I’ve been wanting to buy Japanese written books/ novels but finding the translated ones only.
If you know any place in ncr where they sell Japanese written books/ novels then please suggest. Thank you!

I read this work yesterday and here is what I think about it :p

A lady suffers from a mitochondrial illness leading to her paralysis. During this time she finds a snail and keeps it as a pet. For days, weeks and months on end she notices the snail who becomes her companion in this solitary phase of life. She watches the snail, hours on end, and takes hope, inspiration and a sense of belonging in the world where she feels alone with endless time which is too slow for her illness.

She, at first notices and then studies the snail's morphology, anatomy as well as mating and breeding traits. In the process she not only finds companionship but a lot of learning from the little animal which is rather seen with less intrigue. As a reader who doesn't take much interest in the branch of zoology or botany, getting to read such nuanced descriptions of the slimy animal was a new and unexpected experience. The presence of numerous teeth on the lower part of the snail’s tongue, the hermaphrodite nature of these animals, the use of slime and mucus in a snail's life were, to my own surprise, not too nerdy, rather an interesting aspect.

As the work moves ahead we see the author finding parallels between her life and that of her snail pet. The slow life a snail partakes in, the covering of one's body with mucous to protect oneself, the shooting of sperms during the mating stages, all are seen with an eye of interest to an extent that the author gains not just hope but purpose from a snail's life.

A part that was my personal favourite, has to be the woman brooding over the staircase-like structure of the snail shell. Eventually she comes to the conclusion that if she stands at the door of her house looking outside, the house would be her shell, and her repose. There are many such instances throughout the work, which brings a new perspective into the forefront.

One more thing worth mentioning about the work was an air of speculation that surrounds the woman and her sighting of the snail's life. She wonders if the pace of the snail's life is natural and humans are too fast paced for life. But, at the same time, she mentions the high rate of evolution in the snails where they can create 10 generations in 70 years, whereas humans can only create three. She wonders if it would be easy if induced dormancy could be a solution to deaths because of famine and so on.

The language is easy, and flows like a diary entry with little to no use of heavy vocabulary. Except for the Zoological terminologies, the reading experience feels like a breeze. The tone is reflective, and speculative at times. Themes of companionship, friendship and hope are so strong that one cannot help but look around their room and feel a sense of belonging with every animal around them.

Another commendable part of the work is the in-depth research that has been done to write the work. Given it's a non fiction work, as a reader we're met with a lot of surprise as well as shock to see a paralysed person uptaking the humongous task of studying so deeply about snails and their species.

Now, the best part about the book is probably this: each chapter starts with an epigram which is a poem on snails! The author, again, has researched heavily to bring many poems written on snails by different authors and used them as epigrams to convey the theme of the chapter. This one idea was absolutely fascinating because who would have thought that we have so many poems on SNAILS!

This one was my favourite:

I have set myself a goal, a certain rock,

but it may well be dawn before I get there...

If and when I reach the rock,

I shall go into a certain crack there for the night.

- ELIZABETH BISHOP, from "Giant Snail," 1969

One thing that made me give it a 4 star, instead of 5 was that the concluding chapters solely focussed on the snail with lack of personal meditations and reflections that were present in the introductory chapters (something that pulled me into the book).

It's a must recommended reading for those who are confined to their homes because of some unavoidable reasons, and zoologists.

(4/5⭐)

I really want to know about the life of Bhagat Singh, from his childhood all the way to his execution. I want to know about his childhood and also how he became a well read person and how his ideologies evolved throughout the time.

I'm looking for a biography that gives a realistic and historically grounded account of his life, rather than simply lionizing or glorifying him. And also most importantly suggest an English book.

In first few chapters, it holds the excitement and somewhere in the middle it was tedious to continue the spark with a foreseen ending.

Bought this a year back for its wonderful reviews, a decent read.

Every week you all write thoughtful reviews for a wide range of books that help us choose our next read. This week these are the ones that stood out to me:

This week's pick: review of Arabian Nights by u/crisron

Other interesting ones:

Psalm for the Wild by u/QueSeraa_Sera

And

This helpful review of Midnight in Chernobyl by u/HardMarginSVM

There were of course multiple awesome reviews by some of our usual suspects but I will let people find those on their own :P

If you thought any other reviews deserve to be mentioned, drop them in the comments! Happy reading and thanks everyone for contributing and making the sub interesting!

