I was born a bibliophile. Maybe that is stretching the truth a bit, but as far as my memory serves I got the bug at a very young age. I don't remember which was the first book I read, I don't remember when was the first book I read. The only thing I remember is that fascination for books was always there.
I am told that even before I had learned to read or write, I enjoyed going through "Glow Books". As the name suggests it glowed in the dark. I could only make out the glowing images, but still I spent a lot of time in the dark with my "Glow Books".
The next thing I remember reading is "Champak". I was quite a fan of "Cheeku" probably because that was quite similar to my pet name. Next of course were nursery rhymes. Sindbad, Pinnochio, Rip Van Vinkle, Don Quixote, Gulliver, Alice, Mowgli, Noddy, Snow white, Little Red riding Hood, Cindrella, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Dorothy and many others were my best friends.
My favourite authors back then were RL Stevnsn, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Ruskin Bond and Vishnu Sharma (Panchtantra)
By the time I had reached primary school reading books had already become my greatest passion. Nothing else could give me greater joy and satisfaction, perhaps maybe seeing Sachin Tendulkar bat. Although I was too young to understand the technicalities of the game I still loved seeing Sachin play. Maybe it was because he looked like an outsider, too young to play alongside the other players. I don't know the reason but seeing him bat always made me happy.
Anyway I am drifting from the topic. Perhaps I will write about Sachin some other day. Coming back to the topic of books, this was the phase when I was fascinated by mysteries and thrillers. Everyone who loves mystery books probably started with "The Famous Five". I completed series like " The Famous Five", "The Secret Seven", "Nancy Drew", "The Three Investigators", "The Five find-outers ", "Hardy Boys", "The Barney Mysteries", A-Z series of Sue Grafton and best of all Goosebumps.
This was also the phase when I started reading comics. Chacha Chaudhary, Phantom, Mandrake, Pinky, Billoo, Gamraj, Nagraj, Dhruv, Parmanu, Doga,Tiranga, Inspector Steel, Kobi, Bhedia, Bhokal and Shakti were my new companions. Back then I had crates full of comics. I was reprimanded by my parents on numerous occasions because they did not like me reading comics. I remember spending my entire pocket money for renting comics.
Even today I prefer reading Tinkle or Archie while travelling.
When I entered secondary school I shifted to a bit more mature books. Agatha Christie, Sidney Sheldon, Robin Cook, Jeffery Archer, Danielle Steele, Charles Dickens, Bernard Shaw, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, H.G.Wells, Michael Crichton, Ian Fleming, Alistair Maclean, Mario Puzo, John Grisham, Robert Ludlum, Stephen King, Shakespeare, Mary Shelly, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Canon Doyle and above all J.K. Rowling.
I must confess I am a Harry Potter Junkie and J.K. Rowling is my favourite because she wrote Harry Potter.
After completing my 10th board exams the first book I read was "Love Story" by Erich Segal. My first reaction was "What rubbish!! Such characters don't exist in real life". All that talk of love made me sick. I am a sensitive person but the line "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry." seemed a bit far-fetched. I decided I would never ever read Erich Segal again.
Now the period between my 10th and 12th board was one when I probably spent the least time in reading books. After reading "Love Story" I shifted to much better stuff. Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, V.S. Naipaul were my favourite authors. I also read the authobiographies of Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler.
In my opinion "Mein Kampf" is the most thought provoking book. I was very deeply affected by that book and spent a lot of time on the internet reading articles and other texts about Hitler. I am not very proud to say that I spent a lot of time giving arguments justifying Hitler's act, and also coming up with counter-arguments. All in my mind of course. It was like arguing both sides of a Mobius Strip. I am ashamed to say that I was quite gullible back then.
After Mein Kampf my next book was Fountainhead. It was an equally thought provoking book.
Unfortunately, I did not perform well in 12th boards owing to other distractions and I had to drop a year to prepare for entrance examinations. This was a period which I utilized fully to finish reading great works. Khaled Hosseini, Harper Lee, Ayn Rand, Tolkien, Frederick Forsyth, Alexander Dumas, Jules Verne, Dan Brown, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Leacock, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Iris Murdoch, Robert Frost, John Lennon, William Wordsworth, Keats, Kiran Desai were a few authors in whose company I spent my time. I also started reading up on a lot of relegious texts during this period.
After my 12th board I once again picked up another Erich Segal bestseller "The Class of 58". I loved this book a lot.I particularly related to the character of Andrew Elliot. A youngster who was unsure about what he really wanted from life. Andrew's biggest strength was his ability to make friends. I was so consumed by that book, I read it again.Some time later I read another Erich Segal book "Doctors". The book bored me with its details about medical student's life. But the core of the book was the love story of Barney Livingston and Laura Castellano. The book described how their platonic friendship changed into love. It was beautifully described and I liked it a hell lot more than the unrealistic characters of "Love Story".
This was also the year when I started reading Chetan Bhagat's works. Although none of his books are in the league of the above mentioned elite names, but still credit is due to him as the first author to create interest among the masses. I also tried reading the works of Stephen R. Covey and Dale Carnegie. To my dismay these were not my cup of tea.
In the year 2007 I started college. Engineering was never my thing and once again I found myself spending a lot of time reading books. My friends will confirm this that even on the eve of examination I was to be found with a novel in my hand. Although by the end of my 1st year the time spent on reading books was considerably reduced. A conributing factor could be the quality of books I read during this period. Stepahnie Meyer, Tuhin A Sinha, Tushar Raheja, and a lot many rubbish love stories written by lesser known Indian Authors.Even the eagerly awaited "The Lost Symbol" was a disappointment. As far as I remember there was hardly any exceptional book which I came across in my engineering career apart from the works of P.G. Wodehouse, Cecelia Ahren, Aravind Adiga and Paulo Coelho.
Once the college dream is over, reality hits hard in the form of job. Suddenly there is very little time for books. Especially when you have to work 6 days a week.
In spite of the little time I got over the next 3-4 years I managed to read quite a lot of books. Some were disappointments like "The age of Shiva", "Mahabharata Secret". "The Abomination" while a few were surprisingly good like "Gods and Warriors", "Atlantis", "Being Billy". Some books were really gripping like Rick Riordans mythological series, Shiva trilogy, the Millenium trilogy , Ashwin Saghvi's works and Karan Bajaj's books. Fifty Shades of Grey was another disappointment.. Some were simply great like Howard Jacobson's Finkler Question.
The last book which I would like to mention happens to be my all time favourite."The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes is one of the best books ever written. Especially if you consider the fact that it manages to convey Anthony's entire life within 150 pages. Had this book been written a year earlier it would probably have won the "Best of Booker" prize too. "You don't understand, but you never did, and you never will.."This is what Victoria Ford says to the protagonist Anthony in the end. A simple line which carries a lot of weight in it. It shows you how much Victoria has endured, that all she manages to say is this one line. The one line which has so much impact on Anthony when he finally understands.
There may be a few names which I missed here. There may be a few names which don't deserve to be here. But there are infinitely more names to be added here.
