2020-05-03 15:19
A third of the year is over. I haven't read as much as I had planned, and I haven't blogged at all! It's hard to write individual reviews or a full recap at the end of the year either. So I… Read More
Blog Directory > Arts & Entertainment Blogs > Humor Blogs > Tabula Rasa humor Blog >
2020-03-05 17:14
Aurangzeb Alamgir, the sixth Mughal emperor, the last of the greats, as it were. His reign lasted nearly fifty years, I was not aware of that somehow. What I have been made consistently awar… Read More
2020-01-05 19:23
Let's see how I fared:1. To discover more women writers Status: goal metThere was a time I only read books by men, barring a few exceptions like JK Rowling or Anne Rice. I don't know if thi… Read More
2019-12-31 11:43
I saw someone post a list of their favourite books of the decade and while I would love to write a post quite as grand as that, it seems like an impossible task. I was 17 a decade ago and I… Read More
2019-10-13 11:52
Summary: In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, and the gauze wrappin… Read More
2019-02-27 19:49
To be honest, I did not imagine it would be this hard to keep my only New Year's resolution for 2019 - to write a blog post a week. And yet, here I am, two months into the year and already f… Read More
2019-01-07 01:00
A few weeks ago, I finally read The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare after having successfully TBR-ed it for nearly ten years! This was after yet another student recommended it t… Read More
2019-01-03 15:56
A lot of people are talking about Bird Box being similar to A Quiet Place. Now I haven't Bird Box, but this discussion was my excuse to return to the latter. I unearthed this post that I had… Read More
2019-01-03 12:58
I have not been reading as much as I would like to ever since I got a job and got burdened with the pressure of becoming a proper adult. Even so, I made progress this year and forced myself… Read More
2018-11-02 17:23
Publishing a review that has been lounging in my drafts unnoticed:“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid… Read More
2018-10-28 17:37
Synopsis: Two men find themselves on the banks of the river Seine one late night in Paris. Both are contemplating suicide, when they cross paths. One, Henry James, is a writer who has o… Read More
2018-09-24 21:00
This list includes book I've been meaning to pick up, books I have no intention of reading, and books that I'll eventually get around to reading. This does not (I repeat, does not) make me a… Read More
2018-09-19 04:53
“But there's a world beyond what we can see and touch, and that world lives by its own laws. What may be impossible in this very ordinary world is very possible there, and sometimes th… Read More
2018-09-10 20:20
Over the past few years, I've developed a growing affinity towards memoirs and autobiographies. Non fiction has never been my cup of tea, but these seem to have slipped through the cracks. T… Read More
2018-09-08 23:08
(It's way past midnight and a stray thought brought this post on. I'm just going with the flow.)In my last few years of teaching, I have noticed that parents often ask me to recommend books… Read More
2018-08-16 13:54
I've never taken a break this long from blogging. I still haven't finished this book I started in some time May. Let alone written anything for pleasure in a long time. And yet, I'm on a con… Read More
2018-04-24 21:02
Not so much a review as an organised rant.THE WORLD: Shelved as 'science fantasy', The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin is the first installment in the series that is built on the premise that h… Read More
2018-03-16 01:42
A few weeks ago, I decided to post tidbits from my Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable every Friday, in an attempt to keep the blog up and running even during utter shortage of time. I h… Read More
2018-03-02 07:31
Last Friday, I decided to make a weekly contribution to the blog in the form of a phrase or word history plucked out of a dictionary I own. This is the giant Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase an… Read More
2018-02-26 09:11
Summary: Yun Ling Teoh is the sole survivor of a secret Japanese concentration camp in Malaysia. From flashbacks, we piece together that Yun Ling escaped the torture with a maimed hand an… Read More
2018-02-23 00:00
This entire plan to be a regular blog-poster is on the brink of failure yet again. But the other day as I was going through my giant suitcase of books (my room has no place) I found a much b… Read More
2018-01-30 16:04
I was not about to write a review of Turtles All The Way Down by John Green, until I was asked by a student to explain the main character's point of view. And that led to a lo… Read More
2017-12-01 17:46
"I'm not saying the kids were doing this in a mean way. They were just being normal dumb kids. I know that. I kind of wanted to tell them that. Like, it's okay, I know I'm weird looking, tak… Read More
2017-11-02 08:57
The year is almost over which is something I really cannot wrap my head around. What a weird year 2017 was, and I had gone in imagining it would be one of the bests. I scrolled down to Janua… Read More
2017-09-29 13:31
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is one of the creepiest stories I have read in a long time. This is my first read for the R.I.P. XII event. I'm alone in the house writi… Read More
