Category: Recommendations

Mother’s Day is coming and we do miss scrambling and shopping for gifts to pamper our mothers with.

While we brainstorm ideas to make this day more special than it already is – we decided to ask our fellow Penguins about the books (because, what else, right?) they would love to gift to their mothers!

 

My mother and I share a relationship where most things go unsaid. She lost her mum at a very young age and to bring her some comfort, I would like to gift her LEGACY by Sudha Menon which is a collection of personal and evocative letters from parents to their daughters. The wisdom my grandmother couldn’t give her now, some of these delightful and inspirational letters might!

Vaishnavi Singh, Manager – Digital Platforms & Video Rights

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My mother loves everything written by Gulzar and ofcourse loves his voice too (she always wanted dad to speak like him). I grew up listening to ghazals and songs written by Gulzar because my mother is a huge fan of his writings  I love the way my mom actually makes me understand each and every word in a song written by him as if he actually sat with her when he was penning it.

For her undying love for Gulzar, i’d like to gift her the book, SELECTED POEMS BY GULZAR. She will love reading them!

Soumili Sen, Executive – Digital

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I would love to gift Mumma Sudha Murty’s THREE THOUSAND STITCHES. She adores short, impactful stories and especially the ones that are more about people rather than the plot. She has enjoyed other books by Sudha Murty in the past, is an ardent fan of her writing, so I think Three Thousand Stitches would be perfect for her collection.

Ananya Mathur, Consultant – Marketing & Digital

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While my entire family is a bibliophile, it was my mum who fired our crazy obsession for books, so much so that books became a part of our household, our home décor, our dinner tables, and our bedtime rituals. Believe it or not, she started working only to be able to afford the books she wanted to read, after her father couldn’t expend any more money to her. Presently, she is over 70 years old and books seem to have lost their charm on her. She no longer has the patience or the span of attention and I have seen her struggle to read. Now if I am asked to gift her a book, I think I will give her Sudha Murty’s HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE. A simple book with real stories and a message at the end of each. My mom discovered Sudha Murty at the Penguin Annual Lecture 2019 and she was thoroughly taken with her personality, her life story, and her charisma. I believe my mother would enjoy traversing through Mrs Murty’s world of timeless stories.

Pallavi Narayanan, Senior Manager – Corporate Communications

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My pick is LEGAL CONFIDENTIAL: ADVENTURES OF AN INDIAN LAWYER. My mother’s always loved consuming content surrounding crime and the legal system. The context of this book being a memoir as well as it being based in Delhi will make it an absolutely thrilling read for her.

Veer Misra, Freelancer – Digital

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There are characters that brought us closer to ourselves, and stories that we didn’t know we needed to read.

If you ever wondered which books left a mark on the people who work on (almost) all your favourite books, here’s a list this World Book Day:

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

As a (trying) writer, a lot of the books I get attached to are those that bring me closer to the themes I want to write about. Arundhati Roy’s fiction is rooted in the rawest socio-political fabric of India. This one is my pick because of the surprise element – I picked it up accidentally, not really braced for the enormity of the characters, themes, story of the book. It was cinematic and incredibly immersive, and left me with a hangover of sorts where I couldn’t read anything new for about three months. I think her characters really blend fact and fiction; the way she writes about the pit, absolute rock bottom of human suffering shakes you to the core. Not to mention that this has some of the most powerful lines I have read: “…the fact that something so fragile, so unbearably tender had survived, had been allowed to exist, was a miracle.”

This was one of the very few books that have made me bawl.

– Swara, Freelancer – Digital

To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird will never stop being a good book, and it will never stop inspiring people. This richly textured novel, woven from the strands of small-town life, lets readers walk in the shoes of one fully realized character after another. It’s one of the most important books of our times, Atticus Finch’s message should be heard in the midst of all the global conflicts that we hear of on the news every night.

Importantly, everyone who reads it can take something out of it which no one has before.

