And among other year-end lists, Mark Thwaite's ReadySteadyBook, one of my favourite literary blogs, has a list of very unusual titles suggested by various hands in a Books of the Year 2007 symposium, while Mint's end-of the-year review, which I helped put together, has recommendations from a bunch of great writers, including the versatile Amit Chaudhuri (singing from his great album This Is Not Fusion at a concert in Bandra this evening), Siddhartha Deb, Mukul Kesavan, the ever-moving, ever-shifting, ever-travelling Amitava Kumar, Kalpish Ratna, Tim Harford, and the ever-vacationing yet miraculously hard-working Sonia Faleiro.
And my own piece below is marginally new and improved, and longer as well with the haddition of new luminaries in Hasan, Haigh, and Hitchens.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all the readers of The Middle Stage!
2 comments:
Dear Chandrahas, I look forward to reading some of the books on your list, particularly naipaul, yunus and al aswany (maybe obama if he is elected).
Your list and the other lists on the mint website do not include any science books, an unfair prejudice-why do you scorn us so? Would be interesting to look on our scientific world through the artist's eyes.
Dear Michalis - It's great that I've managed to influence your reading somewhat. As you well know, it is the dream of every reader not only to read widely and well, but also to persuade everybody he knows to read what he himself thinks is good.
As for your query, I am afraid - and it is my great regret - that the limits of my education and competence do not venture very far beyound the borders of the humanities - and even there I am often on shaky ground. I am very sure that if I were ever to review science books, my pieces would elicit howls of protest from readers like you. As there are more great novels in all of literature than I will have time to read in my lifetime, I don't know how to give myself a science education now.
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