The Shelf Life: Champaca Bookstore Blog

Recent world happenings have made us think of a fleeting moment soaked in magic and history. With news coming out of Ukraine, Shakti revisits Soviet children's books from India's history, and recommends books that offer us a new perspective on war and its effects. Get your copies of the books on our website—we ship across India.

Sophy Roberts' The Lost Pianos of Siberia takes us through Siberia through the stories of its pianos. A journey through time and space, this is also a journey through music. Thejaswi Shivanand writes.

We believe that a good bookshelf should hold voices and stories from across time, place and experience. We’ve put together a list of prompts — some fun, some unusual — designed to expand our reading this year. Let’s read together to discover new worlds, and read diverse! 

Pick a book (or two!) for each prompt, You don't have to read in order, and you don't have to finish the challenge — we're just excited to discover new books together! Find our recommendations here, and pick up the books you want here.

And once again, we’re at the end of another year! As with every year, books have been our constant companions in 2021. We decided to look back on 2021 this way: what we’ve read this year and loved, whether new releases or old ones, books we’ve been meaning to read, or ones we accidentally discovered on the way. 

Read on for why we picked these books, and get your copies here.

This month, Nirica recommends Calvin Kasulke's Several People Are Typing, a satirical WFH comedy about a character who finds his consciousness stuck in Slack. She also recommends some of her favourite books and movies that explore the internet age. Get your copy here.