If you’re in Lanka on business, pleasure or cricket, chances are you’ll be served arrack, an amber coloured intoxicant, favoured by the gentle and not-so-gentle islanders next door. Here are 10 things you didn’t know about it.

1.     Arrack predates Scotch and Vodka by centuries. Marco Polo apparently had a tipple in the 13^th century.

2.     It is not the same as raki from the Middle East, which tastes like liquorice. Or arkhi from Mongolia, which smells like fermented milk.

3.     It’s made from the juice of the coconut flower, plucked by crazy men in loin cloths, walking on 40 foot high tightropes.

4.     Arrack is consumed at Sri Lankan cricket matches, dodgy bars, nightclubs, office parties by everyone from hipsters to hip replacement patients.

5.     It’s best enjoyed with Ginger Ale and a plate of devilled meat. Some have it with coke. No one we know has tried it with tofu.

6.    Everyone agrees that frog tastes like chicken. And that arrack isn’t as bitter as whisky, or as sweet as rum. Everyone.

7.     There are 791 references to arrack in the novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. You can count them.

8.    The 1771 recipe for Swedish Punch includes half a pint of arrack. A classic Arrack Sour contains lime juice, ice cubes and a ton of sugar.

9.    There are many types of arrack: Double Distilled, VSOA, Old Reserve, Blue and Pol. But the strongest and meanest is Extra Special Gal, a cross between paint thinner and cough syrup.

10.  After 2 drinks, you will be eloquent on the subjects of cricket and politics. After 5, you will develop an ear for baila music and will laugh at everything. If still awake after 10, you are most likely get beaten up.

Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka is the author of the Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, which won the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize.

(To buy this interesting read that gives you a flavour of cricket, Sri Lanka and arrack, log on to www.indiareads.com)

The World Book Fair at New Delhi is about to begin, and INDIAreads will be there.

Do visit the INDIAreads stalls – we can’t wait to have you paw our brand new merchandise even as you struggle to manage a cheap sandwich with one hand, and a screaming brat with the other.

It’s always a pleasure to hear you gossip about the authors in hushed tones (“Amartya Sen – isn’t he the guy that invented Amul..?”), and it really makes our day when you ask us 50 painfully mundane questions and end up buying nothing. We live for those moments!

The theme at this year’s fair shall be ‘Indian Cinema’.

Cinema and Literature – Really…?

As long as the cinematic medium has existed, the movie industry has looked to literature for both inspiration and content.

But when turning a literary masterpiece into a movie, do the two mediums share enough commonalities so as to enable a smooth transition…?

The filmwallahs would answer ‘yes’. From ‘About A Boy’ to ‘Wuthering Heights’, the conversion of popular books to big screen pictures has been a recurring theme in film, particularly in recent years with the success of huge franchises like Harry Potter and the Twilight saga.

While much discussion centers around adaptations that aren’t seen as having lived up to the literature on which they are based, there are many adaptations that actually enhance an existing story; or completely supersede it.

Example: Fight Club – a brilliant movie, stemming from an okay novel.

Or Clueless, which takes a novel from 1815 and makes it relevant to the modern day by setting the story of Jane Austen’s Emma in the context of a Beverly Hills high school.

But all faffing aside – the tendency to make film adaptations of books stems largely from the desire for a guaranteed audience, and is not quite the ‘natural progression’ for a book as advocated by some filmmakers.

Flipside? Stories are abridged, scenes are added, movie-only fans (newbies, resented by the hard core lit enthusiasts) are born, and those who followed the series from its inception are often left feeling a little disappointed at the end product.

The greatest difference between movies and novels is that cinemagoers share a much more social, passive experience than bookworms – who enjoy an active, solitary read. This means that while those reading the book have their own visions of characters and events, film audiences are forced to share a single vision of what these aspects of the story look like.

This alienates the book fan further – what was once a personal experience for him/her, is now universal; with the perceptions and prejudices of producers, directors, actors and audiences – all influencing the final product.

All is not lost, though.

In Part II, we shall take a look at some of the more successful experiments to have managed the leap from literature to cinema.

Novelistic ambition is a tricky thing; it can be too slight, too grandiose or, worst of all, failed. Dr Kunal Basu has none of these problems in his riveting new novel.

