My learning journey at Stanford continued over the summer with an extremely intense course on “the archive”, an artifact of great fetishization in the humanities. Here is a quick overview.
Read More
The second year of my MLA program ended with a bang in the form of a course on poems. Here I thought it’d be interesting to lay out an abridged version of my response to Blue Swallows by Howard Nemerov.
Read More
I’ve been thinking and writing about Iain M. Banks recently, in the context of a learning journey I am on at Stanford. Reflecting on his work in an academic setting was a different experience and got me thinking — thinking about how we think about the future.
Read More
In which I speak about science fiction and fantasy, and the universality of all fiction. And some book recommendations!
Read MoreHere is the best of what I read in 2021.
Read More
Here I write briefly about language, and specifically the language of English in India. I have some counterintuitive ideas…
Read More
Last week, I finished my first year of a learning journey in the form of a part-time degree program designed for working professionals with an interest in the humanities. Feels like a good time to take stock and make some observations.
Read More
I often feel the English language — or pretty much any other human language — is singularly unequipped to deal with metaphysical concepts. This is one reason why philosophical writing is so opaque and convoluted.
Read More
I recently read Don Quixote in full for the first time, in the wonderful Edith Grossman translation. It can be read — as I did as a child, reading an abridged version — as a rollicking pasquinade. But beneath the hilarity lie perceptive critiques of prevailing social norms and institutions.
Read More
I read sections of the Decameron recently along with the story of The Little Hunchback from the 1001 Nights, as part of an ongoing learning journey. I’d never read the Decameron before; I’ve read the 1001 Nights, but that is mainly because I wanted to read the unexpurgated Richard Burton version (which is an absolute hoot). A couple of thoughts follow.
Read More
Here's the best of what I read in 2020.
Read More
Decades ago the issue of “translation effects” came to lodge in my brain, in the course of reading Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy. During the course of an ongoing learning journey, I read The Analects of Confucius in translation. I wrote a paper in response, and this essay captures the main points of that paper minus all the citations :).
Read More
I read Antigone and the Aeneid (well, the first half of it) in consecutive weeks and a few thoughts occurred to me about parallel threads between both works.
Read More
This past week I read The Odyssey, in Robert Fagles’ translation, and felt a bit like “stout Cortez” staring at the Pacific (note: I am not stout. At least not right now). In reading this brilliant translation from the Greek — with an introduction by Bernard Knox that is worth the price of admission in itself — I realized how much I had missed.
Read More
Here's the best of what I read in 2019. Like all of us, I am struggling to make sense of the world, and all of these books helped me on that journey. Perhaps one theme is that each one provoked thoughtfulness even when I strongly disagreed with the author
Read More
Iain M. Banks died in 2013 and with that came an end to his series of Culture novels. Every few years, I end up destroying many days and weeks of sleep by re-reading a selection of these books (life is full, so any reading occurs after 9 pm).
Read More
Here's the best of what I read in 2018. I set myself an arbitrary count of ten this year. This really forced me to think about which books had a meaningful impact on me, i.e. not just “great books I can unhesitatingly recommend”.
Read More
I'd just graduated college when I read The Remains Of The Day. At the time I thought it was the best novel I'd ever read, and while that ranking may have changed, it's still in the top five.
Read More
Here’s the best of what I read in 2016. All, to varying degrees, enlightening, entertaining and infuriating. It was tough to winnow down to a short list — this was a decent reading year.
Read More