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====== The BookShelf ======

===== 2025 =====

  - **In Praise of the Stepmother, Mario Varga Llosa.** Finishing the book, I felt I was walking in the dark and missing my steps. Helen Lane's translation is verbose. Which is a good thing.
  - **The Yellow Book, Amitava Kumar**. Bought a hard copy, persuaded by the subtitle: 'An observer's notebook.' Kumar has zero qualms about form. 
  - **Box of Matches, Nicholson Baker.** <del>Not as brilliant as Mezzanine.</del> A book that makes you wonder how such a thing is possible, and, knowing a bit about its making, wonder what sort of hard and messy work it took to make the thing this smooth.
  - **Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig.** Currently Reading. This is the time I finish the behemoth. Hopefully without losing my mind. I realise why I couldn't finish it earlier—it is not a book that one finishes, but rather, by tasting it now and then, grasps it. UPDATE: Still unfinished, but I've read past half of it. UPDATE: Is getting too long, I don't know how to go on about this.
  - **Story of the Eye, Bataille** During the time I was reading Zen, I had an intense spiritual experience (unrelated to Zen). This led me to exploring relations between the idea of the 'self' and the world, god and illumination, extremes and erasure, paradoxes, contradictions, pain, sex and so on. I think it started from some reflections I had written down, which took me to phenomenology, Rilke, Jean Luc Nancy, Levinas, and then into Bataille and Cioran. This is how I ended up with Story of the Eye. I think the experience is ongoing, or the experience has fundamentally changed me (may not be a visible change) so that whenever I open a book, I am taken back to the original experience.
  - **Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke and Kappus** My hands are shaking and unsteady as I write this. Letters was a work I had read in a dark and depressing time in my past, and I am rereading it now, seven or so years later. A lot has changed and a lot has happened. This work is so dense that it is so difficult to hold it and read it with a pencil. It has profundities in every nook and corner, and it demands the impossible. It asks of us an unwavering solitude, faith, and perseverance, and an openness that scares the bejeezus out of me. Like a dent that cannot be cured, this work will never leave me.
  - **Studies in Pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer** A few essays from this series, on suffering, vanity of existence, and suicide. It makes logical sense, his arguments. But one must be very careful of accepting those, because the logical end of his arguments is just saying bye-bye. So it is nice to keep this in mind while you accept more life-affirming ones, such as say, absurdism or existentialism or eternal recurrence.
  - **Death Sentence, Maurice Blanchot** Mindfuckery. If one is going to read anything so that they can understand something, they should also read Blanchot to understand that sometimes one only experiences something than understand it. 
  - **How to Read Heidegger, Simon Critchley** Having read Critchley's work on Mystical Anarchism, I think it was a beautiful coincidence that the most lucid yet engaging work on Heidegger was by Critchley. It is not the easiest work to read, of course, especially the chapter on Truth and Art. But it covers all the major early and late Heidegger, with about half the book covering Being and Time and the latter half covering his take on technology, dwelling, art, and language. Highly recommended.
  - **Deivathinte Vikrithikal (Mischief of God), M Mukundan.** People say it is the nair existential angst that pervades Mukundan's works. Maybe I am part of that population, although I am not a nair by birth. Maybe that is the awareness that I have developed as a person. Maybe it is a shame that I have not worked on it. But within that realm, this is a heavy book. A heavy book with heavy sentences and heavy silences and even heavier people who fly in the sky. 
  - **Aa Nellimaram Pullanu, Rajani Palamparampil.** Published by Gooseberry Books, who seems to be doing a good job shaping knowledge on dalit women lives. Rajani's writings are far from the polished sentences which we are used to reading off pages from the literary doyens of Malayalam cultural scene. It is a fairly short read, but the door it opens to the life of a dalit woman from Kerala, and the view that follows this opening, is incomparable.