The Yellow Emperor’s Cure is the story of Dr Antonio Henriques Maria – Portuguese doctor, brilliant surgeon, lady killer, adventurer – who sets off on an ocean voyage to China to find a cure for syphilis; a disease that afflicts his father and is effectively a death sentence in 1898. (As Antonio’s teacher says, “No one even believes in a cure for syphilis anymore.[…] In Naples they’ve built walls inside hospitals to separate the patients from the poxies, just as in Glasgow where the police have replaced doctors on the wards. In the lands of Calvin they’ve been left to die as punishment for their sins. The civilised world has simply given up.”)

Over the next year, Antonio inhabits a strange world of invisible royalty, eunuchs, new food and new customs. He must overcome his impatience and his previous training to learn the secrets of the Nei-Ching, the ancient medical canon that teaches a doctor to diagnose a patient simply by listening to the pulse. He must replace sphygmograph and ophthalmoscope with a reading of the four seasons and the five elements, the twelve channels of the body and its eleven organs. In the process he learns Mandarin, falls in love, and finds himself as a doctor and as a human being.

Basu creates a whole and absorbing world rich with detail, and peopled with characters who, despite a fair level of suspense, refuse to deliver the perfect ending, and are therefore that much more believable.

INDIAreads had the opportunity to speak with Dr Basu at the launch of ‘The Yellow Emperor’s Cure’ in New Delhi recently. Here are some extracts from the interview;

INDIAreads: Tell us a little bit about your first book ‘The Opium Clerk’. How difficult was it getting it published?

KB: When I moved from Montreal to take up teaching at Oxford, I carried ‘The Opium Clerk’ as a voluminous manuscript tucked under my arm, and did not quite know what to do with it.

I’m an academic – I understood a lot about academic publishing, not so much about literary publishing. So I sent the first 100 pages of the manuscript to seven different literary agents – randomly picked from a handbook called the ‘Handbook of Writers’ – and prepared for rejection.

Luckily, 5 of them wanted to represent me. The one I picked to be my agent, and who still remains my agent, managed to place the manuscript in 3 weeks.

So in that sense, my story has been a rather ordinary, boring one.

INDIAreads: What first attracted you to writing?

KB: I always wanted to be an author.

My father was a very famous publisher, and my mother was a fiction writer. So while I was always fascinated by culture, and writing in particular, growing up in the 70’s like I did, one’s options were always limited.

So I made more than a few wrong decisions, studied the wrong subjects, and ended up with the career that I am in now (Dr. Basu is a University Reader in Management at Saïd Business School, Oxford). However, being a ‘Sunday writer’, or writing as purely a hobby, was never an option for me.

So when I did start writing ‘The Opium Clerk’ back in 1998, I wanted to devote full attention to my writing, and that is what I did.

IndiaREADS: You are a full-time writer now, having written 5 books in 10 years. How do you balance being a writer with your career as an academic?

KB: I’ve been writing for 10 years, and am a full-time writer now. But having been an academic for 25 years, I know how to work the academic part around my writing – rather than the other way round. So I’ve never really had to take time off my work for my writing.

For instance, let’s say Wednesday morning I have a class at 11am. So I’ll write from 9 – 10:30am, go out and teach my class at 11, come back, get back to my desk and start writing again.

INDIAreads: How easy or difficult is it for you to flip the literary switch on/off at will?

KB: Well fortunately up until now that has not been a problem largely because I don’t resent my working life. I’ll make it that much harder for myself if I resent it. Look, we all need day jobs – I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that 95 per cent of writers in the English language today have a day job. I could have been a postman, a journalist; I just happen to be an academic. Which is no bad thing either. So I go out, teach my class and do my job, get back home and back to my writing again.

INDIAreads: What in your opinion makes for ‘a good story’?

KB: (smiles)  Ah. It’s what the author makes of it. Having been raised on classics, for me a good story or the scope of a good novel is – intricately woven tales of human relationships in the backdrop of great social turmoil. Think of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, or Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. What sets these works apart?

During times of normalcy, we’re all (more or less) normal. But the extreme in us comes out during extreme times; extremely good, or extremely bad. So if I’m able to think of a story with such elements in it, then that is the kind of story I like to tell.

INDIAreads: How do you begin your writing? Where does the genesis of your story usually lie?

KB: The most difficult question to answer would be ‘how’ or ‘why’ I thought of a particular story; it’s a confluence of various things. I can talk very cogently about ‘how I wrote it’, but the actual ‘birth’ of a story is inherently nebulous.

So I could be stuck in traffic; observing things around me, thinking – and suddenly a thought might pop into my head out of nowhere; it could be about an individual I see, or a setting I witness – it could be anything. Now if I ferment that thought some more, maybe I can create a good story.

INDIAreads: What has been the toughest criticism you’ve faced as an author?

