Ira Pande's Lits

A book that meant a lot to you?
Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals. A favourite since childhood, it has withstood the test of time and cynical middle age. An instant mood enhancer, it never fails to cheer me. Also, I love whacky families because I grew up in one as well.

Your favourite character?
Tom Sharpe’s Wilt, a lovable loser and bumbler, basically intelligent but gets it wrong every time. He suffers from chronic low self-esteem and his changing avatars in successive books are a delight to follow. All of us can see something of ourselves in him.

A genre you hate?
Most forms of chick-lit. It’s clever but vacuous writing packaged to sell well.

Last book bought?
Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles. Call it a charwoman’s choice, but I love the acid tones in Brown’s writings of upper class life. And it’s a very revealing account of the post- Thatcher years and the brittle new Labour world crafted by Blair.

Last book read?
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruis Zafon

A very overrated book?
Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. I’m a long time admirer of his, hooked since I read The Cement Garden in 1981. But both Saturday and this one are heavy disappointments. I can’t say whether it’s he or I who has changed.

A book you wish you’d written?
David Lodge’s Small World. The last in a trilogy, it’s a scathing satire on academic hypocrisy. I wish I could write a similar one on our own jholawalas.

books : Gita Hariharan

GITHA HARIHARAN
Writer

A favourite book, or one that means a lot to you?
I hate being asked about my favourite book or my favourite author — it makes me think of picking ice cream flavours. There are far too many books that mean a lot to me to single just one out. Perhaps I should just say, books mean a lot to me — since we all read more than we write.

How many books do you own?
My sons have begun taking away some of my books pretending they are theirs, but I still seem to have a good number — more than I can dust anyway.

A genre you hate?
I wouldn’t go so far as hate, but I have never been much of a science fiction reader. Maybe I’ll discover it one of these days. I am also wary of novels where large sections are in italics, or a single sentence takes up five pages.

Last book bought?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.

Last book read?
Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

A book you wish you’d written?
If fantasy were limited to one book, it would be impoverished fantasy. I could probably fill up pages with the names of books I wish I had written. From Jose Saramago’s Blindness to Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” to JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians to Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines.

A book you’ve always wanted to read but haven’t?
Again, a great number — a list that is longer than a lifetime. Making such a list would be a depressing exercise.


LAKSHMI INDRASIMHAN

Sidharth Dhanvant Shangvi

SIDDHARTH DHANVANT SHANGHVI
Writer

A book that means a lot to you?
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. It arrests poetry, sensuality and politics in the cast of its enchanted story. It plays with the idea of time like clay, veering between the past and the present as a hawk in the valley soars and dives with startling elegance.

How many books do you own?
4,000; many of them inherited from my grandfather, who read voraciously and taught us to do the same.

Your favourite character from a book and why?
Sula, from Beloved by Toni Morrison, because she loved her daughter enough to kill her; and Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s short novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s, because she drank too much and lived a lot.

Last book bought?
Andrew O’Hagan’s Be Near Me.

Favourite genre?
Literary-shmiterary
.
Last book read?
A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman; Veronica by Mary Gaitskill, which I can’t recommend enough — it’s heady, sexy, conceited and heartbroken. I loved, for
uite different reasons, The Golden Age by Tahmima Anam. Sadly, Anam never made it to the Man Booker list; instead, a slip of a novel, Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach did — more fool me.

A book you wish you’d written?
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.

A book you’ve always wanted to read but haven’t?
Dog Breeding for Professionals by Dr Herbert Richards.

LAKSHMI INDRASIMHAN

indra sinha's bookworld

INDRA SINHA
Booker nominee

Your favourite book?
Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor, for the sheer beauty of the writing.

How many books do you own?
About 9,000. We’re trying to cut down to essentials. (www.indrasinha. com/library.html)

Your favourite character?
Mowgli, from The Jungle Book. As a child running wild in the western ghats I yearned to be him. Animal in Animal’s People is perhaps a sort of inverse Mowgli.

Last book bought?
An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity: Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions by F. Stanley Jones — part of the research for my next novel.

Last book read?
A General History of the Pyrates by Daniel Defoe — more swashbuckle than Johnny Depp. Before that, I read In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh; I came to like him more and more with every page.

Your favourite genre?
The classic novel: Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Dickens’ Hard Times, Mulk Raj Anand’s Coolie, John Fowles’ Daniel Martin, Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. I also love the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson.

