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Book Review – Cricket Country by Edmund Blunden

February 20, 2026 by Vishy

I read a beautiful essay on cricket in my school English textbook. It was a beautiful ode to the game of cricket. It had a beautiful description of the English cricketing legend, Frank Woolley. It was excerpted from the book ‘Cricket Country‘ by Edmund Blunden. I’ve wanted to read the book since then, but unfortunately it was out of print, and old copies were hard to find. Even in the era of the internet, it was hard to find it in Gutenberg or other such websites. Recently, I thought I’ll search for it again and I was very happy when I saw an online copy. I got it and read it during the past few days.

First on how I got this copy of the book. ‘Cricket Country’ was first published in 1944. So during those days, India was a British colony. So it appears that the British Viceroy had got a copy of the book for his library. When India became independent in 1947, the Viceroy’s library passed on to the Indian President. Sometime back, either the President or his aides decided that they should digitize the works from the library and offer it online to the general public. I don’t know which good samaritan did that, but I’m glad that he / she did that, because now I’ve been able to get my hands on a copy of this book and I got to read it now. Sometimes good things happen inside a government office.

‘Cricket Country’ is Edmund Blunden’s beautiful love letter to cricket. In the book, Blunden focuses more on village cricket and shares many charming anecdotes of unknown cricket heroes who were farmers or blacksmiths or in other professions and who came to the cricket field during the weekend and revealed another side of them, that of a cricketer. Blunden describes how people from different social classes played together during a game of cricket and how it was very English and how it was very fascinating. In the second part of the book, Blunden digresses into poetry and art and architecture and talks about other sport. Sometimes he puts these in a cricketing context, but other times he just digresses away from the main theme.

The book is written in an old-fashioned style which was popular once upon a time, in which things are described in a roundabout way, things are sometimes implied rather than described directly. It is beautiful to read if you read the book slowly, when you can see everything coming together and the book unfurls its glorious beauty. But if you try to push or to accelerate your reading pace, it will be hard to enjoy the book. I read the first part of the book slowly and loved it, but tried rushing during the second part and it was hard to read. Because we are used to things being described directly in a straightforward way today, years of reading like this has made my mind lazy and so reading this book was challenging. But it is rewarding if we persevere with it.

I searched for the page on Frank Woolley in the book, but I couldn’t find it. I was very disappointed, because I was looking forward to reading it. This can mean only one thing – that excerpt was not from this book. Now I want to find out where that excerpt was taken from.

I discovered atleast two new writers through this book. The first was Mary Russell Mitford. She wrote a charming book called ‘Our Village‘ in which she describes a cricket match in one of the chapters. This book was originally published between 1824 and 1832. So Mitford must have been one of the first writers who wrote about cricket. And she was probably the first woman writer to write about cricket. It is fascinating that she wrote this nearly 200 years back!

The second writer I discovered was John Nyren. He published ‘The Young Cricketer’s Tutor‘, and ‘The Cricketers of My Time‘, both published in 1833. The first book seems to be a book on how to play cricket. The second seems to have portraits of cricketers of that time. The first ever cricket test match was played between England and Australia in 1877. So this book was published more than 40 years before that. So I’ve a feeling that I wouldn’t know anything about any of the cricketers mentioned in this book. I’m very excited to discover more about these new-to-me cricketers from a bygone era.

I’m very happy and glad to have finally read Edmund Blunden’s ‘Cricket Country’. I never thought that I’ll be able to find it. This is my second book by Blunden after ‘Undertones of War‘. I enjoyed reading them both, but I’ve to say this – and it is really hard for me to say this, because I love cricket and I hate war – ‘Undertones of War’ is the better book out of the two.

Here is a beautiful article about this book and Edmund Blunden – The Passionate Poet

Have you read ‘Cricket Country’? Do you like Edmund Blunden’s writing?

Posted in Book Review, Cricket | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

Book Review – The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins

February 14, 2026 by Vishy

I discovered ‘The Magic of Reality‘ by Richard Dawkins through the author’s mention of it in another book.

This book has 12 chapters. In each chapter, Dawkins picks a particular question and tries to answer it. Like who was the first person, why there are so many different kinds of animals, why do we have night and day and winter and summer. He ventures out of his regular comfort zone, where he talks mostly about the evolution of species and why God doesn’t exist, and goes into other areas of science and tries to explain them. For example, there are chapters on what everything is made of, how the universe came into being, what is the science behind a rainbow, why does an earthquake happen, what is the sun, how do we measure distances between the earth and other galaxies. All questions which are closer to physics and astrophysics, which is not really Dawkins’ field of expertise. But he tries explaining everything in simple language so that general readers, especially young readers can easily understand.

I always thought of Dawkins as a somewhat proud, and maybe even an arrogant scientist. He looked like that in the pictures. He came through like that when I listened to him talk sometimes. But when I read this book, it didn’t feel that way at all. His tone was like that of a friend with whom we are having a conversation. In many places, when Dawkins is exploring areas which are not his primary field of expertise, he is honest about his ignorance. For example, in this passage, where he is talking about what is inside an atom –

“Well then, does our quest to cut things ever smaller and smaller end with these three particles: electrons, protons and neutrons? No – even protons and neutrons have an inside. Even they contain yet smaller things, called quarks. But that is something I’m not going to talk about in this book. That’s not because I think you wouldn’t understand it. It is because I know I don’t understand it! We are here moving into a wonderland of the mysterious. And it is important to recognize when we reach the limits of what we understand. It is not that we shall never understand these things. Probably we shall, and scientists are working on them with every hope of success. But we have to know what we don’t understand, and admit it to ourselves, before we can begin to work on it. There are scientists who understand at least something of this wonderland of the very small, but I am not one of them. I know my limitations.”