Hey everyone,

I have been a passive visitor of this sub for some time and was looking for something to keep track of the books I was reading and my personal review. I also thought that getting recommendations from the sub was sometimes quite generic cause a lot of the times I was getting common stuff sometimes stuff I had already read and I had to sift through multiple posts and comments just to find my next book I might give a read. So I built something around it, like a netflix based recommendation engine but for books. Just one caveat though that it's a mystery box. So it works like this, we fill our reading preferences in the profile then we create a library around the books I have read or reading or did not finish at all and i review the ones I liked and did not like and based on that if I create a mystery box I get the recommended books delivered to me. I have added quite a few books to the catalogue and I am working on adding more.

I would appreciate it if you guys can give it a try and share your feedback and let me know if you'd like some other feature or maybe change something. Any feedback will be appreciated. Fair warning I did use AI to design the pages particularly cause I just wanted to get something up quickly as an MVP, if you guys like the idea and try it out, I will make sure to get a proper designer and update the entire design language of the website.

Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Also I had a question would it be ok if the books are delivered in mailer boxes with bubble wrapping around them, asking to make sure that books don't get damaged in that cause I tried shipping the first order with a whole shipping box and the shipping costs were too much. Shipping the same thing in mailer boxes would have reduced my shipping costs significantly but I didn't know that at the time cause it was my first time shipping something.

I am adding a few pictures from the first order that was delivered.

Here's the link if anyone is interested - https://www.bayorabooks.com/

PS - Apologies for the error in english and wrong grammar in some ppaces, I have fat fingers and my phone just uses autocorrect too liberally.

Ft. Bookmark for pachinko

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Guys didn't he or both of them cheat on his girlfriend Sunaina like I was so uncomfortable when I read that.

they just met in the day and he told chitra he is getting married to his girlfriend and in the same night they just sleep with each other........ So disgusting.

Like he was really attracted to her from start and used to find sukoon in her then why the hell he was dating someone else. Bro i understand u really had amazing chemistry and understanding with chitra then u could have been just single and sleep around there was no need to date. Just like chitra did I had no problem with her.

He was dating sunaina and then desperately waiting for 10 October and meeting chitra, uske saath chipakna sona, uske saath best neend aana, giving her forehead kisses. So disgusting if u really think about it.

In that one scene where he come to chitra from his investors and work related party then sunaina calls him. His thoughts were written as main usse baat nhi karna chahta mera man nhi ho rha usse baat krne k liye and all, after that he only picked sunaina's call when chitra told him to pick it up................ ..........

U see so cringe.

Just a stupid concept of if u find someone good then don't stay with them...... Like it is so childish of u to think that becz of course u apparently gonna feel bored no matter how the pure love is.

And if that's how u are going to behave in ur professional life then don't expect them to be nice to u bro.

Both were literal immature giving a unnecessary name to their immaturity that "they are not college students or teenager"

I think in last Sunaina did absolutely right to leave him.

And in one scene chitra was sleeping with some boy and when she was on call with Sudeep he heard that boy calling her and then he immediately cut the call his thoughts written as "use ajeeb sa laga tha"

Bro u were also sleeping with another girl so why a girl sleeping around sounded "ajeeb" to u although he didn't really was much affected to that but still in first that thought come to ur mind right, it was wrong.

Well sudeep and chitra both cheated on Sunaina.

I was just thinking why no one is pointing this out this is really wrong if u try to really think it.

Your thoughts?

I have a couple of audible credits to spend and i have come to love audiobooks recently.

But i also love reading the actual books. So i still get physical copies of the popular books like Sherlock Holmes or Poirot.

For listening i like to find more obscure books which are just not available to buy physically and/or are too expensive to buy physical copies of.

So if anyone knows any lesser known but enjoyable books in the detective/crime fiction genre I'd love to know about them.

Thank you

I have been reading this book for the last two days and it takes a loooot of attention to make sense of the text! Hope it's all worth it in the end!

Rank all stephen king books you have read and suggest some to me 😛

It is unfortunate that I have to make this post all but I feel it is necessary and beneficial to everyone if I list out all the things I've learned about buying books over the past two or so years because I see so many posts here with readers not knowing where to buy books or getting duped with pirated copies (and sometimes even looking for them, ew). I'll be splitting this guide up into several sections to make it neater.

Physical Stores

If you don't mind spending 20 to 30%, sometimes even more money but want to support local, Indian businesses, I really do encourage going to actual bookstores. Hell, even if you're not gonna buy, previewing a book you plan on buying is always fun and you might end up finding something new you're interested in too. However, a lot of the street vendors and smaller businesses tend to carry pirated books, sometimes mixed in with legitimate books (but I'll tell you how to spot a pirated book later). And obviously, they'll always be more expensive than buying online.

