Since everyone is doing their top 100 books lists and such, here are my top 100 Indian reads of 2021.

1. The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro. A stunning read of how patriarchy works in the country and what led to the death of two teenage girls, children really. 2. Midnight's Borders by @suchitrav . This book left me thinking so much about borders, about the lines we draw, and how people who have no say in it suffer on a daily basis because of geo-political problems. A must-read.

100 books by Indian women in Translation. There are so many of them and I can’t wait. So here we go. So many languages. So many books. 1. A Life in Words: Memoirs by Ismat Chughtai. (Urdu title: Kaghazi hai Pairahan). Translator: M. Asaduddin. This book is an honest account of a writer’s life – from childhood to youth to old-age. Chughtai speaks of women’s liberation to class differences with great intensity.

My first Murakami. I doubt he was that well-known then in India. Date of delivery: 23rd of May 2001. 19 years ago. I read the book in two days. I reread it immediately. I lost my father to death six days later. (1/6) Murakami’s writing got interconnected with the death of a parent. With a loss that one can’t recover from. You just learn how to hide those wounds, smile, and before you know it, you see people with their fathers or a set of parents and it stings. Hurts even after 19 years (2/6)

I remember like it happened yesterday. 25th of August 2006. I met my friend K at Prithvi Theatre and that is when I would first hear of Ismat Apa. He had booked tickets knowing how much I would love the play. I hadn't heard of her before, and yet he was confident. He was correct. It was a play of 3 of her stories. Each of them enacted better than the other. I was mesmerised. I was angry at myself for not knowing of her before. This progressive writer. This writer who wrote her mind and heart. This writer who said what she had to, and with great passion.

It has been the toughest thing to do, but here are my top 10 favourite songs, penned by Gulzar Saab. "Yeh Soch Ke Baithi Hoon,
Ik Raah Toh Woh Hogi,
Tum Tak Pahunchti Hai,
Iss Mod Se Jaati Hai"

Happy Birthday, Madonna! The queen of pop and performance. Thank you for giving a young gay boy so much hope, drama, style, campiness, and above all courage to be who he was. Will always be crazy for you. The best, and the supreme gay icon there is. Here's to the Queen!

And here’s a thread to add to your TBR pile. Every book and author mentioned in @WillSch ‘s heartening book “The End of Your Life Book Club”. A must-read. @AAKnopf

I have said so much about A Gentleman in Moscow and yet even all that much doesn't seem enough. I have just finished the book, and my heart is heavy & light, and I am grinning from ear to ear with a spring in my step. So I will just tweet some of my favourite lines from the book “It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life," he began, "that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Larry Kramer’s Faggots came at a time in my life when I was struggling with my body. When desire overtook everything else and I was in most circle of people considered just desperate and nothing else. That’s when I read Faggots, and thank God I did. Faggots is about Fred Lemish who just wants a loving relationship with a man. Till he stumbles through the seedy gay joints, the BDSM encounters, the mindless sex - that more often than not leaves him empty. Kramer wrote his life for all to read through Fred & it felt honest.

And here are my 100 favourite books written in English by Indian women. There is no ranking.

1. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It’s been 23 years since it published and yet the prose is still magnificent and heartbreaking. Always can be reread. 2. A Necklace of Skulls: Collected Poems by Eunice de Souza. Read her. Read her all the time, anytime, and at any place. If anything, she just deserves to be read a lot more.

Starting book recommendations today. 5 per day.

Starting with @FaizaYousuf , I recommend "We Were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates. A stunning portrait of an American family, in the wake of a tragedy. Tragic, and hopeful. A must-read! This one is for @CrookedBong "Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line" by Deepa Anappara.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is wondrous. The story is dark, and will bring you down, but will also make you smile and maybe make you a little hopeful. #vivekismsrecommends

Some recommendations. Just so. Must-read Literary Memoirs & Biographies.

My current reads. Wolf Hall by Mantel. This has to be read, because I want to reset and start from the very beginning. I will tackle Bring Up the Bodies in April. May will be the month of The Mirror & The Light when all publicity has died down and I can read the book in peace.

Four days of frenzied reading. I could not think of anything else but this book. Every waking minute was spent with this book. I also stopped reading it. It disturbed me. I went back to it. It made me hopeful. I wept. I was angry. I am still trying to process how I feel. This book is about the decade following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. It is about a family and how their life changes overnight. It is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl whose family is forced to leave their home in Tehran to a small village.

@fsgbooks @DandQ Book 3: Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy.

A book that is about Karim and Maya, their life in London, while observing the lives of the underprivileged, the writer's creative process, and more in marginalia.

thehungryreader.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/exq… @fsgbooks @DandQ Book 4: I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached

Zeina Abirached writes about growing up during the Lebanese Civil War. She remembers things that happened in Beirut and what it was like to be a child in such a time.

thehungryreader.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/i-r…

A thread of books read in 2020. Book 1: A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. @fsgbooks

A sparse and extremely powerful read on Antigua - past and present. A brilliant read, so much so that though published in 1988, so many insights hold true for countries once under the British rule.

thehungryreader.wordpress.com/2020/01/01/a-s…

And one must talk about books by women - they have loved and adored and read and reread over the years, every single chance they get. So here I am with some of the books and authors that I’ve loved over the years. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Brutal, will make you weep, the prose is magnificent though, and might I also add that very redemptive.

Books set in Indian States/Translated Fiction from Indian States. Will try and cover all 29 states and 7 UTs. (Thread). These are books that I have loved over the years. Andaman and Nicobar Islands: Islands in Flux: The Andaman and Nicobar Story by Pankaj Sekhsaria. The environmental and climate changes in these islands and how much of a threat it poses to the beautiful island chain.