KB: Every author is criticised; such is the nature of the game. But I feel I’ve been largely lucky in this regard.

(Upon being gently probed further) Maybe one, after ‘The Japanese Wife’ came out. But that wasn’t really a review of the book; it was more of a ‘character assassination of Kunal Basu’, so to speak. ‘He’s a management prof, what business does he have writing fiction – he should go back to management’ – the like.

But one immediately sees something like that as being driven by ‘extra-literary’ considerations, and is consequently not affected by it.

Having said that a large literary novel, after I’ve written it does not belong to me anymore; it belongs to the readers. Different people choose to see different aspects of it. And it’s not mathematics – I can’t argue with how people choose to interpret my work.

INDIAreads: What would you advise aspiring writers?

KB: To read and write a lot, and to always believe in themselves. I dare say, a little bit of arrogance is not a bad thing.  Look. If you were to just look at my CV, would you say this guy writes or would end up writing fiction?

Write if you’re really passionate about writing; don’t write if it’s a ‘side thing’. So if you find yourself saying,” I have an exciting job, a beautiful partner etc., and by the way I also want to write a bit”, don’t pursue it. Usually, those experiences are not happy writing experiences. Write when you’re ready; when writing seems to be the reason you’re alive.

I wake up in the morning, and I literally have withdrawal symptoms if I haven’t written for a couple of days. So, write when you can’t live without it.

INDIAreads: Truman Capote was a self-declared “completely horizontal author” and said he had to write lying down, while Hemingway used to write standing up – a pencil in one hand and a drink in the other. Edgar Allen Poe wrote with a cat on his shoulder, while T.S. Eliot preferred writing when he had a head cold.

Tell us a little bit about your writing ‘quirks’, if any.

KB: I’m a compulsive editor; 3 full drafts at least, edit after edit after edit.

My wife has to drag me away from my desk so I may go out for a walk or some exercise, for I am forever at my desk.

INDIAreads: When may your readers expect a work of non-fiction by Kunal Basu?

KB: I write non-fiction all the time. Strictly speaking, all of my academic publishing has been non-fiction. Additionally, I’ve written the text for an exceptionally different collection of 8,000 beautiful photographs by Kushal Ray called ‘Intimacies’ (releasing on 15^th February 2012), and almost wrote it fictionally. But in principle it’s neither a short story nor a novel; one could classify it as non-fiction.

(Pauses and thinks) However, if I were ever to move to non-fiction per se, I would probably write my memoirs. But hopefully that won’t happen in the next 10 years; I’ve got stories lined up in a queue in my head, each jumping and yelling ‘Me Next!’

INDIAreads: Any particular reason why you choose to mainly write historical fiction?

KB: History was my favourite subject in school. So deep inside me there has always been a strange love for other worlds, other places, and other times.

Also, I’m a Bengali and most of my early writings through school and college, from poetry to short stories, have been in Bangla. And Bengal has always had this great tradition of historical fiction – Bankim Chandra, Romesh Chunder Dutt, and others. So I believe that has seeped into me as I was growing up. Incidentally, I do also want to write a Bangla novel at some point.

But I do not see myself purely as a practitioner of historical fiction – my next novel is set in the here and now, right here in India.

INDIAreads: How much of a part does research play in your writing?

KB: For a historical novel, a significant amount of research always needs to be done. But the trick for me is not to over-research, for an over-researched piece of work will cease to sound and read like fiction.

I am driven only by my story. So I will only research an aspect of my story if I feel it will add to it as a whole. But even so, researching and writing a historical novel easily takes me a couple of years.

INDIAreads: Do you keep shuttling back and forth between Oxford and India?

KB: Quite a bit, and largely for reasons of my writing. I do all my writing at home in Oxford, and I keep visiting India periodically to sort of, do what I have to do to fertilize my imagination.

INDIAreads: What else interests you, apart from writing?

KB: Nothing about me is casual; for me it has to be ‘full on’, or I won’t do it.

I was a painter as a child, I’ve even acted in two films – but a sustained interest in my life would have to be traditional crafts. I really think that this is a part of human heritage that is increasingly getting lost. For instance, most people don’t realize that the terracotta Bankura Horse (a regular feature in most Bengali living rooms, and the official emblem of All India Handicrafts) is not even being made anymore.

So I’ve travelled around the world – Africa, South-east Asia, Latin America, visited villages and spoken to artisans, weavers, craftsmen of all types, photographed them and written about them. In the process, I’ve acquired quite a few pieces that currently occupy pride of place in my study.

INDIAreads: So may we expect to see you try your hand at sculpture sometime..?

