My Reads 2010

As the year comes to a close Outlook magazine usually comes out with a list of readings by the well heeled and powerful Indian. The list cuts across various genres of books and contains some surprises also. As for me, the year past has been a productive one.  I read some of the best books ever. The one perceptible change in my reading, this year, has been the Asian authors in my list. All fiction.  No management or self development books. And none in Malayalam, my mother tongue. (Last year I read a few novels of MT, Pottekad, Malayatoor and VKN).

It started with my introduction to the Pakistan novelist Daniyal Mueenuddin’s book In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. This cannot be called a novel but the stories have a common thread.  “In eight beautifully crafted, interconnected stories, Mueenuddin explores the cutthroat feudal society in which a rich Lahore landowner is entrenched. A complicated network of patronage undergirds the micro-society of servants, families and opportunists surrounding wealthy patron K.K. Harouni.” As you progress through the stories and the characters in the feudalistic back drop of Lahore you never feel you are traversing an alien culture. You feel quite at home as you would be if you were reading Punathil Kunhabdulla.  I had gone around the bookshops in Kerala, at the behest of my daughter, for a copy. But I found even the usually well informed Current Book Stall sales staff ignorant of the author. I read the book when I went on a visit to my daughter in the Middle East.  The book is so popular now in India that even the road side hawker stocks it. 

The other books that I read from my daughter’s place were Aravind Adiga’s ‘The White Tiger’ and G D Robert’s Shantharam.  I didn’t find either of the books a page turner. In fact I found the first one boring and the second one tedious. As both the books had become well publicized I felt compelled to read.  About White Tiger this was what Manjula Padmanabhan had to say in her book review: “I found the book a tedious, unfunny slog, but the back-cover blurb says it is "compelling, angry and darkly humorous". The book won the Man Booker prize with rave reviews in the west. Shantharam became topical with many of the characters and events bordering on the real and Leopold café in Colaba being an important setting in the novel. The popularity of the book could also be attributed to Leopold Café subsequently becoming the first target in the Mumbai Terror attacks (2008).

The minor disappointments of these two books were largely offset by my next read. That was Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A thousand splendid suns’. The best read of the year and perhaps one of the best books ever read by me. Reminded me of Alberto Moravio’s ‘Two Women’ (film starring Sophia Lorren) which I read some 50 years back.  The plot is the providential convergence of the lives of two women separated by many years in age but destined to be the wives of a cruel shoemaker from Kabul and united in facing the miseries of being born as women in Afghanistan. The story passes through the strife torn Afghanistan over the last three decades. From the dictatorship of Daoud Khan, through the Soviet occupation, to the Mujahudeen and finally the Taliban .From one misery to another.  There is, however, a glimmer of hope at the end.  "There are parts of this book that will have grown men surreptitiously blotting the tears that are on the verge of overflowing their ducts, and by the time you get to the middle, you won’t be able to put it down. Hosseini's simple but richly descriptive prose makes for an engrossing read, and in my opinion, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is among the best I have ever read. This is definitely not one to be missed." Read Amanda Richards's review  . I read his first novel “The Kite Runner’ a few months later.

The other books I read during this year were: Paulo Coelho’s ‘By the river Piedra I sat down and wept’, Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies (collection of stories)’. One of my favourite quotes is from this book:"There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." That in nutshell is the theme of the book.  I’m now on ‘Namesake’ which I will be finishing before the year ends.  My next years reading will start with Coelho’s The Alchemist.

I tried reading Orhan Pamuk’s “My Name Is Red” but the sheer size of the book and the style of the narration made me a little apprehensive. Perhaps I will have to approach the book again with lots of patience and complete attention.  Hopefully, next year.

The greatest disappointment of the year was Kiran Desai’s (partner of Orhan Pamuk) ‘The inheritance of loss”, winner of Man Booker prize. Story set in the backdrop of Goorkhaland disturbances in West Bengal. Thrown in between is the struggle of an illegal Indian immigrant in USA and his return to the cauldron of insurgency sweeping his hometown.  The story has minor shades of the storyline of the novel ‘Disgrace’ by JM Coetzee. (a deeply upsetting and chilling account of the post apartheid South Africa).  I couldn’t somehow vibe with the characters and  narrative style of  Ms Desai.

I was surprised when I found myself being one among the few in my circle who had not read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J D Salinger. The critical acclaim of his works and the media attention that followed his death this year made me want to somehow lay my hands on the book.  The book was supposed to have spawned many an adolescent rebel and made ‘alienation’ fashionable among the youth of the 50’s.  That he remained a recluse till his death made him more enigmatic. I got hold of the book from a second hand book seller and haven’t repented for my efforts.

In between these books I read (re-read) many Wodehouse, James Heriot (‘All things great and small’ etc) and Agatha Christie books which never seem to lose their charm. When feeling low and you need something to lift your spirits there is nothing like a tryst with Jeeves. Results guaranteed.