While reading this book, I couldn’t help but notice just how crowded our world has become with ideas and opinions. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon feels like a straightforward guide for anyone hoping to carve out a bit of creative space for themselves. The heart of the book is really simple: it questions the idea that creativity means inventing something out of thin air, and instead suggests that creativity is about borrowing, remixing, and gradually finding your own way. One of the book’s most refreshing ideas is that originality isn’t about conjuring something completely new. Kleon suggests that all creative work is really a kind of fan fiction. We’re all…

I’ll be honest — Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari took me five years to complete. My actual reading time was two months, but I consumed 50% of the book within the last two weeks — prior to that were simply phases where I waited for myself to grow into it. It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it; it’s because this book is a vessel of information overload. You learn so much that you end up struggling to retain even half of it. Even now, I carry away only fragments: glimpses of civilizations, revolutions, the evolution of humankind, and the many economic systems we’ve built and left behind. It’s not a book you can fully absorb…

This book can surprise you with its narrative, and it can also make you clench your fists in rage at the same time. The book is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. It is one of those wild rides where you’re deeply invested one moment, then fuming the next, and engaging in a monologue with your wall about the deep-rooted issues in our societal structures. It’s sharp, it’s witty, and it gets under your skin — not because it messes up, but because it’s too good at showing you all the ways in which the world can be unfair to women. And yet, somehow, it’s also weirdly comforting and full of courage.…

Reading Man’s Search for Meaning took me through an emotional journey, beginning with numbness and heaviness, then shifting into intellectual challenge, and concluding with a feeling of motivation and renewed perspective. The Reading Journey For me, the concentration camp experiences were far more impactful than the later chapters on logotherapy and tragic optimism. The camp narrative evoked a blend of emotions within me, though at first, it almost stripped me of them. The tone Victor Frankl adopts in the first half is so detached — almost deadened — that as a reader, you mirror it. I wasn’t confused about the impact of what he was describing; I understood it. But the way he wrote about those events…

Okay so… here’s a confession: I picked up Kokoro by Beth Kempton in February 2025 thinking it would be a calm, aesthetic, soul-soothing, finding my inner journey kinda read. Something like “let me sip my coffee and romanticize my life” vibe. And it is that book for sure — but also, somewhere between Chapter 1, Chapter 9 and my untimely afternoon existential crisis, I decided I had to know everything about the woman who wrote this book. And yes, I mean everything. I went full reader-stalker mode (and ended up calling it research). So, here’s something we should know about Beth Kempton. Beth is a Japanologist (which is a super…

There are some books you pick up with intention, and then there are books that pick you. For me, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was a little bit of both. I found it sitting at my safe space — the Krishna Curve Crossword — a.k.a. my comfort place where caffeine, aesthetic books, and occasional emotional breakdowns come together for me. Back in October 2024, I bought the book for a book club meet (bless my social self for trying). But the universe had other plans. I got too caught up in another book I was reading and abandoned Vuong’s masterpiece for a few months. Fast forward to January 2025, I…