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If there is one thing I enjoy as much as reading, it’s listening to people talk about the books they love. And there is no better place for it than BookTube where you will get to watch some phenomenal people talk about books that they have enjoyed. I have discovered many books through BookTube, and I must confess that I’m a tad bit addicted to it. I probably watch several videos daily. Some, I rewatch, just to hear people talk passionately about books or authors they can’t get enough of. 

There is a girl called Charu from Kitabi Cabins who talks about poetry with such warmth and enthusiasm that I have been inspired to read more poems. She has also introduced me to poets I would have perhaps never come across, like Shiv Kumar Batalvi and Amrita Pritam. I Will Meet You Again (Main Tainu Phir Milangi) is one of my favorite poems by Amrita that I have saved on my phone and read every other day. I must credit the channel for sparking a love for poetry in me. Even though I might not necessarily understand everything I read, something about how the words flow makes me feel at ease. My mind calms down and I feel recharged. And I might not have given poetry its due had it not been for Kitabi Cabins. 

If you like to read but don’t consume content from BookTube then I must say you are missing out. Not only will you come across new books and authors you will also be able to hear multiple viewpoints about books you have read through reviews and discussions or better yet, sometimes even be a part of those discussions, if you register in advance. If you want to explore this fascinating side of YouTube but don’t know where to start or what’s good, I’m recommending three channels I’m hooked on at the moment. Maybe these can help you kickstart your BookTube journey that is sure to open up a whole new world for you. 

Kitabi Cabins

I absolutely love Kitabi Cabins. It’s a channel dedicated to books that is run by Chalchitra Talks.  I recently came to know about them but I must have watched all their content and there are around 400 plus videos. I love Vaani and Charu. The way they talk about books is so intriguing and I have discovered many books and authors through them. Their love for reading is evident in the way they speak about the books they have read. Both of them are into slow, deep reading. They don’t read to reach an annual target of say like 50 books a year. They read to learn, and to understand the world and themselves better. There are also some interviews with authors and actors who are readers where they actively discuss books. These are mostly hosted by the channels’ founder. I love the one with Prajakta Koli (also known as MostlySane on YouTube) and the actor Namita Dubey (on Chalchitra Talks). I highly recommend this channel if you want to hear readers discuss books they have read in a way that makes you want to pick them up too. 

Read A Day Club

Run by two sisters, Read A Day Club can be your fix if you are into classic literature. Though the channel has been running since 2020, there are only 126 videos and most of them are under 20 minutes. But Amreen and Ayesha discuss classics with an unmatched fervor. I discovered Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet and writer, through the channel and I’m forever indebted for it. I can assure you that Pessoa’s ‘The Book of Disquiet’ has life altering powers. The fragmented lifetime project that was published posthumously is a diary of sorts filled with thoughts, observations, and ruminations. It’s a great book for introspection and reflection. You can read it cover to cover but you don’t have to, choosing instead to dip in and out as you please. Read A Day club can be your entry point into a world of literature that you haven’t explored till date. 

Service 95

Service 95 is Dua Lipa’s website and it has a YouTube channel as well. The Service 95 book club is where you will find Dua Lipa discussing books she has read with writers who wrote them. It’s so interesting that you will be torn between wanting to binge watch the videos and saving them for later, not wanting to run out of content too soon. Most of the book discussions are well over the 40 minute mark but they still feel short. Some conversations that I have loved are ones with Margaret Atwood, David Szalay, and Ocean Vuong. Atwood is the master of her craft and Vuong’s ‘On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous’ is a phenomenal book as is his poetry collection ‘Time is a Mother’. Next on my watchlist is a conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi. I’m saving it for a mundane day when I need something to inspire me. Service 95 Book Club is where many bestselling and award-winning authors are discussing their work and it’s definitely worth checking out. 

I first heard about Osamu Dazai on the internet, BookTube in particular, a few years back when the internet was suddenly abuzz with discussions about his books, especially his melancholy way of writing. I learnt quite a lot about his life from BookTubers, particularly his self-destructive ways, and it intrigued me. I googled him and read whatever I could find on him. Dazai’s life was traumatic and fascinating, and he lived life on the edge. 

