Reading 2013

Through Readerbuzz, I got to know of this interesting End-of-the-Year survey @ The Perpetual Page Turner and thought that it would be fun to look at 2013 in this manner.1. Best Book You Read In 2013? (If you have to cheat — you can break it down by genre if you want or 2013 release vs. backlist)Mystery: The Devotion …

Short Notes: Great Detective Stories

While I love reading mystery novels, the short-story in the same genre doesn't excite me that much. However, I did like this Watermill Classic which has five stories in which either a burglary or murder is investigated by a detective (and his faithful side-kick).In Arthur Conan Doyle' s The Boscombe Valley Mystery, Sherlock Holmes and …

Short Notes: A Little Local Murder by Robert Barnard

A fortnight ago, I had no idea about Robert Barnard. Then Patti @ Pattinase dedicated one Friday to his books and I got to know that he was a British writer of mysteries who had passed away but recently. Sergio's review of his book A Fatal Attachment was so compelling that I wanted to read …

Short Notes: Two Books on Greek Literature

The Iliad is the first extant book of European Literature. Part of an oral tradition of poetry, it is supposed to have been composed by a blind,wandering minstrel named Homer who is also considered to be the writer of that other great Greek Epic, the Odyssey. Over the years both these books have influenced writers …

The House of Healing: Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s Arogyaniketan

There was once a blind pir-fakir in Dera Ghazi Khan (prior to 1947 a province of India but now in Pakistan) who could discern what ailed a person just by feeling the latter's pulse. Extremely orthodox Muslim ladies, who would not allow the touch of any man barring their husband, would tie a thread round …

Hindi Pulp: Surender Mohan Pathak’s Dhabba

Surender Mohan Pathak is a well-known name in the field of Hindi pulp literature. Author of nearly 300 crime novels, he has a number of series and stand-alones to his credit. The earliest series that he wrote is the Sunil series. Sunil Kumar Chakravarty is a reporter at the daily Blast in the fictitious city …

Short Notes: The Secret History, The Sisters Brothers, Drinking Midnight Wine

What happens when reviews pile up, the year is drawing to an end, and time is limited? Well, you resort to short reviews especially if you haven't enjoyed the books.I had heard a lot about Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The story revolving around a group of students studying Greek classics seemed unusual, so when …

Two Books and The Undiscovered Country.

In Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, the eponymous hero calls Death as ''the undiscovered country." Certainly, Death remains the greatest mystery ever. What really happens when one ceases to breathe? Is it the end of everything or is there something beyond? Is there something that is called the Soul which is immortal?These are questions that philosophers over …

Trail of Blood: Henning Mankell’s The Man from Beijing

History can never give us exact knowledge of what will happen in the future: rather, it shows us that our ability to prepare ourselves for change is limited. (375)A couple of years ago, Stieg Larson and Scandanavian crime fiction were the flavour of the season. Everybody, but everybody, was talking about them. Finally, I too …

Being Sindhis in India: Rita Kothari’s The Burden of Refuge

The Partition of India in 1947 was one of the darkest hours in the history of the sub-continent. As communal forces gained strength and boundaries were re-drawn according to religion, tens of thousands of people found themselves on the wrong side of the borders. People had to leave behind their homes, families, friends, means of …