u/Zehreelakomdareturns

"Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them."

The Name of the Rose (1980) originally written by Umberto Eco in Italian and translated to English by William Weaver, takes place in the 14th century and follows William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar and his young apprentice Adso as they arrive at a secluded Benedictine monastery, only to become embroiled in an investigation into a series of mysterious deaths seemingly connected to its vast and labyrinthine library.

What captivated me most was the atmosphere. Eco creates an extraordinary sense of place, filling the monastery with shadowy corridors, candlelit scriptoria, forbidden manuscripts and secret passages. Between the intense theological debates and the constant feeling that knowledge itself might be dangerous, its easily one of the finest dark academia settings I’ve ever encountered in fiction.

​I also loved the rich historical detail Eco drops throughout the narrative. Medieval politics, religious rivalries, heretical movements, philosophy and the rhythms of everyday monastic life are weaved into the mystery so naturally that following William’s investigation feels like taking a deep dive into the intellectual world of the Middle Ages.

​One highlight of my reading experience was pairing the novel with Milo Manara’s graphic novel adaptation. I would diligently revise the chapters I read the previous day from Eco's regular novel by reading through Manara’s graphic novel and it turned out to be an extremely rewarding exercise. His incredible artwork gave tangible form to Eco’s world, bringing the architecture, clothing, manuscripts and character faces to life. Seeing what I had been imagining rendered better on the page made the setting feel even more vivid in retrospect.

​I haven't watched the Sean Connery film adaptation yet, so I'm looking forward to experiencing one last version of this story.

​All in all, it’s a richly atmospheric blend of murder mystery, medieval history and philosophy, set in a world where books and ideas carry absolute power.

​8/10

​

There Will Come Soft Rains

By: Ray Bradbury

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."

Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; umbrellas, raincoats for today. .." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.

Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.

At eight-thirty the eggs were shrivelled and the toast was like stone. An aluminium wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.

Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were a crawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their moustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.

Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted window panes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned, evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the children, the ball - remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.

The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

Twelve noon.

A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.

The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.

For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.

The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized, that only silence was here.

It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odour and the scent of maple syrup.

The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.

Two o'clock, sang a voice.

Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical wind.

Two-fifteen.

The dog was gone.

In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.

Two thirty-five.

Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.

But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.

At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls.

Four-thirty.

The nursery walls glowed.

Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films clocked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched grass, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes. It was the children's hour.

Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.

Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.

Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.

Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling: "Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?" The house was silent.

The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random." Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favourite...

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.

At ten o'clock the house began to die.

The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!

"Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!"

The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistolled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.

But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone.

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.

Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes!

And then, reinforcements. From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical.

The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake.

Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth.

But the fire was clever. It had sent flame outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze shrapnel on the beams.

The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes hung there.

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed. Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a distant steaming river.... Ten more voices died.

In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in, the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under.

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

"Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is..."

Hi everyone! Id love some book recommendations based on my July wrap up. I am open to any genre, as long as the book is engaging and well-written. Thanks in advance.

I picked up ***The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (***2011) by Dr Francis Fukuyama because of the student protests at Jantar Mantar. Triggered by the police brutality and central government's handling of the situation in general, I turned to history as a coping mechanism, hoping to find meaningful answers to questions I had long wondered about but never seriously explored: Why do some countries develop stable, effective governments while others struggle with corruption, weak institutions and political instability? What do successful societies do differently? Where does that divergence begin? This book felt like the ideal place to begin.

Fukuyama starts at the very beginning, with hunter-gatherers, tribes, kinship and the origins of religion, before patiently building the story of how states emerged, why bureaucracies formed, why the rule of law developed independently of the state and why democratic accountability arrived much later. His focus remains on China, India, the Mamluks, the Ottoman Sultanate, France, Spain, Hungary, Russia and England. By the time he reaches China, India and the Islamic world, it becomes clear that many modern political problems have roots stretching back thousands of years, fully justifying the book's sweeping scope.

The comparisons between China and India are the book's highlight, showing how two ancient civilisations took remarkably different institutional paths and why those differences continue to shape governance today. Seeing those historical choices reflected in India in 2026 was one of the book's biggest revelations for me. His anthropological approach, together with concepts like patrimonialism, the tyranny of cousins, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, repatrimonialisation and political decay makes seemingly complex political and social institutions easy to understand. As a result, modern issues like corruption, bureaucracy, caste and even protests no longer feel like isolated events but the products of centuries of institutional evolution.

This is not a light read. To a novice like me, it often felt like an undergraduate course in anthropology, history and political science all rolled into one. But the effort is absolutely worthwhile, Fukuyama leaves you with a simple framework for understanding any society: How capable is the state? Is it constrained by the rule of law? And who holds those in power accountable? Once you start looking through that lens, events from past and present stop feeling like isolated incidents and instead reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a country's institutions.

