Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Rand on my shelf Ayn Rand is a writer who enchanted millions of young people in the second half of the 20 th century. I was one of those millions. My first encounter with Rand was utterly casual. I was travelling back to Shillong from Kerala after the winter vacation. A friend who was on the train was reading The Fountainhead . When he went to sleep after lunch, I picked up the book and read a few pages. I was enchanted. Howard Roark, the hero of that novel, was my kind of the ideal man in those days. He would have had similar effect on a lot of young people in those days, I’m sure. Roark is a genius who is condemned to be an outsider by the society’s ineluctable mediocrity. Roark remains outside the social conventions. He refuses to be moulded by the normal social forces. He makes his own choices which determine his life. He is his own man. And a defiant one too. I loved him. I was in my 20s. I continued to read the novel whenever my friend was not reading it. By the time the t

Book Review Author: Eleanor Catton Publisher: Granta, London, 2013 Pages: 832       Price in India: Rs799 There are some books which extract a sigh of relief from us as we turn their last page.  The winner of the 2013 Booker Prize belongs to that category.  You feel relieved that it has come to an end at last.  You feel like a child who has successfully put together all the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle after a gruelling struggle. 14 Jan 1866.  Crosbie Wells is found dead in his cottage.  Anna Wetherell is found almost dead elsewhere.  Emery Staines has vanished.  Francis Carver has sailed away in a barque that he bought from Alistair Lauderback presenting himself as Crosbie Wells.  An amount of 4000 pounds (a huge sum in those days) is missing.  Alistair Lauderback has a connection with the real Crosbie Wells which the former does not want to acknowledge.  832 pages are devoted to unravel the above mysteries which are all related to one another.  Hokitika