What do they mean to you? Books. We here at The Philospher’s Stone are not bibliophiles, but book maniacs. Our love has no bounds.What do we recommend this week?

Sense of an ending by Julian Barnes

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves

Tony Webster is an old man now, he is reminiscing about the good ol’ days from college times. When almost all friendships break lose after graduating, there was this one friend who stuck around, Adrian Finn. And not just any friend, he was what many would call the perfect person. And through a series of unfortunate incidents when this man commits suicide, it leaves Tony in deep thought, for life.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

haruki Murakami

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person’s essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?

When Noru Okada finds that his cat is missing he is not left one bit disturbed. On the other hand his wife is getting restless every single minute because of it. And those sexually explicit calls he gets from a woman when he is alone. And is his wife restless only because of the cat or something?

But if these look heavy to you, which they could be, then in that case I would suggest one of my favourite re-reads.

Catcher in the rye by JD Salinger.

“I am always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.” 

Have you seen this? It is funny right. The story is pretty much very simple.

Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he’s been expelled from prep school. His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.

Now these were our three suggestions for you to read. Tell us if you have some of your favourites that you would like us to read!

Note: These recommendations have also been sent out last year through our official newsletter.

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