The Blog of Small Things

Name : Aram Porul Inbam Author : Charu Nivedita Year of Publication : 2018 Genre : Q&A, Non-fiction Rating : *** (3 stars out of 5) The author answers readers' questions in this magazine series-turned-book. The answers exhibit all familiar tropes and rants of Charu against the "philistine" Indian society. Despite the familiarity , the book remains a readable tome for two reasons : Simple language, diverse references from Sangam literature to Jean Paul Sartre. He revels that the foundation of literature is love and literary techniques are secondary. Some of the answers here are also deeply founded in love for people and nature. Hence,the book works.

Name : 281 and beyond Author : V.V.S.Laxman, R.Kaushik Year of Publication : 2018 Genre : Cricket, Memoir, Autobiography, Non-Fiction Rating : *** (3 stars out of 5) After Sachin and Ganguly, it is VVS' turn for a memoir. Sachin's was a prosaic regurgitation of score-cards and centuries (a century of centuries,at that). Ganguly's could have been a classic but falls short as he resorts to taking life lessons for aspiring cricketers once in few pages. Laxman limits cricketing advice to the technical knowhow of batting and co-writes a classic (with R.Kaushik) which charts his story from that of a good boy born into a doctors' family to a magician who pulverised the likes of Warne into submission.  From Sydney to Kolkata to Adelaide to Colombo to Mohali to Durban , Laxman relives every memory with rich detail. Even as this review is being written, an interview of Hardik Pandya and K L Rahul is going viral for the wrong reasons. Reading this book might help u...