Aditya's book-list 2011

[Ahtims]

you are on a reading spree?

[Muddle head]

yeppy!!!! :)

[Muddle head]

27) Coffee @ 4:00 3.5/5

A quick read, it was available only in an e-book format, hardly 145 pages. It's a very bold book about three friends, each of whom have their own devils to fight, a couple of them being escorts and the third woman suspecting her husband of having an illicit affair. I call it 'bold' only in an Indian context, nothing alarming if we read it with an open mind.

[Muddle head]

28) No Deadline For Love - 3/5

Another quick read. Set in the corporate world, advertising to be specific. A story about a 'firecracker' of a girl struggling to make a mark and trying to find out her true career interests. A love story is thrown in into the mix. The writing was funny and witty at some places. I thought a bit more of that wit and humor, smethng the author seemed totally capable of, might make this a more attractive package, somethng like 'when a lawyer falls in love'. I know its unfair to compare books, but i feel that book has set a benchmark wen it comes to rib-tickling humor by Indian authors!

All in all a worthy read for 98 bucks and a total paisaa vasool deal.

[Muddle head]

Wow! Three good-reads in a day.
Being a house-husband has its advantages. Sadly tmrw is my last day in this role, gotta join my new org. on Monday!

[Mansee]

Three reads?? Not bad!! Can I exchange places with u :P

All the best for ur new job on Monday :)

[Muddle head]

Sure, let's brew a polyjuice potion, i shall courier u a strand of my hair. Hurry! Offer valid only until stock, er my hair lasts! :-P

[Jyoti]

Aacharya Didn't wrote: "Wow! Three good-reads in a day.
Being a house-husband has its advantages. Sadly tmrw is my last day in this role, gotta join my new org. on Monday!"

Best wishes for your new job. :)

[Ahtims]

all the best for your new beginning, Aditya.

[Sherin]

Aacharya Didn't wrote: "Sure, let's brew a polyjuice potion, i shall courier u a strand of my hair. Hurry! Offer valid only until stock, er my hair lasts! :-P"

LOL :D

[Sherin]

All the best!!
Where are you going to join?

[Muddle head]

thank you guys! Been 3 weeks since i left my old one, really apprehensive while stepping into this now. I feel like taking another week or two off, but wifey is really forcing me to go to work now :P
@Sherin am joining with Xilinx

[Muddle head]

29) The Secret Adversary 4/5

Another excellent one by Agatha Christie, evidently this is only her second attempt. You can sense the rawness in the way she crafted this story, with some light banter, too many coincidences, a couple of love birds etc. But at the end the mystery is superbly brought up and the premature climax and the associated twist is brought up nicely upon the unsuspecting reader.(view spoiler)[More than halfway through, the reader is left with only two guesses as to who Mr.Brown could really be. The way she takes up both the possibilities and shakes them up towards the end is superb A must read for Christie fans. Absolutely loved Tommy and Tuppence!

Trivia: the way (view spoiler)[ Tuppence's sign is made as Twopence thereby giving a hint to Tommy (hide spoiler)] ... is similar to the idea Enid Blyton used in Five on a Treasure Island where George signs a fake note as Georgina to warn her cousins. (hide spoiler)]

[Ahtims]

And this is my first attempt (at reading her books)
I have followed Tommy and Tuppence till they were married, in their sixties,and still solving crimes.

[Muddle head]

30) The Immortals of Meluha - re-read 4/5

31) The Secret of the Nagas 4/5

Loved it! A fitting sequel to the immortals of meluha and similar to that one, even this part is stopped at a very crucial juncture, to those who have the bad habit of reading the last page of a novel first, do not do so with this one ;)

Coming to the story, nothing much that i can talk about it without spoiling the experience for those who are yet to read it. This book eases down on the action a bit and has more of those interesting conversations with the Vasudevs/Pandits. There were a lot of new characters now, making it tough to remember who is who. And one more thing, this part totally turns the user impressions of the good vs evil, u will suddenly find good turning to evil and evil turning out to be good! We will end up almost as confused as Shiva himself ;)

One rouse is that i thought this book diverged from known 'facts' of Hindu mythology by a significant amount. Am not an expert on the Hindu mythology, so maybe it's just my impression! A must read to those who liked the first part!