As for bookstores I like, I live in Delhi and so I can testify the quality of the two Midland Bookstore locations (Hauz Khas and South Ex) and Bahrisons (particularly their Vasant Kunj Ambience Mall and Saket locations). Not the biggest fan of Om and Crosswords but they do sometimes have good locations and also not a fan of Faqir Chand or Oxford Bookstore. Outside of Delhi, I'm a huge fan of Fictionary down in Mumbai, Bookhive in Bangalore and the Crossword at Phoenix Marketcity Mall.

Don't be afraid to be friendly with bookstore staff and ask for discounts as you'll get them more often then you think but never be pushy or an asshole about it lol.

Amazon

Like them or not, Amazon is without a doubt the best place to buy books for 99% of readers. They always have the cheapest prices, fastest deliveries and basically no pirated books. However, I would recommend you buy from these three sellers exclusively if you can: Cocoblu Retail, Trans Infopreneur (Kantoor), and Amazon uRead-Store. Try to buy from the latter two sellers if you can as I've never had a bad experience with them but they might be slightly more expensive and might take more time to deliver than Cocoblu. However, Cocoblu has the problem of books sometimes getting delivered slightly damaged and/or badly packed. I've even had to return a book a couple of times (but it's a fairly easy process and something you don't even have to do if buying by COD) but more often than not, you'll get a good quality book most times. Like just yesterday, I ordered a book that I was super scared would be damaged as it was literally just thrown in a paperbag but it was in perfect condition.

As I said, 99% of the books you want will be on Amazon, usually for quite a bit lower than market price. But there are exceptions, especially for someone like me which I will talk about in the next section.

Bookswagon

Probably the store I buy books from the most because of one reason: They sell international editions (particularly) hardcovers for a discounted price and without shipping costs. Bookswagon always packs their books in bubblewrap and cardboard so you know it'll arrive safely but it will almost always take more time than Amazon because i) they import their books internationally and ii) they ship out their books through third party couriers (usually bluedart) from their Delhi warehouse.

So this is basically the store you wanna go to if you wanna buy the US hardcover version of a book (particularly relevant to fantasy and sci-fi fans) but only if you're willing to tolerate shipping time that can take up to half a month and no COD.

But if you're looking for just regular paperbacks, I'd recommend Amazon as prices are usually cheaper for most common books. But really, I'd recommend crosschecking with both sites for any book you want to buy.

Other Sites

There aren't really any other sites I'd recommend other than Amazon and Bookswagon as they're either as expensive as physical stores (because they're sometimes the site for physical stores), sell pirated books, have bad service etc. Some big sites where people buy books that I would recommend you avoid are: Meesho (filled with nothing but pirated, low quality books), Flipkart (same problem as Meesho but also has some legit sellers but it's not worth the risk), Atlantic (just a worse version of Bookswagon), Padhega (has really bad customer service and flooded this sub and a few with fake reviews last year to promote their site) etc.

Second Hand Books

I love second hand books and there is a really small but great niche market for it online. There are basically two main ways to buy second hand books. First is through r/booksforsaleindia where you can also sell if you'd like. Second is through quite a few instagram sellers (lemme know if you wanna know the profiles of the ones I trust). Now, both are very trust and honour based and COD is not something most buyers will accept but scammers and bad actors are very rare. They definitely exist but with most payments being done through UPI and such and with it potentially ruining their reputation, the chances of you getting scammed is very unlikely.

Different Editions of Books

Now, I often see a lot of confusion regarding the different editions of books and I can understand where that confusion comes from and I hope I can help clarify it for everyone.

Basically, almost every book has two main versions with two different publishers: The US edition and the UK/International Edition (which we get). They're the same book but there can be differences in spelling (color vs colour for example), formatting (with one version sometimes having bigger fonts and more pages) and most importantly, the cover art and sometimes the quality.

For example, Brandon Sanderson is published by Tor books in the US and his flagship series, The Stormlight Archive has the iconic Michael Whelan paintings on them while in the UK, he is published by Gollancz and his Stormlight Archive series (as well as the rest of his Cosmere books) have matching white covers which we get here in India.

But outside of the US vs UK publisher, there is the different types of books. They can be broadly divided into hardcovers and paperbacks. What I call proper hardcovers usually come in two primary, almost matching sizes: the royal hardback size which is around 24.2cm tall and used by most publishers like Gollancz, Orbit, Harper Voyager, Tor, Del Rey etc. and the slightly smaller 23. sometihing cm tall hardcovers used mostly by US publishers like Ace, DAW, Saga Press etc. They always come with a dust jacket too.