And here where he is talking about what happened before the Big Bang –

“Some scientists will tell you that time itself began in the big bang, and we should no more ask what happened before the big bang than we should ask what is north of the North Pole. You don’t understand that? Nor do I. But I do understand, sort of, the evidence that the big bang happened, and when.”

And here again on the same topic –

“Today’s ‘models’ of the universe assume that it wasn’t only the universe that began with the big bang: time itself and space itself began with the big bang too. Don’t ask me to explain that, because, not being a cosmologist, I don’t understand it myself.”

And here where he is talking about Sodium lamps –

“Sodium light (produced by an electric arc in sodium vapour) glows yellow. The reason for this is understood by physical scientists, but not by me because I’m a biological scientist who doesn’t understand quantum theory.”

Today, when people talk like they know everything about everything, I found this humility refreshing. Never thought that Dawkins would be like this. We always learn new things about people everyday.

One of my favourite passages in the book was where Dawkins explains how the distance between the Earth and other stars and galaxies is estimated by scientists. It goes like this –

“The next important point is this. It is possible to measure how far away from us each galaxy is. How? How, for that matter, do we know how far away anything in the universe is? For nearby stars the best method uses something called ‘parallax’. Hold your finger up in front of your face and look at it with your left eye closed. Now open your left eye and close your right. Keep switching eyes, and you’ll notice that the apparent position of your finger hops from side to side. That is because of the difference between the viewpoints of your two eyes. Move your finger nearer, and the hops will become greater. Move your finger further away and the hops become smaller. All you need to know is how far apart your eyes are, and you can calculate the distance from eyes to finger by the size of the hops. That is the parallax method of estimating distances.

    Now, instead of looking at your finger, look at a star out in the night sky, switching from eye to eye. The star won’t hop at all. It is much too far away. In order to make a star ‘hop’ from side to side, your eyes would need to be millions of miles apart! How can we achieve the same effect as switching eyes millions of miles apart? We can make use of the fact that the Earth’s orbit around the sun has a diameter of 186 million miles. We measure the position of a nearby star, against a background of other stars. Then, six months later, when the Earth is 186 million miles away at the opposite side of its orbit, we measure the apparent position of the star again. If the star is quite close, its apparent position will have ‘hopped’. From the length of the hop, it is easy to calculate how far away the star is.”

One of the interesting things I discovered through the book was the origin of the phrase, ‘be in good humour’. I always thought that this meant that a person was happy and relaxed and content. But according to Dawkins, the explanation behind the phrase goes like this –

“The most persistent myth about health and disease, lasting from the fifth century BC right up to the eighteenth century AD, was the myth of the four ‘humours’. When we say, ‘He’s in a good humour today,’ that’s where the word comes from, although people don’t believe in the idea behind it any more. The four humours were black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. Good health was thought to depend on a good ‘balance’ between them…”

I found this very fascinating!

The book ends with this beautiful passage –

“Miracles, magic and myths – they can be fun, and we have had fun with them throughout this book. Everybody likes a good story, and I hope you enjoyed the myths with which I began most of my chapters. But even more I hope that, in every chapter, you enjoyed the science that came after the myths. I hope you agree that the truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical – in the best and most exciting sense of the word – than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.”

I enjoyed reading ‘The Magic of Reality’. It is a wonderful book on science for the general reader, especially a young reader. As a book, it is a direct competition to Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything‘. Though Bill Bryson’s book covers more ground and is bigger, and I would classify it as the finest book on science written for a general reader, I’d also say that Dawkins’ book is excellent and well-written and is a pleasure to read. If you like reading books on science, I’d highly recommend it. If you have kids at home, they’ll love reading it.

Have you read ‘The Magic of Reality’? What do you think about it?

Posted in Book Review, Science | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Book Review – Outgrowing God : A Beginner’s Guide by Richard Dawkins

February 8, 2026 by Vishy

I got ‘Outgrowing God : A Beginner’s Guide‘ by Richard Dawkins when it came out but never got around to reading it. I was in the mood for some nonfiction and so picked this one up and read it.

This book has two parts. In the first part, Richard Dawkins tries to show how modern religions are not much different from Ancient Greek or Ancient Egyptian mythology, that is how they are also a product of the human imagination. In the second part, Dawkins tries to explain how the theory of evolution and the principle of natural selection and other associated scientific theories explain how life and living things and humans came into being.

The book looked like a combination of Dawkins’ other books, like ‘The God Delusion’ and his books on the theory of evolution, but written for a younger audience. The language is simple and straightforward, Dawkins is very clear with the facts he presents, and with his arguments, and his explanations.

I was surprised with some of the facts that Dawkins mentioned. For example, that the Greek mathematician Aristarchus (310-230 BCE) first discovered that the Earth orbited around the sun, but this was forgotten for centuries before Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543 CE) discovered that again. Very fascinating!

