Check it out on Instagram I’m scared. No, not because there’s a pandemic going on, even though that itself is enough to make one lose their mind. There’s another deadly virus crawling its way into my whole being. Slowly eating away at my sanity, feasting on my thoughts, mutating inside my head as if a colony of ants was given an open invitation to a room full of sugary syrup....
Check it out on Goodreads A disappointing jumble of thoughts Disappointed. I am an atheist interested in the power of mindfulness and the whole world of so-called spirituality, so naturally, I am the ideal audience that Sam Harris is looking for. But it disappointed in almost every domain that I had expectations in. Using deep-sounding difficult words and wrapping them in an almost mythical aura of “Consciousness”, this one was a huge letdown....
Check it out on Goodreads World history in a nutshell More than 1100 pages, this behemoth of a book still fails to capture the whole essence of world history - and rightly so. How can you combine over 2000 years of human history and still do justice to every element? But the unique manner in which this book - or more appropriately, collection of letters - has been written, it shines brightly amongst the plethora of history books you can find on this vast subject of world history....
Verdict: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Check it out on Letterboxd You can spot Wes Anderson trademark from a mile ago, although this is the only movie by him which left me dissatisfied. The unique and swift camera movements are still there, the colors still pop out like from another universe, the absurd comic timings still bring a smile to your face - but you won’t feel the kind of personal emotional investment into the characters like you would in the rest of his filmography....
Check it out on Goodreads Reasons you should read this book: If you’ve ever had a panic attack. If you’ve ever counted the number of times the ceiling fan rotates, just so you could avoid dealing with the endless voices in your head. If you’ve ever felt ashamed to admit that you might be suffering from the D-word. If reading about personal stories of how people overcame their mental illnesses soothes you....
Check it out on Goodreads I have been a lover of music since my early childhood - runs in the family - and have imitated and performed songs (mostly inside my own head) on numerous occasions. Despite this lifelong love affair with music of all kinds, there was one particular genre of music that always baffled me. Mostly because of my own ignorance, but partially also because nobody else was talking about it....
Check it out on Goodreads There are few books which leave you in a mesmerizing state after having read them. You ponder about it for days to come, want to scream your head off about it to anyone who’d listen, and then dwell in this fear of picking up another book because how can something else ever come close to being this perfect! I have felt this way before - first when I’d finished The Complete Sherlock Holmes, later when I was left in a daze for multiple days after finishing the notorious and brilliant House of Leaves, and much more recently when I was unable to sleep after reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker....
Check it out on Goodreads Started with a tightly-knit structure, but faltered at the end. The last few chapters were a slog to get through - mostly because of numerous “business-class” style case studies. Main takeaway? Other than the central idea around which the book revolves (and succinctly mentioned as the book subtitle too), the idea of interleaving is what struck me the most. I had already read about this particular method in Michael Nielsen’s brilliant post on Anki (“Augmenting Long-term Memory”) and it was interesting to read about it formally in the book....
(See this picture on Flickr) Deference vs. Indifference There used to be a time when things used to be simple. I’d wake up, rub my eyes, sit up straight, close my eyes, And pray that He will continue to guide me as He had done the previous day. There used to be a time when I used to love the aroma of the stick when it burned, lighting up my day with the secret enchantments,...
Check it out on Goodreads The School of Life - a massively popular YouTube channel - used to be this source of solace in some turbulent times of my college life. It is not something that you’d think would be cheerful and uplifting - a quick glance at some of the most popular videos of the channel would include titles such as “Why we go cold on our partners”, “Why you will marry the wrong person” etc....