Good books – even as they are arresting – are often hard to read. This is not because they are difficult in themselves so much because oftheir content.

Everyone had them on their bookshelves. Everyone read them and fawned over them. Online stores were getting creative with the contents of these young-adult fantasy books, coming up with themed candles, beautifully designed bookmarks, and exclusive sticker packs. It was almost as though the genre had developed a cult following of its own.

One day many years ago, discovering my cousin’s tattered copy of a Give Yourself Goosebumps book completely changed my ideas about what books could be.

Three years before Maloy Krishna Dhar’s death, his memoir, Train to India: Memories of Another Bengal (Penguin India, 2009), came out. Born in a sleepy village of Kamalpur in the Bhairab-Mymensingh region next to Meghna and Brahmaputra, Dhar had an illustrious career as a teacher, journalist, intelligence officer, and writer.

A good book stays with a reader long after they’ve read the last word and placed it back on the shelf. It leaves an impression on the mind, whether because the action was exhilarating, the characters raw and real, or because reading it felt like coming back to a home you never knew you had.

“A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.”

“Happily, the Web is so huge that there’s no way any one company can dominate it,” wrote Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1999.

On the Daily Star Book Club last week, we asked members how they organise and look after their book collections at home. Here is what we learned:

Diversity can seem jaded when it is employed for the sake of appearing “woke”.

Come June, the season of light reading arrives with the promise of filling lazy afternoons freed from school work or, for adults who can’t manage a vacation, escape in the form of relaxing books.

For lovers of short story collections, Rizia Rahman’s Char Doshoker Golpo (2011) can be great company on lazy afternoons. Rahman is undoubtedly among the finest writers of literature in Bangladesh, yet her craft goes unnoticed by many from the younger generations today.

Before my mother bought me a copy of Sarat Shahitya Samagra (2003) one fateful summer back in high school, my exposure to Bangla literature had been limited to Feluda and whatever my textbooks offered.

For me, Amar Chelebela (1991) by Humayun Ahmed would not only be a summer read but also a comfort read, a holiday retreat, a walking tour of a Bangladesh unheard of today, and also a sneak-peak into the daily bustle of a family who redefined literature, science fiction, caricatures, humour and so much more.

During my adolescent years, I devoted a significant portion of my time exploring the idea of ‘summer love’. The cinephile in me went from cheesy Disney Channel flicks like Lizzie McGuire: The Movie (2003) to masterpieces like Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), while the bibliophile in me devoured Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name (2007) and John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines (2006). However, I had to acknowledge all the ways in which these stories didn’t feel relatable to me. Being a Bengali, I’ve grown up reading about the intense romance shared by Devbabu and Paro or watching the pangs of unrequited love in Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (1964). Should I then dismiss the ‘summer fling’ as an irrelevant Western trope? A thing of the sunny Florida beaches and umbrella topped cocktails?

Starting July 15, we at the Daily Star Book Club have started reading Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children. Read-along rules, discussions, and a list of stores where the novel is available are all up on DS Book’s social media pages.

Islam is practised by 1.6 billion people across the world. But when you grow up in a predominantly Muslim country like Bangladesh, it can often exist as a localised concept in your head.

Anisul Hoque, Translated from the Bengali by Mohammad Shafiqul Islam Do you know, Mr Trump, for deaths of thousands of Americans you’re responsible? You’re liable for the heartrending laments of millions of

After holding polls which closed on July 5, the Daily Star Book Club will be reading Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children starting Wednesday, July 15. Read-along rules, discussions, and a list of stores where the novel is available are all up on DS Books’ social media pages.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the knowledge centres of capital Dhaka. Many bookshops are slowly shutting down and publishing houses are struggling to survive. Amidst this crisis, writers and booklovers are seeking state patronage to help them survive.

I came across Kristy’s Great Idea, the first book of Ann M Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club legacy, at 16, in my school’s library in Qatar.