I'm looking forward to starting the second volume, which picks up after the French Revolution.

9/10

Anne of Green Gables(1908) by L. M. Montgomery is set in late 1800s and follows young Anne Shirley, an imaginative orphan who is mistakenly sent to live with the middle aged Cuthbert siblings on Prince Edward Island, where her unyielding sense of wonder gradually transforms the lives of everyone around her.

Considering the dark couple of days we've been having, I finally brought out the big guns of comfort reading, a book I'd been saving for just such a miserable overstimulating occasion. Anne of Green Gables turned out to be exactly what I needed: sweet, wholesome characters doing sweet, wholesome things for each other, making you go "aww" and occasionally leave you a little misty eyed. There's no grand plot, just the understated magic of everyday life, kindness, belonging and Anne Shirley's wonderfully boundless imagination. I came away feeling much lighter, grateful for a brief escape into a gentler world. 

8/10

I started This Is How You Lose the Time War, co-authored by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, expecting hard science fiction about time travel, warfare and paradoxes. Instead, I got one of the most poetic and lyrical romances I've read.

The premise is wonderfully inventive. Two elite agents from opposing factions are fighting a war that stretches across all of history, constantly travelling through time to tip events in favour of their own side. It starts with them leaving messages simply to taunt one another, but those exchanges slowly turn into an ongoing correspondence. Before long, the letters become a refuge from the endless conflict around them, filled with wit, curiosity and vulnerability, until a war spanning entire timelines becomes something surprisingly personal and deeply intimate.

The prose is the novel's greatest strength. The language is rich with striking metaphors, clever wordplay and vivid imagery, yet it never loses sight of the emotions beneath it. At times, it feels less like reading a conventional science fiction novel and more like reading a collection of beautifully written love poems woven into a story.

Full disclosure: I'm not a romance reader. Most romantic subplots have me rolling my eyes, but this one completely won me over. The longing, heartbreak and hope conveyed through the letters are so imaginative, tender and elegant that I found myself extremely invested in the two character's relationship than the full blown time war affecting entire existence. 

​Which brings us to my nit picks, the conflict itself serves more as a backdrop than the main attraction, like the title suggests. The authors are far more interested in the intimacy of the relationship than the actual mechanics of the time war. Because the book is so short, I did find myself wishing for a bit more beautiful world-building they had introduced. Then again, maybe that’s just proof of success…that it leaves you wanting more.

TLDR: Came for the time travel. Stayed for the love letters.

8/10

​

“Bob Moses had learned what was needed to make dreams become realities. He had learned the lesson of power.

And now he grabbed for power with both hands.

To free his hands for the grab, he shook impatiently from them the last crumbs of the principles with which he had entered public service and for which, during his years of idealism, he had fought so hard.”

There are books that teach you facts, books that tell you stories and then there are books that permanently alter the way you see the world. Robert Caro’s *The Power Broker* belongs firmly in the last category.The result of 522 interviews conducted over many years of obsessive research, this book is a monument to investigative journalism. I started it expecting a biography of Robert Moses. I finished it feeling like I'd been handed the operating manual for every major city on Earth.

Robert Caro isn't really writing about one man. He's writing about power, how it's acquired, how it's protected and what it does to the people who wield it. Moses was never elected to office, yet he shaped New York more profoundly than almost anyone else in its history, rewriting legislation to create autonomous public authorities that shielded his billions in toll revenues from democratic control. By the end, I realized that democracy and power aren't always the same thing, even in the first world. The people who truly change a city are often the ones whose names never appear on a ballot paper.

The book's greatest triumph is that it makes infrastructure feel deeply personal. A bridge is never just a bridge. A motorway is never just a motorway. Every line drawn on a planner's map represents thousands of lives that will be changed forever. Someone gains a quicker commute. Someone else loses the neighborhood their family has lived in for generations. A park appears for millions to enjoy, while another community quietly disappears beneath concrete. Whether Caro is charting the Shakespearean ruin of Moses' own brilliant brother, Paul, or documenting the gut-wrenching, block-by-block destruction of East Tremont for the Cross Bronx Expressway, he grounds every macro-political maneuver in micro-human grief. Caro never lets you forget that cities are made of people before they're made of buildings.

As someone living in Mumbai, I couldn't help drawing parallels on almost every page. Replace New York with Mumbai and Robert Moses with the maze of unelected authorities, bureaucrats, politicians and developers who shape the city and the questions remain exactly the same. Why was this road built here? Why did this neighborhood flourish while another stagnated? Who really made these decisions? Who benefited? Who paid the price? Whether it's the Coastal Road, Metro expansion, the redevelopment of Dharavi, or the relentless struggle over land, Caro's insights feel uncannily relevant.