Dazai was the sixth son of a wealthy politician. He was one of the best fiction authors of Japan during the second world war. Dazai lived a relatively short life, ending it by suicide in 1948, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript titled ‘Goodbye’. His novel ‘No Longer Human’ was one of the more popular ones among his works but I could only get my hands on ‘The Setting Sun’. The book is short, at just a little over a 100 pages, and is set in post-World War II Japan. 

The narrator of the story is 29-year-old Kazuko, a young woman from an aristocratic family that is slowly perishing. Kazuko is struggling with her mother’s declining health and her brother Naoji’s addiction. She’s wondering where her life is headed while trying to come to terms with what’s happening around her. The book is short but there’s a lot to unpack, especially since it questions what it means to be human in a changing world. The book, though written 79 years ago, feels as relevant today as it was back then. 

It’s believed that Dazai’s writing takes inspiration from his turbulent life. A sense of gloom pervaded his life and his works too have a dark and moody undertone. Dazai showed a lot of potential for writing from an early age but the sudden suicide of his favorite author Ryunosuke Akutagawa affected him and he spiraled into self-doubt and depression. He tried to commit suicide, ran away with a geisha, and became affiliated with the banned Japanese Communist Party. He even stopped going to university. 

His family ultimately disowned him and it was only after he tried to kill himself for the second time that his family agreed to take care of his finances if he completed his degree. He got married but his wife cheated on him with his best friend. They later divorced after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. He married another woman but also cheated on her with someone else, though he ultimately left them both. Dazai suffered from mental health problems and alcoholism and died by suicide on the fourth attempt.

You get a glimpse of the genius as well as his mental state in his books. I have heard that most of Dazai’s works have a fair bit of humor in them too but The Setting Sun is one of his bleaker books. Though short, Dazai has given attention to his characters to make readers care about and empathize with them. You can probably read The Setting Sun in a single sitting but you will be thinking about it long after having finished it. 

Fiction

The Setting Sun

Osamu Dazai

Published: 1947

Publisher: Shinchosha

Pages: 126, Paperback (Wilco edition reprint) 

Kiran Desai’s second novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. In Nepal, there was quite a hullabaloo over it with readers calling it insensitive and prejudiced. I tried reading it but I couldn’t finish it. It wasn’t the depiction of Nepalis in the novel that made me unable to read it. I just couldn’t relate to the story. It felt a little off. I have since then heard people rave about the book as well as criticize it.

Readers in Nepal were infuriated by the way Desai had portrayed Nepalis in the book. They come across as crooks and people on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Desai’s disdain for Nepalis is palpable in the book, says a friend who is a voracious reader. And I agreed with her, having found what little I read quite off-putting. I believe writers should have the creative license to write uninhibitedly but to have their biases shine through is something else. So imagine my surprise when this friend told me she was reading Desai’s third novel, ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’, and that she was quite liking it. 

I bought the tomb of a book, priced at almost Rs 2000, on a whim. I’m a sucker for pretty covers and I fell in love with the deep blue cover with different phases of the moon on it. Also, Ann Patchett, one of my all time favorite authors, has endorsed the book. It’s right there on the cover: A spectacular literary achievement. Authors like Khaled Hosseini, Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, Lauren Groff, among others also have wonderful things to say about the book. Plus, it took Desai almost 20 years to write the novel. I figured there must be something in it. I decided to read the book in the month of January.

A couple of hundred pages into the book, I loved it. The characters were multilayered and I could relate to them. There were many lines and paragraphs that resonated with me. I was even taking photos of them to send to my friends. Things took a downturn when I was a little over halfway into the book. The story moved slowly and many of the instances were not related to the main plot and just weighing it down. Despite its length, the ending feels rushed. I finished it in a month, reading 20 to 30 pages in a day. But if I hadn’t roped in a friend to read it with me, I wouldn’t have continued beyond the halfway mark. 

Desai also came across as tone deaf, since despite the uproar caused by The Inheritance of Loss in Nepal, she has once again inserted a Nepali security guard into the story. The character, that comes in the form of a minor detail in the story, feels like an afterthought. The portrayal of Nepalis as security guards aka ‘Bahadur’ in books always irks me. Have authors not seen any Nepali in any other position than guards? If that’s the case, then all Indian and other immigrants should only work in department stores. Why are they then portrayed as engineers, doctors, and hot shot CEOs? 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny has many parallel plots that feel unnecessary. I struggled to remember what had happened to a certain character, for example Mina Foi who is Sonia’s aunt, when her story was told in bits and spurts and I had read many other character’s stories before getting back to her. That’s not to say that their stories are boring. Not in the least bit. It’s just that when there are stories of the protagonists’ grandfathers, mothers, aunts and various other relatives alongside the main plot, you struggle to remember who is who, how they are linked, and what happened in their lives. 

Though the book is essentially a love story, it’s also a story about immigration and the issues that come with it. But Desai didn’t know how to tell a story without dragging it out. Issues lose their gravitas when they are written like annoying complaints at best. Also the characters have a whiny voice and at times I was way too irritated to empathize with them. Kiran Desai isn’t an author I’m excited about or willing to read again, especially when she seems to be guided by fixed ideas and biases. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny had a promising start but it failed to deliver. Desai had all that time to tell a good story, instead she just makes her character mope around till forcibly tying things together in the end. 

Fiction

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

Published: 2025

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton 

Pages: 670, Hardcover

Avani is studying law and she works part time at a bookstore. She loves reading romance novels and always has her nose buried in one. Then, one day, a man walks into the bookstore. He seems like a character straight from one of her favorite love stories. Aman is hot and the CEO of a successful company. He is also smitten by Avani and says and does just the right things. The two go on a few dates but when Aman wants to take things further, Avani feels things are too good to be true and shuts him off, despite every bone in her body telling her to be with Aman.

‘Too Good To Be True’ is a simple love story of Avani and Aman. It will remind you of the many Bollywood or even Hollywood rom coms that you have watched. There’s nothing new here but it still makes you happy while reading it. You know what’s happening and where things are headed but you can’t help smiling through it all. The writing is also simple and, if you are an avid reader, you can finish the book in a few days. But there are some lines and paragraphs that are so beautiful that you might want to reread them and that makes you stay with the book a bit longer than necessary. 

I read the book because I watched an interview where the author, Prajakta Koli, was talking about her writing process. She says several ideas came to her during the lockdown and she started working on a couple with friends, putting a writer’s room together. The third idea was so simple that she didn’t feel the need for a writer’s room. Instead, she wanted to see what she could do with it on her own. Two years later, she started working on excerpts of the story. It was never supposed to be a book. She was, at best, working on a script for an eight-part series that she could sell. When she showed her work to her team, they said it could be a book and things took a different turn from then on. 

Many of you might have already been familiar with the name Prajakta Koli much before the book came out. She has been making content on YouTube for over a decade now. She goes by mostlysane. She has also worked in some Bollywood movies. Her recent work, Single Papa, a six part series on Netflix, was so hugely popular that it has already been signed for another season. I follow her on Instagram and her posts are sometimes my daily dose of entertainment and other times, just the inspiration I need to get going. I bought her book because I wanted it on my bookshelf–as a reminder to be passionate about work and tell stories that you believe in. 

I’m not a big fan of the romance genre. I have read the likes of Emily Henry, Ali Hazelwood, and Casey McQuiston because their books have been all the rage online, especially on TikTok, but I don’t naturally gravitate towards rom coms. Truth be told, I think I read Too Good To Be True for Prajakta Koli. I find her humble, honest, and charming. And I loved hearing her talk about her favorite books and writing on the podcast ‘Kitabi Cabins’. I wanted to read what she had come up with as well as be a little inspired to write. The book might not have made it to that one shelf where I keep my favorites and it might have been a little too cliche but it’s a cozy read that comes from a good place. I will give it five out five stars because it’s a lovingly written love story. I’m also giving points to the author for wanting to tell a story badly enough to write an entire book without being fazed by what critics might say about it.

