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DeBooks

A collection of 15 issues

Second chances and spooks

Is everything you read actually your own story, just as every character in your dream is really you? Sometimes I think so. Books are mirrors that reflect your life back to you; characters are avatars through whose eyes, with whose bodies, you experience situations. In these chaotic days, The Emperor

A tale of two Hannahs

Decades ago, I read something in a novel by Lorrie Moore that I strongly identified with. In Anagrams, one of the narrators says she struggles with names that are too similar, like Bill Cosby and Bing Crosby, John Lennon and Jack Lemmon. Exactly. I struggle to keep John Connoly and

Gods, bodies and offices

When life’s storms rage fiercely around you and you’re plunged into an emotional crisis, your mind is too busy and your heart too full to read. You’re focused on survival—every cell in your body is working hard to gather hope, to believe in a good outcome.

Fragments for the Traveller

Books one reads while travelling—especially during an exciting sea voyage—are taken in piecemeal and remembered in fragments. There are simply too many distractions. Coherence eludes you. You remember moments rather than plotlines. That was the case for me with Entitlement by Rumaan Alam— which is not a story

What are we reading?

I sometimes think I understand why women weren’t allowed to publish novels in the bad old days when the world belonged to men. Men probably thought: Better keep them quiet; what if they tell how we treat them? That’s what I think while reading stacks of books by