Unruled Notebook

Book Read List Dec 2008 introduced me to Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge, James Rollins, Donald Westlake, MAJ Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Although I am yet to finish reading Neal’s Cryptonomicon or Westlake’s Drowned Hopes and have just browsed Vernor’s A Fire upon the Deep, I am going to follow other books by these authors. Tom Sharpe (no warmth in his humor) and Steve Berry (boringly predictable) are axed from future reads. There is an house front agreement all of the page-turning yarns of James Rollins should be collected and read the next day. But not any of his horror alter ego books should ever be touched by our shaking hands. Alastair Reynolds remains in the shelf for comment.

Here is a partial Summer 2009 book read list that should be revised as the Summer soars.

• Michael Shermer (author of Why People Believe Weird Things, which I liked)
  • The Mind of the Market (how biology and psyhology shape our economic lives; interesting…)
• Truman Capote
  • Portraits and Observations (collection of all his essays)
• Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Tipping Point (long time pending to-be-read book; so much so that he has released his third book…which is also good, see below)
  • Outliers (got hooked into it, by the 10000 hours concept – update on June 2, 2009)
• Sean B. Carroll
  • The making of the Fittest (moving this to a separate summer science book list)
• George Orwell
  • Shooting an Elephant (essays)
• Nadine Godimer (Editor)
  • Telling Tales (collection of short stories from around the world)
• Nick Hornby
  • Polysyllabic Spree (on how to read books…)
• Jame Rollins
  • Amazonia
  • Deep Fathom
  • Sandstrom (update on June 2, 2009)
• Titania Hardie
  • The Rose Labyrinth (First fiction by the author; I am a sucker for puzzles and riddles in a story that hunts some treasure; this one has more than 30 riddles and reminds the Rose, the Labyrinth, hence Eco…)
• Gerald Durrell (kept him waiting this long; so let me start of with)
  • Beasts in My Belfry (because it starts with the line “They say that a child who aspires to be an engine driver very rarely grows up to fill that role in life)
  • Picnic and other Pandemonium (update on June 2)
• Ogden Nash
  • Candy is Dandy (at last, at least one collection I could buy of this neither poem not prose but somewhere in between with humor writer)
• Erma Bombeck (I wasn’t aware of her until I met the wife)
  • At Wit’s End

and from the perennials pile,

• PGW
  • Aunt’s aren’t Gentlemen
  • Something Fresh (update on June 2, 2009)

and to provide the counterpoint,

• P. A. Davidson
  • Turbulence – an introduction for scientists and engineers (moving this to a separate summer science book list)
    

Update May 18, 2009: Here are some more I collected fro a read.

• John Scalzi
  • The Android’s Dream (my first book for this very popular sci-fi author)

• Umberto Eco
  • Turning Back the Clock – hot wars and media populism

  Ever since I read his Foucault’s Pendulum around 1990 – I read The Name of the Rose late – I am a fan of his works that are ‘approachable’ to the layman – which leaves out his semi-treatises on semiotics and language but includes all his delectable essays, like this collection

  Like me, if you are into reading essays, don’t miss Eco’s collections Misreadings, How to Travel with a Salmon and Faiths in Fakes. Other collections of his, in my opinion, are too erudite for their good (reading).

• John O’Farrell
  • An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of upper class idiots in charge
  • Global Village Idiot (late buy, so late the idiot is no more in power; I was impressed by his subsequent collection of essays Once upon a Bream)

• R. K. Narayan
  • A Writer’s Nightmare – selected essays 1958-1988

• Jyoti Sanyal
  • Indlish, the Book for Every English-speaking Indian

  If you are an Indian residing in India and taking your English writing and writings seriously – not necessarily like me, who take it at times way too seriously for any joy – do get this book and by-heart all the essays. It will help you stop writing. I meant, bad writing.

Update June 2, 2009

• Salman Rushdie
  • Enchantress Florence – impressed by the historical storyline related to India of this book than his Shalimar the clown; obviously, was also impressed by his catchy writing style.
• Jug Suraiya (his blog) – I am ashamed I missed reading him until now
  • Juggling Act – best of Jugular Vein, his Sunday Times of India column (Weekly column on Indian politics and other maladies in excellent laid back English with a human touch and humorous prose)
  • The upside down reader – a compilation of light editorials (from TOI newspaper)
  • A Tika for Jung Bahadur (update on July 6, 2009)
  • Calcutta: A City Remembered (update on July 6, 2009)
• Lynne Truss
  • The Lynn Truss Treasury (columns and three comic novels)
• Mad about the Fifties – by Mad Magazine
• Jerome K Jerome (what that K stands for was a quiz question in my pre-internet days)
  • The Idle thoughts of an Idle Fellow
  • Three Men in a Boat

Update July 6, 2009

• Ramachandra Guha
  • How much should a person consume?
  • India after Gandhi
• Tom Knox
  • The Genesis Secret
• Neil James
  • Writing at Work
• Kay Sayce
  • What not to Write

That certainly concludes my summer non-Science list. Some of them will spill over to the Fall. Hope to do detailed reviews of some of the above books (and from here) in the next two months.