A Never-Ending Reading List: Books remembered and forgotten
Have spent years honing this list, do read, if you like books. It is one way of making your own list for the year. Recommend a title or two also please. 🙏
Oh, and if you decide to skip to the end, scrolling down will also take you to the best possible title to read this year - and no, am not advertising my book anywhere, for once! 😎
Books I will take to my grave (with a headlamp):
Gargantua and Pantagruel: Francois Rabelais — “If you pay attention to the signs, when will you pay attention to what they signify?”
The Unquiet Grave: Cyril Connolly— touche.
A Reading Diary: Alberto Manguel — “Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.” A grave might be the perfect dark place to light up these pages.
Golden Treasury: Palgrave & Tennyson — Poems to echo from the other side.
Books that made me weep (boo hoo):
Of Human Bondage: William Somerset Maugham — all those melancholic scenes about the poverty of feelings. And the one about Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence, is also elegiac.
Fear And Trembling: Soren Kierkegaard — title goes with the category. Full disservice.Training In Christianity is another sore.
The Kite Runner: Khaled Hosseini — alright, I admit to this. I must have been on an aircraft, trying to mask my fright of turbulence. Heard John Abraham cried too, on a flight, reading it.
The Fault In Our Stars: John Green — Two mushy kids; Hazel 16, Augustus 17. Cancer and Osteosarcoma. Lots of texting. “Maybe ‘okay’ will be our ‘always”, and a film version that made 300 million. This is sick-lit. The Indian version is coming soon, starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Sanjana Sanghi. It is not titled: Main Solah Baras Ki, Tu Satrah Baras Ka, or I am 32 (Sushant) going for 22 (Sanjana).
A Little Life: Hanya Yanagihara — “He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.” Exquisite love becomes excruciating torture.
Books that made me laugh so hard, could have ruptured my sphincter:
Don Quixote : Miguel De Cervantes— too damn funny.
A Confederacy of Dunces: John Kennedy Toole— the tragic is so comic.
Breakfast of Champions: Kurt Vonnegut — the doodles are to die for and the character Kilgore Trout who first appeared in Slaughterhouse-5.
My Life and Hard Times: James Thurber — the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is based on his short story.
Rachel Papers: Martin Amis— some more of growing up with zits on your ding-a-ling…ditzy. Thoda sa like Catcher In The Rye. Thoda hi.
Cock and Bull: Will Self — like if you grew a vagina behind your knee, serious.
Brideshead Revisited: Evelyn Waugh — English camp romp.
House of Holes: Nicholson Baker — Just read this, “Will you dance for me? Let your breasts roam for a moment — I need to see how they dance.’ ‘Okay.’ She danced, and as she danced, she tried to think of the most delicious salads she could imagine — with artichokes and sundried tomato and blue cheese dressing, and beets, lots of beets.”
The Sellout: Paul Beatty — “I’m so fucking tired of black women always being described by their skin tones! Honey-colored this! Dark-chocolate that! My paternal grandmother was mocha-tinged, café-au-lait, graham-fucking-cracker brown! How come they never describe the white characters in relation to foodstuffs and hot liquids? Why aren’t there any yogurt-colored, egg-shell-toned, string-cheese-skinned, low-fat-milk white protagonists in these racist, no-third-act-having books? That’s why black literature sucks!”
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao: Junot Diaz — Funny. “Dude, you don’t want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.” Read it to find out if gyani baccha Oscar baba will ever get laid!
Bonk: Mary Roach — if you want to get lost in a vagina, dive deep.
Raise High The Roof Bean, Carpenters & Seymour: J D Salinger — Love, love, love it. Haven’t laughed this crazy. Remember sitting on a macchan in Manali, the birds and monkeys gathering around me, wondering why I was mocking them.
COMPLETE LIST: https://medium.com/@manishgaekwad/a-n...
Oh, and if you decide to skip to the end, scrolling down will also take you to the best possible title to read this year - and no, am not advertising my book anywhere, for once! 😎
Books I will take to my grave (with a headlamp):
Gargantua and Pantagruel: Francois Rabelais — “If you pay attention to the signs, when will you pay attention to what they signify?”
The Unquiet Grave: Cyril Connolly— touche.
A Reading Diary: Alberto Manguel — “Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.” A grave might be the perfect dark place to light up these pages.
Golden Treasury: Palgrave & Tennyson — Poems to echo from the other side.
Books that made me weep (boo hoo):
Of Human Bondage: William Somerset Maugham — all those melancholic scenes about the poverty of feelings. And the one about Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence, is also elegiac.
Fear And Trembling: Soren Kierkegaard — title goes with the category. Full disservice.Training In Christianity is another sore.
The Kite Runner: Khaled Hosseini — alright, I admit to this. I must have been on an aircraft, trying to mask my fright of turbulence. Heard John Abraham cried too, on a flight, reading it.
The Fault In Our Stars: John Green — Two mushy kids; Hazel 16, Augustus 17. Cancer and Osteosarcoma. Lots of texting. “Maybe ‘okay’ will be our ‘always”, and a film version that made 300 million. This is sick-lit. The Indian version is coming soon, starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Sanjana Sanghi. It is not titled: Main Solah Baras Ki, Tu Satrah Baras Ka, or I am 32 (Sushant) going for 22 (Sanjana).
A Little Life: Hanya Yanagihara — “He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.” Exquisite love becomes excruciating torture.
Books that made me laugh so hard, could have ruptured my sphincter:
Don Quixote : Miguel De Cervantes— too damn funny.
A Confederacy of Dunces: John Kennedy Toole— the tragic is so comic.
Breakfast of Champions: Kurt Vonnegut — the doodles are to die for and the character Kilgore Trout who first appeared in Slaughterhouse-5.
My Life and Hard Times: James Thurber — the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is based on his short story.
Rachel Papers: Martin Amis— some more of growing up with zits on your ding-a-ling…ditzy. Thoda sa like Catcher In The Rye. Thoda hi.
Cock and Bull: Will Self — like if you grew a vagina behind your knee, serious.
Brideshead Revisited: Evelyn Waugh — English camp romp.
House of Holes: Nicholson Baker — Just read this, “Will you dance for me? Let your breasts roam for a moment — I need to see how they dance.’ ‘Okay.’ She danced, and as she danced, she tried to think of the most delicious salads she could imagine — with artichokes and sundried tomato and blue cheese dressing, and beets, lots of beets.”
The Sellout: Paul Beatty — “I’m so fucking tired of black women always being described by their skin tones! Honey-colored this! Dark-chocolate that! My paternal grandmother was mocha-tinged, café-au-lait, graham-fucking-cracker brown! How come they never describe the white characters in relation to foodstuffs and hot liquids? Why aren’t there any yogurt-colored, egg-shell-toned, string-cheese-skinned, low-fat-milk white protagonists in these racist, no-third-act-having books? That’s why black literature sucks!”
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao: Junot Diaz — Funny. “Dude, you don’t want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.” Read it to find out if gyani baccha Oscar baba will ever get laid!
Bonk: Mary Roach — if you want to get lost in a vagina, dive deep.
Raise High The Roof Bean, Carpenters & Seymour: J D Salinger — Love, love, love it. Haven’t laughed this crazy. Remember sitting on a macchan in Manali, the birds and monkeys gathering around me, wondering why I was mocking them.
COMPLETE LIST: https://medium.com/@manishgaekwad/a-n...
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