Book Tagging

This is a very belated response to Sukanya Majumdar's book tag. Sorry Sukanya, but better late than too late, true?

Total books I own: Dunno. "More than a few" is my best guess.

Last book I bought: Indian Controversies: Essays on Religion in Politics by Arun Shourie

Last book I read: Am reading the above book right now.

Books that mean a lot to me:

1. Anything by Saradindu Bandopadhyay. He, in my opinion, is the best short story writer who has written in Bangla. For that matter, I cannot think of any author in any language I know who can equal him.

2. Anything by Rajshekhar Basu. Nom de plume: Parashuram. The other brilliant short story writer of Bengal.

3. Anything by the Ray family. Upendrakishore Rowchoudhury, Sukumar Ray, and Satyajit Ray. Grandfather, father, and son. How so much talent can pass on from one generation to the next without dilution is still a mystery to me.

4. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I love history and particularly like reading about the Great War, Part II.

5. Even though I am male and hetero, I have liked Pride and Prejudice. Besides being a deliciously sweet story, it is also a lesson in how to write in the English language.

6. I like Oscar Wilde's stories, plays and poems. Have you read The Importance of Being Earnest or The Ballad of Reading Gaol?

7. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. A jarring, dystopic, disturbing work.

8. Datta and Debdas. Both are novellas by Saratchandra Roy. To those who cannot read Bangla, allow me to say that Debdas, notwithstanding the stereotypes it brings to mind thanks largely to the morons who infest the Hindi movie industry, is the most heart-wrenching and dignified story of love I have ever read. It is a tale of dignity. A story that loses everything in the translation. Thanks, Dilip Kumar and Shah Rukh, for hamming it up and making it painful for those of us who know better. Trust the Hindi movie folks to do the usual bang-up job of turning the sublime into the ridiculous.

9. The dohas of Kabirdas. He was a wise, wise man.

10. The poetry of Omar Khayyam. Beautiful!

11. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini.

12. Stuff by Albert Camus.

13. Stuff by Stephen King.

(Some eclectic, anything-goes sorta list this is turning out to be!)

14. Stuff by George Orwell

15. Arthur C. Clarke -- how can I forget him?

16. Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov

17. Everything by Isaac Asimov -- The Last Question is the best science-fiction short story I've ever read. It exists online and I will post the link.

This is by no means a complete list. It also not ordered. I cannot remember everything that I have read. And I am sure that I have missed mentioning many, many more that have impressed and influenced me.

Oh, Frederick Forsythe.

And G.B. Shaw. And Shakespeare.

And Dave Barry. And Bankimchandra Chatterjee.

And Wuthering Heights. And Robert Heinlein. And Maugham (read Of Human Bondage). And Michael Crichton (read Sphere, the book. Avoid the movie).

Like non-fiction? Read The Mythical Man-month. Read The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris. Read Christopher Hitchens. Read The Final Verdict by Aroup Chatterjee, which is a damning indictment of that "saint", Mother Teresa.

Try Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell. Try Out of Africa, Dinesen. Try Peter Drucker.

And so many more come to mind. So many. This book tagging thing is quite unfair.

I shall stop.

P.S.: Oh, I need to pass on the flame and tag a few, according to established procedure. So, Balajee, Rob and Jyoti, you are it.