Exploring the Bookish World

'Hell! No Saints in Paradise' by A.K. Asif is an urban fantasy novel, set in the year 2015. The protagonist, Ismael, a Pakistani-American student pursuing his PhD, doing his thesis on Hell and Paradise. He believed and tried to prove that both are nothing more than mere human imagination. One day, a sudden encounter with a girl named Petra at a Cafe in New York changes the course of his life. She advises him to try a hallucinogenic drug called Ayahuasca, and join the Yage Yoga Centre, which will help him to experience and discover an alternate reality unknown to mankind. There, under the influence of hallucinogens, he comes across otherworldly beings and is asked to return back to his hometown, Lahore, and gain the confidence of his estranged father, a prominent extremist in the caliphate. His perilous journey will have life-changing effects not only for him, but also for his homeland as well as the whole world. Will Ismael be able to win back the trust of his fat...

“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”  ― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air. An English Literature and Human Biology Graduate, Paul Kalanithi went ahead to practice medicine and become a neurosurgeon to find an answer to the question - "Where did Biology, Mortality, Literature and Philosophy intersect?" 'When Breath Becomes Air' is the heartbreaking memoir of Paul Kalanithi . At the age of thirty-six, at the peak of his career as a neurosurgeon, when he with his wife was looking forward to a beautiful future ahead, Dr. Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV of lung cancer. His story shows us how it feels to see death approaching, and shattering all the plans that one had planned for the future. How the deadly disease cut short the life of such a promising neurosurgeon who could have saved the lives of so many people. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. This book made me contemplate the meaning...