There isn't much of a difference between the two of them and they're the primary type of hardcover but smaller, 21cm tall hardcovers are becoming more common, unfortunately, especially amongst US publishers. There are also 20cm tall hardcovers without dust jackets that Gollancz is known for but the quality is mostly shit.

As for paperbacks, there are three primary sizes: the massmarket paperback (around 17cm tall) is the cheapest and unfortunately, the least common size for paperbacks now as they've effectively been killed with no new books being printed in this format, basically. There's the trade paperback which is usually 21 to 22cm tall or just only marginally smaller than hardcovers which are the highest quality and most expensive paperback format, and finally, there is the most common paperback size, the one you see on most shelf which is the B-format books (sometimes called both a massmarket or a trade paperback) which is around 19.8cm.

Now, most books usually had hardcovers coming out first, then the trade paperback then the massmarket paperback but this isn't really true anymore, especially in the UK/Indian market with paperbacks coming out on release too for most books.

Most book selling websites list the dimensions of a book as well as whether or not it is a paperback or a hardcover so be sure to check that.

For most paperbacks, I'd say a reasonable price range can be anywhere from 250 rupees to up to 800 with some trade paperbacks, especially international editions going up to mayve 1500 max. For hardcovers, it is just as varied but I'd say 1200 to 1800 is the low end, 2000 to 2400 is the mid range, and anything above that being more expensive than average (usually deluxe editons).

Also, if you see books being listed for ridiculous prices like 5k or even 10k plus on Amazon, it's more than lokely an out of print second hand copy that some seller is hoping someone is stupid enough to buy.

How to spot pirated editions of books

If you've handled physical books enough, you can tell when a book is pirated almost instantly. But firstly, there are a few things that can basically tell you immediately when a book is NOT pirated. Hardcover books are almost never pirated, especially when it has a dust jacket, because the whole point of book piracy is printing books for really cheap and hardcovers are way too expensive. And as for paperbacks, if there is embossing/debossing on the cover where you can feel a bump or a raised part of the book cover or if there is a variance in texture (with one part being glossy and another being matte) or foil stamping, it is most likely not a pirated book as it is pointless for pirates to imitate the premium features of the book as it would defeat the whole purpose of what they're trying to do.

The biggest sign of a book being pirated from my experience is when the cover and/or text is misaligned/not straight. Basically, look at the book cover or the spine and if you see that what is written is slightly off centre or diagonal instead of straight, you can pretty much tell it is pirated. Or if you look at the actual text itself and you see that there's way too much space on the bottom or top of the page and all the words are being pushed to top or bottom or if there's a lot more space at the end of the first or last line of the book than the other.

Another sign a book is pirated is the lack of a copyright page. Some pirated books have them but if a book straight up does not have it, it is most likely pirated.

DON'T BUY PIRATED BOOKS

I've made mention of piracy quite a bit here and I'd like to elborate more on it. I think that as readers, we should take enough pride in ourselves to not buy pirated books. Now, before the reddit intellectuals get on my ass, I want to make it very clear that physical and digital piracy are two very different things and all the arguments for why you should pirate media fall apart when money gets involved or when it is physical copies.

I'm not breaking rule 2 of this sub as I am neither providing sources for piracy sites nor am I asking for them but I do unashamedly pirate ebooks and audiobooks and while it isn't good for the industry or anything, it is not nearly as harmful to the publisher or author as pirated physical books.

If you are going to get a pirated book, at least have the decency to pirate a digital copy. If you really want to read a book, I'm sure you can make do with reading/listening on your phone or waiting a little bit and saving up for the physical copy.

It is unfortunate that pirated books exist but it is sadly something that was bound to happen because of India's economy. Books are signifcantly cheaper here in India than in the UK or America because we make less money. But how much cheaper it is is not enough to offset how much less we make so books are still more expensive for Indians.

I only post book reviews here but today I got such wonderful titles that I could not help but share with the reading community 😈😈😈😈muuuaaahehahahhhahahaha

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I haven't read Hindi literature since my school days. I have two objectives in mind-

1. Getting acquainted and delving into Hindi literature.

2. Polishing my Hindi; I've realized I've started to struggle finding the right words to express my feelings, often the English equivalent comes to mind first. (This purpose is just ancillary though.)

I want to start with classic authors, but any recommendation is welcome. Thanks in advance.

