Skip to main content

My Reading List for 2016


I have set a diminutive reading target for the coming year for various reasons.   Just five novels.  If everything goes well (and I’m no optimist), the list may lengthen as the calendar turns.  Well!

Umberto Eco
Topping the list is Umberto Eco’s new novel, Numero Zero.  The only novel of the author that I have read is his very first one, the one that sold millions of copies in the 1980s, Name of the Rose.  It was a thriller dexterously peppered with philosophy, theology, history and mystery.  Numero Zero will be released in India in a couple of days.  It traces a conspiracy linking a long line of events in Italian history, from the death of Mussolini to the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigade.  The Piazza Fontana bombing, the sudden death of Pope John Paul I, the Vatican banking scandal, the P2 Masonic lodge, and the shooting of Pope John Paul II, all find their place in the plot.  Many reviewers have not been very kind to Eco's new novel.  They accuse him of stretching his imagination a trifle too far to make everything fit neatly into his conspiracy theory or his philosophy about conspiracy theories.  His novel, Foucault’s Pendulum (1989),  was beyond my comprehension though I grappled with it two times.  However, I’m determined to venture into this seventh novel of the eminent philosopher-writer because of a mere whimsical, instinctual pull.

Christopher Rush’s Will is the second on my list.  It is a historical thriller written by a Shakespeare scholar.  The novelist has admitted that much of the history in the novel is fabricated.  But the fabricated history in good fiction may be truer than the history recorded by historians.  The ‘will’ in the title is a pun for William Shakespeare and the will he drafts before his death.  Published in 2009, this book did not attract too many raving reviews. 

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a debut novel published in 2005.  “This book reads like a cross between Dracula and The Da Vinci Code,” says the Guardian review.  The legend of Dracula mingles with the history of certain real blood-suckers in this novel which also failed to impress eminent reviewers.

There should be some romance and love too to lighten the darkness of history and its weird mysteries.  Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember is a coming-of-age romantic novel published in 1999.  It tells the story of the love between the 17 year-old Landon and a very religious daughter of a church minister.   A romantic tragedy, it teaches the protagonist that “miracles can happen” – a lesson that I might want to learn.

Kazuo Ishiguro
I would like to begin exploring the mysterious world of Kazuo Ishiguro.  His novels end without any sense of resolution, I understand.  His characters are daunted by some mystery that lies buried in their past.  I would like to read his latest novel (2015), The Buried Giant, which tells the story of Axl and Beatrice who belong to the ancient England of King Arthur and his magician Merlin.  It deals with certain conflicts in the relationship between the couple whose past holds some secret which may enhance their love or ruin it.

I look forward to 2016 with new hopes and dreams in the company of these and hopefully more books.  I also look forward to completing the novel that I'm writing, tentatively titled Black Hole and tells the story of Devlok, a godman's ashram in Delhi's suburban Asola.  


Comments

  1. Your list is short, but it is nowhere near being light. Happy reading.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Maliny. If reading is not an intellectual adventure, what's its use?

      Delete
  2. I have never been able to plan my reading. Books come up suddenly when I don't know what I am looking for. I had not been able to read for a long time and then it began again. I pick up subjects sometimes that interest me, and sometimes, it is the title of the book that captures me. Your list is attractive. Eco's The Name of the Rose was exceptional. I will be looking into the other books you have mentioned here. Will and The Buried Giant definitely seem interesting. Thanks for sharing...!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too don't really plan it, Sunaina. But when I happen to read about certain books which seem good to me, I add them to my reading list. Then I do some filtering. It is possible that the list will undergo changes as I go along.

      Delete
  3. All the best for 'Black Hole' to top this list in 2016!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much, Amit. I know how much you mean it. I can never reach anywhere near these writers. Without any false humility I bow to your wishes.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Taliban and India

Illustration by Copilot Designer Two things happened on 14 Oct 2025. One: India rolled out the red carpet for an Afghan delegation led by the Taliban Administration’s Foreign Minister. Two: a young man was forced to wash the feet of a Brahmin and drink that water. This happened in Madhya Pradesh, not too far from where the Taliban leaders were being given regal reception in tune with India’s philosophy of Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God). Afghanistan’s Taliban and India’s RSS (which shaped Modi’s thinking) have much in common. The former seeks to build a state based on its interpretation of Islamic law aiming for a society governed by strict religious codes. The RSS promotes Hindutva, the idea of India as primarily a Hindu nation, where Hindu values form the cultural and political foundation. Both fuse religious identity with national identity, marginalising those who don’t fit their vision of the nation. The man who was made to wash a Brahmin’s feet and drink that water in Madh...

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...