32) The Mysterious Affair at Styles 3/5

Supposedly the first Hercule Poirot novel, and i thought he would be a youngster just like Tuppence and Tommy but was disappointed when it's his old and retired self who turned up.

A typical Christie novel, with lots of suspects, very few clues and a totally surprising ending. Fans of the mystery lady would love this one too. One thing i learned is that when u r reading Christie with a hope to solve the mystery before it's revealed, u ought to read with a font size of at least 48 in case of ebooks or under a microscope in case of a hard copy....the clues are buried really deep in there in just one or two words among a whole lot of other things. Thank god she doesn't write a lot of trash/descriptions around to make the book bulkier!!

33) The Ninja 3/5

I re-read this one. The first time i read it as an ebook during my office hours and i really had to skip a lot of pages fearing someone might mis-interpret the sensual descriptions :( In the process i also missed out on huge chunks of the story, losing the plot totally by the end of it all. Hence the re-read.

My views this time around are totally confused, initially i liked the book, say for the first 100 pages or so. I found the description of the first couple of murders were written very well. Also the sensual descriptions of the love-making between the lady and the ninja is beautifully done, or so i felt then! But when i started reading the next 100 pages, i felt like am re-reading the same line and the same happened with the next 100 pages and the next 100 pages too :( The sexual sadism of the bad-black ninja defines the word 'disgusting' at least among what i have read till now. And inspite of all that i still can't help but like the east-west comparison. Overall it's a pretty one-dimensional novel, the author has hardly a couple of points to write, but the repetition over the course of the novel sort of irritates you towards the end. Still i recommend this novel to those who don't mind the meticulous but repetitve descriptions of the ninja fights, the love-making scenes etc.

[Muddle head]

Paid a visit to the British Library after a long time. Brought home 6 books including the Delhi, our group read this month.

The other 5 are

The Unexpected Guest
1089 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics
The Amnesiac
Portobello
Rendezvous with Rama

34) Completed The Unexpected Guest already, loved it! :) A simple, small, no-nonsense story! Would rate it 4/5. Now i confess a liking for Agatha Christie's novels that DON'T feature Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. While i think i hate Poirot now (check the next post for details), i find MIss Marple's stories too slow, too un-exciting.
Coming back to the unexpected guest, a man driving in the night through the fog finds himself entrenched in a ditch. So he walks up to the nearest house and walks into a murder scene quite unexpectedly! He finds a cripple of a husband murdered, shot through his head, in the wheel-chair, while the wife is standing in a corner with the gun still in her hand and confessing to the murder. But did she really do that? Is she shielding someone else? Maybe a lover? Or her retarded bro-in-law?
TO those who are thinking of picking this up, u might feel the story is kind of slow in the beginning without any hint of mystery, but then half way through it slowly starts picking up pace and the climax is just too overwhelming!
This is supposedly the only or one of the few Christie novels where the murderer isn't caught or dead!

[Muddle head]

35) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 4/5

I shall remember this book as the one that finally put me off the Hercule Poirot mysteries. Oh, how i hate that snobbish, proud ba*****! Well, it's only because i turn out to be even more proud than he is, because this is the first and the only Christie novel where i was able to catch the murderer before even Poirot did! Ha Ha Ha (laughing proudly)

Now i need not put up with his "no one escape Hercule Poirot" kinda Bollywood dialogues.

Coming to the story, Hercule Poirot retires and goes farming in the small and relatively unknown village. But as it often happens, crime happens where Poirot arrives! And since Poirot has retired, Hastings has left him for good i presume, so this time it's another local Doc who takes up the burden of playing the fool, the assistant and the narrator. It's a typical Christie mystery: a rich old man dies in his castle kinda house, and as it always happens, almost every one happens to have the opportunity to kill the man, and most of the evidence points towards the financially troubled young man, the step-son of the deceased. The local doc who happens to be a good friend of the doc is the first to be summoned to the crime scene and then the story just rolls off.....

OK, coming back to my normal un-proud self, the only reason i was able to catch the murderer was because when i googled "best Agatha Christie novels", this one came out as no.1 in one of the lists. The story itself isn't unique among Christie novels, it's just the climax alone which earns this 4 stars from me!

[Ahtims]

LOL, Aditya. And I do like HP (Hercule Poirot, not Harry Potter) for his idiosyncracies - the egg head and the grey cells and the immense arrogance - all amuse me so. I like Miss Marple better than him, though. She is like everybody's grandmother and so shrewd. You may like Tommy and Tuppence better. They are more wordly and funny.

[Muddle head]

yes, i did like Tommy and Tuppence a lot when i read the Secret Adversary. They were like this Bunty aur Babli (no not referring to the movie, referring just to the rhyming names :P )

Am yet to read more of them. Meanwhile am done with HP....for now! :)

Btw, did u watch any of David Suchet's adaptations of Agatha Christie's works?

[Ahtims]

No

[Muddle head]

36) Delhi: A Novel - 3/5

A memorable read, am not going to forget it anytime soon, if not for anything else, for pages 232-234, i shall be reminded of this book almost every morning :P Too bad i was having my dinner when i was reading that, i had to keep my plate aside, finish reading, digest the stuff and forget it and then get back to my dinner.

[Ahtims]

now you've made me curious.

[Mansee]

Yup me too ...in an unappetising way of course

[Muddle head]

37) Emperor's Ring 4/5
A nice short cozy read, though some ppl (those who read Felu prior to Sherlock) are against it, i'd prefer to remember Feluda as the Indian Sherlock.

38) Prelude to Foundation 4.5/5

Amazing read, Asimov all over again, i thoroughly enjoyed this one too. Hard to review this without spoiling it for future readers. Would recommend one thing though - please read the robot series before this one. It helps you a lot in understanding and also in creating a sense of anticipation for the climax. This has got a couple of explosive twists in the last 20-30 pages, which, am sure, fans of the Robot series would enjoy a lot.

The novel starts with Hari Seldon, a mathematician, being summoned by the present galactic emperor Cleon I, who wants to make use of Hari's theoretically possible but practically impossible Psycohistory. Cleon I wants to use this in order to predict and if possible, alter, the future of the galactic empire and his current reign over the same. Note the elusive shadow of Cleon I, Eto Demerzel who is kind of a security advisor-cum-personal assistant for the emperor. From here Hari sets on a run to escape from the clutches of Eto and stumbles into the omnipresent Hummin. Hummin gives the responsibility of protecting Hari to Dors and sets them off on a series of adventures across different sectors of the Trantor (the largest and most powerful planet in the galaxy at that time). Dors and Hari form a lovable pair and hope it continues forward in future. I think Asimov tried hard to model the galaxy and Trantor along the lines of Earth... where multiple planets/sectors and their life-styles/cultures can be likened to the same varied cultures among different countries on Earth. The climax has some really explosive twists when Eto Demerzel finally gets to lay his hands upon Hari and Dors. Those who are done with the Robot series, enjoy this beautiful read, watch out, u may get to meet ur fav robot(s) here again ;)

PS: This novel is set more than 20,000 years into the future from now, where they believe that Earth is nothing but a myth and that humanity by default started off across all planets simultaneously! But there is one who preserved the precious knowledge of Earth and its history and passes on the knowledge to those worthy of knowing it!

[Anbu]

So the guide is now getting help of Robots to detect some mysteries accompanied by the 'Indian Sherlock' Feluda..

'Prelude to foundation' looks interesting.. I am just trying to understand Asimov's world reading 'Caves of Steel'.. Will take it up in order.. :)

[Muddle head]

ha ha, you can say that! :D

And yes, please do read them in order. And for a bit of flavor i would even recommend the short stories from I, Robot too. And one other book called the Positronic Man. The Positronic man is originally a short story by the name Bicentennial Man which was later re-written into a short novel. It is the most emotional book written by Asimov that i read till now! Would recommend you to complete all these pre-requisites before staritng ur journey with the Foundation series..

That reminds me, i haven't listed the positronic man above.

[Muddle head]

39) The Positronic Man 4/5

As mentioned above, the most emotional of Asimov i've ever read till now. And the emotions have nothing to do with a pair of lovers or a father/mother - child. Read it to feel it!

[Anbu]

Aacharya Didn't wrote: "ha ha, you can say that! :D

And yes, please do read them in order. And for a bit of flavor i would even recommend the short stories from I, Robot too. And one other book called the Positronic Man...."

Cool.. Thanks for guiding me the way towards the foundation series, Dev G.. :P.. I will go in the same way.. :)

[Muddle head]

I do get your attempts at 'guid'ing humor, but thanks to Asimov, am in a heavenly mood since two days, else i wud have guided u all the way into a black-hole :P

[Muddle head]

Shit! Looks like been ages since i updated this thread.

40) The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

Would term this as unrated, will attempt to rate after a re-read. But i shud stay it made for an excellent thriller as long as it was not necessary that the plot make any sense.

[Anbu]

R. Sun Moon wrote: "I do get your attempts at 'guid'ing humor, but thanks to Asimov, am in a heavenly mood since two days, else i wud have guided u all the way into a black-hole :P"

Haha.. I am just trying to use your self-christened name more often.. :P

[Muddle head]

Hence the change in name now :)

[Ahtims]

hey, noticed it only now. when did you change it? and a few words about the origin of the new name?

[Muddle head]

I changed it today morning in the afterglow of Asimov's Prelude to foundation

All robots in Asimov's books are titled R.
example R.Daneel Olivaw, the legendary one who saves the whole of humanity from total destruction

Sun Moon = Aditya Chandra

And right now am on a tour of the galaxies with Asimov, and so are Sun and Moon :)

[Ahtims]

LOL. Happy journey

[Mansee]

lol....U r going to confuse a lot of people here with the change of names....

[Anbu]

Already many calling you Aacharya.. Now new members gonna call you Sun Moon and would think you may be from Korea or Japan... :P

[Muddle head]

he he, now even am wondering if this names is Korean sounding :P

no problemo, i'll leave it as is till i complete my Foundation course :)

[Muddle head]

And anyone who thinks am a Korean or a Japanese, i'll pull them in to the galaxies too, on to my ride, u just gotta read Asimov!!!!!

[Ahtims]

yes, Sun Moon

[dely]

Surya Chandra sounds better.

[Muddle head]

dely wrote: "Surya Chandra sounds better."

It is a valid Indian name, ppl might confuse me for someone! :)

[Meenakshi]

Anbu wrote: "Already many calling you Aacharya.. Now new members gonna call you Sun Moon and would think you may be from Korea or Japan... :P"

lollz..I call him Acharya...don't remember why though..it feels like I've been calling him so ever since I was born :P btw you forgot The Pizza boy (man) and Adz in ur list of 1001 names of Aditya :P

@Acharya ji okay..I think you are Korean or Japanese..fine you get to choose whichever suits you better...now will I get a ride to the galaxy??

[Muddle head]

ya continue teasing me, and i'll give u a free ride into a block hole :P

[Meenakshi]

@Aditya that's it!! I got it!!now I'm absolutely sure you must be from Honululu.. :P
Which ride do I get now??
As long as I am not paying..I don't mind whichever ride you choose..block hole, black hole...whichever...as long as they create a hole in ur pocket not mine... :P