Harris Books and Literature Blog

‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is a memoir by Viktor E Frankl, a Jewish Austrian psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor. It summarizes his observations of people, including himself, suffering in Hitler’s concentration camps and what psychological impacts the bitter experiences there had on them. He keenly studies the transformations of the minds of prisoners and classifies their mental and spiritual states over time into different stages with the help of his professional knowledge. He even explains how bizarre it turns out with certain prisoners finding it hard to cope with a free life when they manage to be free after many years of captivity in the camps, as torment had become their norm. Buy from Amazon He emphasizes that men (read men and women) need a purpose to life, something to live for, even if it’s something imaginary, to overcome the hardships of such environments and survive through the torture and agony. He says those who succumb to the suffering are doomed while those who find...

  ( Buy on Amazon ) I haven't liked much of whatever I have read of M T Vasudevan Nair’s fiction so far, except Naalukettu , especially because of its ending, and one of his short stories. And every time I read one of his books, I sincerely hope I would like it. However, it's only now that I’ve found a novel by him I can honestly say I love and admire. This book Manju (Mist) is different from most of his other works; the story doesn't take place in Kerala but in an exotic Nainital, and perhaps this is his only novel with a female protagonist. It’s not a novel, but a novella with sixty-odd pages and is sweet like a little melancholic poem. Vimala is a boarding school resident teacher in Nainital who stays in the school quarters even during the summer vacation when all the students and staff leave for home. She hardly visits her family. It's the end of winter and the start of the tourist season where Vimala sometimes talks to the boy known as 'Buddhu' who operate...

  Buy on Amazon The book  Kochikkar  (Kochiites) by Bony Thomas is an enquiry into the lives, customs, religious practices, traditions, languages, beliefs, and stories of tens of ethno-religious communities inhabiting Cochin (Kochi), which by the earlier definition comprises the twin neighbourhoods of Fort Cochin and Mattancherry occupying an area of four and a half square kilometers. Despite having been born and growing up here, I only had a superficial understanding of these diverse communities, partly because I lacked the curiosity and inquisitiveness of an outsider. The pages of this book helped me have a deeper look into their lives. For instance, though I knew the area where Konkanis lived, I used to be puzzled why they had at least three temples within an area of a radius of merely fifty metres. Now I do know; though I see all Konkanis as one, they are themselves divided into sub communities based on caste and live their separate lives, which is practically invisib...

Buy from Amazon A maniac sadistic criminal, who goes by the alias Wolf, is on the loose, but hiding in the dark. He is set out on a personal project of blowing up some bridges and city centres in places like Washington, DC; London; Paris; and Tel Aviv. He would inform authorities in advance of the time each incident would occur and that it could be avoided if they paid a hefty ransom and released some political prisoners. Alex Cross moves from country to country chasing Wolf. The story starts with the bombing of an entire mobile-home park in Sunrise Valley, Nevada. It is mostly a free-flowing story. Of course, it has its twists and turns, yet not that thrilling. There is an element of suspense from the beginning to the end concerning who Wolf is and many speculations and investigations to uncover his identity. However, there is hardly anything intriguing enough that tempts you to move from chapter to chapter. I couldn’t help comparing it throughout the read with some other thrillers ...

"You considered neither 'faggot' nor 'homo' nor 'queer' as slurs because you were none of these things. You were simply a handsome man who enjoyed beautiful boys" - The Seven Moon of Maali Almeida , Shehan Karunatilaka Buy from Amazon I feel this quote is simple yet stunningly beautiful (not for its homosexuality content) because it points to the meaninglessness of naming and defining things and how far names and definitions could be away from the truth. It mocks compartmentalizations and isms and rips straitjackets. Your emotions and the essence of your existence are dynamic and fluctuating every moment as the universe itself (And concerning 'moment' I'm yet to know if it is a second or a millisecond or a femtosecond or even smaller). By the time you call someone gay, their mind might have slipped into some other shade of sexuality or even one of the million subtle nuances of being gay itself. Language fails and is inadequate as it cannot ...

It’s been on my bucket list for years to read the Booker-shortlisted books of the year once declared. And I could only accomplish it this year. The following are the six books on the Booker shortlist-2022: 1. Treacle Walker by Alan Garner 2. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka 3. The Trees by Percival Everett 4. Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout 5. Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo 6. Small Things like These by Claire Keegan The order of the above list is as per how I liked them. My perception says that Treacle Walker by Alan Garner is the best on the list as far as the literary value of the work is concerned. Hence, its placement at the topmost position. Which means if I were the sole Booker judge, I would have handed over the prize to Alan Garner However, I guess this year’s Booker might go to the next title on the list, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. It would then be the first ever Booker for Sri Lanka. Here are the synopses of the books: T...

( Purchase book at Amazon ) ( Watch film on Amazon Prime ) Delta of Venus is a collection of erotic stories. In the preface of the book, Anais Nin has mentioned that she wrote these stories around 1940 for an ‘anonymous client’ of a book collector she knew. It all started with Henry Miller, her famous friend, who wrote stories for the ‘client’ for money. Gradually, he involved her and their other friends in the project. They all set their wild imaginations free and started writing stories of lust and desire to order. And the stories Anais Nin wrote were what later became ‘Delta of Venus’. It is obvious that these stories are less literature and more porn. Because the anonymous buyer of these stories kept telling her to dump poetry and philosophy and focus more on raw sexual descriptions. It was not an easy task for the writer, though. As a consequence, you can see the unpleasant tension of a fight between poesy and porn throughout the book. The struggle between her poetic imagination ...