Another year comes to an end..
The calendar created by Surabhi (@vapoursofthought) with lovely photographs she clicked has been my prop for every month's reading wrap up in 2024. As sheets of this beautiful calendar turned, some pretty fast and some achingly slow, I realized I stand at the threshold of another new year. There's a mix of fear, apprehension and hope, a bag of varied emotions swarms my head; but this has been the norm now for last few years.
I stuck to short reads in December as kid's school routine - his exams and year end projects demanded a lot of my time. There was a lovely, short trip to Mangalore around Christmas time. I attended two lit fests in Dec - The Green Lit Fest on Dec 7th and The Bangalore Lit Fest on Dec 14-15. Living close to two decades now in a city known for its wonderful bookshops and bibliophilic crowd, this was the first time I was attending literature fests. Even if it was a meek start and I managed to spend only a little time at the events, I was extremely happy I got a chance to meet Monisha Raman at the The Green Lit Fest and Sayari Debnath at Bengaluru Lit Fest. They are avid readers, fabulous writers and editors and wonderful human beings I have had the pleasure to know and interact with thanks to Instagram/Bookstagram.
Coming to the list of reads for Dec 2024 -
1. Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life by Upamanyu Chatterjee (finally finished this book I had half left half completed by Sep)
2. Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishoi, tr from Norwegian by Caroline Waight
3. The Afterwards by AF Harrold, illustrated by Emily Gravett
4. The Whispering Chinar by Ali Rohila
5. Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
6. Veerapandiya Kattabomman by Ma Po Sivagnanam, tr from Tamil by Tara Murali
7. The Wartime Garden by Twigs Way
8. What Child is This by Rhys Bowen (Amazon Short Story Single)
Two wonderful picture books (The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey and Amadi's Snowman) and two short stories translated from Hindi from the Dec issue of The Bombay Literary Magazine are other additions to the above list.
I also finished a full year on Good Reads and am sharing my statistics below which clearly indicates my comfort with short reads, books that keep my reading habit going on. Like every year, I have no reading goals for 2025, reading is the only activity I have handy for stress busting and I wouldn't want to do anything that makes it stressful for me. So go with the flow will be my motto :)
.png)
.png)
The year 2024 presented some wonderful opportunities to share/write my reviews, my first time on Scroll.in and The Green Lit Fest newsletter. I tried to organize my published articles/reviews until now on Link Tree and here is the link - https://linktr.ee/divya.shankar
Here is wishing you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR ! Signing off 2024 and welcoming 2025 with a little wish that may all of us get a little time to do what we earnestly love to until the time it becomes a habit or a comfortable part of our routine.
