Last updated March 14, 2011
On cancer awareness
On creativity and age
On handwriting
On illness and glamour
On religion and opium
On TEDIndia 2009: I & II
On thoughts disappearing
Book culture
On how to collect books: I, II & III
On making friends in bookstores
Bookstores
The Bangalore Book Festival 2008 & 2009
Goobe’s Book Republic, Bangalore
Premier Bookstore, Bangalore
The Strand, NYC
Literature (General)
On anthologies
On the difference between erotica and pornography
On myth in contemporary writing
On writers and morality
Poetry
On Kamala Das’s ‘An Introduction’
On Arun Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems
On Arun Kolatkar’s œuvre in English
On Don Paterson’s The Eyes
On Kathleen Pierce’s The Ardors
On epigraphs in poems
On the ghazal in English
On mood boards for poets
On tradition and the Indian poet
On writing ekphrastics
On writing poetry reviews
Fiction
On Jane Bowles’s Two Serious Ladies
On Raymond Carver’s Where I’m Calling From
On Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love: I & II
On Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore & After Dark
On Bernard Schlink’s The Reader
On anti-Potterism
On how to write bad fiction
On mystery novels
Nonfiction
On Paul Auster’s The Art of Hunger
Translation
On translations of Anna Akhmatova
On translating poetry
On translations and versions
Cinema
On James Cameron’s Avatar
On Philip Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York
On Krzhystof Keislowski’s La Double vie de Véronique
On Eric Rohmer’s Nadja à Paris
On adapting novels to film
On Aamir Khan
On small moments of violence
On which is harder to parse, novels or films
On why Bollywood can’t make superhero films
Television
On American Idol
On House MD
On Mad Men
Gender/sexuality
On breasts
On exhibitionism
On male feminists and pole dancing
On men of character and David Davidar
On pornography and rape
On the procreative function of sexual harrassment
On stripping and audience
On unreal women
On the Derek Walcott controversy
On woman and destruction
On ‘woman poetry’
Personal
*
Poems
Pablo Neruda: ‘Ode to Salt’
Jacques Prévert: three poems
Charles Simic: ‘Two Dogs’
Fiction excerpts
from JG Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition
from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (tr. Mirra Ginsburg)
Nonfiction excerpts
Jorge Luis Borges on Franz Kafka
from Michel Leiris’s Brisées (tr. Lydia Davis)
*
2011
Books: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November & December
Movies: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November & December
2010
Books: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November & December
Movies: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November & December
Best of 2010: books
Best of 2010: movies
