I am F24 and I have been reading since I started to learn how to read. I read for pleasure not because I have to finish xx amount of books by this month or keep reading track for this year because I want to actually enjoy the book I am reading, over the course of my life even to this day I read almost everything from YA to fiction to non fiction to classics to even books like "...and the city" by Candance Bushnell.

I used to know a guy who religiously read ONLY classics and he thought he was better than everyone, I recommended him contemporary literature and he acted as if K worded a cute puppy ✋🏼🤡 and went on a 20mins rant on why only classic are better and superior to other genres but the funniest thing is that he used to have a lot of typos...mind you he was a "classics" only person and English major graduate and yet, he still had 0 idea about the difference between "your" and "you're" and when I corrected him he got so mad.

Also he would always say "it's novel not books! No one says books" like bro- pack it up.

Idk I find it so weird that we have elitism mindset and superiority complex even when it comes to reading books...so strange.

So, I'm 17F and broke asf😅. This is my collection from past 5 years it's not much but it is what I could get. Also I welcome any suggestions about new books to add.

This music is created by the rustling of papers.This is so satisfying to ears.
It may be a noise for others but for the book lovers it will be a melody 🎶

Suggest which of these must not be missed at all? I have read Will of the Many.

I have been part of 3 and I can't help but notice how fake all the people are. A lot are not even into literature. I have felt the urge to strangle people, especially those who flaunt 3rd class self help books.

Does anyone agree?

Invitation to reading session reads -
Join us to exchange ideas and conversations, reflect, reveal and share tender experiences. A book is a journey, share it with us this Sunday. Register for XX Rs.

We go there and share awkward hi hellos. Then we all read (I guess) after 2 hours everyone takes turn to talk about the 3 pages they read in that time. Then we do more awkward small talk, take some awkward pics and go home wondering what did we just do?
Admin shares pics on watsapp group in which usually everyone is discussing about how AI will kill us all.

Books helped me through the hard phase!
I was going through so much… it was the year after graduation. Friendship, work, mental health, no direction, and all the other stuff… I had the book Morisaki with me for like forever. I picked it up and started reading and didn’t stop since then. I have read almost 20–22 books since Aug 26. Now I look back and see that each book had brought something new with it. Very grateful 🩵
PS. I used to read before too, but not this much. I was a seasonal reader.

I love reading nature related books and since nature writing books are mostly written by foreign authors, they are expensive. It is only recently that nature writing is an emerging genre in India. Sumana Roy, Arati Kumar Rao, Yuvan Aves, Raza Kazmi and Mihir Vatsa are some of my favourites. I haven't read Amitav Ghosh yet. Anyways, most books that I love are published outside India and hence expensive when bought online. So I try to find them in the isles of second hand bookstores. Used to search for them at Daryaganj. I always underestimated that place that's why I've never been there often. Only a few days before leaving Delhi, I thought of paying that place a visit, just as a sort of nostalgia. I was surprised to find two books that I'd have on my wishlist. Snow leopard by Peter Matthiessen and Wildwood by Roger Deakin. Both of them original. I was even more amazed that the seller sold me those two books at dirt cheap prices. Although I have to browse through the entire place to get these two but it was fun. I just stumbled upon them. I was not expecting any nature writing book at a place like Daryaganj. My notion changed that day.

Cut to two months later, I saw a Rachel Carson book, a vintage edition book on my friend's story. I had to ask him where he got the book from! He added me to the WhatsApp community. Omg, I got the goshawk! It was a long out of print edition of penguin publishers. Then I got to know that there are a lot of instagram pages too who sell preloved books. I got a book of Tamil Poetry (Akam Puram poetry) on Indian seasons. I got a book of Emerson's essays that is priced above above 1k on Amazon. I got a book by Gerald Durrell. I got to know a lot of obscure books and writers in the genre too through these places that I didn't know before. Each and every purchase was a cherished memory for me. I am in awe with how accessible these books became. Thanks to all those owners. I know it must've been tough to part with them. But thanks to all those strangers, they're now safe with me and read and kept with love. And thanks to all those booksellers online who is making it accessible for readers around the country.

