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Thursday 11 November 2021

Review of ‘The Untold Tales: Love & Other Demons' by Paras

 Review of ‘The Untold Tales: Love & Other Demons' by Paras

“You are a nice guy but in today’s world, kindness does not pay, try and be clever if you can…wake up and see the modern world.”

-A burglar to protagonist, Joy, in the story, ‘That Half Kindness’.

 


The above statement essentially sets the theme of the stories in the entire collection of ‘The Untold Tales’ by Paras. Subtitled ‘Love & Other Demons’, the allusion is to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1994 novel by the same name.  The title of the book, although evoking unattainable expectations, does appropriate Marquez’s title to suit the stories based in contemporary Indian spaces with some success.

It’s a collection of short stories—with a difference, in that there is a sense of continuity with the names of characters in multiple stories set in entirely different setup. The stories in the collection are short and crisp, with often lurid endings. The author uses a rather simple language, which, instead of adding to the coherence of the narrative, often ends up falling short of doing justice to the scenes.  The idea behind the stories is innovative, artistically honest, and creates an intrigue around the author’s thought-process. A reading of ‘The Untold Tales’ at best makes one crave for a more structured and coherently narrated work from the author in the future.  

 

You can order your copy here.

Friday 19 March 2021

Review of Vitamin H: Volume 2

 Vitamin H: Volume 2 by Abhishek Thakkar (Review)



Vitamin H volume 2 abhishek vipul deepa thakkar
This is the second edition - I won't call it a sequel for obvious reasons - of Vitamin H: Volume 1 by Abhishek Vipul Thakkar. The book is based on, to put everything else aside for a moment, a beautiful concept. One can open this book from any random page and chances are, when he puts it down he will have certain amount of positivity pushed into his thought process. Some quotes in the book might not be immediately applicable in your particular life, but the variety itself makes Vitamin H worth the time one would put into it.

You might not agree with everything said in the book, but the idea of having a 100+ pages document - with an alluring shape, if I may call it that - which one can turn to primarily for motivation, at any time, appears to me a chance worth taking. One should definitely try this book if motivational quotes, and small writeups on general subjects of interest, work for him/her.

Get your copy of Vitamin H: Volume 2 by Abhishek Vipul Thakkar here.


Also read: Vitamin H: Volume 1 (Review)