Sekar Writes
A Collection of (Mostly Nonfiction) Books Review and Personal Notes
Welcome!
Take a look around my blog, where I bring you book reviews filled with knowledges and favorite quotes. Alongside my literary explorations, I share personal stories and some side projects.
Me, More or Less
These lists are pretty much describe me in a nutshell.
Latest Nonfiction Book Reviews
Check out my nonfiction book reviews, featuring thoughts, summaries, and favorite quotes.
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Review: Change Your Questions, Change Your Life
The questions running in your head are shaping your life more than you think. Change Your Questions, Change Your Life is worth reading in the age of AI.
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Review: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
The number of stupid people around you is higher than you think and the proof written in The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity is unsettling.
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Review: Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow is a memoir about losing both her sons, written from the darkest place a parent can stand.
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Review: Nation of Stranger
Feel like you don’t belong as the world falls apart? Nations of Strangers is the essential read on identity in a fractured world.
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Review: Fluent Forever
Fluent Forever teaches you how your brain actually stores memories and uses that science to help you learn any language in an effective way.
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Review: The Beginning Comes After the End
The world has been changing faster than most of us can keep up with, and The Beginning Comes After the End wants you to notice.
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Review and Summary: In Search of Now
What does science say about the present moment? In Search of Now looks at time, perception, and how our brains build the feeling of “now.”
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Review: Flourish
Our fast culture pulls attention away from what truly matters. Flourish reflects on a meaningful life that we should create together.
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Review and Summary: The Score
What happens when numbers decide what matters in life? The Score reflects on value capture where meaning and learning turn into metrics.
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Review and Summary: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Pedagogy of the Oppressed shows why learning should build critical thinking, voice, and humanity, not just careers.
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Review: Letters to Cristina
Letters to Cristina is the personal story behind Paulo Freire’s ideas, how his life in Brazil shaped his vision of education and democracy.
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Review: Create Dangerously
Create Dangerously is an essay about art, freedom, and truth in hard times. It’s a challenging read that still critically urgent today.
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Review: Hyperpolitics
Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics explores why politics today feels louder, faster, and more intense than ever, yet real change seems out of reach.
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Review: The Story of a Heart
Two children are connected by a life-saving heart transplant in this true story about organ donation and the bond between grief and hope.
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Review and Summary: Art Cure
Art Cure is a science-backed book that explains why creativity might be the missing key to your well-being.
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Review and Summary: Technofeudalism
Has capitalism already been replaced by something more powerful? Technofeudalism explores how cloud capital crisis reshaped our economy.
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Review and Summary: How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division
Elif Shafak explores echo chambers, collective narcissism, education, and the crisis of meaning shaping our uncertain world today.
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Review: The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier takes us deep into 1930s industrial England, marked by coal dust, overcrowded homes, and mass unemployment.
From Facts to Fiction
Nonfiction teaches me about the world, but fiction helps me feel it.
Every review comes with the quotes I saved.
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Review: She Who Remains
To escape an arranged marriage, a young woman gives up her womanhood to live as a man. She Who Remains is heartbreaking and poetic.
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Review: The Calamity Club
The Calamity Club, a story of an orphaned girl, a bookkeeper, and a woman with secrets form an unlikely alliance during the Great Depression.
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Review: This Book Made Me Think of You
A widow receives a book each month, gifts her late husband arranged before he died. A story about grief, love, and learning to live again.
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Review: The Bright Years
The Bright Years looks like a sweet love story at first, but it hides addiction, secrets, and a family falling apart underneath.
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Review: On Earth as it is Beneath
On Earth As It Is Beneath is set in a Brazilian prison built on hidden bones, where inmates are hunted each month in a brutal survival ritual.
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Review: Demon Copperhead
Demon Copperhead, forced to grow up too fast amid poverty, addiction, and a broken foster system. A rich retelling of a Dickens classic.
Browse Books by Specific Genre
Have a specific book topic in mind?
You’ll likely find it in these categories!
Biographies and Memoirs (35) Biology and Life Sciences (12) Child Development and Parenting (13) Classics (14) Climate Change (2) Contemporary Fiction (44) Cooking and Culinary (3) Crime (2) Critical Thinking and Research Skills (15) Data and Statistics (8) Dystopia (5) Economics (6) Education and Learning (11) Essays (28) Evolutionary Biology (6) Feminism (4) Fitness and Human Performance (23) Grief (4) Health and Medicine (30) Historical Fiction (24) Leadership and Career (8) Life Transitions (11) Linguistics (4) Literature (2) Luck and Chance (3) Magical Realism (5) Mathematics (2) Mindfulness (3) Mystery (2) Nature (22) Neuroscience (13) Philosophy (8) Poetry (15) Politics and Society (42) Productivity (25) Psychological Fiction (3) Psychology and Behavioral Science (50) Science (44) Science Fiction (10) Self-Development (81) Technology and AI (10) Thriller (2) UI/UX (2) Women's Studies (6) Writing (10)
Life in the Margins
Here’s what else you’ll find on this blog.
Reading Life
- Snapshots of my reading life: the habits, the tracking, and everything around books.
Journaling
- Writing is how I make sense of things. A look at my journaling practice: how I do it, why I do it, and what it’s given me.
Fresh Flower Care
- Looking after fresh flowers asks me to slow down and be present. Here are my personal notes on keeping them beautiful and alive for longer.
Home Gardening
- There’s something grounding about growing things at home. Follow along with my notes as I watch things grow, season by season.
Life in Helsinki, Finland
- Living in Helsinki has shaped how I read, think, and move through the world. A little window into my life in the north.
Hi, I am Sekar!
My passion for reading (at least) one book a week fuels my love for books and drives me to share the insights with others.
Medical science by training, curious about everything else. Here I share my hobbies and the things life teaches me.
Feel free to reach out and join me in celebrating books and all the small joys that make life fuller.
Books let us know we’re not the center of the universe; the universe has many centers.
Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie