The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

A murder mystery.

I don't enjoy reading thrillers. I would rather watch the movies on them

Pilgrimage: One Woman’s Return To a Changing India - Pramila Jayapal

The Indian diaspora always presents this very land where we live in different lights. But I doubts if even the most acclaimed of them rediscover this wonderland without any prejudices. That is what Pramila Jayapal does. This is nothing but her Indian diary, so true and sincere. No glorification, no humiliation. Just her experience.

An engaging read for any Indian.

No One Writes To The Colonel - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Marqez needs no introduction. This is the story of the Colonel, his asthmatic wife, their dead son and the rooster.

Just a novella that can be finished in one reading and comes for 100 bucks. Guess you shouldn't miss. This is so beautifully wriitten.

Marquez is a man of "words".

മയ്യഴിപ്പുഴയുടെ തീരങളില്‍ - M Mukundan

There is no protagonist in this novel. If there is one, that is Mayyazhi herselt. Mayyazhi/Mahe, the Frech colony in the British India.

It is the story of Mayyazhi, the വെള്ളക്കാര്‍ who were there for generations, the localites who don't consider them as invaders but as born rulers, the വെള്ളക്കാര്‍ who gave them an option of choosing between French/Indian citizenship, the natives who wonder what is the meaning of freedom and wonder from whom they need it.

Mayyaziyude Kathakaran tells us their freedom striggle and once they got it how they lost their muse for life. They didn't know what to live for next. One went to the same building the French ruled them and set up a similar Govt, one chose French citizenship as he realised he wasn't fighting the French but the colonioalism and his fight was the nedd of the time, and the one who was the most promising of them all stood standing staring at the life that betrayed him.


It's so touching, so tragical. A true masterpiece, don't miss it.

Cat and Mouse - Gunter Grass

What was that??!!!!

I have no clue.

Either the author's style is too complex for my brain to decipher or the translation from German makes it complex.

This time I give myself a benefit of doubt. I have tried reading Mein Kampf twice and I couldn't go beyond the first 10 or 20 pages. The shameless self flattery of the German leader had put me off enough. Add to it bizarre sentences, long enough to cover half the page, I quit. Don't think I will ever have the mindset to take it up again.

I am absolutely confounded by the book. I have no clue who is the protagonist, how come the best admirer finally becomes the worst enemy and what was all that happening in between. There were certain pages talking about the teenage boys' sexual awakening. It is not that I am dumb to understand such things, but at first I just didn't get it. I re-read. But then I wasn't sure if I was thinking in the same lines as the author. It took me a third reading to finally console myself that I am no pervert but that was what written there.

By the way, Gunter Grass was initially degraded as a pornographic author ;))

I don't want to comment on a Nobel laurate. I will try reading his masterpiece, The Tin Drum and come back on him. But ya, not so soon. Pls..... I need a well deserved break. This book wasn't an easy task. I am proud of myself that I finished reading it despite feeling giddy most of the times.

Note:- If you are looking for pornography, I am sorry, but the book would be an even major disappointment *thought I should make that clear*

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

Of all the books I have read and written about, this stands apart. From the very first chapter I had no difficulty in understanding why is this book tuoted as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time by numerous lists. If you haven't come across this yet, make this your next buy. This is the best book I have read so far and I doubt if at all I would ever happen to read something that would match this.

The novel is considered to be the first and most serious contribution of African Literature. Has to be...

The novel fundamentally shakes the Western notion that Africa has no history of its own by presenting the original Africa culture and its value through a heroic warrior and statesman of an African village. Okonkwo, the protagonist, is a self made man, much respected for his rise from nothingness to one of the most admired men of their time. The novel tells the story of the lives of the people before and after the British onslaught.

Above all, Achebe gives and insight to the way of life of his people through this story set in the early 1900s and the value of what the outsiders considered as barbaric or pagan.

A remarkably well told story, undoubtedly unmatchable by any other book in the world literature.

Leave your Marquez or Toni Morrison or Kundera for a while. You miss this; you miss the finest of them all.

Here I stop and let the book speak for itself.

A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen

Ibsen was a strong critic of the Victorian sense of morals and duties and his writings so strongly reflect on his views. It would be a useless effort to try reading this without some background study of the society Ibsen lived in and the criticism he has faced himself.

There is nothing more than a usual drama in this, if you ask me. But Ibsen had me going through all the wrath, disgust or indifference the protagonist went through. The theme would have well been degenerated to a feminist drama, if not for Ibsen’s genuine dialogues. While reading it, I could feel myself feeling so intensely for the lady Nora, that even before I reached the final point, I had almost pictured her there.

I was so captivated by Ibsen's style that I couldn't resist taking up another book of his - Ghosts. But I think Doll's house stands apart.

It is supposed to be one of the biggest blunders of the Nobel Committee that Ibsen wasn't awarded the prestigious award. Indeed !!!!!!!!

Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

If the word Kafkaesque can be associated with any literature other than that of Kafka, that has to be with Beckett. Try coupling it with some Camus type Absurdity, and you get Beckett. It is with mush apprehension that I try to talk about the book. I might be able to tell you how impressed I am with Kafka, but to describe how I feel about a Kafkaesque drama is beyond my vocabulary.

Thanks to my ability to imagine the most absurd of things and some association with those “modern” dramas in college, I found the book an irresistible read. I knew there were no story, no meaning but just dialogues that too grossly incoherent.

Though many people tried to interpret the drama Beckett only said "It means what it says". I can’t explain it any further. But I would suggest it to all the Kafka fans.

The play has two parts and five characters on stage, everything happening while two of them - Vladimir and Estragon - are waiting for someone called Godot who never appears. Vladimir and Estragon tries to pass the time in conflict while giving a strong indication that they themselves don’t know who this Godot is and why are they waiting for him. Soon comes Pozzo and Lucky and presents us with even bizarre circumstances. Over all these circumstances are very much similar in both the parts, but with subtle difference. And if at all there is a story it is nothing but two guys waiting for someone who doesn’t appear at all and send a boy to inform that he would meet them the next day.

The much quoted ending should say it all:

Vladimir: Well, shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
They do not move.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

Its been quite some time since I wanted to read the author. Thanks to Arjun, that I got an e-book. (Thanks to my credit card, bought the book too the very next week).

The story could have very well been one of those Mills & Boons fictions, revolving round a doctor and his wife, his mistress and her lover. It is with incredible ease that Kundera takes us through pages and pages of infidelity coupled with long narrations on his genre of philosophy.

Since history "never" repeats and we hardly get a chance to say if our actions were right or not as nothing occurs again for to compare, the author doesn't give any absolute sense of right or wrong. Not even when he scorns at the Soviet Invasion of Czech and Czech communists. Though the doctor loses his profession that was his passion, in the end he is a happy man being a mere truck driver. His wife, who was always jealous about his mistresses, finally learns to separate love from physical intimacy.

Kundera's own loss of freedom of expression might have affected this novel, yet there is an underlying lack of trust or discomfort the painter mistress in the story goes through in America. Though she enjoys the freedom, she is equally disturbed of being buried in that alien land. She wants to fly free even after her death.

The entire novel can be viewed as an individualistic view on the communist régime – it is with amazing dexterity that Kundera avoids any political opinion in this regard. It is only the loss of individual freedom that matters, that again doesn’t really go with the freedom struggle we understand.

Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence is what the novel starts with and Mozart is a leitmotif. I understand how well and easily Nietzsche fits in, but what amazes me is how incredibly well the author brings up Mozart. Then again, it is a review on Oedipus that is the centre theme of the whole book.

I can't say this is purely fiction; I would rather call it an explanation of his philosophy.

The Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

This is the story of three generations or four that unwinds thru the youngest of them all. The trauma of the upcoming "nigger" Macon Dead, who alienated his only sister to avoid getting a feel of "those" uncultured, penniless southern Negroes.

The whole story happens in a world so real, yet so unreal. There is a mystery yet no mystery. What caught my fascination the most was that the book was also telling the history of a long suppressed race; a race whom the "whites" considered nothing more than puppets to dance at their whims and fancies, whose lives mattered nothing more than the cost of a bullets.

The author transcends the notions of associating wealth or social position to happiness or satisfaction by showing how miserable people are at both the ends. Macon Dead due to his greed and Pilate with her complex. But Pilate could Sing like an angel. Macon couldn't even love his family.

Nowhere does the author confuses us with emotions like love, compassion or exploitation, it is rather a balancing mixture of all or a lack of any. What could it be if Hagar wanted to take the life of Milkman 'cos she loved him the most on earth? Who was right, Milkman's father or mother?

The novel doesn't give any definite answers, doesn't even attempt to give any answers. It just leaves us in a slight desperation to know who took the gold and who killed whom leaving ample space for our imagination.

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

I know it is absurd to talk about a classic nearly after more than a century. I have rerad this masterpiece almost a decade back. Offlate I hardly had any work at office and I stumbled onto this e-book.

I have always admired Dostoevsky for his intense writing. It is easier for a writer to go surreal and leave a touch of warmth or sadness in your mind. But Dostoevsky plays with real emotions, the most probable plots and take you thru an emotional turmoil.

It is a long book with a mundane theme backed by the sheer power of words that I am at awe than a good long story. I would rather watch a movie in that case.

Had it been some other writer, I doubt if I would have read through pages and pages of sheer emotions going thru the protagonist's mind. I recollect literally feeling miserable throughout the book when I first read this book. Once more, I felt the same. It is not the story that really mattered, its his way of telling a not-so-unique story.

The Mystic Masseur By V.S.Naipaul

This is my first experience with Naipaul and the novel happens to be one of his first novel. He wrote it long before his claim to the Nobel prize, when he was just 25.



















The book is about a Tridadian mystic (or a wannabe mystic) Ganesh Ramsumair. It is a funny narration about the Indian obsession for mystics and one educated yet lazy fellows rise from a struggling teacher to a mystic to a minister.

