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Tome is where the heart is
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A casual enquiry into what some girl friends were reading threw up interesting choices
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Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar
BOOKS FOR OUR TIMES Lose your self in a literary world
We watch the sexy Nigella Lawson pigging it out, and, of course, the conversation turns to cooks and cook-books. That is what Chandrakanta (she restores paintings) is into at the moment in a big way. Not any old cookbooks. These are ‘different&
#8217;. She speaks about the absolutely fascinating “Apricots on the Nile” by Collette Rossant, and M.F.K. Fisher’s “Gastronomical Me”.
Rossant who is part Egyptian, part French, Jewish and married to an American, writes about food in Cairo and of her childhood in the 1950s. “It is a memoir of her memories, her multi-cultural experiences, and her love, romance and marriage, all interspersed with recipes.” As food for the soul, Chandu is also reading An Autobiogaphy of a Yogi.
It is a good feeling to be able to read anything that takes one’s fancy. And not follow the herd. We have been there and done that. Journalist Shiny Verghese is enthusiastic about “The Other Boleyn Girl”, by British author Philippa Gregory.“Awesome and a page turner,” says Shiny who is now waiting to read a translation of the Tamil “Zero Degree”, by Charu Nivedita.
For some, old companions like Enid Blyton and the Billy Bunter series still work. Mini Fowler regularly picks them up in Scotland and from second-hand stores. At the moment “Japanese Wife” and “Labyrinth” are by her bedside. And waiting in the queue is “Cold Steel” by Bouquet and Byron (Mini is an architect, so that explains it).
Jayashree Vivek also an architect is in serious-reading mode at the moment. “I am reading ‘The Curtain’ by Milan Kundera. It provides fascinating insights into the development of the novel through the ages and across the countries.” “Sea of Poppies” and Tim Murari’s “Limping to the Centre of the World” wait in the wings.
Business woman Samyukta Narayan is reading “Sea of Poppies”, too because “It is Amitava, and Barkha Dutt liked it!” She has also made frequent trips to China, and has heard talk of the righteous British introducing the Chinese to opium.
And, most of the book happens on a ship, and she has spent considerable time on one… She likes to be in touch with more than one book at a time. Samyukta was curious to know more about the feisty former first lady of the U.K., so she picked up, “Cherie Blair, the autobiography”. She is also reading Scott Turow’s “Limitations”. Samyukta reads three books at a time because: “It started off as greed. I would always buy three or four books, and would want to read all of them at the same time. Now, I do it as an exercise for the rusting grey cells!”
Anyone who enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith’s “The No: 1 Ladies Detective Agency” series has her heart in the right place, and school principal Roshini Edward does.
At the moment she is immersed in Tony D’Mello’s “Prayer of the Frog”. She also frequently calls up her old friends Poe, Saki, O’ Henry and A.J. Cronin.
She has Homer and Voltaire in her shelves, but “while the spirit is willing, the flesh craves its daily dose of whodunits and thrillers.”
Suryarekha is reading “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss, and she is enchanted with it, especially the part that mentions Anton Chekov’s protagonist Perekladin (in one of his short stories that is a parody of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”) who Scrooge-like is haunted by spectres, that are all punctuation marks!
Suryarekha is an English teacher, and that explains why she reads about punctuation marks!
The aforementioned friends all have a list of books they hate too, but that is another story altogether…
PANKAJA SRINIVASAN
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