Favourite Picks for Summer Reads, Straight From the Editors’ Desks!

Are you already dreading the long summer that awaits, with nowhere to travel to? Fret not, our team of solicitous and sympathetic editors have compiled a list of #SummerReads to transport you away from the mundane! Which one will you pick up first?

Arcopol recommends…

Paper Moon by Rehana Munir
Although I live in Delhi NCR, I’m pretty much a Bombay-kid, having lived there most of my life. So, when you bring together Bombay, a sea-facing villa, nariyal paani, a bookshop and some romance, it is kind of love at first sight. Paper Moon is just that and it’s also contemporary fiction done just right. Written by Rehana Munir, a gifted writer and columnist, Paper Moon‘s story will draw you in with its unique, effortless narrative style and Rehana’s ability in crafting convincing and relatable characters. Tip: Just like honey is best consumed with milk, this book is best devoured while sipping on a cup of adrak-wali masala chai.

Get your copy here!

Bushra recommends…

Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
Summer is the time when one either goes back to favourite authors or to books that have been lying in wait on shelves, begging to be read. So, I decided to pick up Amy Tan’s (of The Joy Luck Club fame) Saving Fish from Drowning.

An art expedition gone bad, a group kidnapping and a forgotten tribe. Narrated by the feisty Bibi Chen, a dealer of Oriental artefacts, ex-leader of the tour and now dead, Saving Fish from Drowning takes the reader into the deep, tropical  jungles of Burma with a tale full of mystery, magic and adventure – a great read for a languid summer afternoon.

Get your copy here!

Nayantara recommends…

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
This summer, we’re probably all focusing on connecting with friends and family more than anything else. And while this isn’t a light read, I can guarantee you’ll want to discuss this absorbing, unputdownable book with everyone you know!

Get your copy here!

Rahul recommends…

Blue Is Like Blue by Vinod Kumar Shukla, translated by Krishna Mehrotra and Sara Rai
One of the world’s great, truly original writers, Vinod Kumar Shukla has been quietly working away at his wise and whimsical fiction for decades. Now brilliantly rendered into English, these stories are the perfect portal into his remarkable oeuvre.

Get your copy here!

Sachin recommends…

Raj Kapoor: The One and Only Showman by Ritu Nanda
For anyone interested in the history of Indian Hindi film industry (Bollywood), this book is a must read. Written by his daughter, the late Ritu Nanda, this must have been a really difficult project as Raj Kapoor was never interested in anything except cinema (much less books or literature as he candidly admits in the book). The book brilliantly portrays not only the life of Raj Kapoor but also the shaping of the Hindi film industry from the pre-independence days to the mid-eighties. In these four decades, the reader is also a witness to the birth of a new nation and its aspirations in the early 1950s reflecting aptly in his films like Aag, Awara, Shree 420 and Jaagte Raho among others. The colourful and romantic sixties giving way to the matured and philosophical Raj of the 1970s. And then the next two decades as a director with more mainstream (read popular) mass-market cinema with hits like Bobby, Satyam Shivam Sundaram and Prem Rog among others. No matter which generation you belong to, this is a book that will have something for you.

Get your copy here!

Suchismita recommends…

On Drinking by Charles Bukowski
I feel it’s an appropriate summer read for the apocalyptic end of times and a reminder that you’re never alone when you have a bottle next to you (with a book on drinking of course).

Charles Bukowski, On Drinking (ed. Abel Debritto): The best of poetry and prose from the ‘dirty old man’ on his muse and life-long obsession, one that brought him much joy and pain – the hard stuff. 

In his words, ‘That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.’ 

And from his poem titled ‘Tonight’:

so many of my brain cells eaten away by alcohol

I sit here drinking now

all of my drinking partners dead,

I scratch my belly and dream of the

albatross.

I drink alone now.

I drink with myself and to myself.

I drink to my life and to my death.

Get your copy here!