January is a time for resolutions, listicles, and planning ahead. We promise to eat better and strike a better work-home balance, maybe even put in some hours at the gym.
Many of us also plan to read more, promising ourselves to find time to at least check out a few of the bestsellers inevitably found in the end of year lists of all newspapers, blogs, celebrity interviews and Instagram reels. If you’re wondering about the last one is, check out ‘bookstagram’, a space in Instagram for book lovers to share reviews, photographs and even book cover design ideas.
That just shows we all need some help in finding that perfect book – perfect for the mood we’re in, a pick me up, a thriller or whodunit, a romance or even a travel or food guide that will take us far away in these days of being cooped up at home, with only Netflix for company.
2021 brought with it a range of motivational books on the back of the pandemic when people seemed to want to be re-assured that the world wasn’t actually going to end, that this was a blip in our lives and we would overcome the challenges of Covid-19 and even come out victorious.
Some more academic than others, most talked about what we can learn from this experience and how we can use these lessons to create a more responsible, caring and sharing world.
Fareed Zakaria’s Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World talks about how the pandemic has upended the world as we knew it – questioning how prepared we are to tackle global emergencies, how the pandemic gave us a moment to stop and think of our world and the direction in which it is going and how interconnected we all are, not just as people, but nations as well.
Far from being alarmist, Zakaria takes a studied, much needed calm approach, actually celebrating our ‘resilient world’. He calls for an empathetic world based on good governance and equitable distribution of wealth, a move away from the obsessions of materialism in the last few decades.
Smart Work:
The Ultimate Handbooks for Remote and Hybrid Teams by Jo Owen takes on another raging issue raised by the pandemic. In so many ways, work has been re-defined in the last two years, with work-from-home leading to questions of whether we even need offices and their mandatory 5-day week, on how to juggle family and work in the four walls of a home.
The professional side of this challenge is addressed by Owen who focuses on how traditional hierarchies in an office have been removed, with less day-to-day accountability, focusing on a job being done rather than on how and who is doing the work.
In the new work space, priority is on trust, collaboration and persuasion, not coercion and control. This has huge implications on leadership styles which will have to be reimagined, according to the author.
As the world worked through its banana breads and dalgona coffee, cooking became another popular pastime, with recipes being shared on social media and fusion cooking becoming the rage.
According to The New York Times, bestsellers ranged from air frying recipe books to vegan and plant based cooking, in addition to, of course, dessert and diet books, all at once!
From Jamie Oliver’s Together: Memorable Meals, Made Easy to Drew Barrymore’s Rebel Homemaker: Food, Family, Life, the obsession with all things cooking seems to be going strong.
There is something for everyone: Foodology: A food-lover's guide to digestive health and happiness by Saliha Ahmad for vegetarians, The Diabetic Cookbook by Michael Swamy, Yotam Ottolenghi’s Test Kichen: Shelf Love that uses everyday ingredients found in the fridge and pantry and Stanley Tucci’s Taste with its re-discovery of Italian flavours – later made into a docu-series as well.
The culinary world has offered wondrous gifts to keep us busy beyond the pandemic days and months.
The lesson here must surely be that we humans can create the best outcomes from the most challenging of moments, and in that, there is hope – keep reading!
Dr Sandhya Rao Mehta,
Associate Professor, Dept of English Language and Literature
Sultan Qaboos University
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