Reading List - December

Last month of the year ! The weather is near perfect and the prospect of snuggling up with a book and a steaming cup of tea is increasingly taking the shape of the carrot dangling before me every day. I had a spell of slightly frenzied reading in November, what with The Caine Mutiny and The Golem's Eye, so this month I decided to keep things light and fun.

1. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells: I had heard of it as a kid, and tucked it away as one of the innumerable stories I swore I would read some day. All these years later, as I was browsing through my Kindle store, I came across it again. I started the book a couple of days back and am quite delighted to find that the story is very much on its way right from the first page. Considering that the novel was penned in 1897, the language is not in the least stuffy and the descriptions are remarkably cinematic. There has been very little exchange of dialogues yet, and the Martians have already arrived on the scene, though their described appearance reminded me of Independence Day ! The book comes very highly rated wherever I look, so here's hoping that I wouldn't be let down. Something tells me though, that I would have to wrap my head round the conceptual obsolescence that comes with something written more than a century ago.

2. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White: How much farther can I get from plundering, tentacled Martians ?! E. B. White's little pig Wilbur is already such heart-melting character ! This is perhaps not the age or the setting to read Charlotte's Web, but the book had been popping up in several references lately, until it became almost impossible to avoid it any more. But more importantly, the book is such a ray of sunshine; I have barely ploughed through three chapters and the warmth it fills me with is amazing.

The third is of course, James Herriot's Dog Stories, which got somewhat neglected in the heat of Bartimaeus and Willie Keith. On and off, as usual, I have also been picking up material like Jule Verne's In the Year 2889 and The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck. The former is a slight book - by length, that is; there can be nothing slight about Jules Verne - while the latter is to be taken a little more seriously, and so obviously will have to be completed at leisure and with full justice.

So that's the haul planned for December. Lets see how the year ends !

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Man-Eaters of Kumaon - Jim Corbett

Genre: Non-fiction Rating: 5/5 This one is decidedly a classic, so there is little point in reviewing this book. It is a beautiful one, without doubt. Personally, I avoid any form of entertainment (books, movies, plays, anything) which features cruelty - either directly or tacitly - towards animals (I have not yet seen any of the Planet of the Apes movies, Ant Man was uncomfortable too). So deciding to read this book took a certain degree of convincing. Much credit goes to the beautiful cover of the book. This one is an Aleph Classics (co-founded by David Davidar of The House of Blue Mangoes fame, and Rupa Publication) edition. In terms of sheer elegance, the cover design is unmatched. The palette concept of jungle green coupled with the late afternoon sun creates an ambiance even before you delve into the pages. I picked out the book from a thin pile on a shelf in the little HigginBothams book-store near Charing Cross in Ooty, one biting winter evening (more

Higginbothams of Ooty

It took us some time to decipher that the name of the crossroad was Charing Cross. After all, it is an unexpected name for an Indian crossroad in Tamil Nadu, and the mildly opinionated chap driving us to our hotel had a heavy accent. Charing Cross turned out to be a triangular enclosure, with an imposing fountain (we later discovered that it was named the Adam's Fountain; it is three-tiered, the second one topped by four very colourful cherubs). Since we had arrived in the middle of the afternoon in the thick of winter, the roads were thronging with people and vehicles. Shops were bustling and business appeared brisk. Our driver skilfully negotiated the traffic as we passed woollens shops, gift houses, eateries, groceries and mobile-phone shops. We returned to the market later in the evening, after having deposited our luggage. Both my husband and I had been fending off a nasty bout of flu and needed to restock our now near-empty medicine pouch. Charing Cross in the eveni

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

I follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, though I had read only one book of his ( Coraline ) that my best friend had gifted me on my last birthday. I am quite ashamed to say that my first acquaintance with his work was through an episode of Doctor Who - The Doctor's Wife , that he had scripted, and to this day , it remains one of my most favourite, poignant episodes of the show. All I knew from the veritable literature and almost frenetic online admiration, was that this was a writer with some fairly impactful body of work to follow. Last weekend, I was at the bookstore, and despite the bulky backlog of books and work on hand, I ended up buying The Ocean at the End of the Lane . Having finished it a couple of days back, I am the wiser to have given in to my impulse then. Like Coraline , The Ocean at the End of the Lane was difficult for me to categorise. This was fantasy, but the writing did not suggest it. Not even remotely. The story is narrated through the eyes of a sev

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