Le Carre's Smiley and the other trilogy.

The reading this year comprised mainly of fiction books. Couple of trilogies and a few other novels.

This year I completed the Karla Trilogy from John Le Carre after reading the Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. While Honourable Schoolboy was a good book, I thought Smiley's People was fantastic.
As fantastic as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Indeed the best book I have read in years.

I loved the insanity in the cunning that Smiley and Karla create against each other. I loved the fact that Smiley acknowledges that he and Karla are no more than each other's alter ago. Most of it, I loved the climax. Never expected it to be so stunning. Never was it so predictable either.

John Le Carre sits in an overlap of fiction thriller writer who imagines a lot about the espionage world and a literary master who knows the people about whom he writes. What a treat!

The other trilogy was the very readable Shiva Trilogy. I enjoyed Immortals of Meluha, the first part very much. The other two were alright. What impressed me was the amazing imagination shown by the debutante author Amish.Writing sure is a difficult art, writing with so much imagination on a topic which is so well known to Indians, is much more difficult. Amish stands out. And I hope we get to see movies made from his books. And I hope that the movie has good production values....

Books I read this year....

This post is just to pen down the books I read this year. No particular order, just noting them as I remember.

Stieg Larrson's stunning millennium series (Recommended)
1. Girl with Dragon Tattoo
2. The Girl who played with Fire
3. The Girl who kicked Hornet's Nest.
Review - This is a stunning trilogy. As morbid as the coincidence may be, but it describes how evil societies are to girls and women. This book talks about Swedish, but the recent case in India is no different. Indeed our country lacks the machinery to tackle this menace. That we don't have a deterring punishment history for past cases is a tacit go ahead to the potential criminals.

John Le Carre's (Recommended)
4. Our game
5. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Re-read this)

Review - Le Carre remains one of the darkest authors I will ever read. Our Game was a new book and not as great as his Smiley series. But TTSS was once again fun to read! Smiley as a spy is something that tells on how cerebral that vocation is. And how movies have trivialized it with the likes of Mr. Bond. Yet, I love both these characters, Smiley as well as Bond.

John Grisham's
6. The Litigators (Recommended)
7. Theodore Boone: The Accused (Recommended for teenagers)
The Litigators is a different story told by Grisham. The best part about the book - you can identify with the protagonist. Loved the book. Not pathbreaking, but immensely entertaining.
So it is for #7 there but for teenagers.

Michael Crichton's
8. Timeline (Not Recommended)
9. Rising Sun (Recommended)
10. The Disclosure (Recommended)

I started reading Crichton recently. And have I enjoyed his writing! Immensely insightful. Consider #9 and #10. Such polemic about things like globalization and corporate games in fiction is incredible. Plus the breadth of subjects Crichton can cover is unbelievable. Science fiction, thrillers, aliens, dinosaurs... wow!
By the way, Timeline is something you can avoid. Quite ordinary and full of holes in the story.

Dan Brown's
11. The Symbol (OK if you like Dan Brown)
The line above has told you what you want to know.

Michael Lewis'
12. Liar's Poker (Recommended)
Brilliant non-fiction. I read his Big Short back in 2010 and I loved it. This one is also immensely entertaining!

Wodehouse's
13. Much Obliged Jeeves (Recommended)
Wodehouse is way too big for me to say anything. Read it, enjoy it!

14. Rubbish called Greed (Sorry to have noted this.... but utter waste of time)
This author is called Chris Ryan. I hope no other author turns out like him.

Will add as I remember the missed ones...

WISH YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thanks,
Sid

New year and change...

It has been a while since I wrote a post of which I have been long thinking. In general, 2011 year has been an ok considering the pluses and minuses each year has.

Year 2012 was welcomed with the usual frenzy. Some newspapers said that many people preferred to stay home and indoors instead of partying hard on 31st night. That is strange considering the lovely cold that Mumbai is experiencing. But it is perfectly understandable considering that the same cold is quite harsh in the north.

So how was your celebration at the turn of the year? Party or ghar pe TV ke saamne? Not that the TV had much to offer. I apologize in advance but I cannot resist pasting this excerpt from one of my earlier posts :

      "Well, these days the TV does not stop, the viewer has to muster the courage to go to the power off   button. These days there is no need of news wrap because you have been fed the same news 24x7 till you have learnt it to the last headline and you no longer wait for that 5 minute magic from Jaaved Jaffrey because there are like a million copies doing rounds on 50 channels."

Nevertheless, the year had its share of headlines - the anti-corruption headlines from our nation, the Arab spring headlines, the Japanese earthquake and the tragedy thereafter, the British royal wedding, the famous Indian World Cup victory and the Euro zone fiasco.

For me, in 2011, I read one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read on general science - Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything. I have since been recommending it to anyone who has been showing a slightest interest in science.

So here we come to the close of this post. It was just a general chit-chat on the year that went by.

What am I looking forward to: Seeing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. One of the finest spy novels I have read as well as one of the finest mini-series I have seen ever. It would be interesting to see how Gary Oldman compares to Sir Alec Guinness. Having missed the movie in the cinemas, I now await its DVD release...

How 2009 Went By? Part 1

As is the ritual, year endings are mandated with the lists of 10 somethings...top news, best, worst....

So here are the 2 telecom updates:
1) MBB on top 10 telecom news. 
2) Telecom M&A details from Unstrung - Check the AdMobile story in there. Interesting.

As I gather more such lists, I will either update this post or post next part.

Also posting these / some of these individually on twitter under #How2009Went. If you got any interesting ones, post in comments here or tweet them.