Another interesting fact that I discovered through the book was that Prince Philip was regarded as a revered deity by the people in one of the South Sea Islands and they were waiting for him to come back again. Prince Philip was my favourite Royal. He looked so dashing and handsome when he was young when he served in the navy, and later when he became older he had an irreverent sense of humour. He was like an old grandpa who cracked a lot of jokes and many times he didn’t realize that his jokes were offensive and people were upset by them. I loved all his jokes, even the ones that people thought were offensive. As an elderly, kind gentleman who has seen a lot in life, and as the Queen’s husband, I thought he had the license to crack any kind of joke. It was a sad day when he passed. He was the last of the kind, and we’ll never see another like him. It is nice to know that somewhere deep in the South Pacific, there are people who revere him as a deity and are waiting for him to come back.

Dawkins also doesn’t shy away from the difficult questions and doesn’t try to sweep things below the carpet. He puts it all out there in black-and-white and tries to answer them. For example, this passage here –

“The previous chapter was filled with amazing examples of animals beautifully built, displaying uncannily perfect colour patterns, or doing apparently clever things to assist their survival. After each story, I asked : must there not have been a designer, a creator, a wise god who thought it all out and made it happen? What exactly is it about those examples and you could tell similar stories for every animal and plant that ever lived – that makes people think there had to have been a designer? The answer is improbability, and I now need to explain what I mean by that.

When we say something is improbable we mean it’s very unlikely to just happen by random chance. If you shake ten pennies and toss them on the table, you’d be surprised if all ten came up heads. It could happen but it’s very unlikely. (If you enjoy arithmetic you might like to work out just how unlikely, but I’m content to say ‘very’.) If somebody did the same thing with a hundred pennies it’s still just possible they’d all come up heads. But it’s so very very very improbable that you’d suspect a trick, and you’d be right. I’d bet everything I have that it was a trick.

With tossing pennies it’s easy – well, straightforward, at least – to calculate the odds against a particular outcome. For something like the improbability of the human eye, or the cheetah’s heart, we can’t calculate it exactly just by using arithmetic, like we can with the pennies. But we can say that it’s very very improbable. Things like eyes and hearts don’t just happen by luck. It’s this improbability that tempts people to think they must have been designed. And my task in this chapter and the next ones is to show that this thinking is mistaken. There was no designer. The improbability remains, whether we are talking about the improbability of an eye or the improbability of a creator capable of designing an eye. There has to be some other solution to the problem of improbable things. And that solution was provided by Charles Darwin.”

There is also humour throughout and that makes the book a pleasure to read. I don’t know whether some of the humour was intended or whether I read between the lines.

The book is fascinating and the pages just fly, and whether we agree with Dawkins or not, this book makes us think a lot. And that is the best thing that we can expect from a book.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

Quote 1

“Humans have a tendency to believe in agency. What is agency? Well, an agent is a thing that deliberately does something for a purpose. When the wind rustles the long grass, there is no agency. Wind is not an agent. A lion is an agent. A lion is an agent whose purpose is to eat you. It will modify its behaviour in sophisticated ways in order to catch you, and work energetically and flexibly to thwart your efforts to escape. It’s worth being scared of agency. But it can be a waste of time and effort, because the suspected agent may be something like the wind. The more dangerous your life tends to be on average, the more the balance should shift towards seeing agents everywhere and therefore sometimes believing falsehoods.

Nowadays we mostly no longer have to be scared of lions or sabretooths. But even modern humans can be scared of the dark. Children are scared of bogeymen. Adults are scared of muggers and burglars. Alone in bed at night, you hear a noise. It could be the wind. It could be the timbers of the old house, creaking as they settle. But it could be an armed burglar. Maybe nothing so specific as a burglar. As far as you are concerned, you fear an unnamed agent, as opposed to a non-agent like the wind or a creaking beam. The fear of agents, even if irrational, even if inappropriate on this particular occasion, may lurk within us from our ancestral past.”

Quote 2

“The idea of reciprocation, of exchange of favours, is at the root of all trade. Nowadays, few of us grow our own food, weave our own clothes, propel ourselves from place to place with our own muscle power. Our food comes from farms which may be on the other side of the world. We buy the clothes we wear, get around in a car or on a bicycle which we haven’t the faintest clue how to make. We board a train or plane which was made in a factory by hundreds of other humans, not one of whom probably knew how the whole thing was put together. What we offer in exchange for all these things is money. And we’ve earned that money by doing whatever it is we can do, writing books and giving lectures in my case, curing people in the case of a doctor, arguing in the case of a lawyer, fixing cars in the case of a garage mechanic.

Most of us would have a hard time surviving if we were transported back ten thousand years to the world of our ancestors. Back then, most people grew or found, dug up or hunted their food. In the Stone Age it’s possible that every man made his own spear. But there would have been expert flint-knappers who made especially sharp spear points. At the same time there may have been expert hunters who could throw a spear hard and accurately, but were not skilled at making spears in the first place. What could be more natural than an exchange of favours? You make me a good sharp spear and I’ll give you some of the meat that I catch with it.”

Have you read this book? Do you like Richard Dawkins’ books? Which of his books is your favourite?

