March 2013
1 post
8 tags
Book Review: Dozakhnama - Conversations in hell...
“Manto Bhai, don’t you agree that you cannot try to write poetry? Poetry must come to you on its own. But we don’t know why it comes, or how. Do you know what I think? I think you cannot call someone a poet even if he has written a thousand ghazals, but if he can write even a single sher like a howl of pain, smeared with all the blood in his heart, then and only then can we...
February 2013
3 posts
6 tags
Book Excerpt: Farhad Dadyburjor's 'How I Got...
Pre-order your copy for Rs 188 on uRead.com and get free shipping: http://www.uread.com/book/how-i-got-lucky-farhad/9788184003147
If only you thought about it.
Railway stations were matrimonial ads in disguise—waiting to happen; a love paradise abandoned of its reaping. Faces criss-crossed in a hurry, everyone rushing somewhere, with their pliant guises of variable emotions firmly set in...
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Some Thoughts On Midnight's Children
“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.” – Saleem Sinai, Midnight’s Children
How does one review the Booker of Bookers? I cannot possibly know. The task becomes all the more difficult when I realize I’m the minority who struggled to go beyond one third of the book the first time he picked it, many years ago.
[[MORE]]
Seven years on, when the release of the book’s film...
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Book Excerpt: Because Shit Happened - Harsh...
On a fateful winter day, Amol Sabharwal, co-founder of one of the most ambitious startup ventures in the country, Yourquote.in, decides to quit. What makes Amol quit his own business venture just when it is on the brink of raising its first round of funding? Because Shit Happened gives you an insider’s peek into the big, bad entrepreneurial world of fame, betrayal, lust for power, greed, and...
December 2012
2 posts
9 tags
Eye of the Tiger: Thoughts on 'Life of Pi'
In a hot summer vacation, about two decades ago, the following line was a conversation starter:
“So, have you seen Jurassic Park?”
Cut to 2012 and the conversation starter has become:
“So, I hope you’ve seen Life of Pi?”
I’m making a bold assumption that most readers of this blog would have already seen the film by now - and hopefully made a scramble to...
6 tags
November 2012
1 post
5 tags
Book Excerpt: 'Bonsai Kitten' by Lakshmi Narayan
Sleeping With The Enemy
If you hear of me getting married, slap me. - Elizabeth Taylor
Today, husband dear came home early, and immediately proceeded to make his presence felt as lord and master of the domain by plonking himself in front of the TV, switching channels without so much as a by-your-leave and demanding immediate sustenance.
I began my role-playing of the ideal, devoted wife.
...
October 2012
2 posts
5 tags
Book Review: Operation Lipstick
By Anubhav Mehta
Pia Heikkila’s Operation Lipstick: Mission For Mr Right brings good ole’ chick-lit in a new setting - war ravaged Afghanistan, courtesy its main protagonist, Anna Sanderson who is a thirty-something, single, horny foreign correspondent for UK-based television network. After a series of run-ins with her dream man, Mark (Mr Delectable, she calls him), she is convinced...
Dracula Special: Why does vampire fiction still...
Pictured above: Bram Stoker
On the eve of Halloween, Joan Acocella puts her finger on Dracula and finds out what makes vampire fiction so irresistible.
“Unclean, unclean!” Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mina’s friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, near London, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina...
August 2012
1 post
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Ten things you didn't know about JK Rowling
1. As a child, JK Rowling’s favourite book was ‘The Little White Horse’ by Elizabeth Goudge.
2. JK Rowling insisted on using British actors for the Harry Potter films.
3. Rowling and her husband (an anaesthetist) have no plans to stop working despite her multi million pound fortune, as she thinks working sets a good example to her children.
4. The author goes on Harry Potter...
July 2012
2 posts
10 tags
Book Review: Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer
by Arcopol Chaudhuri
I’m a sucker for books about Parsis. They’ve got some mad stories about them. Dysfunctional families, property disputes, affairs with first cousins, renting out apartments to suspicious tenants, unhappy marriages, colonial bungalows and what have you – murder, betrayal, divorce, illicit affairs – all ingredients for very gripping plots.
Being a close-knit...
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Confessions of a Book Reviewer
by George Orwell
In a cold but stuffy bed-sitting room littered with cigarette ends and half-empty cups of tea, a man in a moth-eaten dressing-gown sits at a rickety table, trying to find room for his typewriter among the piles of dusty papers that surround it. He cannot throw the papers away because the wastepaper basket is already overflowing, and besides, somewhere among the unanswered...
June 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Book Review: The Moslems Are Coming
It’s a book that might attract curious stares if you’re found reading it in public.
