Tag: book recommendation

Books of humorous essays can be hit or miss. Too often, the collection lacks cohesion or the humor can feel cloying. Scaachi Koul’s debut, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, is the rare collection in which none of the essays feel expendable. Rather, each one is well-crafted and thoroughly entertaining, balancing keen insight with effortless, acerbic wit.

Koul’s essays largely center around her identity and how it was shaped by her upbringing in Calgary as a child of Indian immigrants, the racism (both subtle and overt) she’s experienced growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, and the sexism embedded in both Western and Indian cultures. Her experiences feeling like an outsider undoubtedly helped influence her perspective, which is uniquely her own.…

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Behind every crazy woman is a man sitting very quietly, saying, “What? I’m not doing anything.”

At some point, you realize you aren’t waiting anymore for your life to start. Your life’s happening right now, and it’s pretty dull.

– Jade Sharma, Problems

There’s an unspoken yet ubiquitous set of expectations we have for women in an attempt to keep them palatable. They shouldn’t be “too loud” or “too much.” We praise them on their restraint. We associate femininity with being demure. Maya, the narrator of Jade Sharma’s Problems, has freed herself from the shackles of these notions, so much so that her behavior directly upends them: She’s a drug addict. She’s blunt about not loving her husband. She’s unapologetically unfaithful, sleeping with a much older man who doesn’t bother pretending to be interested in her.…

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