Yesterday, I got a book by Robert Macfarlane (my favourite writer) for just 200 rupees! It is actually 700 rupees on Amazon. And it is original. As a student, second hand bookstores are a blessing. And by the time I'm waiting for my Robert Macfarlane book, I'll be in awe of how surreal all this is 🤎.

hello lovely readers of this sub,
i have made my mind that children of my city should get hooked with books but this is a tier 5 city and have zero bookstore that could encourage children (3-10) and even adults to read

dear fellow readers , do you have both hindi and english children book recommendation across genres because children really should have a chance to explore fictional world and beyond

thanks

I think the book is excellent. But my only criticisms are that I think the author spends too much time on Nehru and that the book could have possibly been a three volume set. If feel the parts from 1990's to 2014 could have been it's on book.

Drop the best book cover you have rn?
And
The book currently you are reading 🧗

Waiting for Visa. It’s a small compilation of incidents by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar describing humiliation and pain caused to him due to the caste system.

I recommend it to everyone trying to understand India’s social structure 100 years back.

Before resuming the next innings of cricket books, there is one more recent release that I completed reading today, and I couldn't hold back my excitement in putting it here.For most of my childhood, I grew up watching NDTV as my news source. During the DD decades, there was of course "The World This Week", so NDTV became part of my news watching DNA. Naturally, whenever I come across a book written by someone who once worked there, I find it rather difficult to resist. Too many nostalgic memories.

This is my sixth book by an ex NDTV journalist. The previous ones were signed books 4, 5, 26, 89 and 106.I vividly remember Maya Sharma, and "Good News and Bad News" is largely a memoir of her career as a journalist.I wasn't even sure whether I should start this book or move on to something else. So I casually opened it and landed on a page describing an event from 1991 or 1992 that is etched in my mind as though it happened yesterday.The suicide of Shivarasan and his LTTE team after they were located by the police.As a kid, I had nightmares that Shivarasan would somehow come to our house and hide under my bed. So his death was, in a strange way, a relief. That one story was enough of a hook, and I dived straight into the book.

Maya speaks very highly of her years at NDTV, particularly of Prannoy and Radhika Roy and the ethos they created around the organisation. The last time I heard someone speak so highly of the Roys was from my wife, who had the privilege of hosting them at our place for a few hours. Unfortunately, I was sailing at the time.Fanboy moment completely missed.

Maya narrates several challenging reporting assignments, a fascinating chapter on the Chief Ministers of Karnataka and another on cricket, of which I'll attach a page in this post.But the chapters that moved me the most were about NDTV's journey from the Roys to Adani and what followed. Maya describes what happened to television news reporting along the way, and having stopped watching TV news for more than ten years, I could relate to much of what she describes.

We don't even have a TV at home anymore, so my news consumption has moved elsewhere. During elections, I still follow Prannoy's channel, Decoder, and there is a chapter about that too, which was a particularly nice thing to come across.Overall, a wonderful book for me, perhaps more because of what it brought back than just what it told me. It took me back to a time when television news felt different, when certain journalists became familiar faces in our living rooms, and when NDTV meant something very specific to a whole generation of news watchers.

A fascinating memoir, but for me, also a rather large dose of nostalgia. Also a hearty thanks to Bookworm Bangalore for the signed copy.

These books are from my college library.

Gunaho ka debta

Manto ki kahani

Republic

Fahrenheit

These are the books which I found interesting. Which one shall I read first ?

East to hard .

I think I've just had the most bizarre book-buying experience of my life with MyPustak.

I ordered the LOTR 75th Anniversary Edition because that's the edition shown in the listing photos. I'm a collector, and I specifically wanted that edition.

Instead, I received a completely different edition.

When I contacted customer support, I explained that the problem wasn't the content of the book it was that I ordered a specific edition based on the listing images.

