For the Love of Books

Author: Anthony Doerr Genre: fiction, historical I received this Pulitzer prize winner book as a birthday gift. I had heard a lot of good things and a prolonged sick leave gave me the chance to read this book. I must say, that after a long time, I read a work of fiction that was so fulfilling. The book describes the lives of two characters in the second world war era. The first is a French girl, blinded at the age of 6. The second is about a German boy who gets recruited in Hitler’s army due to his special talents with operating and repairing radios. The book describes how fate and the war brings these two souls in contact with each other. The storyline is not described in a simple chronological manner. It flits between the time that the meeting happens (1944) and the time before that. The chapters alternate between the life of the girl and the boy. Because the reader catches a glimpse of the moment of climax at the very beginning, curiosity drives her through the book, to unde

Author: Isaac Asimov Genre: science fiction        This is the first of Asimov’s novels that I have read. Before this, I had read a few short stories of his and of course heard a lot about him. So I had been curious to know what the fuss is all about. I must say that I was not disappointed.        The Foundation series includes three books. The   first book describes the events occurring in an unnamed galaxy where there are many planets inhabited by humans. The story starts with there being a Galactic Empire that has been ruling the galaxy for many thousands of years. However, a psychohistorian predicts the fall of this empire and start of a dark age. In order to shorten the dark age and bring forth a new empire, he sets up an institute on a remote planet and calls it the Foundation. The rest of the book follows the trajectory of this foundation and its inhabitants.        One of the first interesting ideas put forth in the book is that of psychohistory- that a large popul

Authors: Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre Genre: non-fiction, historical            This is the third book of Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre that I have read. I found this book after looking for it for almost three years! I must say that like the previous two books I enjoyed this one a lot as well!         The book is about the fate of Paris in the last year of the   second world war. The book recounts the events spanning a month. With the allies decision of bypassing Paris on their route to the liberation of France from the Germans; and Hitler’s firm resolution that if the Allies get Paris, they should find nothing there but rubble, the fate of Paris seemed to be sealed. However, the presence of a German General who doubted the decision of his Fuhrer, the firm resolution of France’s previous ruler- Charles de Gaulle and his brave soldiers, as well as the unending courage and conviction of the Parisians themselves; Paris is saved.         As with their previous

Author: Art Speigelman Genre: graphic novel, history, biography          After being recently introduced to the amazing experience of reading graphic novels with ‘Logicomix’, I was looking for new ones to read. ‘Maus’ caught my attention for two things- one that it was based on the holocaust and second that it had won a Pulitzer prize. Maus means mouse in German, which is how the Jews are depicted in the book.            It is the story of the author’s father, a Polish Jew. It starts out with how he met the author’s mother during the pre-war period, then portrays his days as a soldier in the second world war, his family’s many attempts at escaping the Nazis and finally ends with his days in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Interestingly, all the characters are animals, the Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs and the Americans are dogs. This in no way undermines the human experience of it all though. The choice of animals themselves is also quite interesting.

Author: Venki Ramakrishnan Genre: popular science, memoir            Nobel laurate Venki Ramakrishnan’s first book is about his experiences in the race to elucidate the structure of ribosome.   I had read an excerpt from this book earlier, where he talked about how winning a Nobel prize may not be the best thing for a scientist and how prizes, at times can be unfair. I liked it very much and was keen on reading the whole book. I finally got the chance after borrowing a copy from a friend.           The book starts out with his experiences as a student of physics and his almost accidental entry into biology. It then covers his postdoctoral work that got him interested in ribosomes in the first place, followed by his incredible journey across America and then to MRC, Cambridge, which was across the ocean. The book is mostly a personal account, focusing on his experiences and the struggles he and his lab went through. It eventually culminates with his winning the prize and the N

Author: Bill Bryson Genre: memoir, travel, non fiction              This is the first of Bill Bryson that I have read. I am not a fan of travel books but I was keen on reading some of his books and so I picked it up. Before moving to the US the author decides to take one last nostalgic trip of Britain and the book is about this journey of his.              The book of course, is all about Great Britain and why, according to the author is it so great. It includes memoirs not only of the incidences that the author experienced on the journey of his but also some memories of the past that certain places invoked. It has detailed descriptions of the all the places he visited and also how he went there, most of the travel was done on trains, buses and on foot. It also includes a fair bit of description of all of the people he met. If you want to know what living in Britain is like and know about especially unknown but worth visiting places, this book has it all.            As I sa

Author: Paula Hawkins Genre: fiction, suspense        This is not the first book of Paula Hawkins that I read. I did read ‘Girl on the Train’ and didn’t like it much. However, I decided to take my chances with her again without having too many expectations. At the end of this book though, I decided that I wouldn’t read any more of her work.         First of all, a book that does not have a good end, is not a good book. It usually doesn’t matter that the content before was excellent or how well it was written, if the end does not give you closure, all the pages before are almost a waste. This is especially important when it comes to thrillers and suspense stories, where everything unfurls in the end and where the reader discovers whether all that they were suspecting was right or not. I feel that it is here that she fails the most. With the previous books, I had already predicted the plot which was simple enough. In this book, she seems to have tried to compensate for the prev