But don’t get excited as yet. The subtitle ‘Encounters with a desktop terrorist’ might give you the impression that you’re in for a thriller about a jihadi who takes on the world from the comfort of his desktop. But the book isn’t any of that. I was mildly disappointed when I learnt...
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Book review: The Taj Conspiracy
Pictured above: Author of The Taj Conspiracy, Manreet Sodhi Someshwar seen here at a meet with bloggers, hosted by Westland, Blogworks and Punjab Grill.
The Taj Conspiracy begins like India’s Da Vinci Code. The supervisor of the Taj Mahal is found murdered in the tomb’s premises and the Quranic calligraphy on the tomb of Queen Mumtaz altered to suggest that the monument actually has...
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Mohammed Hanif, on writing in three languages
Mohammed Hanif in Tehelka
Sometimes fellow writers and journalists ask me how I choose whether to write in Urdu or English or Punjabi. I usually start my answer with a self-deprecating remark: I can write badly in three-and-a-half languages. Like most self-deprecating remarks this one barely conceals a boast: I read and write Urdu; I can also borrow my ideas from ancient Punjabi, unlike you...
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Book review: The Householder
There are books we complete reading, and there are books which despite having read fully, stay within us and we wish the experience had lasted longer. A bit overwhelmed by Amitabha Bagchi’s The Householder and in a bid to prolong my experience with his writing, I’ve duly ordered a copy of his first book, Above Average (which I haven’t read, but have heard much about.) Also,...
May 2012
1 post
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Would You Like Some Bread With That Book?
As a book reviewer, I’m required to organize the books received from publishers, schedule them for review and - the most difficult part - find innovative ways of saying good things about the books I enjoyed reading, wherein I try to avoid cliches, not give the story away and recommend it to readers of this blog.
I received Veena Venugopal’s collection of essays Would You Like Some...
March 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Television, a poem by Roald Dahl
The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set —
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last...
10 tags
'Work-life balance seems like a term coined by...
Author Mainak Dhar
The Cubicle Manifesto is the story of Mayukh, a young and harried manager whose computer gets taken over by a virus bent on starting a revolution. A revolution, where Mayukh is gradually freed from the entrapment of his cubicle and reconnected him with his true self and family.
Targeted at cubicle dwellers urging them to go get a life, The Cubicle Manifesto is a compact,...
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Book Review: Switched
There are three kinds of books in this world. Good, bad and unputdownable.
Amanda Hocking’s Switched falls in the last category. Unputdownable is probably the easiest way to describe it. It’s a bit like eating food at a restaurant where you’re a regular. Your taste buds get so used to the comfort of something familiar, that you keep ordering the same items, hesitant to try...
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Book review: The Butterfly Generation
Flip open The Butterfly Generation to read the blurb and there’s this feeling: Where have I read this kind of social commentary before? Why does this feel like deja knew? How do you put an entire book about something as obvious as this?
However, a few pages into the first chapter, as you read about author Palash Krishna Mehrotra wriggling his way out of a petty squabble with his landlord...
January 2012
3 posts
7 tags
Book Review: Death In Mumbai
The most striking feature about Meenal Baghel’s Death In Mumbai is how it stands out as the flagbearer of exciting, gripping narrative non-fiction that has come to dominate India’s publishing landscape over the past couple of years.
Based on Baghel’s (and her team at Mumbai Mirror’s) research of one of the most sensational crime stories in recent history, it attempts to create an engaging...
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Book review: Two Fates - The Story of My Divorce
The parody novel is a bit of a novelty in Indian publishing and Judy Balan couldn’t have found a better book (or an author) to adulterate. Marriage itself, or the union of two individuals is the bedrock of most Indian story-telling – be it in our movies, television serials or swayamvars. Two Fates – The Story Of My Divorce, provides a fresh spin to the boy meets girl story.
The story of Punjabi...
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Book review: The Yellow Emperor's Cure
From the writer of The Japanese Wife, where we learnt that “Chithi likhe likhe baccha hoye na!” (You can’t produce babies by writing letters), The Yellow Emperor’s Cure is an ambitious novel by Kunal Basu, about a Portuguese doctor who upon seeing that his father’s dying of “the pox”, travels to China on a voyage to find a cure for the disease.
On a...
December 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Here's how we're playing Santa this Christmas!
How about ending this year on a delightful note?
How about creating a wishlist of things for Santa to gift you?
How about being the lucky one to receive your wishlist, courtesy uRead.com?
Because this Christmas, we’re playing Santa for all book lovers out there!
Here’s what we want you to do:
1. Create your wishlist of 5 books on uRead.com. (No international editions, please!...
8 tags
Book review: Lucknow Boy
Arnab Goswami and Vinod Mehta at the Delhi launch of Lucknow Boy
By Arcopol Chaudhuri
You may not be a loyal reader of Outlook, but that doesn’t mean you’ve not come across Vinod Mehta.
The editor-in-chief of one of the best general interest magazines in India, Outlook, Mehta makes an appearance regularly on news channels and is seen looking at the viewer, but ends up instilling some sense...
November 2011
6 posts
12 tags
Book review: God Save The Dork
By Arcopol Chaudhuri
You may recollect the Sardarjee who hears a joke and laughs at it, several days later. My room-mates think I’m that Sardarjee. Not because I have a delayed sense of humour.
It’s just that after reading Sidin Vadukut’s God Save The Dork, I’ve broken into laughter, often at odd hours, thinking about the funniest portions in the book. That’s the good news in this sequel. The...
9 tags
Book review: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again!
Let’s set this straight: If you’re looking for books for kids and young adults, or if you’re simply keen to read a breezy, funny adventure, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again is the best thing amongst the new releases in bookstores right now. A sequel to Ian Fleming’s very successful Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which also spun off into a major motion picture), written by children’s...
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Book review: Beyond The MBA Hype
Title: Beyond The MBA Hype Author: Sameer Kamat Genre: Non-fiction / Education / Self-help / Business & Management Pages: 172 Binding: Paperback It’s taken a while to put together the review of this book. Not that it’s a long read, but considering no one in our book review panel is an MBA, we figured we’d be terrible at assessing this book’s merits. What we did therefore, is take the...
4 tags
'My Next Life' by Woody Allen
In my next life, I want to live backwards.
You start out dead and get that out of the way.
Then you wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day.
You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.
You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement....
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Book review: 'Get To The Top' by Suhel Seth
By Arcopol Chaudhuri For a layman, it is quite easy to be put off after reading Suhel Seth’s Get To The Top - The Ten Rules for Social Success. The book is a rather extravagant showcase of Seth’s tremendous clout - his uthhna baithna - with India’s most influential newsmakers and corporates, considering they are his ‘dear friends’ and his advice and opinion is much sought after.
You can’t blame...
5 tags
How we review books (and why you can trust this...
By Arcopol Chaudhuri
Reviews have often been a touchy topic, more so lately because the web allows you to publish your opinion about almost anything. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has become a film-reviewer.
To each his own, I say. We live in a democracy, everybody has the right to an opinion, and as long as there’s a sense of honesty and no malice, we must encourage these forms of...
October 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Book review: Good Food, Good Living
Dear Karen Anand, I just finished reading your new book, Good Food, Good Living. I’m not exactly a voracious reader of books about food and cookery, but I’m certainly always game to know more about the ‘good living’ bit. That’s one of the reasons why I began reading this book. In hindsight, I wish you’d put a disclaimer at the beginning of your new book. Something on the lines of, “Do...
5 tags
Book review: Revolution 2020
Not exactly a review of not exactly a Chetan Bhagat book.
Chetan Bhagat’s books are quite honestly, critique-free, because the ‘Chetan Bhagat family’ (the term he uses to describe his complete following on Twitter) is almost involved in idol worship - least bothered of how his books turns out, what reviewers say and how does it fare compared to his previous work. It’s no secret...
6 tags
1888 Dial India: Toll free management lessons
The thing about reading a book by Anuvab Pal is that you can almost double the humour quotient in the book simply by picturing Pal’s face as you read the book. He’s one the funniest screenwriters in India (Loins of Punjab, The President is Coming) and an acclaimed playwright too. He’s the Bengali who begins to sound funny when angry.
In his new book 1888 Dial India, adapted...
September 2011
9 posts
9 tags
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Jogging down Jug Suraiya's memory lane
In the last chapter of JS and The Times of My Life, Jug Suraiya describes his 43-year long career in journalism as a “career of pissing people off”.
He’d pissed off Shobha De by making fun of the way she describes sexual encounters in her writing; he’d pissed off Amitabh Bachchan when he wrote, in response to the superstar’s blog on Danny Boyle’s...
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Ruskin Bond shares a few Secrets
Book: Secrets
Author: Ruskin Bond
Publisher: Penguin | Published: September, 2011 | Price: Rs 185 | Pages: 150
Reviewer: Arcopol Chaudhuri
It is no secret that Ruskin Bond borrows a lot from his memory in each of his works.
Be it short stories or novellas, you will always get this feeling that Bond is narrating from experience. His works are THAT personal. What makes him a great writer...