–Sanjeeta, Assistant Manager – Marketing & Digital

The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh

My favourite read and re-read is the The Shadow Lines. No matter how many times you read it, you find something new. What are the shadow lines? Are they around me? There are days when I actually feel like Tridib. That’s the magic of this book.

I was in college when I first read it. I thought that my life was not perfect because I had just come out of a relationship and everything felt bad. But when I started reading this book, I started to think differently. This book helped me understand the importance of having multiple perspectives.

–Soumili, Senior Executive – Digital

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 

The book that I keep going back to again and again is Jane Eyre. It was the first classic I read and I really enjoyed reading about a simple, stubborn and intelligent woman who beat the odds stacked against her. Jane and Mr. Rochester ignited a passion for reading in me and I cannot thank this book enough for it!

I revisted the book in college and loved analyzing it’s depths especially the character of Bertha Mason.

–Kadambari, Consultant – Digital

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy 

Nothing I say about The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse can ever explain how it feels like a warm hug on a cold night. You don’t have to be feeling lost or down to find a ray of light in it. It’s a book about friendship, love, kindness and hope, but it’s not preachy at all. Everything in this book is so beautiful; the flow, the illustrations and the characters. It’s a story I wish I had read a long time ago.

–Ananya, Consultant – Marketing & Digital

‘Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

– Mason Cooley

 

If you are a reader like us – we’re sure you’d agree that we have never needed to step out to have our own adventures and travels. Times are uncertain and quarantining is not always easy. But one perk of being a book lover is that we always have an escape within reach!

We have piled up some (e)books that you can dive into if you are craving a bit of retreat from the real world!

The Best of Ruskin Bond

What better to transport you than Ruskin Bond?

This one brings together the best stories and poetry from one of our favourite storytellers. This literary landscape is worth disappearing into for its rich web of emotions and unforgettable characters.

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The Torchbearers

We suggest bringing some exciting adventure into your homes with Prem, Kushal and Samhita – three endearing kids whose designated roles as ‘The Torchbearers’ set them on the path to fight demons and find the Nectar of Immortality to bring the gods back in power.

Also – there is a very punny fish in there!

Puffin Book of Bedtime Stories

Here’s one for the restless young ones! From a wandering elephant to a helpful yeti, from flying houses and faraway galaxies; delight the kids with a range of imaginative stories that would make their bedtime more exciting and active.

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Artemis Fowl Series

Impossible to recommend just one – so we advise diving into this whole series of misadventures!

Join twelve-year-old Artemis in discovering a whole new a world of armed and dangerous – and extremely high-tech – fairies.

This is a major Disney film now, so we think it’s high time to prepare on the page before the onscreen adventure!

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Little Women

Timeless tales are perfect to transport yourself into different times and memories. Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth are always a delight to revisit in the rural neighbourhood of Marmee in Masuchusetts.

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The French Lieutenant’s Woman

A classic, delightful, and often irreverent postmodernist novel, this one takes you to back to the Victorian age in the most metafictional way possible. AND you get to choose from three endings!

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The Shadow Lines

Another celebrated classic – Amitav Ghosh’s story a must-read in these times for its themes of memory and its stream-of-conscious narrative. This is a perfect read to tie in with the reflective and nostalgic headspace we are in these days.

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Chats with the Dead

Whodunnits are so brilliant at sucking you in – and Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel puts a delightful spin on the genre! This one takes you to a lot of places: the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war, life, afterlife, and everything in-between.

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Sarojini’s Mother

This literary masterpiece is in our list mostly because of Kunal Basu’s cinematic prose that would take you right into the sights and scenes of Calcutta. This is a perfect window to the city to transport you while sitting on your beds and chairs.

As eclectic as we have tried to keep this, there are ALWAYS more worlds out there to step into. If you know about them, hit us up!

From love and loss, to survival and trauma – fiction brings out the human condition like no other space in literature. We love snuggling up with a good fictional story; there are so many characters to meet. And we especially love how a good story can take us through such an incredible range of emotions. There is nothing like screaming at your book because a character won’t stop being stupid, or jumping on our bed (you did not hear this from us) when those two people you had been rooting for over 300 pages finally get together.