Posted in Book Review, Science | Tagged , | 4 Comments »

Book Review – Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto (translated by Russell F. Wasden)

February 4, 2026 by Vishy

I got ‘Amrita‘ by Banana Yoshimoto last year. I’ve read nearly all of Yoshimoto’s books in English translation and this is the only book of hers that I haven’t read. I had kept it aside for a rainy day. Last week I decided that it was time to read it.

We hear the story through the voice of a woman called Sakumi. Sakumi lives with her interesting family in Tokyo. Her family members are her mom, her younger brother, her cousin, and her mom’s friend. It is a strange family, but they all love each other. Sakumi used to have a younger sister who was an actress, but she died in a car crash. Sakumi meets her sister’s former boyfriend after a long time and there are sparks between them. During this time, Sakumi has strange dreams. And one day her brother tells her that he had come in her dream. That is when Sakumi discovers that her brother has strange powers – he is able to enter other people’s dreams, he is able to sometimes see the future in advance, he is able to sense the presence of spirits of dead people and sometimes converse with them. What happens to Sakumi and her family forms the rest of the story.

‘Amrita’ started well. I enjoyed the story till around halfway through. I don’t know what happened after that. It was hard for me to read and I had to push myself through the second half to get through. At around 370 pages, it is the longest book by Banana Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto normally writes books which are between 100 and 200 pages long. So this was double (or more) the length of a typical Yoshimoto book. I don’t know whether that is the reason it was hard for me to read. Charles Dickens typically wrote chunksters. His books were around 1000 pages long. When he tried writing a 250 page novel, it didn’t work. I think maybe Banana Yoshimoto is the opposite of him. Maybe 100 page novellas are her thing. Maybe that is the length in which her stories shine. But I’ve seen other readers love this book. So maybe the problem is with me.

One of the phrases that I look forward to seeing in any book I read is ‘A dog barked in the distance’, or something similar. Many writers use some version of this and I’ve seen it written in multiple languages. Banana Yoshimoto doesn’t use that. But her favourite phrase seems to be ‘the sound of waves’. I saw it appearing multiple times that at some point I started highlighting every new occurrence of it and counting it  I don’t know whether she just loved the phrase or whether she was paying homage to Yukio Mishima who wrote a famous book called ‘The Sound of Waves’.

I’m glad that I read ‘Amrita’. It was my final Yoshimoto. I’m not really a completist because it is hard to read all the books by one particular writer, but I’m glad that I’ve been able to read all the books by Yoshimoto. Looking back, I think my favourite books of hers are ‘Moshi Moshi‘ (the first book of hers that I read), ‘Goodbye Tsugumi‘, and ‘The Premonition‘. I also loved ‘Dead-End Memories‘, but I can’t remember much of it now, and so I think I need to read it again.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“There’s something familiar about warm coffee on a late night. I wonder what it could be. It always makes me think of my childhood, even though I never drank coffee as a child. Like the morning of the first fallen snow, or a night of a strong typhoon, there is something reminiscent about late-night coffee, every time it makes a visit.”

“Only recently have I discovered that humanity, that large, solid body which seems so steadfast and strong, is actually nothing but a soft, flabby object, easily ruined under pressure like when it’s stabbed, or run into.

This thing we call humanity, soft and as fragile as an uncooked egg, manages to survive each day unscathed. Human beings function together and carry on separate lives, each and every one of us. All people – the people that I know, the people that I love – manage to go through life one day at a time, despite the fact that we do it holding weapons that could easily destroy us at any moment. Every day brings a new miracle.

Once I start thinking like this I find it hard to get distracted. Of course there will always be calamities in this world, and I wonder why they exist. I ask myself that every time someone I know passes away, or I see someone in pain. But then I can’t help thinking about the other side of the story as well the miracle life that each one of us witnesses every day. Compared to wonder of daily life, perhaps there isn’t a whole lot we can do about the sorrow…”

      “A drop of water fell from the sky.

      “Oh, look,” I said. “Rain. Even on a beautiful day like this.”

The drop of rain had fallen through the bright rays of the sun from a single white cloud floating against the blue sky. At first I took it for a small fragment of ice, then more raindrops came down, one right after another, landing in our hair – mine black and hers golden yellow. Like something delightful, the rain fell through the warm air, casting a cold shadow around us. The rain was quiet, throwing light across the beautiful scenery like tiny little globes, giving us quick glances of the brilliant sun. Everything looked sweet glittering in the light. Now the world was wet around us, and even though I thought the moisture on my cheeks had fallen from my eyes, when I wiped away the tears I discovered that it was only water from heaven.”

“Without question it was the most brilliant sight I’d ever seen. If I had to make a comparison, I’d say it was like a child seeing light at the end of her mother’s womb for the first time, a light so pure, full of genuine beauty, a brilliance that would never be repeated. I longed to see it again.”

“As people we narrowly get by with our lives each day, energy from our soft, delicate actions appearing like cherry blossoms, only once, and only for a short while. Eventually petals fall to the ground. The sun beats down, wind stirs about, and I stand petrified, unable to move, astonished by the sweet color of the blue sky that flows through the dancing petals of pink tumbling gently about me. The trees above sway softly in the breeze. It happens only once and then it’s over. But I eternally melt into that instant.”

Have you read ‘Amrita’? Have you read books by Banana Yoshimoto? Which book of hers is your favourite?