What impressed me most was Caro's refusal to write a simple morality play. Robert Moses isn't portrayed as either a hero or a monster. He is visionary, obsessive, brilliant and extraordinarily effective. The first third of the book is a tragic study of a deeply romantic, idealistic young man burning to build public parks for the poor. Yet the exact same unyielding certainty that allowed him to accomplish the impossible also made him incapable of recognizing the human cost of his decisions. Watching that slow, terrifying transformation unfold, where keeping power eventually becomes the sole obsession, is one of the finest character studies I've ever read, fiction or nonfiction.

People often describe this as a book about urban planning, but that undersells it enormously. It's history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology and biography rolled into one. More importantly, it's about consequences. It teaches you that every city is the accumulated result of countless decisions made by people with ambitions, blind spots and competing visions of the future.

Reading this monumental book on a tablet using a split-screen layout completely transformed it from a passive reading experience into an immersive historical investigation. I am normally a fast reader, but I deliberately took my sweet time with this one, pairing Caro's dense prose side-by-side with historical maps, blueprints, and archival photographs of the era. Seeing the physical reality of the people and the changing city landscapes right next to the text entirely elevated the reading experience, making the staggering stakes of Caro's reporting feel incredibly vivid and immediate.

The true legacy of *The Power Broker* is how it lingers long after you close the back cover. Beyond the haunting memory of an aging Moses stripped of his empire, the book permanently alters your urban perception. You begin looking at every city through a radically different lens. Suddenly, roads, flyovers and parks stop being passive infrastructure, they become stories of ambition, conflict, and consequence. Even an empty plot or a traffic jam begins to speak, leaving you with the chilling realization that absolutely none of it happened by accident.

Very few books have changed the way I think.Even fewer have changed the way I look at the world.*The Power Broker* managed to do both.

“Someday, let us sit on this bench and reflect on the gratitude of man."

Down in the audience, the ministers of the empire of Moses glanced at one another and nodded their heads. RM was right as usual, they whispered. Couldn't people see what he had done?

Why weren't they grateful?

10/10.

"Dear Reader, do you believe in The People? Do you applaud the impulse that brings The People together to express a grievance or take a stand?

And what if The People are angry? What if The People aren't YOUR people, and what if their anger appears to be directed at YOU?

Then when does their assembly begin to look like an unruly crowd, and when does an unruly crowd begin to seem like an enraged mob?"

Just finished Joe Sacco's The Once and Future Riot(2025), an engrossing work of graphic journalism that uses the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots to explore the political, social and historical forces that fuel communal violence. 

Through interviews with survivors, villagers, police and politicians, he pieces together a complex picture without any bias or expectations of easy answers. Sacco examines how rumours, misinformation, identity politics and political opportunism can turn ordinary people into an enraged mob and how those in power often benefit from deepening these divisions. 

Sacco's black and white artwork is incredibly detailed and realistic without trying to be photorealistic. Rather than relying on flashy visuals, he uses subtle facial expressions, body language, architecture and the sheer scale of crowds to make the reporting feel immediate and authentic. The crowd scenes convey tension, confusion and fear without sensationalising the violence, while close ups capture the uncertainty, grief and conflicting emotions of the people he interviews. His illustrations also help navigate the geography of villages and streets and by visually reconstructing different testimonies, they make conflicting accounts much easier to follow than they would be in plain text.

While it's more investigative than narrative and occasionally feels dense, it's a thoughtful and eye opening look at how democracies can be manipulated through fear and division.

 7.5/10

​

Operation Bounce House — 7.5/10

Premise:

Set on the colony world of New Sonora, the story follows Oliver Lewis, a rancher whose peaceful life is shattered when Earth decides the colony is no longer useful. Instead of sending a conventional army, a corporation turns the invasion into entertainment: wealthy gamers on Earth remotely pilot giant war machines to wipe out the colonists as if they're playing a video game. Oliver and his community have to fight for survival against enemies who don't even see them as real people.

What I liked:

The central idea is incredibly original and feels like classic Dinniman.

The satire of gaming culture, corporate greed, and dehumanization was surprisingly effective.

Oliver is a relatable protagonist who's forced to become a leader.

The mix of humor and serious emotional stakes worked well.

The AI and robot characters added a lot of personality to the story.

Who should read it?

Fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl, Red Rising, or Ender's Game who enjoy fast-paced sci-fi with dark humor and

social commentary.