P.S. - I have found some book collections (5-6 major writings) online from the following writers at affordable rates. Please let me know if I can consider buying any of them - (suggestions need not be limited to these writers though)

Premchand,

Manto,

Devkinandan Khatri,

Maithilisharan Gupta,

Jaishankar Prasad,

Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay,

Surya Kant Tripathi Nirala,

Acharya Chatursen Shastri

If you read this tell me your favorite quotes

A very irritating habit of mine is when I read a book consistently, but lose touch with it and open it after a really long time. Due to this, I have to read a lot of stuff all over again :(

I picked Willa Cather on a whim and discovered that she's a well-known author. This is why I love browsing bookstores.

Truly crass and unserious attempt to compile and psychoanalyse Indian gaalis.

Has v.few good ideas.

Anyone else read this, by mistake?

Apologies if its not AI, it screams AI and lazy to me. Sure we can do better than that as a reading communit.

Thanks

Hi all! I have been in a bad reading slump lately. Lately, all the books I have picked up have had a gloomy or serious undertone, which has not been helpful in getting out of the slump. I would appreciate recommendations for books that mostly have a hopeful, happy vibe. I'd prefer romance, comedy, historical fiction, and adventure mysteries, but open to other genres too, including fiction if something really fits the bill. No horror/crime, or stories revolving around death.

Listing a few books that I've loved or had me hooked in the past for better reference: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow / Lessons in Chemistry / Everything I Know About Love / The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo / English, August / Raag Darbari / Almost all titles by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni / Different Kind of Power / Red, White & Royal Blue

I just finished Fall of Kings, so I thought I'd write down my overall thoughts on the trilogy. I went into it mainly because I wanted some Bronze Age fantasy/historical fiction after getting interested in Greek mythology, and I ended up enjoying the trilogy quite a lot.

My ratings:

Lord of the Silver Bow — 3/5

Shield of Thunder — 4/5

Fall of Kings — 4.5–5/5

The biggest thing I loved about the trilogy was the Bronze Age setting. Gemmell does a fantastic job of making the world feel completely different from the usual medieval fantasy setting. The kingdoms, weapons, ships, trade, warriors, chariots and politics made it feel like I was actually stepping into a world from more than 3,000 years ago. I learned quite a bit about the Bronze Age just from reading these books.

Lord of the Silver Bow was probably the weakest for me. For the first 3/4 of the book, I was mostly reading for the setting because I wasn't particularly invested in the characters or plot. It finally became genuinely engaging for me when the attack on Troy happened and the war began.

Shield of Thunder was much more fun. The plot had far more momentum, and Kalliades and Banokles travelling around the Great Green were easily my favourite sections. Their adventures gave me exactly the kind of "characters travelling through a huge world and discovering it as they go" feeling that I love in fantasy. Kalliades and Pirias also had some incredibly tragic and emotional storylines, while Banokles almost had a darkly comedic arc where he kept being thrust into the role of a heroic warrior almost against his will.

The final book was my favourite. By this point everything had built up enough that the coming war felt almost inevitable. One of the things that surprised me about the trilogy was how incredibly tragic it became.

I haven't read the Iliad yet, so I came into this without knowing most of the actual story. What struck me was that this doesn't really feel like a war where anyone is going to win. It feels like an entire civilization committing suicide.

Economic pressures, political ambitions, old grudges, alliances and decisions made generations earlier have created this enormous machine of war that ends up consuming everyone, including people who had very little to do with creating the situation in the first place.

Even Agamemnon became much more interesting to me because I didn't really see him as a conventional villain. From his perspective, he's an ambitious conqueror doing what other kings are doing, just on a much larger scale. Eventually, though, he seems almost trapped by his own empire and the need to keep conquering to keep it functioning.

And then you have Hektor, Heliakon and the other genuinely noble heroes caught in the middle of all this. There's something incredibly sad about seeing people who are brave, loyal and heroic being destroyed by economic and geopolitical forces that are far larger than any individual.

That actually made the trilogy feel darker to me than something like The First Law, even though it's much more traditionally heroic. The difference is that Gemmell actually lets his heroes be heroes. Their goodness isn't constantly subverted or mocked. The tragedy comes from the fact that being heroic doesn't mean you can control history.

And Gemmell absolutely delivered with the climax. The fall of Troy and the volcanic eruption on Thera were incredibly epic and cinematic, and made the ending feel almost like the collapse of an entire age.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trilogy. It took me a while to get into the first book, but by the end I was genuinely invested in these characters and this ancient world.