Posted in Book Review, Japanese literature | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

Book Review – My Dad and Mom (‘Endhaiyum Thaayum’) by Dhinakari Chokkalingam

January 22, 2026 by Vishy

Pudhumaipithan was one of the greatest short story writers in Tamil. He passed away when he was just forty-two, leaving behind his wife and their two-year-old baby. That two-year-old baby grew up and became Dhinakari Chokkalingam. She didn’t know her father as a baby. She knew about her father only through the stories shared by her mother and through some of the letters her father had written. In this book Dhinakari shares some of the stories that her mother narrated about her father, and their life and the challenges they faced after her father passed. It is more of a long essay rather than a book. It also has  annexures – shorter pieces and a collection of letters that Pudhumaipithan wrote.

The book was okay. On its own it is not much. But what it does is it opens a gateway into Pudhumaipithan’s life and work. Now I want to read his biography and his stories.

Have you heard of Pudhumaipithan and read his stories?

Posted in Book Review, Memoirs, Tamil literature | Tagged , , | 5 Comments »

Book Review – And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

January 7, 2026 by Vishy

The next book I decided to read in my Agatha Christie adventure was ‘And Then There Were None‘. It is one of my all-time favourite Christies and one of my all-time favourite crime mysteries.

A retired judge gets a letter from one of his old acquaintances to spend a holiday at her place in an island. The judge accepts the request and leaves for the island. This is how the story starts. Soon we discover that seven other people have got similar letters or requests – some to visit the island as a guest, some have been offered short-term employment there. So this group of eight people end up in the island. They are welcomed by a couple who are caretakers of the bungalow there. None of the guests or the caretakers have seen the host. They don’t know who this person is. The host has meanwhile sent a letter to the caretakers that he will arrive the next day. We can guess what happens next. We can imagine that there will be a storm, the island will be cut off from the rest of the world, and strange things, bad things, scary things will happen in that island. And what we imagined would be right.

I’ll stop here though. If you haven’t read this book yet, you should read it soon and experience the pleasures it has to offer, yourself.

I was very surprised when I reached the end of the book. Because the ending was very surprising. This fact in itself is nothing special. Because in an Agatha Christie book, the ending is always surprising and it stumps the reader. But I’ve read this book already. And I knew the ending. But the ending was still surprising! Because this was not the ending I remembered! I wondered why! Then I realized that I’d read the play version of the book before. This is the first time I’m reading the novel version. And the endings in the two were different! To confirm this, and to just check whether my memory wasn’t playing any trick on me, I went and read the ending in the play version again. The endings in the two were definitely different! Both very surprising endings, but also different! I watched a film adaptation of the book once and the film ending was the same as that of the play. I’m not telling you what were the two endings though. Read both the versions and find it out for yourself.

Many crime fiction lovers and Agatha Christie fans have rated ‘And Then There Were None’ as Agatha Christie’s greatest book. The inside flap of the book says – “This book is certainly the greatest story that the Crime Club has ever published. We believe it may come to be considered the greatest crime problem ever devised in fiction.” High praise indeed. And it is true, I think.

‘And Then There Were None’ was published in 1939, more than 86 years back. It is still fascinating, it is still fresh, it still surprises us. Many have tried copying it, there have been many films across the world which have copied this plot. But they are all imitations. None have equalled Christie’s original. It is a true classic, and I hope that a century from now, it continues to be read and enjoyed by a new generation of readers.

Have you read ‘And Then There Were None’? What do you think about it?

Posted in Book Review, Crime Fiction, Murder Mystery, Mysteries | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

Book Review – Endless Night by Agatha Christie

January 5, 2026 by Vishy

I decided to continue on my Agatha Christie reading adventure and picked up ‘Endless Night‘.

Mike is a young man who flits from one job to another. This is how he describes himself.

“I liked knowing about things. I was twenty-two years of age at that time and I had picked up a fair amount of knowledge one way and another. I knew a good deal about cars, was a fair mechanic and a careful driver. Once I’d worked with horses in Ireland. I nearly got entangled with a dope gang but I got wise and quit in time. A job as a chauffeur to a classy car hire firm isn’t bad at all. Good money to be made with tips. And not usually too strenuous. But the work itself was boring.

Once I’d gone fruit picking in summer time. That didn’t pay much, but I enjoyed myself. I’d tried a lot of things. I’d been a waiter in a third class hotel, life guard on a summer beach, I’d sold encyclopaedias and vacuum cleaners and a few other things. I’d once done horticultural work in a botanical garden and had learnt a little about flowers.

I never stuck to anything. Why should I? I’d found nearly everything I did interesting. Some things were harder work than others but I didn’t really mind that. I’m not really lazy. I suppose what I really am is restless. I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything, I want to find something. Yes, that’s it. I want to find something.

From the time I left school I wanted to find something, but I didn’t yet know what that something was going to be. It was just something I was looking for in a vague, unsatisfied sort of way. It was somewhere. Sooner or later I’d know all about it.”

Once while in the countryside, while walking on the road, Mike accidentally meets a young woman. She is Ellie. They start talking and they like each other. Mike tells her about a place there called Gipsy’s Acre. He feels that it is beautiful and it would be wonderful to build a house and settle down there. But there are a lot of legends floating around about Gipsy’s Acre, all of them dark and scary. On their walk back, they bump into a gipsy woman. She tells them that this place is dangerous for them and asks them to leave immediately.

