The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. By WH Auden (1921 – 1973) Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes was synonymous with his widely acclaimed writings such as The Death of Artemio Cruz, Aura, The Old Gringo, and Christopher Unborn...

          “May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness.” Epitaph on Howard Carter’s tomb   Howard Carter was the man who lived it up and he emerged as someone larger than life itself. Egyptologist and archaeologist, he discovered Tutankhamen’s tomb from the 14th century BC. He was characterized in literatur...

Joseph Pulitzer was a man who came, he saw and he conquered. His was a tale of riches to rags and rags to riches. Born on April 10 in 1847 into a Jewish family in Hungary, he witnessed and experienced a lot in one lifetime. After his father’s death, the Pulitzer family’s business empire crumbled and they were left in utter penury. Pulitzer traveled from Hungary to the United States after making an attempt to get enlisted in numerous European regiments. He s...

“What is the victory of a Cat on A Hot Tin Roof?—I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can...” ― Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof   Tennessee Williams was born on this day in 1911. He stooped to conquer it all; his writings were all about passion, love, promiscuity, explosive emotions, tenacity, and compassion. And there would barely be anybody else who would capture human emotions the way he did. Cat on a...

In this blog, we make an attempt to highlight some of the best short-story writers. Moving into the abyss of psychoanalysis, Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) wrote some of the best short stories. The Imp and the Peasant’s Bread is an example of Tolstoy’s concept of good and evil. He highlighted the naivety and goodness of human nature juxtaposing evil. His thoughts and characterization bordered on the ascetic and the real and his writ...

Love stories continue to stimulate us, and if we go by the number of times Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Rivermouth Romance has been downloaded, you would get an idea of the hold love has over us. The book has been downloaded 394 times within a month of its availability on the BookChums eBook section.  Aldrich (1836-1907) was an American poet, novelist, traveler, and editor.   ...

“The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.”   Funeral Blues by WH Auden   Gallows humor reveals tremendous courage and a stoical side in man. Kurt Vonnegut demonstrated an entirety of it in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Although sick and numb with the Dresden experience, he went on to survive and tell the world...

When it comes to macabre fiction, A Sight for Sore Eyes is a brilliant tale of the macabre, morose, and low life. Here I’m reading one of the many best books by Ruth Rendell. Teddy Brex’s eyes feast on Francine; she is the treat and a sight for his sore eyes. She is an object to him: an object to be treasured, loved, and admired. There is a strong undercurrent of obsession and the question that good looking Teddy Brex has an eye for beauty yet regards human b...

The BookChums eBooks section is very popular among the visitors of the site. Several free ebooks have been downloaded or read by countless readers. We chronicle here the most popular and the most downloaded among these books. The section that we are looking at here is Body and Mind.   The most d...

 Reading about other people’s lives often gives us a fresh perspective on life and changes our attitude towards it. In this blog we shall look at three such memoirs/autobiographies that are entertaining, informative and very enriching.     A Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mendela “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” -   ...