This February, we decided to take our reading passions a notch higher by celebrating the very singular experience reading fiction can give you. Our shelves this month is filled with as wide a range as the emotions these stories elicit. And we are giving you glimpses into just some of these worlds that we are stepping into.

It is time for #FictionFebruary, and we are (re)looking at some of the most poignant moments from our February stories that stayed with us long after we had turned the last page.

War, Memory, and Victimization

Chats with the Dead delve deep into the complexities and nuances of war and victimization. From all the voices from the afterlife we get to hear, this one really got us to stop for a moment.

 ‘If suicide bombers knew they end up in the same waiting room with all their victims, […] They may think twice.’

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Writing the Rainbow

Alongside the rich cast of characters we get to meet in her worlds, Namita Gokhale has also given us some inspiring female characters who make us think on what it means to be a woman today. Her latest, Jaipur Journals, is no different, where we meet Zoya Mankotia, a celebrated writer making waves with her latest novel. In a panel, she speaks about the safety and freedom in writing that allows us to be who we are:

‘We can be who we are, write as we like. Sexuality, as a narrative, is a freeflowing river.’

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Strength in Times of Trouble

Djinn Patrol is a powerful story of human warmth, resilience, and bravery that can emerge in times of trouble. We were hooked from the first page itself, with these lines:

‘When Mental was alive, he was a boss-man with eighteen or twenty children working for him, and he almost never raised his hand against any of them. Every week he gave them 5Stars to split between themselves, or packs of Gems, and he made them invisible to the police and the evangelist-types who wanted to salvage them from the streets, and the men who watched them with hungry eyes as the children hurtled down railway tracks, gathering up plastic water bottles before a train could ram into them.’

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On Grieving the Right Thing  

Sarojini’s Mother gives us a complex portrait of motherhood that goes well beyond just a biological concept. Sarojini confides in her friend Chiru about an abortion she went through because she was not ready to be a mother; and the confusing weight of grief that came with it:

‘Being right doesn’t take away the sadness, does it? I knew I’d lost again. I’d done to my baby what my mother had done to me. I’d kept the circle going. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t stop myself from grieving. That’s when I knew I had to come to Calcutta.’

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On Fighting the Sadness

We all try to deal with the weight of sadness in our day-to-day life. Seventeen-year-old Gehna’s words from Not All Those Who Wander on her simple but effective ways to fight her depression have definitely become our new strategy:

‘Wiser now, Gehna was no longer sure that she had any say in the comings and goings of the sadness, but she still held hope of ducking it. She had drawn strict boundaries, drip-feeding herself the pop songs about heartbreak and the tragic movies she loved, never exceeding a ratio of one part sad to nine parts happy.’

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Too Much of A Good Thing

In Soar, we loved the friendship between soldiers Bholanath and Khudabaksh during World War I. It hit us hard when they realized and discovered the power and potential of greed in a dream-nightmare sequence:

‘Invited guests waited patiently as the pair added item after item to their infinite plate. This went on for hours in the dream—the soldiers smelling the food, acquiring the food, but never enjoying it. Eventually they realized that the abundance would never end, that abundance only enlarged appetite. So the dream revealed itself as a nightmare; and, at the same instant, they sat up.’

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Moving On is Hard 

Love and loss are very complicated things, and one of the hardest to move on from. We felt Amal’s pain in The World Between Us as she struggled to move on from her husband, Haider and her love for him. Reaching the point where she took the decision to move on made for one of the most powerful moments in her story: 

‘It was true that I was still very much in love with Haider and his memories, but I was also beginning to realize that it was high time I moved on.

Life was so much more than a lifetime spent mourning and brooding on past memories.’

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Unspoken Love 

Family and home are two other things that can be beautiful and complicated all at once. One of the most powerful strands in Undertow is the simmering yet unspoken love between Loya and her estranged grandfather, Torun. Torun and his wife had thrown out Loya’s mother for marrying outside of her community. Twenty-five-year-old Loya returns to Torun and ends up reconnecting with him. This particular moment between the two of them carried exceptional emotional weight for us:

‘The girl then rose from her seat and came across to him.

