पृथ्वी की गंध

 The superlative living master Amit Dutta at his most direct, and most accessible in the 2 minute 'The Scent of Earth' [मिट्टी इत्र]. 

Go forth and prosper, o successor of Mani Kaul! 

Yellow yellow dirty fellow

'Yellowface' by Rebecca F Kuang is an unputdownable, wickedly funny book that's worth devouring in one sitting. This is how great storytelling reads like. Rebecca Kuang and Sally Rooney are capturing the zeitgeist like no one else in their generation. Splendid stuff! Well done.

And Kuang's next project "Katabasis" made NF cackle:

[...] she is also working on her sixth novel, a fantasy about two magical PhD students as they travel to Hell "to rescue the soul of their advisers so that they can write their job recommendation letters".

Godspeed!

The Reading List: Jan 2023 to Jan 2024

1. The Exile (Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott)
2. Platform (Michele Houellebecq)
3. A Crown of Swords (Robert Jordan)
4. Conversations with Friends (Sally Rooney)
5. The Man from the Future (Ananyo Bhattacharya)
6. Corridor (Sarnath Bannerjee)
7. Darkness at Noon (Arthur Koestler)
8. Armageddon Averted (Stephen Kotkin)
9. End of the fxxxing world (Charles Forman)
10. The Worldly Philosophers (Robert Heilbroner)
11. Atomic State (Jahnavi Phalkey)
12. Path of Daggers (Robert Jordan)
13. Triumph of the City (Edward Glaeser)
14. Men of Mathematics (E T Bell)
15. Slouching Towards Utopia (Brad DeLong)
16. The Revolt of the Public (Martin Gurri)
17. Winter's Heart (Robert Jordan)
18. Adi Parva (Amruta Patil)
19. Dead Lions (Mick Herron)
20. Dostoyevsky: The story of liberation (Joseph Frank)
21. मुद्राराक्षस (विशाखदत्त)
22. Crossroads of Twilight (Robert Jordan)
23. The Wages of Destruction (Adam Tooze)
24. बेताल पचीसी 
25. A life in the shadows (AS Dulat)
26. The housekeeper and the professor (Yoko Ogawa)
27. The IPCRESS file (Len Deigton)
28. Knife of dreams (Robert Jordan)
29. The Gathering Storm (Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson)