To make amends thought I will atleast try to salvage something out of 2011, a year I managed to spend a lot of time reading. So thought of listing down books I read; I had a very lofty goal at start of the year - 25 books something couple of my friends warned me I will not reach.
So let me see how I fared, here goes my list
1.Temple Goers - Aatish Taseer
2.Have Space Suit , Will Travel - Robert Heinlein
3.Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan - Zac O'Yeah
4.Smoke & Mirrors by Neil Gainman - Brilliant collection of bizarre short stories
5.Chinese Whiskers - Pallavi Aiyar
6.Arthur C Clarke's The Collected Stories - (Still not finished) this is a huge collection of his short stories right from 1930s to 90s. Its been a fantastic read, I usually read 2-3 stories once in a while. As I write about it I feel guilty of having neglected the book for last 4 months. But more on that later in the list
7.India After Gandhi by Ramchandra Guha - A must read to get an idea of how our nation evolved after independence ( good read atleast till 80s )
8.Room - Emma Donoghue
9. A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers - Xialou Gou : Story of a Chinese girl who goes to England to learn the language learning much more about the strange land and an unusual love story. One big diff was the way story is narrated, its from the perspective of this girl and the English in the book is her English - Badly formed sentences, wrong words etc! and it gradually improves as her language and understanding of culture improves ...
10.The Artist of Disappearance - Anita Desai
11.Transforming India - Atanu Dey
12.Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka - Thanks Vaidya for the recco, delightful read!
13.Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction ( still reading this, slowly one story at a time)
14.Batman : The Killing Joke - Alan Moore (ofcourse- just had to get this :)
15.The Hotel At the End of the World - Parismita Singh
16.Wide Angle - Anil Kumble ( its a photo album/coffee table book)
17. The Eight Guest and other Muzzafar Jang mysteries - Madhulika Liddle
18. Ambani and Sons - Hamish McDonald ( had to get this after 3 years of working for Ambani! )
19. The Secret of Nagas - Amish
20. Tea time for Traditionally Built - Alexander McCall Smit ( yet another book from the delightful No:1 Ladies detective agency series! )
Then towards the end of the year I got lost in the world of Westeros and other continents created by George RR Martin, easily the best stuff in world of fantasy. Guess the Songs of Fire and Ice series deserves a separate post, but this is what i covered last year
21. Book One : Game of Thrones
22. Book Two : A Clash of Kings
23. Book Three : A Storm of Swords
24. Book Four : A Feast for Crows
25. Salt - A World History by Mark Kurlansky
25 incidentally was my target at start of the year and until i started on George RR Martin's heavy tomes, I was well set to go past that number. And as you could probably notice there are 3-4 books in various stages of completion in that 25 ;)
Hoping I will touch 25 books in 2012 as well :)
4 comments:
Considering that you use twitter, it doesn't take more than 140 characters to record whatever you are reading there also as you start off or finish.
And please, please move to WP. I'll send you the image of the comments page, just to show how bad it looks!! Feels like am in a college project website for blogging. Minimalism is one thing, just empty is another.
Thanks for the book
list,I usually go by reviews.. So pls do some few lines. I haven't come across some of them.. Maybe we can all publish a book list every month and it would be great if we are able to read somethings which perhaps wasn't in our initial orbit!
BTW the thanks for chinaman Should reach me somehow! I made a present of it to Vaidya and therefore he had to read it! And he did like it. After reading it I was most reluctant to give it to him even tho I had bought to give it. It was one of the best reads last year.
write more this year!
@ Indhu : I see that Vaidya has published his list, please update yours as well for 2011!
Monthly might work for prolific readers, but im doing badly this year ... i finished out whatever George RR Martin has written and the series has consumed me so much that I went after graphic novel version and viewing TV series version now. Not been able to read anything else after that!
okay monthly is ambitious.What i meant was we could discuss books. Something that I like doing :-). See my list now!
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