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.
Latest Nonfiction Book Reviews
Check out my nonfiction book reviews, featuring thoughts, summaries, and favorite quotes.
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Review: Man’s Search for Meaning
What’s left when everything is taken? Viktor Frankl found the answer inside Auschwitzāand it changes how you’ll think about pain.
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Review: I Eat the Stars
I Eat the Stars talks about how the world in collapse and the hopelessness so many of us carry. What remains when our biggest hope runs out?
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Review: Light and Thread
Light and Thread is a tiny book with huge questions about violence, love, and being human, and closed with a beautiful garden diary.
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Review: Things My Son Needs to Know about the World
A father writes to his son about life, love, and everything in between. Backman makes the little things feel enormous.
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Review: Bibliotherapy
Reading does more than entertain us. How does a good book carry us through hard times? Bibliotherapy reveals how stories truly heal.
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Review: My Dreadful Body
My Dreadful Body is Djabbarova’s memoir told through eleven body parts, each one shaped by chronic illness and Azerbaijani tradition.
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Review: Strangers
Strangers by Belle Burden is a raw memoir of marriage, grief, privilege, and the memories we leave behind.
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Review: Inside the Box
Having options feels exciting and constraints are what help us thrive among them. Inside The Box shows how limits shape clearer decisions.
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Review: Black Milk
Black Milk is a memoir about postpartum depression that somehow ends up asking the questions you have been afraid to ask yourself.
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Review: How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay is full of practical tips and insights to manage both our head and her heart.
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Review: Free
Part childhood memoir, part political awakening, Free is the book that moves you because it is about more than just Albania.
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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 ānow.ā
Browse Nonfiction Books by Specific Genre
Have a specific book topic in mind?
Youāll likely find it in these categories!
- Biographies and Memoirs (33)
- Biology and Life Sciences (12)
- Child Development and Parenting (13)
- Climate Change (2)
- Cooking and Culinary (3)
- Critical Thinking and Research Skills (15)
- Data and Statistics (8)
- Economics (6)
- Education and Learning (10)
- Essays (27)
- Evolutionary Biology (6)
- Fitness and Human Performance (23)
- Health and Medicine (30)
- Leadership and Career (8)
- Life Transitions (11)
- Linguistics (4)
- Literature (2)
- Luck and Chance (3)
- Mathematics (2)
- Mindfulness (3)
- Nature (21)
- Neuroscience (13)
- Poetry (15)
- Politics and Society (41)
- Productivity (25)
- Psychology and Behavioral Science (49)
- Science (44)
- Self-Development (79)
- Technology and AI (10)
- UI/UX (2)
- Women's Studies (6)
- Writing (9)
From Facts to Fiction
Nonfiction teaches me about the world, but fiction helps me feel it.
Every review comes with the quotes I saved ā maybe you’ll want to save them too.
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Review: Small Comfort
Five stories about money, ambition, and the dreams we hide. Small Comfort is full of bitter truths most of us are never taught.
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Review: Departure(s)
Departure(s) has a beginning, an ending, and a hole where the middle should be, and three people whose memories bend the truth.
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Review: The Words that Remain
A man holds a love letter for fifty years but can’t read a word of it. The Words That Remain is a heartbreaking story of love and time lost.
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Review: Dream Count
Dream Count tells of four Nigerian women navigating love, loss, and betrayal. A premise with a promising start, but a finish that let me down.
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Review: The Things We Never Say
The Things We Never Say is Artie’s story, a history teacher asking if life is worth staying for. A light read, heavy with all we never say.
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Review: Yesteryear
Yesteryear follows a tradwife influencer pulled into the life she markets online. A bold take on gender and faith.
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 the 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
- There’s something grounding about tending to fresh flowers. My personal notes on keeping them beautiful and alive for longer.
Home Gardening
- Growing things at home with a lot of curiosity. A record of my small gardening experiments, wins and failures included.
Life in Helsinki, Finland
- Living in Helsinki has shaped how I read, think, and move through the world. A little window into daily 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