For me, holidays, especially Dashain and Tihar, are times to catch up on my reading. I always plan to read more than I normally do on days I have work during my time off. But Dashain and Tihar are hectic times, with family, chores, shopping, and more to attend to. I always make ambitious plans and feel disappointed when l can’t follow through. Sometimes, I will have barely finished a book in a week and since I tend to finish at least two during regular times, the feeling is quite discomfiting.
So this year, for Tihar, I have decided to be smarter with my reading selections. The idea is that I’m going to pick some books that I don’t have to commit to for hours at a stretch. And I should be able to dip in and out of them without losing track. That is why I have picked a collection of poems, a book of short stories, and a slim non-fiction that I have read before (it can be called cheating but it’s a good book so I don’t mind).
The Poetry Pharmacy by William Sieghart
I used to be intimidated by poetry but once I started reading them, I realized you don’t always need them to make sense right away. You can simply let the words wash over you and slowly they will unfurl in your mind. ‘The Poetry Pharmacy’ by William Sieghart is a collection of 56 poems by different poets prescribed by Sieghart to help you during different conditions like anxiety, loneliness, and even grief. The idea of the poetry pharmacy was born when Sieghart was asked to prescribe poems from one of his books to the audience during a literary festival. People queued up to be prescribed a poem that would fix whatever was weighing them down. The Poetry Pharmacy has Sieghart’s ‘prescriptions’ on one side and the poem on the other page. You can randomly flip to a page and read what’s there instead of reading it cover to cover.
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq
This book won the International Booker Prize 2025. Translated from the Kannada to English by Deepa Bhasthi, the 12 stories in the collection capture the lives of everyday women and girls in Muslim communities in Southern India according to the book’s blurb. The stories were originally published between 1990 and 2023. Mushtaq has championed women’s rights and protested against discrimination and the stories come out of her years of experience and what she’s seen play out around her. I recommend you get the hardbound book that has recently come out or read it on the Kindle because the paperback version is flimsy and feels weird—the pages and typeset aren’t very nice. I love reading short stories because they don’t require too much effort but you still have a nice plot and character(s) taking up space in your head, especially if the author is good at telling stories in the shorter format. A short story comforts me and makes me feel like I have read something substantial when I don’t have the time for a longer fiction.
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
I have read ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf a few times and I own multiple copies of this book. And I have read every single copy. I recently bought a copy, the cover of which I really liked and I’m going to read this during Tihar. The good thing is that it’s a slim volume and I already know what I’m getting into. A Room of One’s Own grew out of two lectures that Woolf had been invited to give at a college in Cambridge in 1928. It argues why Jane Austen or Emily Bronte could have never written ‘War and Peace’ and the importance of financial freedom for women to be able to write. A room of one’s own symbolizes a space for women away from societal obligations. The book is freely available online as it’s a classic so you won’t have to go searching for it if you don’t have a copy but I highly recommend getting one as the feel of holding a book doesn’t compare with reading on the kindle or the phone.