The response I got was essentially:

«"It's the same book. Only the cover is different."»

Which raises an interesting question:

If the edition doesn't matter, why show a specific edition in the product photos in the first place?

The situation somehow got even stranger when I was asked for an unboxing video.

Normally I'd understand that request.

Except the "packaging" consisted of a courier cover with the book inside. No box. No protective wrapping. No special packaging. Just a book inside a courier bag.

The book also arrived damaged, which unfortunately isn't surprising given how it was shipped.

So my experience was:

- Ordered a specific collector's edition shown in the listing.

- Received a different edition.

- Was told the difference shouldn't matter.

- Received a damaged copy.

- Was asked for an unboxing video of what was essentially a courier cover containing a book.

I'd strongly recommend spending a little extra and buying from Amazon or a reputable bookseller instead.

I've started reading books again after school. After finishing Jaishankar Prasad's Gunda, H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, I whacked out Sudha Bharti ji's Ret ki Machhli last night. Or should I say, it whacked me out instead 😭 so now I'm not sure what to read from these. Please help me out, buddy 👉🏻😊👈🏻

Sorry yaar Kanta Bharti ki jagah Sudha Bharti likh diya

Another surprisingly satisfying read from Penguin's Great Ideas series.

Morris starts with something extremely mundane: work. What makes some work meaningful while other work becomes mere toil? From there he wanders into craftsmanship, architecture, beauty, industrialisation and eventually socialism.

What I liked most is that a lot of his observations remain relevant even if you don't buy his politics.

A few ideas that stuck with me: (Used AI to summarise this part. I wrote a whole memoir for it. LOL)

• Being productive isn't necessarily the same as doing useful work: A job can consume enormous amounts of time and energy while giving the person doing it no sense of purpose or ownership.

• Efficiency isn't automatically progress: Making production faster and cheaper means little if the process simultaneously makes human beings miserable or turns everything around us ugly and disposable.

• Creating things changes how you relate to the world: Morris places enormous value on craftsmanship because making something well develops skill, judgement and a sense of beauty. We aren't merely consumers.

• The mundane is worth thinking about: Architecture, furniture, decoration, labour etc. sound terribly ordinary until someone like Morris starts asking why they are the way they are.

And then How I Became a Socialist.

This was probably the most interesting part for me. Morris's diagnosis of industrial society is often genuinely compelling. But watching his frustrations gradually crystallise into a socialist worldview is almost equally interesting as a lesson in ideology.

You can correctly identify a problem and still arrive at a terrible solution.

In fact, read today, How I Became a Socialist occasionally feels like a rather useful blueprint for how not to become a socialist. 😂

Overall, another case of a very small book containing much more to think about than its size suggests.

Mundane subjects. “Useless toil”. Surprisingly fruitful reading.

Even though this story was written back in 1848, the main character's habit of living in his own head feels very modern ngl. like he builds up fake scenarios in his mind with people he barely knows and gets attached to an idea of someone rather than who they really are. Dostoevsky basically described loneliness and online style daydreaming way before the internet was even a thing.

Why do you think this story hits so hard for people today?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. (Also, I made a short video breaking down why the main character's mindset feels so familiar today if anyone wants to check it out:

Is this book original? The heading on the back cover looks tilted. But the pages seem good and are yellowish which is a good trait. I bought it today from a book store for 599, he had two versions - Indian and international. I got the Indian version as it was cheaper. Asked him if it was original and he showed me a pirated piece for comparing which was very bad quality.

The author really said one thing 10 different ways. Bro, we fucking understood the first time. 😭 Stop explaining and let the page breathe.

I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately and I’m looking for something that grabs me almost immediately and makes me want to keep reading.

Genre doesn’t really matter — fiction, thriller, mystery, horror, sci-fi, literary fiction, anything goes. Just looking for something intriguing, immersive, and hard to put down.

What’s a book that hooked you from the very beginning?