Still Waters and Ripples

A book that got me back to love reading all over again. This made it so many popular booklists/book clubs in 2025, including Jimmy Fallon's (My love for Jimmy Fallon is for another day:-) My first read by Fredrik Backman; the book navigates friendships, loneliness, grief, domestic violence, drugs and more but the way it is written is reflective, hard themes written with relatable humour, in third person and the story travels from several characters narrating it from their point of view. I was completely moved by the book and it showed me another side of the World and its challenges. In retrospection I guess why I connected more to it was also that it was reflective in nature!  Will I read more of his? Yes, I am thinking about " Anxious People"  and  "The Winners"

I have been working on getting my reading appetite back for the last year or so more consciously; My reading habit has been predominantly centered around anything that catches my eye or a theme or a topic that I have been drawn to in that season. But, making a reading list this year has been a game-changer! Sometime in Dec 2025, during a conscious break to reset myself, I started seeing book recommendation reels while dumb scrolling and then told myself that I was spending my time usefully looking at book lists (talk about reframing!) A particular "My Friends" by Fredrik Backman caught my eye and I borrowed it as an ebook immediately started reading and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Even recommended them to people I know who read quite regularly.  Then… it dawned on me to make a list of titles I wanted to read from all those shared for 2026. I looked up every book that caught my eye, almost like love at first sight adding some, disregarding others if they didn’t appeal to me. I a...