Fiction

Too Good to be True

Prajakta Koli

Published: 2024

Publisher: Harper Fiction

Pages: 307, Paperback

I came across a meme on Instagram where a guy asks a girl who says she likes to read to name her favorite book. She replies, “It’s Murakami by Norwegian Wood.” This silly meme made me want to reread Haruki Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’. I had read it when I was in the 12th grade because it was all the hype back then. I had fallen in love with the plot and the characters and I always talked about it as one of my favorite books. But I remembered none of the details. I couldn’t even find my copy of the book on my shelves which is why I had to buy another one. 

All readers have favorite books. But as we continue on our reading journey and meet new characters and hear new stories, inevitably we forget the ones we have read a long time back. What remains is how they made us feel. When we say a certain book is our favorite, chances are that we are talking about how it made us feel and not what’s in it. This year, I’m planning to reread some of my favorite novels and I decided to start with Norwegian Wood. 

Norwegian Wood is perhaps one of the few books by Haruki Murakami that doesn’t have magical realism woven in the plot. It’s a simple, heartwarming love story, or rather the love triangle of Toru Watanabe, Naoko, and Midori. It starts with Toru Watanabe hearing his favorite Beatles song and being transported back to a time and place 20 years ago when he was a student in Tokyo and was in love with a girl named Naoko. She was the girlfriend of his best friend, Kizuki. He recalls those days when uneasy friendship, casual sex, passion, and desire ruled his life. Then Midori walks into his life and he has to decide whether he wants to hold on to the past or work on his future. 

Toru, Naoko, and Midori are fascinating characters with such strong personality traits that it feels like you know them personally. Some of the side characters, like Toru’s friends and Naoko’s roommate, are also integral to the plot. Despite making short appearances, Murakami ensures that they stay on his reader’s mind as much as the main characters. It’s the hallmark of a great writer. I liked the plot of the book but I loved the characters more. Even when one of the side characters goes on a rant, telling her story to Toru, you are never bored and actually want to know more. 

I can now understand why the book was all the rage when I was in school. It deals with friendship, love, and youngster’s search for identity and so it was bound to resonate with us. The love story angle is also intriguing. I find it fascinating that Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in Tokyo when the urge to write came to him. He wrote several books before Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, turned his six figure readership into millions. However, Murakami was uncomfortable with the stardom and moved to Europe and then to the United States for a life of secluded writing. It wasn’t until 1995 that he considered moving back to Japan, but he had his terms and conditions clear: He wouldn’t give interviews or make television appearances. 

I’m fascinated by Murakami’s mind. I wonder how it might feel to have all these stories in one’s head. Norwegian Wood is just one of his masterworks. Others like ‘Kafka on the Shore’, ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’, ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’  and his short story collections are brilliant too. I must have read seven or eight of his books and each of them have reminded me what good stories can do to you. They blow your mind wide open and urge you to look at things from different perspectives. 

Fiction

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami

Translated into English by Jay Rubin 

Published: 2000 (English translation)

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

Pages: 389, Paperback

‘Somewhere Beyond the Sea’ is the sequel to ‘The House in the Cerulean Sea’ by TJ Klune. Though you can read Somewhere Beyond the Sea even if you haven’t read The House in the Cerulean Sea and it will still work as a good story, it will be a much more wholesome experience if you read both the parts in the order they were written in. That way, the characters and the plot will grow on you and you will be consumed by the world Klune has created.

The House on the Cerulean Sea is one of my favorite reads of 2022 (that was when I read the book though it was published in 2020). It made me happy and the LGBTIQA+ representation was unlike any I had read till then. Despite being a story about magical creatures, it felt real and relatable. It’s also a queer love story of sorts as the author, a queer himself, has weaved one in beautifully without taking away from the central plot. 

In the book, Linus Baker, a caseworker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youths, is assigned to go to an orphanage on a remote island where there are six magical children. He has to determine whether these children are as dangerous as the ministry thinks they are, especially as one of them is the son of Satan. As Linus gets to know these mysterious children and the person who runs the orphanage, Arthur Parnassus, he starts feeling at home in this strange place. 