2017-08-29 14:40
“...where's the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?”Un Lun Dun. Say it quickly, in one go. UnLunDun. Does it make sense? That's it. UnLondon. Un-London. U… Read More
2017-07-27 14:38
About a couple of months ago, one of my friends lent me this book called Whispers from the Wild which I had been immersed in for a couple of weeks. A beautiful read, just the perfect one to… Read More
2017-07-07 17:17
For an entire month, I've found myself writing posts and deleting them, because they did not sound right enough or because they revealed too much or too little. I have never suffered this ki… Read More
Kashmir In Two Books - Curfewed Night By Basharat Peer And Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years By A.S. Dulat
2017-05-13 08:12
I've been on a non-fiction mission these past two months, catching up, one might say, on history the only way I know how - through books. I have been reading the most about Kashmir and the t… Read More
2017-05-10 18:23
(Oh, sweet fantasy, how I have missed you.)"She did feel it. A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head… Read More
2017-04-14 05:12
The very title of this book will have a polarizing effect; people passionate about the "cause" so to speak will read it with annoying vehemence, the happy meat-gobblers among us will quite p… Read More
2017-03-12 14:47
*Not in that order.Tuck Everlasting: I had always thought that a film whose crowning glory is its beautiful narration must have been a really good book. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt h… Read More
2017-01-22 20:41
This post will go into great detail about some of the characters in the book, their motives and such, but not any plot developments. I wouldn't call any of my observations spoilers as such;… Read More
2016-12-30 18:28
Warning - Minor spoilers: but none for the plot. I am very glad to have heard of this book only through Jess Mariano on Gilmore Girls, though this should have given me a clue of its cult sta… Read More
2016-12-13 00:13
(I had to finish this in November, for German Literature Month, but it spilled into December.)The first book I finished this weekend was a beautiful autobiography of German Nobel-Prize-winni… Read More
2016-11-12 19:53
SO I have no intention of ever reading the Game of Thrones books; not out of a sense of I'm-too-good-for-it, but rather, Who-has-the-time? But I was curious about Martin's style, so I have b… Read More
2016-10-27 19:46
Image courtesy of KEKO64 at FreeDigitalPhotos.netYesterday I was lamenting the fact that whenever I say I am a vegetarian, I always somehow end up offending someone. The responses I get rang… Read More
2016-10-24 16:29
'My daughter,' Bannerman agreed softly. 'I think she passed within forty feet of that ... that animal. You know what that makes me feel like?''I can guess,' Johnny said.'No, I don't think yo… Read More
2016-09-10 19:42
Brace yourself, this will be one of the long ones... Set in the coldest North Canada, White Fang is the story of a wild little wolf cub, White Fang, borne of a wolf and a female wolf-do… Read More
2016-08-20 09:42
When Breath Becomes Air is an incredible, honest book. Written in the face of cancer by a man who happened to have spent the better part of his life trying to gain an understanding of death… Read More
2016-08-03 19:18
Keri Smith was my favourite illustrator, back when I used to know enough illustrators to have a favourite. Her blog, The Wish Jar, is one of the most interesting things on the internet. Tall… Read More
2016-07-24 11:19
About the series: Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett is the fortieth book in the Discworld series (yes, four-zero-eth) and the third installment in a mini-series that describes a period of ind… Read More
2016-06-15 18:40
Or rather, a 'Remember-me?-I'm-NOT-dead!" post. I have started working as a middle school English teacher since the last time I was here and that keeps me more busy than I had imagined possi… Read More
2016-05-06 13:14
(Another of my famously bad titles, but it stays.) What studying linguistics entails is not clearly understood, in my experience, in India. Having just finished two years of a post-grad… Read More
2016-04-15 18:32
(Has anyone noticed how terrible I am at coming up with titles?)Today's post is a condensed (yes, it was even longer) form of an essay I wrote for a job/fellowship application. I have since… Read More
2016-04-15 18:26
(this is not a direct reference, but representative of the sad books I am buried in lately)This past month I have been working on my Masters' dissertation in psycholinguistics. The project i… Read More
2016-04-06 21:07
My spoken Hindi is shaky at best. But I can read Hindi fairly fluently, one reason being that it shares its script, called Devanagari, with my mother tongue. A little detail I love abou… Read More
2016-04-05 19:14
In the last post, I mentioned a project. That is what has been killing my creativity for the past three months. The topic is metaphorical language; how it is stored and processed in the mind… Read More
2016-02-22 03:26
I have found non-fiction much lighter to read in the past few months than fiction, the best of which is too absorbing, dense and intricate. I was delighted to find this gem in the library, a… Read More
