BOOK AND ME PART 2

It was time to finish off KAFKA and so the TRIAL and CASTLE the 2 greatest novels I have ever read was endured and conquered atlast. The librarian directed me to the old classic section. I gleefully accepted and never dared too much except MobyDick,Old Man And The Sea ,Farewell To Arms-Earnest Hemingway,.Siddhartha of Herman Hesse, Lolitha, Of Sons and Lovers. The second greatest writer as I see it was Dostovsky-Idiot, Crime And Punishment ,the Karamazov Brothers.Nobody has ventured in to the depths of human mind as Dostovsky and the hero of idiot is my favourite of all the times..then it was Jacqueline Susanne-Valley of Dolls, Love Machine, Once is not Enough. Gone With the Wind, Godfather series, Papillon and Papillon2,Thorn Birds the humorous Vet series-James Herriot[must read-for laugher].,.50yrs best of readers digest articles, ,Adventures in Two worlds, Citadel by AJ Cronin,the Grapes of Wrath by Steinbech, Humbolds Gift by Saul Bellow, Dr.Zhivago-Boris Pasternak,Cancer Ward-Solshenitzyn, Longest Day, a Bridge Too Far, Private War-Cornelius Ryan,great 2nd world war novelist were the librarians courtesy.offcourse I had to dole out 10% of the cost when rs150 was my p.g stipend. It was time to leave calicut.soon I married and joined ottapalam in81 after 2 yrs imprisonment in a rural dispensary in Koodaranhi in Malabar where I could lay hands on a few Malayalam hit authors like M.T,Thakazhi,Muhammad basheer,Malayattoor,O.V Vijayan,Uroob,Muttathu Varkeyetc etc

For another 6to 7 yrs I had forgotten books and was busy making my career graph ,raising two children who were quite handful. Once they had started schooling I joined municipal library adjacent to our hospital. It was a treasure trove. I began with the medical horror fiction series by an ophthalmologist-Robert Cook-Coma, Fever, Sphynx, Brain, Mutation,Harmful intent,Sydney Sheldon novels I liked-Naked Face,the Otherside of Midnight, Bloodline, Rage of Angels, Tell Me your Dreams etc,then Wilbur smith novels.then more serious types like Milan kundera of magical surrealism ,Thus Spake Sarathusthratha- Nietzhe,Alexander the Great[biography] Rebecca by Daphne Du Marrior impressed me. The Roots,I just loved it. Soon it was the turn of Michael Crichton novels, One Who Flew over the Cuckoos Nest, the Third Wave by Alvin Toffler[must read], Foucaults Pendulum by Umberto Erico, Autobiography of a Yogi and not but the least Salmon rushdie-the Midnight Children, East-West, Moores Last Sigh,.then one science writer Capra-Tau of Physics,History of Time,Road Ahead, I am o.k You are o.k on transactional analysis, Freuds-Psycho Analysis---, Jane Austen-Pride and Prejudice, Great escape, and another of my favourites the crooked Jeffrey archer-Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less,Kane and Abel, Shall We Tell the President, Matter of Honour, Diary in Prison.Of Human Bondage, Razors Edge-Somerset Maughm were an eye opener[the hero whom I disliked most was from of Human bondage. Paul Coelho-Alchemist,the Valkyries, Pilgrimage, Devil and Miss Prymm, the legal thrillers of Grisham – the Firm, the Time To Kill. the Pelican Brief, Chamber, Partner I liked,one of my favourites Agony and Ectasy biography of Michael Angelo, Lust For Life on Van Gogh by Irwing Stone,90 minutes at Entebbe, Munich Olympics are great thrillers in Isreili history.

Another pause for a few years as I became the Superintendent at O ttapalam and another 8 yrs flew by,meanwhile Shyam had taken the baton from me and became a ‘rabid reader’[the only thing I remember is I bought a book for the 1’st time in my life ‘complete short stories of Sherlock Holmes ,for Shyam as a present during his schooldays]
Now that I retired I took up reading under the tutorship of Shyam from his bookshelf at Pune and had a good catch of fish,a large one at that was Murakami-Kafka On Shore, Bird Chronicles, I rate next to Dostovsky,where fishes fall from the sky and cats talk,wonderful artist. It is the turn of Henning Mankel – side tracked,the Selfish Gene, Ian macEvan-Saturday,The Remains Of The Day- Ishiguro , KHA-a book on Hindu mythology , Love in the time of cholera by Garzia Marquis, Life of Pi, Momo-Emile Ajar[must read],Historian ,Catcher in the Rye, Mother’s milk, Inheritance of Loss ,God of Small Things, R.K Narayan-Malgudy Days, In Cold Blood, No Country for Oldmen-Macarthy ,Animal People, Disgrace-Coetze, Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead-ayan Rand on modern objectivism[must read],Don’t Kill a Mocking Bird, Davinci Code ,Deception Point, Zorba the Greek,the Last Temptation of Christ-Kazantsakis,the most recent one on hold is Life and Times of Micheal K by Coetzee
. Missed authors-Tolstoy, Mauppesante Maxim Gorky, Pearl s Buck ,Thomas Hardy-Emily solo, Bertrand Russel, J.Krishna murthy ,Osho , Origin of Species-Darwin.

Last but not the least, greatest book ever read was BHAGAVAD GEETHA of Swami Ranganathananda, Ashtavakra Geetha commentery by Chinmayananda, Vedanta a treatise by G. Parthasarathy [must must read].

Hope The Fantastic Voyage Continues.