The House on the Cerulean Sea is a wonderful story about friendship, love, and how your sense of belongingness is tethered to people and places that make you feel safe and seen. Somewhere Beyond the Sea picks up where the first book left off. It feels like a continuation of the first part and I loved having an extended version of a story I had immensely enjoyed. It’s like being enveloped in a warm hug that you don’t want to get out of. 

In Somewhere Beyond the Sea, we see Arthur being forced to make a public statement about his past and that jeopardizes the orphanage’s and the children’s future. The Department in Charge of Magical Youths sends an investigator to determine whether Arthur is training the powerful children to cause destruction and Miss Marblemaw is far from a fair person. She seems to take an instant dislike to Arthur and the other inhabitants of the island. Arthur and Linus have to do everything it takes to stop the ministry from taking the children away from them. It’s a test of their love, for the children, for each other, and for all that they hold dear, and the extent to which they are willing to go for it. 

Klune’s books (and there are a few others apart from The House and Somewhere Beyond) are comforting, whimsical reads that make you happy as well as question your beliefs. I think of them as books to read when you need a little bit of cheer in your life and don’t want to think too hard. The plot can feel a little too simplistic and the humor a bit banal but you will still be captivated by the characters and the storytelling. Somewhere Beyond the Sea also has great LGBTIQA+ representation which is so important in stories. Arthur and Linus are interesting characters and it’s fun to get to know and see them grow. 

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is easy to read as the language is simple. It’s funny and heartfelt at the same time. There’s magic and adventure that makes you keep turning the pages. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a light, fun read to take their mind away from the humdrum of real life. 

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

TJ Klune

Published: 2024

Publisher: Tor

Pages: 405, Paperback

I heard about Riley Sager from a BookTuber I loved (She has long stopped making content and I couldn’t be more upset about it). She didn’t love his books much but she still wouldn’t stop recommending them whenever someone asked about thrillers she had read. The book she didn’t like much and gave two stars was ‘The House Across the Lake’. I picked it up because though she gave it two stars she still said it wasn’t a bad read if you hadn’t read Sager before. I really enjoyed it. I think she gave ‘Survive the Night’ one star because she couldn’t give it a zero star rating but I still enjoyed that as well. Sager tells predictable stories especially if you read a lot of thrillers but they are compulsive and hard to put down while they last. 

The one book that she did highly recommend was ‘Lock Every Door’ and I was excited to get my hands on a copy. My reasoning was if I had enjoyed books that she hadn’t been particularly thrilled about, then I was sure to love one that she was raving about. I stumbled upon a copy of Lock Every Door at Books Mandala in Baluwatar, Kathmandu, and though the font wasn’t eye-friendly, I bought it. I like thrillers that are based in apartments or closed spaces. They have a claustrophobic feel to them that I really enjoy, despite giving me goosebumps and making me feel uncomfortable. Isn’t that the best feeling when you are reading mysteries and thrillers? 

Lock Every Door is about a woman named Jules Larson who lands a new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high profile buildings and home to the rich and famous. Jules finds out that her boyfriend, Andrew, has been cheating on her and she moves out of their shared flat. This leaves her practically homeless as she has little money in her bank account. So she takes up the job at the Bartholomew despite her friend Chloe warning her about its dark history. The job comes with a few rules. She can’t have visitors over. She must not spend nights away from the apartment. And she shouldn’t disturb the other residents. 

These seem like simple rules to Jules especially since she will be making about $4000 a month for the next three months and getting to stay at a really luxurious apartment. She makes a new friend, Ingrid, who is another apartment sitter in the same building. Ingrid confesses to Jules that the building scares her but Jules dismisses it. That night, Jules hears a scream from Ingrid’s apartment and the next day Ingrid is gone. The girl who hired Jules, Lesley, tells her Ingrid left without notice but Jules thinks something sinister is going on and that Lesley, along with the building’s other residents, is trying to hide it. She starts searching for Ingrid and looking for clues behind her disappearance and in the process uncovers a dark and deadly secret. Ingrid isn’t the first apartment sitter to have disappeared. 