What happens after that forms the rest of the story.

‘Endless Night’ is very different from the other Christies I’ve read. The writing is more direct, the story is dark, there is menace in the air. It feels like a noir novel by James Cain or Dashiell Hammett. Agatha Christie was 77 years old when she published this novel. She reinvented herself at 77, and wrote this book is a totally different style. It is amazing to think about. Very inspiring!

‘Endless Night’ is a beautiful story, which becomes increasingly dark as the pages progress, and the revelation at the end is stunning. I didn’t see that coming. It made me sad and it made me angry and it broke my heart.

The title of the story is inspired by William Blake’s poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence‘. The lines from the poem go like this –

“Every Night and every Morn

Some to Misery are born.

Every Morn and every Night

Some are born to Sweet Delight,

Some are born to Sweet Delight,

Some are born to Endless Night.”

The same William Blake also wrote one of my favourite lines –

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.”

These are also from the exact same poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence’. How can the same poem have two amazing groups of lines like these two? It just gives me goosebumps thinking about it. What an amazing poet William Blake was!

There is a beautiful scene in the story, where the sunny warmth reaches its height. We know then that this is the height of happiness. We also have a lurking suspicion that from here on things are going to go into free fall and it was all going to be darkness going forward. That scene goes like this.

“She looked up and saw me.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Mike?”

“Like what?”

“You’re looking at me as though you loved me…”

“Of course I love you. How else should I be looking at you?”

“But what were you thinking just then?”

I answered slowly and truthfully: “I was thinking of you as I saw you first – standing by a dark fir tree.” Yes,  I’d been remembering that first moment of seeing Ellie, the surprise of it and the excitement.

Ellie smiled at me and sang softly.

“Every Morn and every Night

Some are born to Sweet Delight,

Some are born to Sweet Delight,

Some are born to Endless Night.”

One doesn’t recognise in one’s life the really important moments – not until it’s too late.

That day when we’d been to lunch with the Phillpots and came back so happily to our home was such a moment. But I didn’t know it then – not until afterwards.”

It is a beautiful scene. It is a heartbreaking scene.

I loved ‘Endless Night’. It is one of my favourite Christies, up there with ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, ‘And Then There Were None’, and ‘Sleeping Murder’. I’m glad I read it.

Have you read ‘Endless Night’? What do you think about it?

Posted in Book Review, Mysteries, Noir Fiction | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

Book Review – A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

January 3, 2026 by Vishy

I decided to continue with my Christie reading adventure and read the Miss Marple mystery, ‘A Murder is Announced‘. It is my first read of this new year. I started reading it in the last days of the old year and finished reading it today.

In this story, an advertisement comes in the paper that at 6.30pm that day evening a murder is going to happen at a particular place. Many people from that village assemble at that place, which is a kind of an inn. No one is talking about this though. They all say that they’ve come to see the owner of the place and find out how she is doing. At 6.30pm, the electricity goes off and as we can expect, all hell breaks loose. You should read the book to find out what happens next.

I loved the premise of the story. It was very fascinating. The murderer announcing that someone is going to be killed in the evening at an exact time. We want to find out what happens next and we keep turning the page in excitement. This story is vintage Christie, there are subplots, surprises, twists in the end, and an amazing revelation. I enjoyed reading it. And Miss Marple’s insights and wisdom are all a pleasure to read. At one place she even refers to Dashiell Hammett 😊 It goes like this –

“So it really all fits in very well, doesn’t it, on the assumption that <one of the characters’ names> was the – I think, ‘fall guy’ is the expression I mean?”

Rydesdale stared at her in such surprise that she grew pinker still.

“I may have got the term wrong,” she murmured. “I am not very clever about Americanisms – and I understand they change very quickly. I got it from one of Mr. Dashiel Hammett’s stories. (I understand from my nephew Raymond that he is considered at the top of the tree in what is called the ‘tough’ style of literature.) A ‘fall guy,’ if I understand it rightly, means someone who will be blamed for a crime really committed by someone else. This <one of the characters’ names> seems to me exactly the right type for that. Rather stupid really, you know, but full of cupidity and probably extremely credulous.”

A great way to ring off the old year and ring in the new one. By reading a Christie mystery 😊

Have you read ‘A Murder is Announced’? Which is your favourite Miss Marple mystery?

Posted in Book Review, Crime Fiction, Murder Mystery | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

2025 – My Year of Reading

December 31, 2025 by Vishy

I started my 2025 slowly. I didn’t read for most of January. I was busy with cleaning the house and with other house work. I didn’t even go to the book fair. But towards the end of January I started reading. The first book I read this year was ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven‘ by Mitch Albom. I loved Mitch Albom’s ‘Tuesdays with Morrie‘ when I read it earlier. I loved this one too.

Late in January, I decided to read a book for ‘January In Japan’. I picked up Banana Yoshimoto’s ‘The Premonition‘. Then the Banana Yoshimoto fever caught me and I read one Yoshimoto book after another and nearly read all of her books. I can’t remember much about them now and they all feel same, like one big book. Now I feel that I shouldn’t have read them the way I did and I should have given some space between two Yoshimoto books. Because in the previous 10 years, I had read 3 Yoshimotos and I remember most of the things about them, but now in the space of 7 days, I read 7 Yoshimoto books, and I don’t remember anything. It was like cramming for an exam. I hope to read better and do better in the future.

