Reading List - September

I am one of those readers who likes to have a balanced diet, unless it is something like Harry Potter, which will have my whole, undivided attention at all times of the day (bad news for my academic endeavours in the past and my professional engagements now). Since I am not very picky about what I read, I have, on an average at least three books in my WIP list. This month, these three are on my bedside:

1. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters: This was the result of my random browsing through the booklist of the British Council Library, and I was caught by the synopsis… “This is the story of four Londoners – three women and a young man with a past – drawn with absolute truth and intimacy… Their lives and their secrets connect in sometimes startling way. Wars lead to strange alliances…”. The book is partitioned in three sections and I have just finished the first one. So far it has captivated me well enough.

2. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield: It has been nearly a year since I bought this book at an airport, and though I read about half of it, I left it mid-way. That’s not an indication of the quality of the book. In fact, it is enormously educative and though the title appears partial to wannabe astronauts, I can assure you, this one goes far deeper. Chris Hadfield gives remarkable perspectives on everything in life and frankly, it is very inspiring. Of course, anyone with an amateurish fixation with space-travel (I guess I am one of them) will find it easier to read, though everything has been broken down in very easy-to-understand, laymanish concepts. It is only that the occasional instructive tone does not always make it a fun read, which is why I need to read the next title alongside.

3. San Andreas by Alistair MacLean: I picked it out of habit at the bookstore I mentioned in my last post, and am yet to crack open the spine. The summary notes a lot of ships and submarines and sabotage and betrayal. At the risk of sounding morbid, I confess I can already feel the tention building in my stomach !

Time to get my cup of tea. And let the reading commence…

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Man-Eaters of Kumaon - Jim Corbett

Genre: Non-fiction Rating: 5/5 This one is decidedly a classic, so there is little point in reviewing this book. It is a beautiful one, without doubt. Personally, I avoid any form of entertainment (books, movies, plays, anything) which features cruelty - either directly or tacitly - towards animals (I have not yet seen any of the Planet of the Apes movies, Ant Man was uncomfortable too). So deciding to read this book took a certain degree of convincing. Much credit goes to the beautiful cover of the book. This one is an Aleph Classics (co-founded by David Davidar of The House of Blue Mangoes fame, and Rupa Publication) edition. In terms of sheer elegance, the cover design is unmatched. The palette concept of jungle green coupled with the late afternoon sun creates an ambiance even before you delve into the pages. I picked out the book from a thin pile on a shelf in the little HigginBothams book-store near Charing Cross in Ooty, one biting winter evening (more

Higginbothams of Ooty

It took us some time to decipher that the name of the crossroad was Charing Cross. After all, it is an unexpected name for an Indian crossroad in Tamil Nadu, and the mildly opinionated chap driving us to our hotel had a heavy accent. Charing Cross turned out to be a triangular enclosure, with an imposing fountain (we later discovered that it was named the Adam's Fountain; it is three-tiered, the second one topped by four very colourful cherubs). Since we had arrived in the middle of the afternoon in the thick of winter, the roads were thronging with people and vehicles. Shops were bustling and business appeared brisk. Our driver skilfully negotiated the traffic as we passed woollens shops, gift houses, eateries, groceries and mobile-phone shops. We returned to the market later in the evening, after having deposited our luggage. Both my husband and I had been fending off a nasty bout of flu and needed to restock our now near-empty medicine pouch. Charing Cross in the eveni

A Legacy of Spies - John Le Carre

Genre: Fiction Sub-genre: Spy-thriller Rating: 4.5/5 Sometimes, I really do feel that an intelligence organisation must be very much like any other workplace. What is at balance is certainly much more valuable and capable of altering the course of history. All the same, it is a workplace, an office with employees and clients. John Le Carre's Circus is thus a workplace. It behaves as drudgingly as one, and there lies the connect that every single book about this agency elicits in its readers. A Legacy of Spies is fittingly another installment in the legacy of the Circus. The murky past catches up with my beloved Peter Guillam in his retirement years; it unlocks suppressed corners of his heart and makes him revisit the morality of his life's work. I say his, but I really do mean in the plural. Le Carre's stories have always been remarkably steeped in cynicism, and part of me believes that we still love them because, in some dark way, they resonate with our

The Pile of Books

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