Feed"Unputdownable" is how I would describe Philip Pullman's superb "His Dark Materials" trilogy comprising "The Golden Compass" (released as "The Northern Lights" in the UK), "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass". I am so glad that I picked them up after all the three books had been released as I cannot imagine how I would have borne the agony of having to wait for a couple of years to find out how this delicious saga unfolds.
Fiction Books
"The Silmarillion" by J. R. R. Tolkien is a collection of tales that make up the epic mythology that forms the background of "The Lord of the Rings" (LOTR), this book and "The Hobbit" are a must-read for anyone who wishes to fully appreciate LOTR.
I was tempted to read "Atonement" by Ian McEwan after having watched the eponymous film based on the novel. The film was good, but a novel has more space to develop the characters and present their thoughts. The downside of having watched the film based on a novel before having read it is that it constrains your imagination to be based on the scenes and the actors in the film.
"Watchmen", written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, has been widely hailed as one of the best graphic novels ever written. In fact, Time magazine even went to the extent of putting it in its list of the 100 best English-language novels of "all time" published since 1923. It is also the only graphic novel to have ever been awarded the Hugo Award (given every year to the best work in science fiction and fantasy). It has also won numerous other awards for its creators.
"The Best of Rumpole" is a collection of seven Rumpole stories personally selected by the author John Mortimer and considered by him to be the best among those he has written so far.
"Train to Pakistan" is a short and deeply moving novel by Khushwant Singh. It shows the effect of the partition of India, as the British left the country, on the simple folks of Mano Majra, a small Indian village on the banks of the river Sutlej near the border of India and Pakistan. The Sikhs and Muslims of the village, living happily together for centuries without any animosity towards each other, get caught up in forces beyond their control with the Muslims forced to flee to Pakistan and the Sikhs getting ready to kill unknown strangers who just happen to be Muslims.
"Above Average" by Amitabha Bagchi is a novel about a smart boy with a middle-class background and his life before, during and after his stay at IIT Delhi. It is the story of friendships forged and lost, love blossoming and withering. It is a coming-of-age novel that has also been termed a "campus book" because of the many recent Indian novels based on life at the IITs and the IIMs. However it is certainly one of the better-written novels of the lot.
"V for Vendetta" by Alan Moore and Dave Lloyd is the graphic novel that was the inspiration for the eponymous movie by the Wachowski brothers. I was quite impressed by the movie and was eager to read the book. The book did not disappoint me at all. I found out that the movie and the book had many differences in the plot and the characters, but for once I did not mind it - in fact, I quite liked each of the forks in both the media.
"Batman: The Dark Knight Returns", written by Frank Miller and published in 1986, presents a Batman that is completely different from the stupid television series of the 1960s. If you liked Tim Burton's "Batman" and "Batman Returns" movies, you will love this graphic novel.
Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" is another of the books recommended to me by Yumpee. Any novel that features a complete program in BASIC for generating all the permutations of the letters of God's name in Hebrew ("Yahveh") has to be interesting.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is the seventh book in the "Harry Potter" series by J. K. Rowling. At least as of now, this book is supposed to be the final book in this series. So it was natural for me to wonder before picking it up whether it would provide a closure and a satisfactory resolution for this saga.
The sixth book in the Harry Potter series also manages to keep one interested throughout. It has a rather sad ending though and, unlike the previous books, doesn't achieve "closure" (in my opinion, also shared by Ananth) - one longs to read the seventh book to find out what happens to Harry after the terrible tragedy. Be that as it may, I would still highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read this volume yet.
The fifth book in the "Harry Potter" series by J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is so much better than the previous one (which was the worst, in my opinion) in the series "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"! It is the biggest book in the series and yet manages to keep the reader interested throughout by various turns in the plot.
"The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown has action, pace and intrigue sustained right throughout and not since "Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets" have I wanted to finish a novel in one day and enjoyed it all along! The plot can be summed up as one big treasure hunt (with cryptic clues leading to more clues, as in the eponymous game) for that ultimate Christian quest - the Holy Grail.
"The Rule of Four" is a novel written by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason that revolves around cracking the code in the 500 year old obscure book "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili".
"Angels and Demons" was written by Dan Brown before he wrote his bestseller novel "The Da Vinci Code". As such it shares the same protagonist Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and a plot revolving around medieval Christian mysteries. The story is about an ancient brotherhood named Illuminati and its alleged attempt to blow up Vatican City using antimatter.
"Year's Best Graphic Novels, Comics, and Manga", edited by Byron Preiss and Howard Zimmerman, is a collection of short snippets from graphic novels, comics and manga published between May 2003 and December 2004.
This short novel by Chetan Bhagat tells the story of the narrator and his two friends and their stay in IIT Delhi. While some of the lines did make me chuckle and some made me say "So true!", I still do not feel that all the hype over this novel is justified. Some of the stuff was a bit of an exaggeration too - this is not what generally happens in the IITs people (the coke bottles episode, the making out with a professor's daughter thing, etc.)! Then again, IIT Delhi has always been a bit different from the other IITs, so who knows. ;-)
