I am a book freak, since my very early days. But those days I never got any chance to study beyond my syllabus books. I mainly started reading various Fiction/Nonfiction stuff after 12th. Since then, I have read many novels and a few Nonfiction works. Well of course, I havent read as much as Nyati or Lokeshwar or Bokaro might have read. Also my pace isn’t that fast.
Anyways, I thought of mentioning about some of the books that I have read very recently, and here it goes.
1. Train to Pakistan By Khushwant Singh :
Its a master piece. One of the best books I have ever gone through. It was the book that made me put Khushwant Singh on the top of my choices list. Its a story of the time of the great partition. Khushwant Singh has wonderfully plotted the storyline and the implementation is also awesome.
I borrowed the book from Anupam, it was the 50th anniversary edition and it also contained a number of pictures of the partition time taken by Margaret Bourke. The pictures by the way, were really very disturbing.
2. Delhi By Khushwant Singh :
After I read ‘Train To Pakistan’, I was compelled to buy one of Khushwant Singh’s works. There I got ‘Delhi’ from Landmark.
Delhi is not really a novel. Its more towards the history of Delhi. The author indeed has done a very good amount of research over the same. He has mainly focused over the Moghul era and the invaders like Nadir Shah. And the author has described all these fellows in first person, which makes the reading more lively. He has described the various phases through which the city of Delhi has gone and finally has finished up at the twentieth century.Well, if someone is not much interested in history, he may find it slow and boring. Otherwise, it will be a good companion.
3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini :
I had thought of reading this book when I first saw it on NDTV’s Just Books programme, and when I found it in Nyati’s cupboard, I had no reason to drop it.
Its the first novel of the author. Very fast paced and unputdownable. It took me to the streets of Afghanistan with every page of it. The language used in this book is also very simple and lucid, which I liked a lot. Its a story of two generations. A story of sin and its penance.
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini :
This book, which is the second work of the author could not satisfy my expectations. The first novel of him was really very good. If I rate ‘The Kite Runner’ 4.ated5 out of 5, then I would probably rate it 3.
Its mainly women centric and plots the sufferings and misery of women in Afghanistan when the Talibans were in power.
5. The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun J. Tejpal :
This is the first novel of Tarun Tejpal, popularly known as the editor of Tehelka. I bought this book when I saw Khushwant Singh’s praise for it at the back of it. And it was a good decission of mine.
This book of is full of erotic stuff, but not explicit. Its a story of a couple, their love and relationships. The author has a very good talent of embedding stories within stories within stories again within stories, keeping the reader’s interest intact. One more thing I liked about this book was Tejpal’s description of Nainital. Since the day I have read the book, I am longing to go to those beautiful hillsides.
By the way, Tarun Tejpal has a very strong vocabulary.
6. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry :
Before I buy any book, I generally go through its reviews from different sources. I read about this book once when I was going through Indian literature and Indian authors kind of stuff on the net. And then I decided to buy this.
This is a story of the emergency time in India. Its a story of four different people whose lives were linked to each others. It describes the backgrounds of all the characters involved in the story in very detail and how they all ended up in different destinations, that was not at all ever imagined. The plot is not at all exaggerated, and its very convincing, moving.
The book reflects the exact picture of the Indian cities. The story is based on Bombay (now Mumbai).
Besides those above mentioned books, I have also read a few non-fiction books during these past few months. These include Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, The Goddess in India by Devdutta Pattnaik, Indomitable Spirit by Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam etc.
Presently, I am spending my time with Mrinal Sen’s autobiography Always Being Born and Joseph Keller’s Catch-22 and I have a lot more still in the queue. I will soon come up with reviews of the same as soon as I finish them up.