Lock Every Door has a nice plot. There are elements of suspense and tension. You keep turning the pages. But it’s also predictable, especially if you read or watch a lot of mysteries. I could guess what was happening when I was less than halfway into the book. A character entered and what was going on became clear to me. I wasn’t wrong despite hoping there was another ending than the one I was guessing. But I can understand why the BookTuber couldn’t stop talking about Sager’s books. They are gripping stories that are enjoyable to read. Sager is also known for plot twists that you don’t see coming. All in all, I would say you don’t want to miss out on his books that are good distractions from whatever is going on in your life. 

Fun fact: Riley Sager is actually the pen name of American author Todd Ritter.

Fiction

Lock Every Door

Riley Sager

Published: 2019

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

Pages: 368, Paperback

I first heard about Jojo Moyes because of her hugely popular book ‘Me Before You’. Published in 2012, this romance novel was all the hype back then. It turned my non-readers friends into readers overnight. The book has a sequel ‘After You’ which was published in 2015 and a second sequel ‘Still Me’ published in 2018. I often got asked if I had read the book. The answer to which was always a resounding no. And I had no intentions of reading it either. Something about the whole hullabaloo around the book had put me off, and I wasn’t a big reader of romance either. In a way, in my mind, I wrote Moyes off as a writer of fluff that I wasn’t going to waste my time on. 

Then a friend whose reading choices always fascinated me recommended ‘The Giver of Stars’ by Moyes. I reluctantly picked it up. I didn’t expect to like it but it was one of the best books I had read that year. I still recommend it to everyone I know and it’s one of my picks when I have to give a book to someone. Set in small-town 1930’s Kentucky, the book is based on the real-life Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky, or the Horseback Librarian program as it was called then. The program delivered books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s traveling library and ran from 1935 to 1943, making books accessible to over 100,000 rural inhabitants. I love historical fiction and The Giver of Stars was compelling. Romance is one aspect of the novel but there’s a lot to it than just that. 

I have since then retracted my stand on Moyes and look forward to her books, though I still haven’t read Me Before You. ‘The Girl You Left Behind’ is another fascinating work that tells the story of two women who are connected by a beautiful painting. Moyes, I have come to realize, writes about women in an honest, empathetic, and engrossing way. She doesn’t show them as weaklings or as extremely courageous women through and through. Instead, she makes them completely human and relatable–with both strengths and weaknesses.

‘Someone Else’s Shoes’ is also the story of two women, Sam and Nisha, whose fates collide when they mistakenly pick up each other’s bags at the gym. Sam is struggling with a depressed husband and a boss who pretty much hates her. She can’t afford to lose her job because her family depends on the income. Worse, her best friend has cancer. So when she finds Christian Louboutin shoes and a Chanel jacket in a Marc Jacobs bag that she thought was hers, she tries them on and feels like a new person. 

Nisha (who the shoes belong to), on the other hand, had it all till she didn’t. Her lavish lifestyle comes to a startling halt when her husband throws her out of the penthouse they share, blocking her access to all their accounts as well as her clothes and shoes. She finds herself working in the same hotel where she once stayed in order to survive till she can eventually get back at Carl and reclaim what is rightfully hers. Then her husband offers her a settlement if she can return the Christian Louboutin shoes to him. The only problem is she doesn’t have them but she is determined to get it back which is how she eventually meets Sam and the two become unwilling allies in order to get their lives back on track. 

Narrated alternately by the two main characters, Someone Else’s Shoes is a compulsive read that you don’t want to put down. There’s a little bit of romance too but it fits into the storyline and doesn’t seem forced. It also deals with some heavy themes like identity, loss, and grief, though these aren’t given the seriousness they deserve. But I have no complaints about the writing or the plot. Sam and Nisha, and the friends they have and make along the way, are all interesting characters. I was hooked on this gorgeous book about the importance of female friendships.

Someone Else’s Shoes

Jojo Moyes

Published: 2023

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

Pages: 423, Paperback