My Reading List of Oct '13

Reading list of July '13

Tawny, ageing books send me reeling into a nostalgic old world charm. They remind me that someone gazed into this very book and spiralled into a world quite different from what each one of us lives in. Someone grazed through these very pages that I hold and emoted similarly as I move from emotion to emotion. So if I'm sure of it being a good read, and if it's economical I would definitely buy second-hand books. And I came across just what I wanted when YMCA gave space to some second-hand book dealers space in one of their halls in Thiruvananthapuram. I grabbed a copy each of Don't Blink by James Patterson and The Girl who played with Fire by Steig Larsson.

Before reading about James Patterson I had heard about him inCastle, the television series(I'm a huge fan!). I kept muttering that dialogue of and from Castle, "Oh, I'm not James Patterson rich, but I do ok" for all the few days I had Don't Blink with me but didn't read it. So finally I dig into it and I finished Don't Blink in the blink of an eye. And now I'm a James Patterson fan too, waiting to lay my hands of another book of his. Inspite of having read it in May this book deserved a mention here more so as this helped trigger my insatiable thirst for good books all through the month of June. Come June I had finished that and moved on to a bunch of interesting books.So here goes the tiny list of books that took me through Oct-Sept 2013.

The Shiva Trilogy:

Mythology has always been my favorite genre next only to crime-thrillers. I fell in love with the genre with Devdutt Patnaik's Jaya. Through I had issues with the passive language, the narrative and the inner meaning of the stories left me spell-bound, that I went on to read The Pregnant King, also by the same author. And no, I wasn't disappointed. But after the two books I never found anything worth my time in the genre till the Shiva Trilogy. Though I was reluctant to read it, The Immortals of Meluha reached me through a friend who insisted that I read the book.So I started the month with The Immortals of Meluha, the first from the Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi.

While I dug into the book I heard many a friends, interested in the genre themselves, express their reservations about Shiva being depicted as a casual, pot smoking, free-willed mortal. They didn't want their beliefs about Lord Shiva to be questioned or influenced after turning a few leaves of the book. Frankly being an agnostic myself, I found the books a logical explanation of why Shiva is revered the way he is. Tripathi made me respect the intricacy with which myth is woven into a logical story, with the right amount of magic sprinkled on it. 

The language is plain and the story a melodramatic strain. Its runs a risk of sounding like a mythological drama somewhat like your everyday K-brand of television serials. While the war description is painstakingly long and laborious, Tripathi's language is simple and sweet in handling emotions and relationships.

Rating: 4/5

The Girl Who Played With Fire
I had read the 1st book from the Millennium series, 'The Girl with the Dragon tattoo,' a long time back. This girl, Lisbeth Salander fascinated me with her complete mysterious ways of detachment from the society. The 2nd installment in the series, 'The Girl who played with Fire,' gives you answers regarding her peculiar behavior. This book here is less about Mikael Blomkvist & more about Lisbeth Salander. Go, read it for her.

Gives you a better picture of why Lisbeth is the way she is.

Rating: 3/5

They Do It With Mirrors
They do it with mirrors pretty much refused to move. It gave me sleepless nights & restless days. This one being my first Agatha Christie book, I'm not sure I'll go back to one. Having said that, though the book was not all bad the exercise seemed oh-so-trivial.

This one is a neatly written slow story that dragged on to meet a rather flimsy climax.

Rating: 2/5