===== 2024 =====

Finished
  - Orotha, Kakkanadan (short, hemingway-esque form)
  - Requiem for the Living, Johny Miranda (queer? another world)
  - Litanies of the Dutch Battery, NS Madhavan. (ha!)
  - Jeevithathinte Pusthakam, Ramanunni.
  - Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb.
  - Smarana, VKN. (not as funny as payyan, could pick up the references)
  - No Longer Human, Ozamu Dazai. (dark, mishima-like, relatable)
  - A Chronicle of an Hour and Half, Saharu Kannanari. (shows you why perfect words do not make a perfect story)
  - Kari, Amruta Patil (dark, edgy, emo, goth)
  - Asterios Polyp, David Mazzuchelli. (simple in its calculated precision)
  - Malayalam Dalit Cherukathakal (anthology)
  - Ithramaathram, Kalppetta Narayanan Mash. (ought to be translated. sharp).
  - The Orders Were to Rape You, Meena Kandasamy. (smooth writing, rough subject)
  - When I Hit You, Meena Kandasamy. (Getting hold of the domestic violence narrative.)
  - Love in the Time of Cholera, Marques. (Wordy, funny, technically superb, light, but also heavy.)
  - Intermezzo, Sally Rooney
  - Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar

Short Stories
  - Biriyani
  - Vaank
  - Patachonte Choru
  - Malayali Bhranthante Diary
  - Auttokarante Bharya

Sampled
  - Amaruka-sataka. Translation.


Incomplete
  - A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter. (Incomplete. Short sentences, American construction)
  - The Brothers Karamazov (Incomplete)
  - Slow Homecoming, Handke (Incomplete
  - Kalaapangalkkoru Grihapadam, Babu Bharadwaj (incomplete).
  - Ways and Means, (Incomplete. quarter of it—tedious after a while. pretentious.)
  - Yellow Face, (Incomplete. quarter? boring, too genZ).


===== 2023 (Q3). Remembered. =====

  - meesha, s hareesh.
  - vegetarians only, skybaba
  - stories, chekhov
  - urayooral, devika
  - yellowface [skimmed]
  - stories, ardra
  - poems from rathri, ed.
  - poocha, neruda.
  - penjipsikalude jeevitham, yama.
  - milk fed
  - sailor who fell from grace with the sea, mishima.
  - a/amma, rekha raj
  - kitchen, banana yoshimoto

====== The MovieStack ======

===== 2025 =====

  - Yannick
  - Working Girls
  - A Bigger Splash (Luca)
  - Matt and Mara
  - Koottukkali (Tamil)
  - Sookshmadarshini (Mal)
  - Esthappan (rewatch)
  - Alpha Males (series; spanish)
  - The Recruit (series; hollywood)
  - Queer (Luca)
  - About Love (Marathi)
  - Emilia Perez
  - The Edge of Heaven

===== 2024 =====


  - Like Someone in Love, Kiarostami.
  - The Myth of the American Sleepover, David Robert Mitchell.
  -  Pain and Glory, Almodovar.
  -  The Wild Pear Tree, Ceylan.
  -  Petite Maman, Sciamma.
  -  Medicine for Melancholy, Barry Jenkins.
  -  Fallen Leaves, Kaurismaki.
  -  Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, Chor Yuen.
  -  Demolition, Vallee.
  -  Premalu, Girish AD.
  -  Deception, Desplechin (didn't finish)
  -  The Plains, Easteal (didn't finish).
  -  Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stone (didn't finish).
  -  Macbeth, Kurzel (didn't finish).
  -  Crashing, Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
  -  Thund. (meh).
  -  Winter Sleep, Ceylan.
  -  About Dry Grasses, Ceylan.
  -  Murina
  -  Perfect Days
  -  Bougainvillea, Malayalam.
  -  Rush Hour 
  - Ajayante Randam Moshanam
  - Kishkindha Kandam
  - All we imagine as Light
  - Sulaikha Manzil