by Aashisha Chakraborty | Feb 17, 2026 | Reviews
…and the Joke That Explains Everything “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Famous words by Malachi Constant, the man who gets rich by chance and ends up in space by chance, feels extraordinarily deeply...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Nov 11, 2025 | Reviews
Writers have always feared and worshipped the most perilous ironist of all — the restless, consuming, and merciless fire. “It was a pleasure to burn.” Few first lines have scorched themselves so deeply into memory. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury gave us a world where...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Nov 4, 2025 | Reviews
Aashisha traces writers’ obsession with the oldest ironist of all — the boundless, beloved, and beautiful sea. The sea is a fascinating concept, not only because water makes up three-fourths of the planet as well as the human body (thanks, fourth-grade writer...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Oct 7, 2025 | Reviews
Aashisha revisits George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo and talks about the irony of indecision – how living between what was and what must be might be the truest form of being alive. Bardo is a Tibetan word for the liminal space between death and life. It is a...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Oct 2, 2025 | Reviews
Nigel writes an encomium for the Cost of Glory… Twenty minutes on the rowing machine and the display will dutifully say I have rowed 3.7 kilometres. But that is not really where I am. In my mind, memories merge. I am rowing from Miletus on the Maeander to...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Sep 23, 2025 | Reviews
In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro holds up a mirror to our own compromises— how much of life we trade away in the name of duty. “The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” I wish. To be...