White Man Falling - Mike Stocks

LibraryThing has these fun stats where it displays books that you share with only one other person and thats how I stumbled on Mike Stocks. He and I are the only ones who own Kalki's selected short stories.
White man falling is a story of how sometimes 'suddenly out of the blue' or 'out of nowhere' incidents end up making such a drastic impact on our lives. Its a rather humorous take of how when a white man falls over one Retired Inspector Swami (who by the way is famous for having tried to commit suicide with just a cycle tube) leads to such bizarre events in life that he ends up as Guru Swamiji.
It based in a long forgotten town in Tamil Nadu and its hearting to see someone based in Edinburgh write such a nice little novel about something like this.

Blind Faith - Sagarika Ghosh

Well... Why did I pick this book? Mainly because it was written by Sagarika Ghosh of the IBN fame and she does have some decent posts up her blog.
So... was I disappointed.. not entirely. It didn't start off well.. it jerked between a novel and a news report.. but it did pick itself up somewhere in between.. but then again the end was a bit of a damper.
Although the characters are pretty intruiging, there are a lot of unnecessary explanations given to certain events whereas certain interesting ones just breeze through. It comes out more like a first time novel.. although I think she has already published atleast one that I know of.
But I must add that the Indi is one of the best character sketches I have read so far.
A decent one...but could have been a lot better.

Home Products - Amitava Kumar

So what did I like about the book...umm..
-The title
-The cover
-The minor details that show keen observation on part of the author...like the one about the relationship between Bua and Parshuram where he describes Parshuram wiping his glasses with Bua's saree pallu.

Although the book is pretty engrossing... its pretty ordinary in the sense that it does not have you thinking about it later. The narration is pretty smooth and make a for a leisure read.

Links for follow-up:
Jabberwock in conversation with Amitava
Reviews of the book
Amitava's Blog

Side note: A lot of recent writers have well-read blogs which kind of make them more real as compared to say a Naipaul or Rushdie..and it not helps in marketing the book to a certain extent but also brings in a lot of healthy discussion about the book which adds that little extra to the whole experience of the book.

Pic courtesy: Author's homepage

Two at a time

The thirteenth tale - Diana Setterfield
This debut novel of the author is set against the dark past of the writer Vida Winter about whom anything and everything that is written about is just another story. But now when her life is about to end she wants to 'tell the truth' and the task is assigned to young Margaret Lea who not only has to fight against Ms Winter's ghosts from the past, but also her own even as she stumbles her way through a world of lies, mistaken identities and strange relationships...
Its a very well written book specially for a first-time author and one ends up almost re-living the entire story. Recommended.

Collected stories - 2 Shashi Deshpande
Again one of the better short stories collection, this one traces lives from the times of the Mahabharata to the this IT age. I specially liked the one with Duryodhana's introspection.. a really well written piece. I am looking forward to picking up the part one of this collection.

Beantown Boomtown

After Mumbai and Delhi, Bangalore is the next in the series to have books being based on it. The red carpet, Pinging from Bangalore and finally Beantown Boomtown. This anthology tries to cover many facets of the city, but because it does not have the kind of vibrant history as the other two cities most of the extracts in the book just fleeting touch upon it.
R.K.Narayan talks about Bangalore in the late 70's where he mentions Basavangudi, Chickpet, Jayanagar among others.. a time when Indiranagar, Domlur, Electronic city were barren lands.
Irappa Kambali then talks about life around Majestic whose significance is strangely lost among the IT expanse of the city.
Most of them like Shashi deshpande talk nostalgically about the city gone by..
It even has extracts from Thomas Friedman to Winston Churchill.. from Uma MahadevanDasgupta to Deborah Moggach.. but the one I liked the best is Yusuf Arakkal recollecting his childhood in the city that gave him his identity.
A lot us who have had the opportunity of having experienced Bangalore before and after the IT boom would surely connect to the book.

Sidney Sheldon..

"I try to write my books so the reader can't put them down," he explained
in a 1982 interview. "I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end
of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of
the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the
cliff at the end of the chapter."

I am sure most of the early novel-reading sessions would have included atleast one of his books. So Mr SS.. so long and thanks for all those stories!!!