I continued the Japanese reading adventure and read a couple of Yoko Ogawa books (one of them was good, the other was underwhelming), read a couple of Kyoko Nakajima books (both very good), and I discovered the books of Uno Chiyo, one of the great Japanese writers from yesteryears. I found Uno Chiyo’s life very fascinating and inspiring.

This was the year when Faiqa Mansab’s second book ‘The Sufi Storyteller‘ came out. Any new Faiqa Mansab book is an event, and this new book was coming out after eight years, and so fans like me were eagerly waiting for it. I got the book as soon as it came out, and finished reading it in one breath. Faiqa Mansab’s writing was exquisite as always and I loved the book. One part of the book was heartbreaking, but the writing was even more beautiful there. I keep reading my favourite passages from the book again and again.

I also discovered N.N.Jehangir’s ‘Sektor 47‘ this year. Science fiction from South Asia is like a rare bird and is not easy to find. And this was science fiction and it was the debut work by the author. It was gripping and beautiful and it felt like watching Star Wars or Blade Runner. Glad to have discovered a wonderful, new science fiction writer from the region.

I read Terence Rattigan’s play ‘The Winslow Boy‘ when I was a student. I loved it at that time and have always wanted to read it again. This year I read it and loved it all over again. Then I got a Terence Rattigan fever and read four more of his plays. I loved most of them, (one of them was underwhelming), but ‘The Winslow Boy’ is his best, I think. Terence Rattigan was one of the great playwrights during his time. He was one of the last British playwrights who wrote a proper plot based play before the experimentalists took over and started writing plays which no one could understand. It is a shame that he is virtually unknown now. I don’t know of any of my bookish friends who has read ‘The Winslow Boy’. It is sad. Terence Rattigan deserves better.

I also read another play this year, ‘The Holiday Game‘ by Mihail Sebastian which was translated by my friend Marina Sofia. This play was originally written in Romanian. It is a beautiful play and it has some wonderful conversations and it asks some important questions. I hope the English translation of this play gets published by a mainstream publisher and reaches a wider audience. It deserves to be more well known. I was extremely fortunate to have read it.

I also read a couple of Indian classics this year, ‘Pinjar‘ by Amrita Pritam and ‘Divya‘ by Yashpal. I loved both. Hoping to read more by these two writers in the coming year. Amrita Pritam is a legend of Punjabi literature and she’s still popular, but Yashpal seems to have been forgotten now. I didn’t even know about him before. Now I have a few of his books lined up on my shelf including a near-1000-page chunkster, which I hope to tackle soon.

I read two graphic novels this year, ‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou‘ by Hitoshi Ashinano, and the graphic novel adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road‘ by Manu Larcenet. Both were very beautiful. The story told in ‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou’ was very fascinating, and Manu Larcenet’s artwork in the second book was exquisite.

This was the ‘Year of Chunksters’ for me. I saw the film adaptation of ‘The Hobbit‘ and then decided to read the book again. After reading the book, I told myself that I should tackle ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ too. I’d tried reading it multiple times before, when it was fashionable to read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ because the movies were coming out, but it was too huge and challenging for me. But this time I avoided all distractions and managed to get through it. Then the chunkster fever caught me and I went and read Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials‘, a 1300-page comic adaptation of ‘The Mahabharata‘. Then I picked the biggest of them all, ‘The Thousand Nights and One Night‘. The edition I have came in four volumes and it was around 2400 pages long. I managed to read the first volume and got halfway through the second volume, when I got burnt out. It was too much for me, reading one chunkster after another. I took off for nearly a couple of months and watched K-Dramas.

During this time I also managed to watch a movie called ‘Mogha Mull’ (‘Thorn of Desire’) which was a film adaptation of a Tamil novel by T.Janakiraman. I liked the movie so much that I decided to read the novel. The novel was very beautiful. Then I got into a T.Janakiraman reading spree and read four more of his books. Then I got burnt out and got into another reading slump and couldn’t read for a month.

During Diwali time, I watched the film adaptation of Kalki’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan‘. I’d read the book when I was in school and I’d loved it. I’d always wanted to read it again, but it was too big (2100+ pages). But after watching the movie, I decided to try it again. I avoided all distractions and temptations and stuck to the book. It took me one-and-a-half months, but I was able to finish it. Then I got Kalki’s biography which is a 900-page tome and read that too.

So that is five chunksters this year. I’ve never read so many chunksters in one year. Normally I read one chunkster, once in a few years. But this year was different. It was special, it was weird, it was crazy. Very proud of what I accomplished as a reader this year.

This year, I also read a lot of Tamil books. I read 12 Tamil books, which is a lot for me. Glad to know that my Tamil is intact and I can still read fluently.

During this festive season, one of my friends recommended Agatha Christie’s ‘Peril at End House‘. I read it and loved it and suddenly caught the Agatha Christie fever and read two more of her books. ‘Sleeping Murder‘ is my favourite till now. Reading my fourth consecutive Christie now, ‘A Murder is Announced‘. Hoping to finish reading it tomorrow, before the year is out.

