There was a time in my life when I read a lot. I read everything I could lay my hands on – newspapers, magazines, comics, detective novels and so on. I remember my favourite books as a kid used to be the Hardy Boys mysteries. I enjoyed them thoroughly and I remember regularly borrowing a couple of books every week from the Secunderabad Club library before eventually reading them all. You could even say that perhaps I read the Hardy Boys a little longer in my life than most people 
Now that I think about it, it was from the Hardy Boys series that I learnt much about American culture and lingo – at least before the advent of cable television in India in the 90s.
I did eventually, of course, graduate to reading the likes of Frederick Forsyth and Tom Clancy and what not, but there was a certain charm about those books that was hard to replace. Tintin books had a similar place in my childhood. Rahul and I have practically read every Tintin book there is at least 50 times each and we probably know the exact sequence of panels on most of them!
When I got to college, I got involved with too many other things and found little time to read but what I did manage to read were some real classics. This course that I took in my second semester, ‘Science Fiction: An Appreciation’ was responsible for my consuming a significant amount of SF. I read Clarke, Asimov and an assortment of authors thanks to the course. There are still so many great books that I haven’t read and plan to but like some other things in my life, it is something I always promise myself I will get down to but never actually do
And since I am on the topic of SF anyway, there is a classic book that I just cannot keep myself from mentioning. A book that is perhaps the most famous in its genre – Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.’ An absolutely brilliant and hilariously written book which is perhaps the most memorable book I have read in a long, long time. If you want to read SF and have time for just one, read this one
The habit of reading everything in sight is arguably a good one (even if I say so myself). It certainly has served me well – the head start in general knowledge that I had as a kid was thanks to this as is the fact that today, the volume of information that I process every single day through mailing lists and websites and all the other reading that I do is not trivial. I guess the credit goes to my parents – they first put me on this by introducing me to the Readers’ Digest magazine back in 6th grade.
So in the last few months, I have done quite a bit of reading. Some of it thanks to Mr. Booze’s fantastic collection and excellent suggestions about what I should read to catch up with some of the classics that I had missed reading in the past. Some of the others are ones I picked up on my recent India trip while browsing around in a bookstore.
1984 – George Orwell
1984 is a brilliant book which depicts a totalitarian state in its worst form. The book left me feeling a sense of paranoia and a newfound respect for basic human liberties that we all enjoy and sometimes do not appreciate enough. George Orwell’s masterpiece was the first of a series of books which were about dystopia, another notable one being Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World”.
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
I admit that I started reading the book with a lot of skepticism. I expected a somewhat realistic book and instead, I was reading one which couldn’t be more sympathetically titled in favour of the protagonist, Howard Roark. I almost thought that in the first part, it was like a Hindi movie! Gradually though, I began to give the book more credit. In the end, I ended up liking quite a bit and it is in fact, one of my favourite books. Every single day I look at skyscrapers of New York and I am reminded of Howard Roark. When somebody mentions Hell’s Kitchen, I am reminded of Gail Wynand.
The book definitely left its impact on me. I liked it for a lot of the ideas in her philosophy although I hardly subscribe to all of them. But in the end, it did seem a little too hopelessly unrealistic of the world we live in. Reason and ego cannot drive the world because of the one thing that I think is the key to understanding people – human nature.
The IITians – Sandipan Deb
Some good non-fiction for a change. I read this book for purely personal reasons. As an alumnus of IIT Madras, this book was something that I just had to read. As I leafed through its pages in a bookstore in Hyderabad, it seemed to me that this book was going to be more than just another ego-trip for us IITians. And I am happy to say that it definitely was a very rewarding and inspiring book to read. The book is well written by Sandipan Deb (alumnus IIT Kharagpur, IIM Calcutta) and is a good mix of history, personal anecdotes and the stories of a lot of different IITians – some famous, some not so famous – that were interviewed for the book. It examines some of the crucial questions and challenges that face the IIT system today and more interestingly, raises questions about what it is that IITians owe back to the system. All in all, a great book and certainly something you shouldn’t be missing if you graduated from an IIT.
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
A delightful little book about a young Indian boy who gets shipwrecked as his family is migrating to Canada. Absolutely wonderful story-telling complete with the right touch of humour. Richard Parker in the book is my absolutely favourite character
India Unbound – Gurcharan Das
This is a book that I currently read on my daily commute – I picked this up entirely on a hunch when browsing in a bookstore in Hyderabad. India Unbound is a rivetting story about India’s journey from independence in 1947 to the global information age that we live in. A well-written book that I think combines historical accounts, economic analysis and personal anecdotes remarkably well. The author is the former CEO of Procter and Gamble India and offers what I think is a remarkable insight into modern India. What makes this book extra special for me is that it really is the first account I am reading of events in independent India. All our history books at school stopped with independence, as a consequence of which, nobody from my generation really has a clue about all what happened since then.
Sometimes I think I missed something by not reading as much as I should have during my college days. But what the heck, I have a lifetime to catch up everything I could possibly want to!
[Ladies and gentlemen, this is my 100th blog entry!]