She squatted and put her long arms across his shoulders. ‘I love you, I think, Koka.’

He watched her make her way back to her bedroom and drained the last of the amber liquid into his glass. He swallowed the last words, lest they escaped him.’

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On Battles and Bravery

The Crown of the Seven Stars give us a powerful character in the form of Saahas (which means “bravery” in English) as he refuses to submit to oppression and tyranny that has taken over his Kingdom. The lines below are some of the many that translate internal battles into very external fights.

‘A blade whirling in each hand, Saahas roared like a summer storm and Zankroor came at him, braids tangling around his head like a white cobweb. Striking hard with his curved axe, he broke Saahas’s iron blade in half, the impact jolting Saahas to the ground. Zankroor swung the axe again, squealing in glee, and Saahas lunged, stabbing the broken blade into his adversary’s thigh, just above the knee, his other arm moving with lightning speed. Zankroor grunted. His axe whistled downwards, eager to meet Saahas’s neck. ‘

These lines and these characters brought us just a little bit closer to ourselves, and to life in general. Emotions and desires are never easy to figure out, but stories like these definitely help a little.

Which one of these are you going to pick up this month? Do share with us in the comments below!

Whether it’s fiction, non-fiction or a picture book on the theme of depression. We have an exciting range of books for you this February. You’ll run out of days before you run out of books to read this month!

Here’s the list of books you should look out for:

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

Nine-year-old Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari and Faiz. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him.

But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighbourhood. Jai, Pari and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and rumours of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.

Undertow

The tale of the troubled relationships of a family and what it might take to put the pieces back together.

Years ago, Torun Goswami and his charismatic, formidable wife cast their Rukmini away from their home and their lives for marrying out of her community.

Now, Rukmini’s daughter, Loya, twenty-five, solitary and sincere, arrives at Torun’s old yellow house. Will she be able to change her nonexistent relationship with her grandfather and in the process figure out who she is?

Soar

A laugh-out loud book by the author of Sitayana and Godsong. 

Bholanath and Khudabaksh are two soldiers in the British Indian Army, sent off to Europe to fight in World War I.

When a mission in a surveillance balloon goes awry, these two gentle soldiers-along with an exceptionally ill-tempered squirrel-are set adrift high above the Western Front. Follow their grand tragicomic adventure!

The World Between Us

The bestselling queen of romance is back!

When Amal finds out that her disastrous Tinder match is now going to be her boss, she can’t be more annoyed. Qais Ahmed is everything she never wants to be: narcissistic, manipulative and arrogant.

However, despite her relentless efforts, she is unable to resist his charm. Will a disturbing secret tear them apart or bind them together forever?

Calligraphies of Love

Inspired by timeless poems from around the world, Hassan Massoudy’s calligraphy takes us on a visual journey through love in its many forms.

Through his signature broad strokes and vibrant colours, this master calligrapher brings to life the words and wisdom of some of our greatest poets, from Ibn Zaydoun and Rumi to John Keats.

With Love: A Collection of Letters 

Dear Reader,

Letters change people.

They turn forty-year-old men into helpless fathers.
Scared mothers into fierce fighters.
Long-lost pets into possessive exes.
And old lovers into best friends.

They make you spell help.
Give someone a second first chance.
Make you leave behind a home.
And find another in someone.

Sometimes, they’re warnings.
Sometimes, confessions.
And sometimes, a story left untold.

Letters change people, they say.

Let’s hope these change you too.

With love,
Us

Terribly Tiny Tales and Penguin come together on the same page with this book!

The Girl Who Disappeared

The bestselling author of The Girl Who Knew Too Much is back!

At the onset of her getaway to the hills of Himachal Pradesh, Nisha knew something terrible was going to happen. Less than seventy-two hours later, she goes missing under mysterious circumstances.

With barely any leads, the police know they have to work doubly hard if they want to find her, but with each passing day, the mystery around her disappearance gets murkier.

Where is Nisha?

Inside A Dark Box 

A pertinent picture book on depression.

When you get trapped in darkness, finding your way out can be a long and lonely battle, especially when the war is within your own mind. Here’s a peep inside a mind struggling with itself.

Fearless

One girl can change everything.

Through the ages, strong, inspirational women and girls have risen in response to uncertainty and injustice. A timeless call to arms that many like Fatima Jinnah, Asma Jehangir and Malala Yousafzai have always been answering.

Fearless chronicles the lives of fifty such incredible women-scientists, lawyers, politicians, activists and artists-who incite hope, inspire action and initiate dialogue.

Not All Those Who Wander

Quirky and heartfelt, this is a story of millennial friendship that is #litAF.

Seventeen-year-old Gehna Rai has normal friends and belongs to a normally dysfunctional family. Everything about Gehna is normal-except she just found out that she’s going to be a mom.

Eram, a nerdy high-school dropout, dreams of becoming a poker pro while trying to keep his dad, who has Parkinson’s disease, from going completely mental. He has little time for much else-until a chance meeting with a girl blows his life to pieces.

The Crown of Seven Stars

Aum is under attack. The enemies are not external; rather, they are within the kingdom, each obsessed with the Crown of Seven Stars. Early one morning, Destiny rolls her dice. General Saahas, heir to the throne, becomes a hunted man and Aum plunges into chaos, submitting meekly to the tyranny of the self-appointed Raja Shunen and the wily Queen Manmaani.

Rolling the dice once more, Destiny prepares to bend Saahas to her will. She, not Saahas, must decide the winner of the Crown of Seven Stars.

The Other Side of the Divide

A fresh perspective on Pakistan, how Indians view Pakistan and how Pakistanis view India and Indians.

Pegged on journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s visit to Pakistan, this book provides insights into the country beyond what we already know about it. The Other Side of The Divide attempts to present a contemporary portrait of Pakistan as a complicated and conflicted country suspended between tradition and modernity.

Chanakya Niti

Chanakya’s numerous sayings on life and living — popularized in the wake of his successful strategy to put Chandragupta Maurya on the throne, if legend is to be believed — have been compiled in numerous collections and anthologies over time. This entire corpus was referred to as Chanakya Niti.

A.N.D. Haksar’s wonderful translation places this work into context, showing how these verses have endured in the popular imagination for so long.

Endless Song

The Tiruvaymoli is a grand 1102-verse poem, composed in the ninth century by Sathakopan-Nammalvar, the greatest of the alvar poets. Ingeniously weaving a garland of words-where each beginning is also an ending-the poet traces his cyclical quest for union with the supreme lord, Visnu.

In this magnificent translation, Archana Venkatesan transports the flavour and cadences of Tamil into English, capturing the different voices and range of emotions through which the poet expresses his enduring desire for release.

Nava-e-Sarosh

Delhi established a legacy of poets whose words set hearts ablaze for the times to come. Love, with all its wine-infused passions and experiences of yearning, has preoccupied classic poets of the city.

As a patron of Urdu poetry and a resident of Delhi, Sanjiv Saraf’s personal investment in preserving and furthering the arts in the Urdu world led to the creation of this book.

Desire, longing and the complexities of love are therefore open to exploration for you, dear reader and lover, through the words laid out in these ghazals by the ‘voices from beyond’.

An Officer and His Holiness

In 1959, the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet into India, where he was granted refuge. Few know about the carefully calibrated operation to escort him safely from the Indian border. An Officer and His Holiness narrates how political officer Har Mander Singh successfully managed this assignment in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) with limited resources, and despite a treacherous terrain and external threats.

The Story of Yoga

How did an ancient Indian spiritual discipline turn into a GBP 20 billion-a-year mainstay of the global wellness industry?

This comprehensive history sets yoga in its global cultural context for the first time. From arcane religious rituals and medieval body-magic, through muscular Christianity and the British Raj, to the Indian nationalist movement and the arrival of yoga in the twentieth-century West.