KB: Writing is the path I’ve reached after most meanderings in my career, and it continues to be an abiding passion in my life. But (and smiles) never say never, is what I’ve come to understand about life.

Homies!

The Jaipur Literature Festival (20-24 Jan ’12) is about to get underway.

It’s been a bumpy ride - The inaugural event in 2006 drew a crowd of about 100 attendees, including some who “appeared to be tourists who had simply got lost,” according to the event’s co-director William Dalrymple.

And the naysayers feel the festival is all about pretenders and post-colonial sahibs. Like Hartosh Bal; in a caustic piece appearing in Open Magazine in 2011, he wrote the festival  “works not because it is a literary enterprise, but because it ties us to the British literary establishment”—exemplified, first and foremost, by Dalrymple himself (whom he went on to deride as the “pompous arbiter of literary merit in India”). Incidentally, Bal is an Oxbridge-educated Indian who sounds more British than the Queen herself.

Dalrymple hit back immediately, lambasting Bal’s screed as racist cant akin to “pouring shit through an immigrant’s letterbox”.

Sadly, things are less acrimonious now.

Let’s take one final, longing look back at some of the funnier and more candid moments from events of years past. To set the mood for the serious business that follows.

Literary foreplay, if you will.

At the 2011 Jaipur Lit Fest;

1. Orhan Pamuk, that grave purveyor of melancholy, is evidently also a funny man.

During the Q&A session, someone asked Pamuk if the theme of his new novel ‘Museum of Innocence’ was whether philosophical love was deeper than physical love. Without skipping a beat, Pamuk responded, “That depends on the penetration.”

2. Junot Diaz (author of ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao‘), during a session titled ‘Storyteller-in-Chief’, told a packed crowd under the Mughal tent, “I can’t imagine anything more foreign to Indian readers than the Dominican Republic or New Jersey. But white people were looking for YOU when they found US.”

3. During one of the interactive sessions, Gulzar amused the audiences with little anecdotes on the birth of songs in Hindi cinema before Javed Akhtar (who arrived 20 minutes late) could join him. He later apologised to Akhtar saying,” ‘Maaf Kijiyega, main inhe behla raha tha (Forgive me, I was just managing them).

4. During a Q&A session, a school girl asked Gulzar, “There was simplicity in our old songs. The vocabulary was simple and it touched our hearts. Why can’t we have a similar vocabulary in new songs?” Gulzar shot back, “You have used ‘vocabulary’ twice in your question. Can you tell me what it is called in Hindi?

5. An angry Indian editor from a well-known and respected publishing house was heard  describing Dalrymple (who at last year’s festival was reading his own texts while Paban Das Baul sang and swayed, even as certain sections felt as the Director of the Festival he should not have been hogging so much of the limelight) as “that self-promoting ‘White Mughal‘ who has turned down all my authors”.

People !!!!

Now is the time to subscribe to INDIAreads.

We’re giving away a Free Bestseller with every purchase of an INDIAreads Smart/Bonanza Plan in 2012.

You heard us; our shelves runneth over.

Only for New Members, though.

Existing Subscribers will have to settle for our massive discounts and flawless service; it’s quite sad, really.

So please hurry and mooch off of us.

For a complete overview of all INDIAreads plans, please click here. (for Delhi/NCR)

or here. (for Other Metros)

and here. (for Rest of India)

NOTE: Offer valid only till midnight, January 2012.

Do They die really?

The death of an icon- be it on telly, in the comic books or in a novel, normally leads to a whirlwind of emotions and a storm of protests from their ardent followers. I mean that’s what fiction is about right – good triumphing over evil, the main protagonist going through everything and coming out unscathed. That’s what provides hope to millions. That’s half the attraction of fiction- thinks that can’t happen in real life, happen there and they normally end with a happily ever after, and increasingly now, they don’t end. So, even when an author decides that he has had enough of a character and decides to make it a mortal, the audience just refuses to let go. “You are an author, use your imagination and give us more or even give us more of the same, but don’t you dare kill my superhero. ” And so for the comic book sellers, it has become a tried and tested formula. Kill a superhero, generate loads of hype, see sales skyrocketing and then give in to popular demand and bring him back. And then watch the sales go up even higher.

I almost feel that now even the readers know that death in comics or even on telly is often temporary. So when Rowling killed Dumbeldore or Sirius Black, almost every Potter fan was confident that they would return. Rowling stuck to her plot. But not so with others. So today when an icon dies,  the readers feel very little loss, they are simply left wondering how long it will be before their icon is resurrected. The excitement is to see how they are bumped off and how they will be made to return and in what form. Here is a look at the death of some of the important comic and fictional characters.

