S02E10: Favourite non-mystery reads from 2025

About murder, she did NOT write.

Painting by Osheen Vijin, an artist who draws women at leisure. See her work here.

This episode is for the handful of my readers who said (in my poll last time) that you want to know what else I’ve read and loved in 2025 apart from murder mysteries. Here goes.

Indian Millennials: Who are they really? by A.M. Gautam (2024)

In spite of the awful cover and a blurb that does it a grave injustice, this book is really interesting—ignore both and pick it up. It is a collection of standalone personal essays from the point of view of a North Indian millennial man, each examining subjects and problems that many millennials of his socioeconomic and educational background have pondered in the last decade (and continue to ponder, because the answers aren't easy)—climate change, political extremism, diets and body image, spirituality, conspiracy theories, liberalism, and so on.

One of my favourite definitions of an "essay" says that it is a journey undertaken by the writer to make sense of a subject; the writer writes to clarify their own thoughts and views, catch contradictions and prejudices, and make sense of the subject in their own unique way. By this definition, readers should be able to see the writer's mind working and the process or stages they go through to arrive at a conclusion. And by this definition, A.M. Gautam's essays are excellent.

He writes these as much for himself as for an audience and that inherent honesty endeared the book to me. I read it in one sitting, over seven or eight hours in my favourite cafe. Each essay is standalone, so you do not need to do this. Chances are, you might anyway because they make for easy reading while also making you pause to nod along or admire how well-articulated some thoughts are or reflect on points that hadn't occurred to you.

The book isn't faultless ; for one, the author's own limitations of experience and personal prejudices colour his perspective. But I would argue that this is true for all writing—can any author be truly unbiased? It is also not representative of all Indian millennial voices—there's a definite skew towards urban, male, upper-class perspectives. I still loved it.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder (2022)

We judge books by their cover ALL the time—thanks to the blurb at the back and the cover design ( I just did that a couple of paragraphs ago). In this fantastic book, the author, who has spent over two decades in publishing as a writer of thousands of book blurbs, reveals what goes into the writing of a good blurb.

What I love is that the book is a great mix of trivia, context, quotes, and surprisingly, excellent writing advice for copywriters. It also answers questions like: what does a blurb-writer do when the book is shit but the blurb still has to sell it? Is there a point to strap lines? Are quotes and testimonials from more famous authors published on the cover truly honest? How do the cover design and the blurb work together? And so on.

It’s a fun and interesting read and will also make a good gift for a bookish friend.

Monk and Robot 1 & 2 by Becky Chambers (2021)

Why am I here? What am I doing with my life? What is the purpose of my existence? These are questions that I have been mulling over for a few years now. During a particularly bleak spiral of wondering about the point of anything, a friend who has a knack for recommending the right book at just the right time, sent me A psalm for the wild-built.

I read it over 24 hours in a daze of delight and have concluded that this is one of the most beautiful books I have read in recent times.

Set on an earth-like planet at some point in the future, this follows tea monk Sibling Dex, who embarks on a journey of introspection and self-discovery, joined, some way in, by the robot Mosscap. I can’t explain what the story is, especially because this is very unlike the sort of book I usually read. Later, I found out that the genre is called ‘sci-fi hope punk’—make of that what you will.

The book does not answer all of my existential questions but at different points, I found myself inexplicably blinking back tears or putting the book down to stare at a row of potted plants outside and nod heavily. "This made me feel seen" is a phrase so overused on social media as to lose all meaning, but I am going to use it here, feeling trite and stupid but tritely and stupidly happy too.

Take the story literally, take it metaphorically, take it philosophically—just take it and read it. it's wonderful.

P.S. I bought the second book in the duology and read that over another 24 hours. It let me linger in the land of Sibling Dex and Mosscap a little longer and I think I’ll re-read both many times.

Searches: Selfhood in the digital age by Vauhini Vara (2025)

What a fantastic cover that is, no? It’s the biggest reason I picked up this book from a Sapna Book House in HSR Layout (which also yielded some other unusual finds).

Vauhini Vara gives us a history of the internet age starting in the late 80s, but in the form of a personal history starting with teenage angst and online explorations in early chatrooms. She also includes conversations and memories from her time as a tech reporter in Silicon Valley and we get snatches of Zuckerberg and Altman and Musk in their early years. As a 90s kid, I found all this familiar, relatable, and fascinating, even though I grew up in India a decade later. At the time, much of this tech came to India with a lag of about 5-8 years.

The second interesting thing about the book is the different creative formats that the author has explored. As she wrote each chapter, she shared the drafts with ChatGPT and had an ongoing conversation about what was written and where the narrative is going. As a frequent experimenter on ChatGPT, I could spot a number of patterns, biases, and predictable responses from the AI, but it is also fascinating to see the sort of questions and inner moral struggles that the author went through at different stages while using AI—as a writer, a creator, a consumer, and a person who cares about climate change.