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Book review: The Tailor of Giripul
Is Giripul the new Malgudi?
I just finished reading Bulbul Sharma’s new novel The Tailor of Giripul, published by Harper Collins India and I can feel a major “R K Narayan hangover”. It’s a comforting feeling - there’s always a need to rediscover great works through new voices. And this simple story of a remote village of Giripul in somewhere in Himachal is just the...
8 tags
Book review: The Company RED
Above: Author Shantanu Dhar
Title: The Company Red
Reviewer: Arcopol Chaudhuri
I love books that have plots you can explain in an elevator chat - short, focused and concise enough to be shared with someone you run into, in about 60 seconds, with the result being “Hey, that sounds interesting - I’d like to read that!”
The Company RED satisfies this requirement.
This being...
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Book review: David Nicholl's One Day
Reviewer: Divya Jain
A friend gifted me David Nicholls’ One Day and recommended it highly. The book has totally lived up to that. I could not keep the book down until I absolutely had to.
One Day follows the story of Emma and Dexter, from their graduation day, who after a brief romantic encounter decide to stay friends. Nicholls brilliantly sketches the characters of Em and Dex and takes you...
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Book review: The Ineligible Bachelors
Ruchita Misra’s debut novel is formula driven chick-lit, but where it scores brownie points is in the book that it turns out to be, than the book it claims it is.
What’s positioned as a satire on arranged marriage turns into a minor chuckle-fest around love and friendship.
A story about Kasturi Shukla, a management trainee who does little work at office except polish PPT...
6 tags
An incredible book of short stories
Rakhshanda Jalil’s debut collection of short stories is full of such curious characters, it’s difficult to put this book down.
Curiosity and a certain creepiness, if I may add, are ingredients that are requisite of a good short-story. And even more so, considering the short attention spans - a nightmare for any author - a writer must use these ingredients wisely.
Jalil does...
August 2011
8 posts
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Book review: Tarun Tejpal's The Valley of Masks
Tarun Tejpal’s The Valley of Masks is that good book which you won’t enjoy reading. And that’s precisely why you should read it.
It will take you several sittings to finish this book, like it did for me, but just like the greatest penance, this is one book you must struggle through and achieve.
The sense of fulfillment towards the end is a bit odd, but it will be one that...
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'My pseudonym gave me a wonderful sense of...
I began reading Ameera Al Hakawati’s Desperate In Dubai as a skeptic, thanks to a blurb on the cover, which described it as ‘Dubai’s Desperate Housewives’ and I sensed that this book would most likely appeal to urban, elite, suave, brand conscious women.
But a book reviewer’s job being what it is, I decided to give it a shot. And I’m thrilled that this book...
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'In relationships, women can articulate their...
Author Amrita Sharma
It doesn’t take long to be absorbed into Amrita Sharma’s What Did I ever See In Him?, the first non-fiction title in Penguin India’s Metro Reads series. Perhaps it appeals to the voyeur in us, knowing about someone else’s love-life issues and probably learning something from them, or telling ourselves that thankfully, we’re not in the same mess...
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Review: The Book of Answers
CY Gopinath, author of The Book Of Answers
The Book of Answers is a fine tribute to George Orwell’s 1984. Set in the not so distant future, it’s a story about an ordinary Mumbaikar Patros Patronobis - half Bengali, half Keralite - who receives a mysterious, metal bound book which supposedly has answers to all the world’s problems. Except, that to open this book, one needs a...
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Paul Auster, on what it means to be a storyteller
Writer Paul Auster’s speech at the Prince of Asturias Awards, Letters 2006. (Reposted from here.)
Your Majesty, Your Highnesses, Distinguished Authorities, Ladies and gentlemen,
I don’t know why I do what I do. If I did know, I probably wouldn’t feel the need to do it. All I can say, and I say it with utmost certainty, is that I have felt this need since my earliest...
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'I consume lots of chocolate when I'm developing...
uRead.com chats with Manasi Vaidya, author of No Deadline For Love, published by Penguin Books India, part of its Metro Reads series. A light-hearted, easy read set in the corridors of an FMCG company, it’s a story about Megha, the MBA in marketing and economics and how she balances the pull of her creative side in her corporate role, and the attraction towards Yudi, the gorgeous, sardonic...
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Book review: Chanakya's Chant
With Chanakya’s Chant, Ashwin Sanghi proves his mettle as a great curator. The best lines in the book do not belong to Chanakya or any of the characters that adorn this book’s pages. The References section at the end of the book attributes those quotes to various personalities from history. Sweet gesture. But that’s possibly the biggest turn-off about this book.
One however,...
