What is it that’s so fascinating about Michael Crichton’s books? I didn’t know until recently, when I read my first Crichton – Micro. And now I can confidently say that he’s not just a master of far-fetched, never-imagined-before or near-impossible concepts (which, incidentally, he makes very plausible by using science), but also a master...
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The Hypnotist is almost like Inception in a book. Honestly. A plot within a plot, the book’s a page turner not even from the first chapter, but from the lead-in to the first chapter itself. I started the book on late Sunday evening and had to put it down in the early morning hours...
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So, you called someone your boyfriend and he dropped you faster than a hot potato? Or had you been in a relationship for so long that he panicked at the normalcy of it all and did a Road Runner number? We’ve all been in a bad relationship at some point in our lives, haven’t...
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Because I’ve read a fair number of works on historical fiction recently, the genre no longer amazes me. However, my respect for authors who create such works continues to accrue, and a secret ambition of authoring such a book one day builds steadily. I was first acquainted with historical fiction with Devdutt Pattnaik’s ‘The...
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Once you are through with “A Wild Sheep Chase”, you could wonder why Murakami bothered to give this novel a name. No character in this story is referred by a proper noun. Well almost no one, except an uncurious cat who finally gets one. “I”, a divorced twenty-nine year old lives a humdrum life;...
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This last day of February, I risked getting late to work. I walked around the house frenetically, preparing my bath things, putting out my clothes, bumping into furniture, eyeing the clock, panicking, yet continuing to read the last few pages of Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, ‘My Name is Red’. It had to be...
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I’ve known John Grisham as a serious man, so when I picked this up years ago at Blossoms, I anticipated getting to know the ‘lighter writer’-side of him. Skipping Christmas is about Luther, a man with a grown daughter away from home on work, who has had just about enough with Christmas – the...
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J. D. Salinger’s only masterpiece. And what a masterpiece this one is. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the book, is claimed by numerous critics and reviewers of going through a nervous breakdown. It is also claimed that the book is a narration of one night in Holden’s life. For me, that is a far-fetched...
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He wept for his father, the pregnant king, for the imperfection of the human condition, and our stubborn refusal to make room for all those in between. This last line of the book, The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik, succinctly sums up its message. And what a powerful message! The book is less about...
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Chetan Bhagat’s new novel – Revolution 2020 promises a lot but fails to deliver. Three friends, love, ambition, envy…. It harps on the now cliched – corruption and ambition. It does get exciting and interesting in the middle but loses direction and the protagonist seems to be totally confused in the end. Varanasi has...
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