shelf care #10

Recommendations on reading and consuming, plus this month's crossword

Hello and welcome back to shelf offering, a Tuesday newsletter by Apoorva Sripathi – writer, editor, artist. If you think my work is valuable and would like to support me, follow 💌shelfoffering on Instagram, share this post, and consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.

I spent most of this month tending to our balcony garden – transferring the strawberry plant to a bigger pot, pruning back tomato plants, pinching out basil flower heads, marvelling at the ladybirds that have made our small garden their home, collecting seeds in an old jam jar to use again next year, routinely trying to weed our planters and falling behind – reading, watching a lot of television, and photographing my cat.

I’ve been doing other things too, like work and following day-to-day rhythms but I find it too boring to recap.

Here’s what I’ve been consuming since the previous shelf care newsletter.

[Note: The book links are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a tiny commission if you choose to purchase through those links, at no additional cost to you.]

P.S. If you’d like to get to the crossword, just scroll to the end!

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Books

I started reading Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan on a train back home, tipsy and happy, and the first page enveloped me whole. I’m reading this in tandem with Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage – they’re both set during the Sri Lankan civil war and the Tamil genocide that was carried out against the Tamil population by the Sri Lankan government. I’m in two minds about what to start next. Part of me wants to dip back into nonfiction – Deviant Matter by Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Cod by Mark Kurlansky – or a poetry collection – Wrong Norma by Anne Carson, Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha – but I’m currently saddled and mesmerised by fiction. Open to taking recommendations for new non-fiction books!