Books you wish you had written?
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell; anything by Saadat Hasan Manto.

A book you’ve always wanted to read but haven’t?
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce It’s like a really fine whisky, to be taken in small sips and savoured. I’ve never managed more than a few sips at a time — unlike whisky.

Lavanya Sankaran's books

LAVANYA SANKARAN
Writer

A book that meant a lot to me?
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight's Children. I read it first when I was fourteen, and the way it captured India with a vivid pungent intensity left me breathless.

How many books do you own?
Over 3,000 and growing. Books are an addictive purchase. The collection is extremely eclectic, as one might expect in a family of heavy readers — ranging from literary fiction to mystery and travel; from the serious to the bawdy; from scientific philosophy to spiritualism to children’s lit. In my study, I keep about 500 books of fiction and non-fiction. Some are tattered from frequent re-readings; others are over 200 years old and the result of trawling through antiquarian bookshops. I guard them all quite jealously.

Last book bought?
Chuck Palahnuik’s Haunted.

Last book read?
Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea.

Favourite genre?
Literary fiction, for (usually) being the best of language and literature; and crime fiction —nothing is more relaxing than a well-written murder.

A book you wish you’d written?
Any book written really well in six weeks or under! If there are such things

A book you’ve always wanted to read but haven’t.
Hundreds of them — and that’s the ongoing joy and adventure of my life as a reader.

An author or genre you hate?
Poorly-written pulp fiction maddens me. Every well-written mystery or romance seems to drag, in its wake, a hundred shoddy imitators.

LAKSHMI INDRASIMHAN

smpurna chattarji's books

SAMPURNA CHATTARJI, Poet

Books that mean a lot to you?

John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces for its incredible humour and its hero, Ignatius J. Reilly; Joseph Roth’s The Legend of the Holy Drinker and Rebellion; all of Coetzee for his unflinching examination of human cruelty; Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter; Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings; all of Saramago, particularly The History of the Siege of Lisbon…

A favourite character?

Two radically opposite characters — Raimundo Silva, the hero of The History of the Siege of Lisbon, for his awkwardness, reticence, and a small, astonishing act of subversion; and the above mentioned Ignatius J. Reilly!

Last book bought?

Vinod Kumar Shukla’s novel Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi Last book read? (Re-read) Borges’ Doctor Brodie’s Report.

An overrated book?

Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Too cloying by far.

A book you wish you’d written?

Coetzee’s From The Heart of the Country, for the beauty, economy and psychological accuracy with which it deals with sexuality, hysteria and the derangement that
solitude can bring.

A book you’ve wanted to read but haven’t been able to?
Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I keep meaning to read it at one go, but that hasn’t happened. Having read the first two volumes with interruptions, I have to either do the same for the next four volumes, or go on a read-Proust vacation.

How many books do you own?
My husband and I have accumulated a collection of 1,326 books.

TUSHA MITTAL

Ramu Ramanathan, Playright, on Books

The book, that means a lot to you and why ?

' The Leopard' by Lampedusa. ' Midnight Children' by Salman Rushdie. ' Me Grandad 'Ad An Elephant' by Vaikom Mohammed Basheer. " In an Antique Land '' Amitav Ghosh. And almost everything by Borges and Marquez and Saramago.

A favourite charactar ?
Godot.

Last Book bought ?
An exquisite edition of ' Man without Qualities' by Robert Musil. I'll read it with hand-gloves.

Anil Dharkar's Fav Books

Books that mean a lot to you ?

A : I've had a lifelong passion for Graham Greene. I've read all his novels, his ' entertainments', but my favourite is " Brighton Rock . I also went through a Nabakov phase reading all his books. I love Lolita but Laughter in the Dark is really wicked, cruel story, beautifully told.

A favourite Character ?

The catcher in the Rye ws a very important book to me as it was to a lot of people I used to go around saying I was Holden Caufield.

Last book bought ?

I try not to buy books anymore as it's got that stage in my flast where either the books stay or I do.

Last book read ?

Mukarami's " Kafka on the Shore" for sometimes. It's a strange , mysterious book addressing spirituality and para normal coincidences which are subjects I'm increasingly interested in these days.

A book you wish you had written ?

Any play by Tom Shoppard. And Graham Greene's May we borrow your husband ? - a collection of short stories . The title story is so long, that it's a novella. It's an absolutely a brilliant sexual comedy.

The book you wanted to read ?

Gita and Bible. It's clear that I'm getting old. LOL !