Radz Pandit
@radzpandit.bsky.social
1.3K followers 660 following 1.2K posts
Avid reader, book reviewer & amateur book photographer. I write about books on my blog Radhika’s Reading Retreat. Love art and travel too. Website: https://readersretreat2017.wordpress.com Also on: linktr.ee/radzpandit
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radzpandit.bsky.social
These are MY BEST BOOKS OF 2024 featuring Lars Gustafsson, Barbara Comyns, Celia Fremlin, Mathias Enard, Barbara Pym and more. New blog post here:
readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2024/12/17/m...
A stack of the best books I read in 2024.
radzpandit.bsky.social
Also, two friends Elena and Leila, one rooted in Buenos Aires while the other has travelled, an absent child...faint echo of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels?
radzpandit.bsky.social
In “A Fabulous Animal,” an unsettling tale of friendship, grief, and loss, Leila gets a call from her dying, estranged friend Elena after 20 years about her son, whose death Leila unwittingly caused. The boy’s wish to become a horse lends the story an eerie vibe and a faint hope of reconciliation.
radzpandit.bsky.social
In “A Fabulous Animal,” an unsettling tale of friendship, grief, and loss, Leila gets a call from her dying, estranged friend Elena after 20 years about her son, whose death Leila unwittingly caused. The boy’s wish to become a horse lends the story an eerie vibe and a faint hope of reconciliation.
radzpandit.bsky.social
“Welcome to the Club” focuses on a woman in crisis, as she tries to drown herself, fails, and returns home to prepare lunch for her family. Putting on dry clothes & hiding the suicide notes, she views her surroundings with an eerie sense of unreality, until a neighbour makes a disquieting remark.
GOOD AND EVIL AND OTHER STORIES by Samanta Schweblin.
radzpandit.bsky.social
I've read two - Eve's Hollywood and Slow Days Fast Company. They are a compilation of short pieces, often autobiographical with a lot of anecdotes.
radzpandit.bsky.social
I love Babitz's voice, so chatty, intelligent, and charming.
Reposted by Radz Pandit
joiedevivre9.bsky.social
#NYRBWomen25 Eve Babitz starts tomorrow! Here's the page guide. 🎉🎉
Cover of I USED TO BE CHARMING by Eve Babitz (NYRB Classics). Page guide for I USED TO BE CHARMING by Eve Babitz (NYRB Classics). #NYRBWomen25
radzpandit.bsky.social
"All the women in New York have posters of Redford on their walls. If they came to Los Angeles, they'd find Redford parking their cars and saving their lives on the beaches of Santa Monica, Redfords are a dime a dozen in L.A. Pacinos are de rigueur in New York."
#NYRBWomen25
Reposted by Radz Pandit
yalereview.bsky.social
László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel Prize in Literature!

Read his interview with Hari Kunzru in The Yale Reviewon apocalypse, art, and the urgency of the present—and his short story “An Angel Passed Above Us,” also published in TYR.

yalereview.org/article/l%C3...
László Krasznahorkai on hope, apocalypse, and his new short story
Hari Kunzru interviews the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai.
yalereview.org
radzpandit.bsky.social
"Over in one corner, I saw one nondescript extra who looked like Al Pacino's brother's friend. Someone told me later that he was Robert De Niro."
#NYRBWomen25
radzpandit.bsky.social
"Francis (Coppola) is strange about actors. He believes in them. He doesn't try to improve them.

He once told me that he was terrified when he learned that Brando would actually be in the original Godfather movie. Imagine trying to tell someone like that how to act."
#NYRBWomen25
I Used to be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz. NYRB Classics.
Reposted by Radz Pandit
fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social
💋 BIG KISS, BYE-BYE by Claire-Louise Bennett published today 💋

‘Bennett writes like no one else. She is a rare talent.’
— Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of THE WOLVES OF ETERNITY
💋
Read an extract and order a copy: fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/big-ki...
radzpandit.bsky.social
I know I'm going to like it👍 I'm also getting The Oppermanns vibes, that same feeling of dread too.
radzpandit.bsky.social
"'I'm not afraid,' Lexa answered angrily.

'Why don't you do it then?' mocked Elsa, her square face tense and lined with excitement as she relit the candle.

'Because there's no sense in it. I'm not afraid of anything that's got sense in it.'"
CROOKED CROSS by Sally Carson. Persephone Books.
Reposted by Radz Pandit
faberbooks.bsky.social
'If you think you’ve heard this kind of story before, think again.’ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘Breathtaking, immensely beautiful and impossible to stop reading.’ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

On the Calculation of Volume III is nearly here! Publishing 18 November 📚

www.faber.co.uk/product/9780...
radzpandit.bsky.social
Loved THE SKIN CHAIRS, top-tier Comyns for me. Very difficult to find but I was lucky to finally get a second-hand copy. Apparently publishers are hesitant because of the title and what it implies, but I still hope it gets reissued.
Reposted by Radz Pandit
joiedevivre9.bsky.social
#NYRBWomen25 Who's ready to read some more Eve Babitz?!! Starting Thursday!

"gathers nearly 50 pieces written between 1975 and 1997, including the full text of Babitz’s wry book-length investigation into the pioneering lifestyle brand Fiorucci"

I'll post the page guide tomorrow. :)
Cover of I USED TO BE CHARMING: THE REST OF EVE BABITZ (NYRB Classics) Photo of Eve Babitz taken by Mirandi Babitz
Reposted by Radz Pandit
joiedevivre9.bsky.social
#NYRBWomen25 I finished THE JUNIPER TREE this morning, Barbara Comyns’s final novel published when she was 77yo. It’s everything I love about her writing. Here are a few rabbit holes I went down while reading this enchanting retelling.
Barbara Comyns and her daughter, Caroline, circa 1937 Barbara Comyns later in life
Reposted by Radz Pandit
radzpandit.bsky.social
Russell Hoban’s TURTLE DIARY was amazing - strange, dark, beguiling, wise, and rich with self-deprecating humour. My thoughts here:
readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/t...

Published by @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social.
radzpandit.bsky.social
"Two of the turtles at the Aquarium are green...The sign said: 'The Green Turtle, Chelonia mydas, is the source of turtle soup.' I am the source of William G. soup if it comes to that. Everyone is the source of his or her kind of soup. In a town as big as London that's a lot of soup walking about."
TURTLE DIARY by Russell Hoban. NYRB Classics.