Books This Year

Disclaimer: I'm not a voracious reader.
I generally read about 3-4 books a year. This year has been slow as usual. I started with White Tiger. I loved the brutal, honest, vivid and sometimes repulsive description of life in "The Darkness". Anyone who has journeyed across India in a train can recall how apt the descriptions were. The character of Balram Halwai was too gray and almost impossible to judge. As Oscar Wilde once said, "Every Saint has a past and every sinnner has a future." In the end I'm unable to feel happy for him though he comes out of the predicament on top. I believe Balram had something in common with the tycoons, the dictators and hardened criminals. I call it self centeredness. Anyhow, the book is a gem.

The second one I read was Amitav Ghosh's Hungry tide. I thought there was too much prose in the book without adequate meat. It meandered like the river itself and never really got my interest. I liked Piya's character. I admire women with resolve and conviction. But then the author spent too much time showing off his knowledge of geography, aquatic life in the Ganga basin and such, impeding the flow of the book. I would not recommend it.