Desi Book Haul | nonfiction, poetry, essays & more | South Asian themed books I got from Pakistan

Bookshops mentioned:
- Saeed Book Bank Islamabad, Pakistan
- Liberty Books, Lahore, Pakistan
- London Bookstore, Peshawar, Pakistan
- The Bookstore, Peshawar, Pakistan
- National Book Foundation, Peshawar, Pakistan
Follow me on other social media platform's:
🍉 Instagram: / instareesha
🍉 Goodreads: / reesha
🍉 Twitter: / isolatedsystem
#nonfiction #classics #literature #southasian #poetry #desi #southasianhistory #pakistan #india #pathan

[@rogston39]

My family are visiting Pakistan in 2 weeks time .....we are really excited, and looking forward to visiting bookshops :) Great to see you back !

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Oh that’s wonderful. Hope you all have a lovely time 🫶🏼

[@noorduha257]

I shop from Liberty books as well, but love finding books from old/weathered bookstores. Adds a sense of secrecy and personal discovery. It feels like it is uniquely mine.

[@karlalikestoread]

Great haul Reesha! I love that you picked up the short story collection by an author you weren't allowed to read when you were younger, now you can see what all the fuss was about! The feminist books you got sound really interesting. I'm wanting to read more nonfiction so I got some good ideas from you! I feel you on wanting to connect with and learn more about your home country and read in your first language. For me it's Mexico and Spanish 💜

[@orladdin]

I just watched your Saeed Book Bank vlog, and immediately searched for Feminisms of Our Mothers because it looks so intriguing! The publisher, Zubaan, has soooo many interesting books on their site, even one by Sara Ahmed who grew up in my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia. I'm not sure if they ship internationally but I might try buying their ebooks and seeing if that works!

[@davidmccalip5759]

Hello Reesha! I hope all is well with you and your family. It is great to see a new video as I have missed your videos! I enjoyed this one and look forward to your next one. Have a great day!

[@badfaith4u]

Welcome back and hope you enjoyed your trip to Pakistan. I read Songs of Blood and Sword by Fatima Bhutto years ago and loved it. My mother loves the books by Rana Safvi.

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Oh Songs of Blood and Sword is the one I am on a look out for. Good to know you enjoyed it.

[@shohinisen4068]

Love from India ♥️ So happy to see you read Roy, love her !

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Thank you, I just started Azaadi and I am already enjoying the way she writes.

[@cunningba]

Hello. Good to see you again. Exploring one's roots is good. Supposedly that's what The Iliad is for Western Culture. But it is somewhat alien to modern sensibilities. There is no shame in preferring to read other literature. I did a little pursuing of my roots late last November and mid-March this year visiting graves of my mother and her family members. My mother and father separated when I was about 5. I was raised by my father in Los Angeles and my mother moved to San Francisco. We corresponded some. She sent me gifts several times a year. But I didn't see her again until 19 when I had lunch with her in San Francisco. She died about 2 years later in July, 1969. So I wasn't terribly familiar with her side of the family. In March I visited her grave in Albany, Oregon for the first time. She is buried with her sister. I also visited her parents' graves in Hillsboro and Salem, Oregon. They are not buried together. Evidently my maternal grandmother spent some of her life in the Oregon State Mental Hospital in Salem. I only recently figured out that my maternal and paternal grandmothers were sisters. Last November I visited the grave of my mother's brother who is buried in the Riverside National Cemetery in California. He was an army aviator. He fought in World War II and the Korean War. A few years ago, remembering that sometime during my childhood I had seen my mother's college yearbook from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, I bought a copy of the 1927 Linfield College yearbook, Oak Leaves, and discovered that my mother was the editor of that yearbook. It made for interesting and important personal reading, albeit not a classic. When I was in Oregon I stopped by Linfield University in McMinnville, had a wander around, ate lunch in their campus Starbucks, and remarked to one student who was looking curiously at me that exactly 100 years ago my mother was a freshman there. I haven't read a great deal about Pakistan. I do recall reading a history of the dissolution of the British Raj and the partition of India. More recently I read Steve Coll's two books on the C.I.A.'s involvement in the area, Ghost Wars and Directorate S. A good bit of my reading about that region was inspired by listening to Frank Sinatra's exotic, romantic, and jazzy arrangement of "On the Road to Mandalay" from his Come Fly with Me album. The song is based on Kipling's poem Mandalay from his Barrack Room Ballads, originally set to music by Ollie Speaks. I think Sinatra's rendition inspired the name of the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The poem revolves around a retired British soldier's reminiscences of the British invasion of Burma in 1885. But when one tries to look up the places referred to in the poem / lyrics, one finds that geographically it is arrant (and errant) nonsense. All the directions are wrong. Apologists claim poetic license for Kipling. One could claim that it portrays the British soldier as an unreliable narrator. I think it more likely that it portrays the poet as an arrogant young jingo carelessly recalling his voyage through the region with little attempt to understand the actual geography, history, or natural environment. But, in trying to make sense of it, I read several books about the region. First was an interesting novel by Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace, which opens with the British Capture of Mandalay in 1885, and goes on to explore the history of a fictional family through World War II. A second was a book you picked up recently, that I found kind of rough reading in places because the main character was just so painfully stupid, namely George Orwell's Burmese Days. Other reading the song inspired included Will Friedwald's book analyzing Sinatra's style entitled Sinatra! The Song Is You, A Singer's Art; The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling by David Gilmour; and parts of From Sea To Sea - Letters Of Travel: 1887-1889 Travel Letters from Kipling’s journey from Calcutta to London where he describes his experiences sailing past Burma. Somewhat inspired by the fanciful paranormal and occult books of Lobsang Rampa I consumed in my misspent youth, I have recently read some books related to the history of Tibet in the early 20th century. First was India and Tibet by Francis Younghusband, describing his much maligned expedition into Tibet in 1904. That led me to read his biography, Patrick French's Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer. I also read Trans-Himalaya - Discoveries and Adventurers in Tibet: A History of The Legendary Journey by Sven Hedin, describing Hedin's 1905-1908 expedition during which he ran into Younghusband in India and later managed to sneak into Tibet and explore a great deal of its geography previously unknown to Europeans. That last is a bit of a chunker, which you might find a little dry, but I found it fascinating to try to track his progress on Google Earth. Just a long ramble about the investigating one's heritage and some of my reading related, however tangentially to the region. We'll skip Genji, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Basho, and Andre Malraux for now. Best wishes. Enjoy your reading. Your friend in Cleveland.

[@gargvanit]

My fave book is the Quran - 4:34, 4:24, 23:6 and so on.

[@sydneyfrederick8819]

First time viewer and subscriber here. You had me chuckling and adding books to my TBR list. Can’t wait to delve more into your channel. -sending love from a bookish girl from Trinidad 🫶🏽

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Hello! Welcome here. I’m so glad to have you. Trinidad 🇹🇹🫶🏼 Enjoy your time and happy reading 📖

[@xUmberBlackstonex]

First time watcher and subscriber here, love your picks and would be intrigued to watch your reviews of them once you’ve read them. I’ll be adding a couple of them to my tbr

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Welcome!! Hope you enjoy your time here

[@stephenn3727]

Thank you!

[@adilsatelier382]

Well Done Ma-Sha-Allah

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Thanks!

[@sofiah.6797]

I love this videos 💗🫶🏻 I love learning about classsics from other country’s ! :)

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

🫶🏼🫶🏼

[@ayinhaaffrdhee7549]

I read the autobiography by Perveez Mushrif few years back. I really enjoyed the first quarter of the book which is about his childhood and then his schooling .

[@megreads9]

You can read The silence of the dearest for Mehvish Sayyad an Indian young adult among our bookstore

[@nasemshaikh2338]

Hi Reesha, I hope you are doing great today. I don't mean to be rude, or being a twat, however just wanted to inform you that Pakistan came into existence in the year 1946, not 1947. Have a blessed day.

[@shadabaurangzeb8062]

after long time

[@maddummel]

this is very out there but that's how my brain works, and I apologise xD I'd love to read that book about foods. I'm from eastern europe and lately I started following some more asian booktubers and also stumbled over the "most people don't consider eastern europe white [culturally]" conversation and I feel like I'm starting to understand that 😅

[@nashwas5761]

Wow what an amazing collection of books! It’s so funny what you said about not being allowed to read Manto at a young age, because I had definitely read worse things in English. I guess things in Urdu can sound much more crass, which makes them uncomfortable for others. I really hope you enjoy Kamila Shamsie, I’ve read four of her novels and finally decided that I can’t read her anymore. I haven’t read A God in Every Stone so I’m intrigued to hear your thoughts on it.

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

So true! I’m heading people haven’t had a good experience with Kamila Shamsie, hope this one is good

[@YoumsBooks]

I really loved your selection ! Home fire was a 3-star read to me, but you made me want to read A god in every stone. Loved that you shared those books from your home country 🌼

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Thank you so much 😊

[@megreads9]

I have Pakistanian friends and they are very nice and helpful people. I miss them

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Hope you get to meet them soon

[@isaacmonterrosa4657]

Which is your favorite book of all time?

[@booksaremysociallife]

I definitely wanna get my hands on The Pathans, I also have some distant Pathan heritage. That price, though! I just converted it. What a steal!

[@booksaremysociallife]

I've read Capitalism A Ghost Story by Arundathi Roy. She's great!

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

I know! It was such a good price for a hard cover

[@mahnooriqbal5448]

What a niche video and i love it 😍🥰

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Thanks 🫶🏼

[@megreads9]

And whenever you visit your country Pakistan, get with you a lot of your cultures, history, ... In this way you will save heritage and whenever missing your country.

[@johanna5610]

thanks you, there are some very interesting books. I try to find them in the university libery. What you are saying about urdu books, is the same for me. I nearly don't read books in dutch, so I have to do it. Have a nice Day.

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

It's my pleasure

[@BBB888B8B8]

A DESI BOOK VLOG YAS

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

🫶🏼

[@mayan5600]

Mirza Ghalib (Asad) never went to Pakistan. He was from Agra and he came to Delhi and spend his remaining life there. He was not so rich and had no home of his name. He was a gambler. As far as he went from Delhi is to Lucknow. I know this because I live in the same gali in chandni chowk where he had his house.

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Thank you for sharing that. You live in Chandni Chowk, that is awesome! I literally need to read up about the guy.

[@bigbang3224]

Please make videos often, I panic click ur videos with excitement as soon as i see the notification.

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Aww! Thanks! Will try my best to

[@t.hussain921]

I'm an Indian muslim who randomly came across this video. You got me really interested in Azadi by Arundhati Roy. I'll have to check it out. The past few years have been rough for us, but things will get better hopefully.

[@megreads9]

I hope India and Pakistan get well relations because I love those two countries they are so beautiful in culture, people and nature richness.

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

I wish so too

[@IAmWillJR]

Hello! Do I have permission to watch your videos? As I am learning about books on India and Pakistan. 🙏

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

Ofcourse, don’t need my permission. Enjoy watching and happy reading 📖

[@IAmWillJR]

@@Fortheloveofclassics, thank you. May I share the books I am reading? The least I can do as a ‘thank you’. Women Of Sand And Myrrh Goddess Of River Princess by Jean Sasson And a few books written in Spanish. Happy reading.

[@tahahussain2938]

Is Pushto your mother tongue, mam? Do you speak it? If I am not wrong, there are Pathans, who speak Urdu instead of Pushto.

[@the_blue_mushroom_]

I thought it's a Pakistani youtube channel 😂

[@Fortheloveofclassics]

I am from Pakistan so ….