Naipaul has a way with words. And for the story - a quick and easy read.

Three Men in A Boat - Jerome K Jerome

If it is to be made into a sitcom, I bet that all the "Friends" and "Mr Bean" fans will shift loyalties.

Amerika - Franz Kafka

The Karl Rossmann saga leaves me baffled... I flip my book and check the front page again, is this Kafka. Did I mistake????!!!!!!!











My so far rendezvous with Kafka - The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Judgement - had been on a different level altogether.

Somehow, I loved the other novels better. This is ofcourse an admirable book, but doesn't go with the usual Kafka tag. What I love in his books are that unusual turn of events, mundane yet brilliant narration and the sheer unpredictability of events. (Oops ..... does that make it sound like he is one of those thriller writers??)

I have got a collection of his short stories(???????) lying in my shelf. But I feel I am getting addicted to Kafka and Marquez. (Got 3 more of Marquez to read. I burnt a good hole in my pocket last month.) So I am taking a break. How about Three Men In A Boat for a change??? (Geeeeeeee... and I bought that 50 bucks from the roadside. They don't sell Kafka there ;((...)

Candide-Voltaire

Reading Voltaire was a strange experience. All I had was a vague idea that he was a renowned French philosopher. I didn't even know what his philosophy was. I still don't know.




















Candide was a controversial book when it was published. It is said that Voltaire mocked at a couple of then prominent political, religious and philosophical figures in this novel. To be frank, I didn't enjoy it the way I could have enjoyed had I had a thorough understanding of the background of that era.

Voltaire never admitted to having written the controversial Candide. The work is signed with a pseudonym "Mr. Dr. Ralph."

The core idea of Voltaire was to mock at the then eminent German polymath Leibniz who thought mankind lives in the best of possible worlds. The naive protagonist of Voltaire, Candide, goes through the worst imaginable conditions. Having born and brought up in the coziest of atmosphere, one fine day he got thrown out to face the real, harsh world outside.

The best of Voltaire comes out in this sentence where Candide's philosopher teacher tells him - Nose is there in that shape so that we can keep spectacles on them.

Candide was Voltaire's, an agnostic, way of lashing up the clergy he loathed and the same novel led to the Church's loathing towards him.

The events, the narration, the thought - everything is so different from any book I have read. Though I didn't particularly admire this kind of prose, it still made quick and good read.

''Love in the Time of Cholera” ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

''I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love’’ said Florentino Ariza to Fermina Daza. Indeed, it was true. He waited with a burning in his heart for 51 years, 9 months and 4 days, since he rejected him at the age of twenty.

















How many of those eternal love stories have you heard and seen in real life? I have to say, even the legendery Romeo & Juliet or Laila Majnu can be counted only after this masterpiece of Marquez.

Marquez has been my favorite writer ever since I read the Nobel winning One Hundred Years of Solitude. Now I have 6 of his books and 3 are yet to be read.

How do I describe this book? I am at a loss of words. Can I say it is a triangular love story? But I don't know if the relation ship between Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his wife, Fermina Daza was love or as just a successful marriage.

The story begins with Jeremiah de Saint-Amour's death and keeps us guessing who are the lovers? And by a quirk of imagination, Marquez presents us Florentino Ariza, making his second proposal to Fermina Daza, on the eve of her husband's funeral.

As the story of three lives - the doctor, his wife and her former lover - unwinds, the author keeps us hooked with his delicate details and gripping language. And at the end we see the triumph of love in a altogether different light. The author shakes us out of out conventional definition of love and the familiar Shakespearian turns of a love story.

If you have ever loved anyone for reasons that surpass the matters of common human logic, read this. Or you may perish without feeling through Florentina Ariza and his unrequited love.

paradise is ...

When the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards --
their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble –
the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say,
not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms,
"Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."

~ Virginia Woolf ~

If there is a paradise, that has to be a big library, with all the books of this world. Those who enter it will be eternally hungry, for nothing but to read more and more. And I wish, I be a life time member there and sit there and read and read and read, leaving this mad world outside. Sigh..........

There is no place on earth that keeps me happier and at peace than a book store and the first loyalty card I owned was that of CrossWord. And I piously spend a portion of my earnings there that one day I aspire to be their most privileged customer.

There was a time I used to buy ten books at a time from the roadside vendor. Off late, I have decided to buy only from good bookstore. 'cos a truck load of them may be the only saving I would be leaving behind when I leave. So I have to buy good quality ones, internally and externally.

It is a habit originated from home, which I consider is the greatest gift I have been given.

There are people who don't share my passion, those who wonder "why?" and those who think I am pompous to talk about books. But the fact is that I am addicted to them, all the time.

I wish the Hindu philosophy of births and rebirths are true; one life is not enough even to go through the best of books. Even if I die, may Virginia Woolf be true about me, and I be given a place in heaven (or hell) where I am left alone with countless of books.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.
~ Louisa May Alcott ~