The 1992, DC comics storyline, “The Death of Superman”, created a lot of buzz around the death of Superman. In the story, Superman is killed in an engaging battle with the machine named Doomsday. Both the contestants succumbed to wounds caused due to fight. The later issues depicted the world’s reaction to Superman’s death in “Funeral for a Friend,” the emergence of four individuals believed to be the “new” Superman, and the eventual return of the original Superman in “Reign of the Supermen!”

In DC Comics’ Batman: RIP: storyline, Batman was apparently killed. The “Final Crisis” storyline revealed that he had survived, only for him to disappear into the time stream. Dick Grayson took on the mantle of Batman, and Batman came back to the present in the “Return of Bruce Wayne” storyline, published about a year and a half after “Final Crisis”.

DC Comics has revived the character of Batwoman with a 21st-century twist: The masked crime fighter is a lesbian socialite. Batwoman made an appearance in the July issue of DC comics called 52, in 2008.
The hero’s real identity is Kathy Kane. Interestingly, the former Batwoman, created in 1956, was also known by the same name. However, The first Kathy was killed off in 1979, murdered by an assassin.

While Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, even though was not the work he valued most.  In fact Conan Doyle once referred to them as  “an elementary form of fiction”.  He was very proud of his historical novels and considered them some of his finest work. As time went on Conan Doyle found himself more closely identified with Sherlock Holmes to the exclusion of his other works.  “I weary of his name,” he told his mother.

After a visit to the Reichenbach Falls, Conan Doyle contemplated the death site for Sherlock Holmes.  The Adventure of the Final Problem was published in December of 1893 in The Strand magazine.  People were so upset that more than twenty thousand of them cancelled their subscription to The Strand magazine. It took a story of a ghostly hound to inspire Conan Doyle to bring the great detective back.  In 1901 Sherlock Holmes reappeared in “The Hound of Baskervilles. The Hound of the Baskervilles was also first published in The Strand. The magazine’s circulation rose by thirty thousand overnight.

The publisher of the Spiderman series said that Parker’s alter ego, Spider-Man, will finally succumb to one of his most pernicious foes in the final issue of “Ultimate Comics Spider-Man”. He will end up dying, after an epic fight, by the hands of the Green Goblin, on the last issue of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man. Fans of Spider-Man can take a sigh of relief, as the “Ultimate” imprint will have no bearing on Marvel’s bigger universe and Amazing Spider-Man series.

Source: http://enotes.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/top-10-true-confessions-of-professors-and-other-literary-types/

So, I love collecting books. I see a good book, especially if it has anything to do with history, politics, world affairs and I just have to buy it. I know that I may never get a chance to read them all, but one can dream right? And just looking at them gives me immense pleasure. I begin each morning by walking around the library, running my hands over books, flipping some open and smiling. I know that at the end of the day (or even in between), I have something to look forward to. My friends and family often complain that the only reason INDIAreads came up is so that I could indulge this book addiction of mine. Every time they call and ask, “So where are you?,” the answer inevitably is, “book shopping.” “Again?” “Hey, that’s my job after all ”

So in my latest shopping spree I came across some great Off the Beaten Track Non Fiction reads (bought 500 in one go ). They’ll make their way to the library collection soon enough but here’s a list of a few choice picks. Now take a look and tell me can you really blame me for buying these????

P.s. I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to read and review all of these, so am including external albeit reliable reviews. The once without any information are books which we have already uploaded on the site with all information. Hope you enjoy them!!!!!

1. Conquerors of Time: Exploration and Invention in the Age of Daring by Trevor Fishlock: A completely absorbing read that brings to life the important events and ideas that have shaped our world. It is about “men, animals and machines, about the seafarers, engineers, inventors and trailblazers who enabled the British to hold together a vast empire and the Americans to push their frontiers West.”  http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/feb/14/featuresreviews.guardianreview21

2. Spectre of Violence: The 1857 Kanpur Massacres by Rudrangshu Mukherjee: An illuminating inquiry into the play of power and dominance behind 1857 .
On 27 June 1857, rebels publicly slaughtered over 300 men, women and children of the ‘master race’ at the Satichaura Ghat in Kanpur. On 15 July, a group of women and children who had survived were killed at the Bibighur. Two days later, General Havelock reclaimed Kanpur and Colonel James Neill decimated the rebel population. This sequence of violence has held sway over Indian and British imaginations for generations, and historians and commentators have recounted the massacres with horror.
Locating the massacres in the upheaval which overtook north India in the early nineteenth century, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, an eminent 1857 historian, analyses the nature of the violence. Mukherjee argues that the absence of rebel accounts and chronicles inhibits a telling of their version of the story. What is available are the contemporary accounts of British survivors, diaries of British loyalists and depositions as part of the official report prepared by the British. By reading these sources ‘against their grain’ and by examining the manner in which the evidence was stitched together, Spectre of Violence brings to light fresh directions of inquiry into the events of 1857.

3. The Mammoth Book of War Correspondents: 100 of the greatest war dispatches ever written with contributions from Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Rudyard Kipling, James Cameroon, Leon Trotsky and Max Hastings. “War correspondence is a dangerous job, but someone has to do it. The readers demand it. Need  it. Warfare has changed much since Russell’s day (the first man to use the telegraph in the 1840s to to send dispatches from the Crimean wars.), so has the technology of war journalism from telegraph to sat phone, and live commentary as you watch war-u like on the tube. The readers’ hunger for war news has changed too. It’s even greater. In the information age the one information you cannot do without is Mars’s latest havoc. Somewhere, a war correspondent is dying to give it to you.”  This book contains dispatches from the Crimean war to the Franco-Prussian War, from the American Civil War to the Russian Civil War, from the World Wars to the Korean War, from the Cuban Civil War to Chechnya,  from Bolivia (the last journey of Che Guevara) to Vietnam.

4. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a window into human nature by Steven Pinker: How you use words can determine how your mind works, Steven Pinker explains here. Find out more with this detailed NYT review. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/review/Saletan-t.html

5. Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment by Jacques Leslie: There are more than 45,000 of them in the world. They have altered the speed of the planet’s rotation, the tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field. They influence landscapes and societies. They are dams, and in Deep Water,Jacques Leslie offers an incisive, searching, and beautifully written account of the emerging crisis over dams and the world’s water. Reporting in the tradition of John McPhee and Peter Matthiessen, Leslie examines the crisis through the lives of three people: Medha Patkar, the world’s foremost anti-dam activist; Thayer Scudder, an American anthropologist; and Don Blackmore, an Australian water manager. In each of these engrossing portraits, Leslie shows how dams seduce national leaders with seeming bounties of water and power but end up producing blights on the citizenry and landscape. Deep Water is an eloquent and important book about the water crisis and a startling look at the fate of our planet. (From goodreads.com)

6. Simplexity: Why Simple things become complex (and how Complex things can be made simple) by Jeffrey Kluger: Frustrated by the traffic on narrow bridges? Stunned by the number of buttons on a remote control? Saddened by the lack of basic medical care in the developing world? Kluger (Splendid Solution) makes the modern world comprehensible, analyzing social and technological systems to reveal that “things that seem complicated can be preposterously simple; things that seem simple can be dizzyingly complex.” He compares cells to cities to stock markets, renders quarks and fractals accessible and draws parallels between Wal-Mart and AIDS clinics in Tanzania. Although Kluger is prone to hyperbole, his astonishing discoveries require no exaggeration: the book describes how even the most technologically advanced manufacturing plant is infinitely simpler than a humble houseplant “with its microhydraulics and fine-tuned metabolism and dense schematic of nucleic acids”—and baseball fans will be dismayed to discover that football is, in fact, the more complex of the two games: “the possible number of starting configurations before the play even begins is… 31.4 billion.” Kluger’s findings are likely to incite controversy, confirming his contention that explaining simplicity and complexity is never as straightforward as it seems. (Publishers Weekly, April 2008)

7. Flames of the Chinar by Sheikh Abdullah (Abridged and translated from Urdu by Khushwant Singh): This is the autobiography of Sher-e-Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah, the man who shaped Kashmir’s destiny.

8. Mountbatten and the Partition of India by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre: This book contains interviews with Mountbatten, and a selection of papers that were in his possession, explaining and examining Mountbatten’s role in India’s partition.

9. The Europe since Napoleon by David Thomson

10. Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz

11. War Made new:  Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World by Max Boot: From bronze cannons to smart bombs, this engaging study examines the impact of new weaponry on war by spotlighting exemplary battles, including famous epics like the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the attack on Pearl Harbor along with obscure clashes like the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, in which a British colonial force mowed down Sudanese tribesmen with machine guns. Boot (The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power) gives due weight to social context: advanced weapons don’t spell victory unless accompanied by good training and leadership; innovative doctrine; an efficient, well-funded bureaucracy; and a “battle culture of forbearance” that eschews warrior ferocity in favor of a soldierly ethos of disciplined stoicism under fire. These factors flourish, he contends, under a rationalist, progressive Western mindset. The author, a journalist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, enlivens his war stories with profiles of generals from Gustavus Adolphus to Norman Schwarzkopf and splashes of blood and guts. Boot distills 500 years of military history into a well-paced, insightful narrative. (from the Publishers’ Weekly)

By now, we all know that technological and strategic revolutions have changed the face of war, but how many of us also realize how much these innovations have also transformed the world beyond the battlefield? Narrative historian Max Boot contends that advances in military affairs helped create the modern nation, facilitated the growth of European colonial empires, and aided the rise of 20th-century totalitarian governments. Boot’s detail-packed discussion of the impact of military revolutions on the course of modern history makes War Made New one of the most provocative, thought-stimulating books in recent memory (goodreads review)

12. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell: Among his many gifts, Joseph Campbell’s most impressive was the unique ability to take a contemporary situation, such as the murder and funeral of President John F. Kennedy, and help us understand its impact in the context of ancient mythology. Herein lies the power of The Power of Myth, showing how humans are apt to create and live out the themes of mythology. Based on a six-part PBS television series hosted by Bill Moyers, this classic is especially compelling because of its engaging question-and-answer format, creating an easy, conversational approach to complicated and esoteric topics. For example, when discussing the mythology of heroes, Campbell and Moyers smoothly segue from the Sumerian sky goddess Inanna to Star Wars‘ mercenary-turned-hero, Han Solo. Most impressive is Campbell’s encyclopedic knowledge of myths, demonstrated in his ability to recall the details and archetypes of almost any story, from any point and history, and translate it into a lesson for spiritual living in the here and now. –Gail Hudson, Amazon.com

13. True as the Stars above: Adventures in Modern Astrology by Neil Spencer: What do Princess Diana, Ronald Reagan, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare and the leaders of the Third Reich have in common? They all consulted astrologers. Why? How does astrology work, and if scientists like Richard Dawkins go out of their way to rubbish it, why has it never been so popular? Most books on astrology have either been how-to manuals, cheap guides to the year ahead, or forbidding academic tomes on subjects like the transits of Pluto – until now. True as the Stars Above is a irreverent, intelligent defence of astrology, and an examination of the extraordinary role it has played in the past and still plays today. Among some of the revelations in the book: Margaret Thatcher sought astrological advice after the Brighton bomb. A significant number of the world’s major financial institutions have an astrologer or two on their payroll. British intelligence employed an astrologer during WWII because they were convinced Hitler was doing the same. Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff (to his fury) was forced to keep a colour coded calendar, with green for good days, red for bad days and yellow for ‘iffy’ days, in line with the views of Nancy’s astrologer. This is astrology demystified, whether it’s the ongoing row over statistical evidence for astrology; the myth of The Age of Aquarius; computer dating by star sign or why Gone With The Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara is definitely an Aries.

14. Beyond the Oxus: the Central Asians by Monica Whitlock

15. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: Okay, before you point it out, I know this one’s fiction, but I just had to mention it. Why? Read the synopsis below…..

“. . . I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.”

January, 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, Dawsey Adams, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name in a book?
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of Dawsey and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—a book club born as a spur-of-the- moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts an outstanding cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable conversation in letters with the Society’s members, learning about their lives, their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on all of them. Over time, and despite a demanding and dramatic life in London, she finds herself drawn to the self-contained Dawsey Adams, and to the story of Elizabeth, a young woman whose bright spirit and strength live on in the daughter she left behind when she was sent to a concentration camp. Juliet knows she has found the subject of her book, and possibly much more, and sets sail for Guernsey, changing the course of her life forever.

And I could go on and on, after I hand picked every book and each according to me is special….but here’s just a taster….just to explain why I am a compulsive book buyer!!!!!

After the overwhelming response to quick contest 1 and the box full of complaints about how unjust it is to have a contest only for a certain age group, we bring you Quick Contest 2. Age no bar. Yes, everyone (living in India) can participate!!!!

If you were to set a date/ meeting between 2 fictional characters, who would they be? Where would you have them meet and why?

Your entries should reach customercare@indiareads.com before midnight, May 31, 2011. Or you can send them to our facebook mailbox.

As long as you are living in India and are not a family member of any INDIAreads employee or related to someone on our review panel, you can participate.

Top 3 entries get to choose their prize from our bag of best sellers.

HAPPY READING and Keep sending in your entries.

