Adi

If there's one skill I wished I'd learned years ago it's this: listening.

Listening will propel your career, improve your relationships tenfolds (and even spark up your sex life), understand intricacies and complexities that is the world, improve your learning & knowledge, and make the world a safer place.

When I look at the world today (and my own personal life as well), I realise that listening is screaming in demand and scarce in supply. It's one of the reasons we witness wars, climate change, toxic masculinity, racist/caste violence, violence against women, rise of jingoistic politics, and unhappy relationships.

We all want to be heard but we rarely get it. We all want to listen but we rarely offer audience to people (especially loved ones) who need it. Why? We simply do not know how.

Kate Murphy's book is fantastic and distils the essence of listening. Yes, one could refer to a dictionary and be done with it. But there's a lot more nuance than just hearing & understanding. There are so many levers involved in the process it requires us to fully utilise all our faculties at our disposal, it's not easy. We often get overwhelmed and eventually fail to listen – even if we are trying our best, even if we are making a conscious effort to do so.

Remarkably, after reading this book, I've learnt to listen better and noticed that the quality of my life has improved by leaps and bounds.

I highly recommend this book. Let's have some wine and indulge in a conversation, shall we?

The comic form remains the most under-appreciated form of storytelling. As one saying goes – a picture is worth 1000 words, and comic panels are no exception. Human desire is too complex to be distilled into words and the best way to express this is through the comic form. This book is about infidelity. I'll stop here. It's very short though and can be completed within 15-20 minutes. I'm afraid the sticker price doesn't quite justify the length.

I bought this book with great expectations because it's about squash, a sport I happen to play and love in equal measure. Yet it was a total let down.

This book is very shoddily edited. It felt like a series of blog-posts strung together to form a book. It felt very uneven and the disjointed time-frame left me confused at times. Many a times, the author veered into an off-tangential rant on random stuff which was exhausting to be honest. Overall, the writing felt extremely dry and very repetitive at times, especially when it came to descriptions of his matches.

Yet, this is probably the best squash book out there. There are nuggets to learn when it comes down to the sport and its nuances - ghosting, warm up techniques, injury prevention - are all great and solid pieces of advice that any weekend squash player would appreciate. The mental aspects of the sport is also explored in detail. It does give perspective to how hard the sport is and how professional squash players approach it.

I only wished the author highlighted more of his relationship with his girlfriend. He does, however, open up about his tenacious relationship with his father and also pours out his heart when it comes to his late mother, which shows his softer side.

The book is devoid of drama, humour and colour, which could have elevated this otherwise staid book on squash onto something else.

Needless to say, if you're a squash fan - do pick it up - but expect it to be a sort of ‘boring' read. Otherwise, give it a pass.

 This is an easy 4 but could have been 5. I absolutely love flawed characters and this book does a terrific job of highlighting it. The writing is evocative and fluid although it feels extremely rushed towards the end, where the pace and tone suddenly shifts as if the author had a pressing deadline and ran out of ideas. Needless to say, the first 80% of the book is very good and gives us a lot to think about in the most #MeToo era, where the narrative is usually one-sided. This book also reminds me of Mary Gaitskill's book “This is Pleasure”. I look forward to Ms Jonas future works. 

So bizarre.