I’ve been cleaning up. Read more

I think I shall start a re-reading project and write about it here on this blog. This is for two reasons. Read more

The last couple of months I’ve been watching a lot more TV than I ever have in my whole life. This is not TV that’s airing on TV here. It’s TV acquired from dubious sources and it makes me incredibly happy. Almost as happy as good books do. Read more

[I wrote this in 2004, when I was working in Delhi. It seems as relevant now as it did then. So here it is. Oh, and by the way, some hotels' plans for a ladies' only floor have become reality since I wrote this piece.] Read more

Yesterday, I read a rather strange book called The Way of Muri by Ilya Boyashov. A book that was such a bestseller in Russia, apparently, that it was translated into English almost at once. Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I’d written that I don’t listen to music anymore. That music distracts me when I read. Read more

I’ve just started reading The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling, her first novel for grown ups. Read more

(You’ll see why about halfway though this post, definitely at the end of it)

On Saturday, I went home from the office, clutching a big fat book. For once, it was a relatively traffic free day, and I got home in about half an hour. Read more

Do you have sickness books?

By sickness books I mean books you turn to when you’re ill and away from your mummy-daddy, or ill and too old to have your mummy-daddy tuck you up in bed with the lights off and listen to you croak self-pityingly about how everything hurts and spoon sickness food like khichdi down your throat despite your feeble protests that you couldn’t eat a thing. Read more

I’m reading a book that I can’t believe I’m reading. Soccer Men — Profiles of the Rogues, Geniuses, and Neurotics Who Dominate the World’s Most Popular Sport, by Simon Kuper. Read more