Philip Roth: The Man Booker International, 2011, Winner

Philip Roth, the highly acclaimed American novelist has been awarded with the  prestigious Man Booker International Prize, in the process he shrugged off competition from 12 other contenders, including India-born Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry.

Roth, 78, one of the world’s most prolific, celebrated and controversial writers won the biennial Prize worth sixty thousand pound. However, events preceding the actual announcement of his name has taken some sheen out of his glorious achievement.  Carmen Callil, one of the panel judges, walked out of the jury saying  ’I don’t rate him as a writer at all.’  “He goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It’s as though he’s sitting on your face and you can’t breathe”.

Roth shot to fame with his 1959 novel Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrayal of Jewish-American life that earned him the National Book Award. The Portnoy’s Complaint transformed Roth into a major literary celebrity. The late 1990’s trilogy comprising the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastora’l(1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000), has left little doubt about him being the true literary genius.

The award is a tribute to the man who has so meticulously penned down a humorous, satirical ways of Jewish-American life through his superlative imaginations.

If there is a book that every bookaholic must read, it is this, it is this, it is this.

84, Charing Cross Road – a weird name for a book, don’t you think? I would probably have never picked it up if I was browsing at a bookstore or a library. But this one was recomended by a very dear friend so I rented it out (the perks of working at a library!!!).  After the first two pages I began to seriously question my friend’s taste in books. I mean what would you think if you were to read two letters – one from a customer to a nondescript bookstore asking for cheap, second hand copies of books and the second, the bookstore’s very proper (read British) reply. How exciting or inspiring could it be? I was tempted to call my friend and ask her if this was some kind of a sick joke. You have a bookstore cum library, so there read this. But before blasting her off, I decided to go through a few more pages. And boy, was I rewarded. By page 5 my faith in my friend had been restored. By page or shall I say, letter 7, I was hooked. For the next hour or so I kept reading the correspondence between a quirky American book lover and a small, antiquarian book shop located at 84, Charing Cross Road, London.  Not once did I stop smiling. The book is a sheer delight. Of course, I must apologize for using the word antiquarian here, lest the author – who in case you are wondering is the woman who wrote the letters – takes offense. She categorically stateson page 1 itself that the term scares her.

Yes at first glance, 84, Charing Cross Road is just a collection of letters between a buyer and a seller, but those letters have so much spirit, so much humour and so much warmth in them. They portray a series of beautiful relationships formed between people across the Atlantic who had never met one another and who had only one thing in common -books. Who says books provide fodder only for the mind? They enrich the heart and the soul too. And the letters which start out as straight jacket formal notes that one learns to write in English classes, soon become chronicles of friendship and compassion; a treasury of good natured banter. By the end of the 97 page book you feel as if you know the author, Helene (with an ‘e’ as she points out) really well and you can’t help wanting to meet her to experience her wit and warmth first hand. Who after all sends eggs, ham and even nylons to the families of the bookstore she is buying from, when she herself is on a shoestring budget?

Helene’s letters are a delight – the way she waxes eloquent everytime she receives a good book and blows up Frank Doel, the man who is responsible for procuring her books at Marks and Cohen, whenever there is a delay is hilarious. There’s not much more to say about the book, except that you have to read it to believe it. This is no great piece of literature, just a book straight from a booklover’s heart. A word of appreciation for the editors. They have lett the letters be as is. No grammar checks, no effort to ensure that all’s well with the punctuation. And despite the fact that I get irritated every time I come across a grammatical error in a book, not once did I get cross with Helene or her publishers. By withholding their red pens they have retained the spontaneity of the letters; their very real, very tangible feel. Who, after all, wants to read “perfect” error free letters? Especially letters where you are holding a conversation with the writer, hearing, not reading every word.

Oh and before I wrap this review up, I must confess that I was lucky, the copy available in the INDIAreads library had not just 84 Charing Cross Road but also what can be termed as its sequel, “The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.” If there was one dream that Helene had, one that crept up time and again in her letters, it was a wish to visit England and Marks and Cohen. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is none other than Helene herself and the book is her diary, a blow by blow account of her visit to the land of her dreams for the release of 84 Charing Cross Road. Once again Helene’s candour, her uncensored observations and effusive notes have you smiling all the way. And you realize once again, just how many friends a book can win you.

A definite must read.

Rent/Purchase 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff from INDIAreads Online Book Store cum Library. Register Now.

** P.S for those of you wondering at the verbose and absolutely informal tone of this review, you have to read the book. There is no way that one can do a critical, formal review of this one!