A Parade of Horribles — 8.5/10

Premise:

The eighth Dungeon Crawler Carl book picks up after the chaos of Faction Wars. Carl and Princess Donut reach the tenth floor, which initially appears simple: race from point A to point B and don't finish last. Naturally, it turns into something much bigger. While competing in increasingly insane vehicle-based races, Carl uncovers deeper problems within the dungeon itself, as the AI, NPCs, and entire system begin showing cracks.

What I liked:

Carl continues to be one of the most entertaining protagonists in modern fantasy.

The vehicle-racing concept was fresh and surprisingly tense.

Huge emotional moments and character payoffs for long-time readers.

The lore revelations were some of the biggest in the series.

Great balance between absurd comedy and genuinely dark themes.

The found-family dynamic remains the heart of the series.

Who should read it?

Anyone already invested in Dungeon Crawler Carl. New readers should absolutely start with Book 1 first.

What Moves the Dead — 8/10

Premise:

A retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Alex Easton travels to visit a childhood friend, Madeline Usher, only to find her wasting away in a decaying mansion surrounded by strange wildlife, unsettling fungi, and a growing sense that something is profoundly wrong with both the house and its inhabitants.

What I liked:

The atmosphere is fantastic—creepy without relying on jump scares.

The fungal horror angle felt fresh and unsettling.

Alex is a witty narrator whose humor prevents the story from becoming overly bleak.

Kingfisher modernizes Poe's story while preserving its gothic feel.

Short length, but it still delivers memorable horror imagery.

Who should read it?

Readers who enjoy gothic horror, folk horror, and atmospheric rather than extremely graphic horror. Also a great choice if you're curious about Poe but want something more accessible.

​

I read 4 books in April, here’s what I thought of each one:

1. All My Friends Are Superheroes – Andrew Kaufman ★★★★☆

120 pages

Genre: Magical realism / romance / quirky literary fiction

Premise: Everyone in Toronto is secretly a superhero—not the cape-wearing kind, but people whose entire identity is defined by one extraordinary quality (The Perfectionist, The Couch Surfer, etc.). Tom, one of the rare non-superheroes, is trying to win back his wife before their cross-country flight lands—and she has convinced herself he doesn’t exist.

What I liked: It’s tiny and reads like a fable someone wrote in a very inspired afternoon. The superpower taxonomy is genuinely clever and it doesn’t overstay its welcome at all.

Who should read it: Anyone who likes their fiction weird and warm. Perfect one-sitting read if you're between longer books or just need something that reminds you literature can be playful.

---------

2. Not Nice – Aziz Gazipura ★★★★☆

507 pages

Genre: Self-help / psychology / social anxiety

Premise: A clinical psychologist argues that “niceness” (the compulsive kind, driven by fear of disapproval) is a form of self-betrayal. A practical guide to recognising people-pleasing patterns and replacing them with genuine assertiveness.

What I liked: Gazipura is unusually honest about his own struggles, which stops it from feeling preachy. The distinction between being kind (values-driven) vs nice (fear-driven) is useful and sticks with you.

Who should read it: If you habitually say yes when you mean no, avoid conflict at your own expense, or apologise reflexively, this book was written for you. Long for the genre at 507 pages, but earns most of it.

---------

3. The Lost City of the Monkey God – Douglas Preston ★★★★☆

326 pages

Genre: Narrative nonfiction / archaeology / adventure

Premise: A journalist joins a team using LiDAR technology to locate a legendary lost city buried in the Honduran jungle. What follows is the discovery, the expedition, and the alarming tropical disease most of the team contracts afterward.

What I liked: Reads like a thriller—but it all actually happened. The third-act pivot to a flesh-eating parasite the team unknowingly picked up is both horrifying and fascinating. Preston doesn’t shy away from the ethical messiness of Western archaeology in indigenous territory either.

Who should read it: Fans of adventure nonfiction or anyone who liked The Lost City of Z. Also great if you enjoy nonfiction with a side of “this could have gone very, very wrong.”

---------

4. The Fifth Season – N.K. Jemisin ★★★★☆

468 pages

Genre: Science fantasy / post-apocalyptic literary fiction

Premise: On a supercontinent called the Stillness, a caste of people called orogenes can control seismic energy and are both feared and brutally exploited for it. Three women across different timelines all converge on the same cataclysm.

What I liked: The second-person POV is an unusual choice that pays off emotionally. The worldbuilding is dense and rewards attention, and the thematic core consisting of systemic oppression, survival, and what we owe each other, hits hard without being heavy-handed.

Who should read it: Anyone who wants literary fiction with genuine speculative ambition. Fair warning: it ends on a cliffhanger and you will immediately want book two.