Stories of the True, Jeyamohan (Transl. Priyamvada)
Jeyamohan's stories are hard-hitting without a trace of fetishization of the downtrodden (like poverty porn). My first brush with his stories was a narration by Bava Chelladurai of his Elephant Doctor which moved me to tears. I took printouts of this and another story to read them (and also share them with mom).
A year or so later, I was at the Bangalore Lit Fest where Jeyamohan was promoting this book and my brother recommended it to me (because he had already purchased and read it eons ago). On the cover, it says, "A book that moved me to tears - Kamal Haasan" and I thought he was overstating as usual. But by the end of almost every short story, I was struggling to finish because I was reading through a thick screen of incessant tears.
Conversations with Mani Ratnam, Bharadwaj Rangan
Long before Bharadwaj Rangan became a fixture across Indian cinema YouTube, he was a writer par excellence. I had a good inkling of his writing through his periodic reviews in The Hindu, so my brother and I had no hesitation buying this book (we were trying to start a collective movie-maker/writing thing at the time). That is to say, I did not buy this book only because it was about Mani Ratnam. The book paid for itself and more in just the Introduction. I doubt if there's anyone left who can be a fanboy and still interview and write with sharp, unmarred (and reasonably unbiased) intellectual curiosity. On a certain level, the book is about Mani Ratnam's experiences and philosophies of movie-making, and on another level, it is a testimony to BR's craft of an art critique and a writer.
The Last Question, Isaac Asimov
Technically a short story (and this will be the first of a few others to come). I do not usually pick sci-fi as much as I'd like to. I stumbled on The Last Question out of serendipity during one of my usual aimless meanderings on some subreddit. Or maybe it was from some chatter on one of the IRC channels I used to frequent. Either ways, this story left an indelible impression of the class of thinking, crafting, writing and imagination that is Asimov.
The Unlikely Spy, Daniel Silva
Before le Carre, and after Dan Brown, I was in this spree of reading fast-paced thrillers of the war or espionage kind. I picked up The Unlikely Spy from the paper-mart, not quite in tatters but getting there in a few months' time. By the time I finished it, The Unlikely Spy was my most-favourite book of all the things I had read till then (I must have been about seventeen or eighteen). In retrospect, Vicary is copied modelled after George Smiley.
The Master of the Game, Sidney Sheldon
By the time I got my hands on this novel, I was a fan of Sheldon's work (having read a grand total of 2 or 3 of his novels). I was about 15 at the time and since many of his novels featured book covers with sensually-posing women, my mom had serious doubts about the contents, so she consulted with a well-read neighbour before letting me read the book. I've since grown out of Sheldon but the memory of this novel remains intact. A multi-generational story. Starts with a banger of an introduction about the diamond rush in South Africa and a masterful revenge. I do not remember reading any other multi-generational novel so this one remains a favourite.
In this series:
- Books that stayed - N°1
- Books that stayed - N°2 (current)