So, this was my reading year. I read 53 books I think (not sure about the exact number, because some of the books I read are not listed in Goodreads, and I didn’t review some of the books I read, and so the actual number might be a few more than that). It is hard to pick my favourite books, because I loved most of what I read. (Martin Scorsese was once asked to pick his 10 favourite movies, and he picked 125 😄 I’m also like that 🙈) It was a strange year for me, because I read a lot of Japanese books, Tamil books, many plays, and many chunksters. But it was a great reading year and I Ioved it.

How was your reading year?

Hope you are enjoying the holidays and the festive spirit. Happy New Year 2026! Hope it is filled with love, joy, beauty, and light.

Posted in Year of Reading | Tagged , , | 10 Comments »

Book Review – Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple’s Last Case) by Agatha Christie

December 29, 2025 by Vishy

After reading two Agatha Christies, I decided to continue on that path and read a third one. One of my friends who is one of the biggest Christie fans I know, recommended ‘Sleeping Murder‘. As I’ve read only a few Miss Marples (probably one or two), I decided to read this one.

Gwenda is a young woman who is recently married. She is from New Zealand. She and her husband decide to move permanently to England. Gwenda comes first and finds a house and sets things up. She loves her new house and everything there. One day she feels that there is a door in the wall and nearly walks into the wall. She attributes that to forgetfulness and carelessness. Later she calls the construction guys to actually put up a door there because it would be convenient. But when they try doing that, they discover that there was a door there before, and now it has been bricked up and painted. Gwenda is surprised at this but assumes that it is just a coincidence. Later Gwenda feels that she’ll put a wallpaper of one particular design in her room. When she opens the cupboard in her room later, she is surprised to see the exact wall paper inside. She is puzzled by these things and to make herself feel better, she goes out to watch a play with friends. But when the climax scene comes, Gwenda screams and runs away from the theatre. Because when she sees that climax scene, she sees in her mind a woman strangled to death in her own house and someone mentioning that woman’s name, and quoting the exact lines as those from the climax scene in the play. Later after she has calmed down, Gwenda thinks about things. She feels that she is either going mad, or she is clairvoyant and is able to see things from the past or the future. But a third intriguing possibility presents itself. What if whatever Gwenda sees is true? What if she had already been in that house and she has seen a door in that wall, and the same kind of wallpaper that she thought about? Does it mean that she also saw a woman murdered in that house? How is this possible? Because Gwenda has never been to England before.

What happens after that and how the mystery is resolved forms the rest of the story.

I loved ‘Sleeping Murder’. It is one of my favourite Christie stories now, up there with ‘And Then There Were None’, and ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’. Out of the two great Christie detectives, I’ve always been drawn more towards Hercule Poirot rather than Miss Marple, and that is why I’ve read many Hercule Poirot stories, and very less Miss Marples. But now I realize that I’ve been unfair to Miss Marple. She has her own style of detection and the way she does it is very unobtrusive. No one suspects that she is getting information out of them. She is just a harmless old Victorian lady who enjoys a good gossip. But her style is very effective and she’s able to see things much before others do. In one place in the story, she reveals her philosophy and it is a masterclass in the art of detection. That part goes like this –

Giles : “But don’t you see, Gwenda, that the way we must look at it now, we can’t depend on anything anyone says.”

Miss Marple : “Now I’m so glad to hear you say that. Because I’ve been a little worried, you know, by the way you two have seemed willing to accept, as actual fact, all the things that people have told you. I’m afraid I have a sadly distrustful nature, but, especially in a matter of murder, I make it a rule to take nothing that is told to me as true, unless it is checked.”

After reading this story, I’ve become a big fan of Miss Marple. Hoping to read more of her mysteries now.

One of the things I loved in the story was a minor character called Inspector Primer. Inspector Primer comes in just a few scenes but he leaves an impact. He is described as “a man with a deceptively mild manner and a gentle apologetic voice.” But our gentle Inspector shows how a good police detective does his job.

Our heroine Gwenda tells the Inspector what happened, and her husband Giles interrupts her like this –

“We think that –” Giles began, but Inspector Primer, with unexpected authority, held up a restraining hand.

“Please let Mrs Reed tell me in her own words.”

Soon, Giles interrupts his wife again, and this time our Inspector says,

“Please, Mr Reed.”

Soon after, when Giles interrupts his wife a third time, this is what happens.

“Gwenda,” said Giles. “We can’t really –”

“I wonder, Mr Reed,” said the Inspector, “if you would mind going out into the garden and seeing how my men are getting on. Tell them I sent you.”

He closed the French windows after Giles and latched them and came back to Gwenda.

“Now just tell me all your ideas, Mrs Reed. Never mind if they are rather incoherent.”

I loved Inspector Primer 😊 Giles was a good husband and he loved his wife and treated her like his friend. But he also did things like this. Agatha Christie must have remembered all the times she was interrupted by men when she was trying to say something, and the way they were trying to shut her down. And that must have inspired her to put this scene here. It was a beautiful scene. It was not important for the story. Agatha Christie could have written it differently. But she wrote this. I’m glad she did that. Because now I have one of my favourite characters in an Agatha Christie story, Inspector Primer 😊

‘Sleeping Murder’ was the last Agatha Christie story to be published. It came out in 1976, many months after Agatha Christie had passed. Before Dame Christie left this world, she left behind this treasure for us. I’m glad I got to read it.

Have you read ‘Sleeping Murder’? What do you think about it?

Posted in Book Review, Detective Mystery | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

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