What are we reading?

When a quick look around the newsroom shows new books on almost every other cubicle, we know it’s time to update you all on what we’ve been reading here on the floor. So here’s a roundup of what amazing books have caught our attention at the moment.

Lajja
by Taslima Nasrin

Shreejana Shrestha
correspondent, Social Bureau

I recently started reading the once highly controversial novel, Lajja by Taslima Nasrin. Though the issue and the story are nothing new to me, I’m enjoying the writers’ ability to tell a humane story in the simplest way possible. Her honesty and courage are evident and it makes the story gripping, though the narration is a bit awkward in parts.

Lajja angered the Muslim leaders so much that a fatwa, or holy judgment, was invoked, offering thousands of dollars to anyone who would kill her. The Soldiers of Islam accused her of “blasphemy and conspiracy against Islam,” while the Bengali government charged her with sacrilege merely for saying that the Koran should be revised. Nasrin escaped to Sweden with the aid of American, French, and European Union authorities after months of hiding. The animosity and bloodletting between Muslim and Hindu extremists is centuries old. In Lajja, Nasrin describes the nightmarish fate of one family within her country’s small Hindu community.

Notes to Myself
by Hugh Prather

Pramila Rai
correspondent, GenNext

I have just started reading this book by Hugh Prather that is supposed to change your life. I doubt it will, but I have high hopes from it because of the reviews that form a part of the blurb. The editor who discovered the book apparently said, “When I first read Prather’s manuscript it was late at night and I was tired, but by the time I finished it, I felt rested and alive. Since then I’ve reread it many times and it says even more to me now.”

I wouldn’t say that I completely agree with the editor but the book does serve as a good beginning for you to go exploring about your life and as a treasury of thoughtful reminders. These little nuggets of wisdom will stick with you and make your think. Even if you don’t agree with the entire passage, there will be line or two that will make you pause and reflect. For those who enjoy self help books, Notes to Myself would be a good slim volume to pick up. I hope to take at least five things from this book when I’m done with it.

Superforecasting
by Philip E. Tetlock and Daniel Gardner

Biswas Baral
op-ed editor, Republica

You can be an “expert” in rocket science (the craft you send to the moon lands exactly where you intend it to, millions of miles away); you can be an expert in medicine (the medicine you prescribe, based on your experience of dealing with similar cases, actually cures); and you may even be an expert in writing (sentences flow effortlessly from your pen and your skill is appreciated by the world). But an expert in political science, or economics, or weather forecasting? You must be kidding!
Which is why the most famous predictions are so spectacularly wrong: Francis Fukuyama’s prediction of the end of history and total triumph of capitalism with the collapse of the Berlin wall; the supremely rosy outlook for the American economy that was being painted by many an American economist in the lead up to the 2007 Great Depression; and nearly all the weekly weather forecast available in our smart phones. But is there a way to better predict the future even in the fields where uncertainties are aplenty? This is the question Phillip Tetlock and Dan Gardner deal with in their new book Superforecasting. The short answer: Yes, you can.

Firfire
by Buddhisagar

Nabin Khatiwada
senior correspondent,
Political Bureau

I have always liked Buddisagar’s writing style and I enjoyed Karnali Blues a lot which is why I picked up Firfire the minute it hit the bookstores. Before coming out with the novel in 2010, he already had two books, a collection of ghazals and an anthology of poems, to his credit. Buddhisagar’s prose is simple yet distinct and so it sort of sticks to your head. You are feeling what his characters are feeling and you are actually living the story as you read.

The novel, set in the mid-western Nepal, chronicles the story of a struggling family told through the eyes of a teenage boy. It will remind people like me who grew up in the villages of their own childhood. For the nostalgia it manages to evoke, Firfire is a must read for everybody.