2016-02-19 13:53
I missed Day 4!! But between job interviews, submissions and classes, I found no time to blog yesterday. Anyway, here is the last prompt for the Book Blogger Appreciation Week, how do you ke… Read More
2016-02-17 18:35
When I read the prompt for today for the Book Blogger Appreciation Week at The Estella Society, I did not realize we could be talking about bad books. So mine is a politer Thank the Blogger… Read More
2016-02-16 16:33
The second day of the Book Blogger Appreciation Week is interviews! Those of us who signed up were assigned bloggers as interviewees. I got Heather from Based On A True Story. And got i… Read More
2016-02-15 15:09
I decided to participate in the Book Blogger Appreciation Week after reading about it on Deepika's blog. The Book Blogger Appreciation Week is an event hosted by The Estella Society. Th… Read More
2016-02-07 11:53
I miss my book club. A lot of people I know like to write and love to read. But there is something special about those who make time for it on the one free day of the week. My home town was… Read More
2016-01-30 04:48
The other day I read that they named a Himalayan thrush after Dr. Salim Ali, the 'Bird Man of India.' The better part of my childhood was spent cultivating a happy interest in birding. The i… Read More
2015-11-18 18:50
The German Literature Month, a favourite bloggy event! We are closing in on the end of November and I have only finished my first read. I stumbled upon it in the Linguistics section of… Read More
2015-10-30 12:00
I have been awfully out of touch with all things literary, even the latest Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling release whizzed past my notice. Anyway, here is a long overdue book review. I stumb… Read More
2015-10-11 13:05
(Reposting with minor edits a post from early last year, because it really fits this week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt and because I love it.)Excuse the generalization. The title could be mislea… Read More
2015-10-05 10:25
A Chinese woman, Z, moves to England to study English, a language she greatly struggles with. Z carries around her Concise Chinese-English Dictionary wherever she goes. When Z moves in and f… Read More
2015-09-20 17:44
This review is part of the R.I.P X Challenge. Visit The Estella Society to learn more.Bill Hodges was once a detective, one of the finest of the city. Now retired, he is a fat lonely T… Read More
2015-09-12 13:43
The last month was pretty busy. The posts I had scheduled in July kept the blog up and running. But they do not extend into September. As I am not ready with a review, this post will be abou… Read More
2015-08-24 02:44
"The passing years had not diminished Asmat's beauty. Time had painted some grey in her hair and etched a few lines on her face. But it was the same dear face, the same trusting eyes. She ha… Read More
2015-08-17 16:28
Summary: Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor. His book, Man's Search for Meaning, was originally titled, Nevertheless, Say "Yes" To Life, which I think makes… Read More
2015-08-10 11:49
Summary: Roland Mitchell is an American scholar, out of place in the British academic world. He is studying the life of the Victorian poet laureate, Randolph Henry Ash, when he happens upon… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
When I was a kid, I had this beautiful Disney picture book of Beauty and The Beast. I realized I'd never seen the movie version of Beauty and The Beast (I mean the Disney one, of course - an… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
All of us readers have those books that really started us on our way to becoming book lovers. It could be something we read as young children, or it could be a book we picked up in adulthood… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
First of all, I think Full Dark, No Stars is right up there with the bests of Stephen King. Not for the first time, he's proved that ghosts don't have to be translucent white spirits that lu… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
A Good Marriage is the final story in this amazing short story collection, Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King. It's a 100 page novella and makes a greatly disturbing read. If I think about… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
I wonder if, had I known my blog would actually find readers, I would have been more stringent about what I posted. My social media presence, blog aside, does not create even a tiny ripple i… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
Spoiler alert: Do not read this review unless you are already aware of the history of Wolf Hall. It has been brought to my notice that this review contains spoilers. Well, I'm sorry. It neve… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
"To some, advertising executives exist at the fringes of legitimacy. We are neither hard-core business people nor scholars. We do not control the levers of capitalism nor offer academic insi… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
The picture does not do these books justice, the light is wonky. They are much prettier. I got a great deal from a book sale on campus (for those to whom its relevant, hosted by Best Book Ce… Read More
Subscribe to Tabula Rasa
Get updates delivered right to your inbox!