all that twenty-six years is too long to play a joke on anybody, no matter how funny it is.”

The title, the plot, the character arcs and their personality trait all boils down to one question I have been asking myself since Persepolis. How much of what we are is based on where we come from? And what do you do when where you come from and how you were raised has made you blind?

Go set a Watchman, says Harper Lee.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

Always on the lookout for book recommendations. If you have some to make or have books to discuss, do let’s connect on Goodreads. Here’s me!

Thoughts: Palestine – Joe Sacco

July 31, 2018February 27, 2021 ~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

The last time I cried while reading a book was a decade ago when the final Harry Potter book was released and the words, ‘Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf’ were carved on stone atop a child sized burial mound. Ten years later, I found a work that moved me to tears through a non-fiction that only aims to narrate the staggeringly grim world we live in.

Joe Sacco brings out every little detail in one epic of his work, Palestine: every face, every word and every emotion detailed in the book is so well expressed and so well disguised as a passer by, a passing remark and a motion to be forgotten about. Yet they stay on- haunting the readers, ringing in our ears and singing their despair for us to hear over and over again.

I’d picked up this book a couple of months earlier, intending to finish it. But my lack of knowledge about the Palestine-Israel conflict screamed out to me at every page, every tile. It made me so uncomfortable that I dropped it altogether, deciding that I’d read an Introduction to Palestine- Israel Conflict by Gregory Harms to educate myself first. That… never happened. I read a few pages, skimmed through a few chapters and read up on Wikipedia to satisfy the mood-swings of my curiosity and calm my ignorance induced panic.

I picked this book up again this week and found it to be a work of art that stands easily alongside the titanic shadows of Maus and Persepolis- both books I had thoroughly enjoyed earlier. You don’t need a lot of prior knowledge to venture into this one, the author clearly knows the ignorance of his readers and has handled it here kindly, politely.

The story- if we could call it that- is a loose narration of the events and scenes as experienced by the author in Palestine and they paint a dramatic picture. We notice ourselves (alongside the author) first struggling to accept the pain Palestinians suffer through everyday. Later, just as the author does- we settle to accept it. It still aches, it still pains when an old orphaned mother talks about her son jailed and her daughter-in-law deported, but we’re too broken to feel the crushing blow again. That’s what I felt, exactly mimicking Sacco’s crude character.

By drawing himself to be a story-thirsty, fame-craving journalist, Joe Sacco does us a favour of allowing us to feel like the better human being every now and then. It allows us the cruel, tiny satisfaction of not being as bad, as being the bigger person. This realization hit me only towards the end of the book, and once again I gaped at the intricacy and planning this book would have taken to complete.

There are a few pages and a few panels that I know I will carry with me forever, ones that left an impact I haven’t yet entirely dealt with and I couldn’t help but share just a few here.

A panel that left me as bewildered as the author himself is made, right here:

A page that made me panic more about being unaware, and resolve to never relate to the apathy the speaker here boasts from with her all her gloried privilege and unmentioned ignorance.

One of the many many pages that took me to the brink of tears.

I would share a lot more but I’d end up stealing from your experience of reading the book if you haven’t already. It is a magnificent, devastating read, and one that I know I’d carry with me forever.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

Here’s the book on Goodreads

Also- I’m always on the look-out for readers on Goodreads so if you’re on the site and you update regularly please do add me so we can mutually follow each other’s reads. Here’s my profile.