Good reading is a blessing..I have been fortunate enough to get a small healthy dose of it in the last few months.
The Pregnant King, Bollywood History, A Calendar Too Crowded, Immortals of Meluha, Time of my Life are some of the books I have managed to read, while I am sitting like a mother hen on Shantaram, Hunger Games and Khalil Gibran. Yes, sometimes motivating oneself to flip through the pages of a book at around 11 PM in the night after a whole day is tough, though not an excuse:). Each of these books set my thought process in motion and made me wonder how my life would have been if I hadn't chanced upon the book. Pregnant King, to state, is a supremely well researched book by the scholarly Devdutt Pattnaik. Set as a sub plot of the Mahabharata, Pregnant King combines mythology and narrates a powerful tale of the male-female identities and crises enmeshed in the principal characters and their lives. A lovely read for its gripping narrative and simple language. Would transport you back straight to the epic.
A Calendar too Crowded is a book of essays, of myriad voices - of female angst, joy, strength and survival in a world still so dominated by the male voice. A decent debut by young author Sagarika Chakraborthy. Bollywood History, on the other hand, is a treatise on the evolution of Indian cinema, the golden years, interesting anecdotes when history was in the making, a little bit of gossip (especially the bits on Pamela Bordes and Raj Kapoor), all these add up to make the book immensely readable, but for the small print, which can be a strain on the eye. Mihir Bose, the adept historian that he is, clearly knows his craft, and engages the reader with a good mix of research and trivia.
Time of My Life, a gift from a friend for my birthday, remains a book that I enjoyed immensely. Reasons are aplenty. The protagonist, Lucy is Bridget Jones, redefined. She is a victim of a web of lies she has to break, in order to live and love her Life. Life, here, comes alive as a character and she has to confront Him and answer Him at very stage. Bracketing Time as chicklit would be a bit of an insult to it. Time is a feel-good read that one must indulge in, a book that kindles a warm feeling within and makes you take stock of your life (now I begin to exaggerate:))..On a serious note, a good read, well-written, laced with dry humor, can get cliched at places, but will still make you reassess your life a bit, and stop being a quitter, especially if you are a girl.
I would be doing Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni's The Palace of Illusions great injustice, if there is no mention of this book...but then, it merits a separate review in itself or so, I believe...