There were also chapters composed entirely of the author's internet searches and glimpses into actual product reviews she had written on Amazon. A bizarre format, yes. But they created a vivid, if skewed, picture of the author's mind.

In the end, what is the book about? I would describe it as a memoir of the early years of the age of AI, seen through the eyes of a writer who can't help being interested in AI and taking advantage of the conveniences that tech capitalism has brought us, even as she recognizes that her personal and professional identity is under threat by this very technology.

Which is, if not all of us, definitely me on many days.

A matter of death and life by Irvin and Marilyn Yalom (2021)

Irvin D. Yalom is a renowned psychiatrist, psychotherapist, academician, and thinker whose work on group therapy is considered foundational in the field. Thanks to my study of transactional analysis in the past couple of years, his name and ideas were familiar. This book, however, is co-authored with his wife Marilyn Yalom, a professor of French and feminist author.

This is a deeply moving memoir written by a couple who loved each other and had the privilege of living together for 65+ years, raising a family, travelling the world, and often, collaborating with each other. This, their last collaboration, has Irv and Marilyn authoring a chapter alternately until Marilyn dies—and then Irv continues to write about living life without her. Living as "an independent adult" for the first time in 65 years, he puts it.

They don't use exaggerated language or a lot of visual imagery, but their deep connection and love for each other shines through every simple, honest sentence. At different points, both of them have acknowledged their privilege, and I see some anger in the reviews around how "easy" it is to navigate illness and death when money isn't a problem. I don't mind this too much—everyone should have privilege. and more importantly, people should not be penalized for writing about their own lives and how they have experienced it.

I appreciate how frank both of them have been. Marilyn's suffering and desire to look for assisted death options as a way to end it contrasting with Irv's desperate need to hold on to her and, in turn, his life. Even when M tells him she is ready to leave, much as he loves her, much as he is an experienced psychotherapist and medical doctor, Irv struggles to accept it. He writes about what it feels like to outlive practically all of his peers, to see familiar worlds change, to know that he will lose, in a matter of months, the only other person who has known him for most of his life. It's a desperate kind of loneliness.

What am I taking away from the book? First, joy for Irvin and Marilyn, at their wonderful and interesting life together. No matter how life ends, they've truly, fully lived it. Second, how both of them seized opportunities and accomplished so much, purely out of interest. Success came from their passion, discipline, and consistent effort—that's admirable and inspiring. Third, no matter how long you've had with someone, the pain of loss can be devastating. But as Irv wrote, maybe living through one cycle of all seasons, and then another, will help us somehow live on.

I lost my father, all my grandparents, and a grand-aunt who lived with us before I turned 30. Sometimes, I think that has made me see debilitating illness and death as familiar, inevitable parts of life. This book reminded me that while that might be true, life can still be rich and beautiful.

A teashop in Kamalapura and other classic Kannada stories (2025)

As a teenager, I used to read a lot more vernacular literature: directly in Malayalam and translations from Tamizh, Bengali, Chinese, Russian, and Italian. Somewhere along the way, that narrowed to English…to the extent that when someone asks me what language I think in, I have to say English. :|

In 2025, I discovered a sudden yearning to read more literature from my homeland. India itself has 22 officially recognized languages and hundreds of dialects. I felt short stories are a great way to get reacquainted and this was the first I picked up.

This is an anthology of Kannada short stories written in the early 20th century, translated without losing the vernacular touch or the cultural connections. It is a commendable effort by the translator and I really appreciate the various notes written by the editor and the translator sharing rich information about the evolution of the Kannada sannakathE (literally ‘short stories’) and the writers and publishers that contributed to the evolution of this genre.

The stories themselves are fascinating for both the variety and the commonality of themes, the often simplistic (I don't mean 'simple') style, and the glimpses they offer into the society of Karnataka 100-125 years ago. Many deal with the man-woman relationship, attraction, social norms, class and caste boundaries, and more. They can also be painful because they show you how so much has changed in India, but so much still has not.

What does it feel like? by Sophie Kinsella (2024)

Over a decade ago, when I was going through a rough time in life, I remember devouring Sophie Kinsella's feel-good novels and living vicariously through them. At some point, I Googled the author and realised that she lived a pretty charmed life herself, the kind I might have like to live. I remember thinking with some envy how lucky she was.

Which is why this book was very hard to read. The novella, the most autobiographical of her works, starts with a fictionalized version of the author remembering some of the high points of her life and acknowledging how lucky her life has been. Almost too much luck for one person, she writes, and how she might have run out of it. The rest of the book uses different styles and formats to cover everything that comes after she receives her glioblastoma diagnosis.

I felt terribly sorry for what Kinsella and her family are going through. Yet the book is not really a tearjerker. It makes you clear your throat in a couple of places but in her characteristically delightful fashion, in spite of staring down the barrel of an uncertain yet certain future, Kinsella is able to smile and make us smile. And that really has been the magic of her books all these years.

A few weeks after I read this book, Kinsella passed away.

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What have you been reading? I’d love some recommendations.