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These are my top books.
School
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
My first "story" book, opened in Fifth Std. Not a scene forgotten. I was mildly puzzled that there were no homework questions at the end of chapters. It's possible that I might've been a different person had my introduction to reading been varied.
Swami and Friends
Simplicity of plot and characters matched only by the unalloyed delight provided.
Curtain
Had unwittingly set myself up for it by having wolfed down a big segment of the Poirot catalogue over years. Yet to get over the shock, tragedy and irony.
The Godfather
Thrice read, and fascination undiminished. Did not quite realize it then, but this was my first glimmer that a mediocre story and style can be insignificant if you make the characters unforgettable.
The God of Small Things
A terrifying experience. Product of a fatal combination of observant eye, excellent hand and a capacity to tap deep into the dark shadows of the human condition. Surreal as only realism can be. Thankful that Roy indulged in those lovely, quirky linguistic experiments throughout.
College
The Gods Themselves
Set the bar for science fiction reading; yet to find a book bristling with more imagination or logic or their blend.
Papillon
The only memoir I'm aware of that puts the recollector's name in the title. Had been primed for it by the excerpts my pa had laced my childhood with. Acme of escapism. That a lot was found to have been fabricated is delightfully irrelevant; if anything, he must've dispensed with the true stuff, as befitting an autobiography.
The Code of the Woosters
The pinnacle of PG's canon. I was fortunate to not come upon it too soon in my reading career of him. The characters are at their side-splittingest, — with Jeeves at his finest — the language at its richest and the plot at its most diabolical. Funny would never be the same again.
A Brief History of Time
Another tome I'm glad not to have read young. Some of the images it left in my head echo in my research thoughts.
Grad school
Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman
One of the two Books That Changed My Life (BTCML). Once again the timing was perfect [not by design] — consumed at the dawn of my pursuit in theoretical physics, a field of inquiry Feynman had not so much impacted as turned upside down. The unbridled passion with which the man touched every corner of his existence cannot but have a galvanizing effect.
A Papillon on the sunnier side of prison bars, Feynman the nonsense-intolerating, scientific-integrity-and-rigour-upholding rationalist does not shirk away from embellishing his reminiscences, and thank goodness for that.
Rendezvous with Rama
A lesson in "less is more". Clarke need have written nothing else and assured himself a place in the SF pantheon.
50 Vingyaana Kathaigal
Had read a good many of the contents in other anthologies. The most inventive book in Tamil, and certainly the most untranslateable. Some of these are the best science fiction shorts read in either tongue that I know to read. Sujatha not only did sight this island of literature (SF premises in Tamil cultural situations), but also made himself its king.
Pride and Prejudice
The second BTCML. The only book read (and re-read and re-read) in 2013. Haven't plumbed another novel deeper, and am yet to find this one's bottom. Wasn't sure if I could commence my next book without being disappointed, but was proved happily wrong by the same quillstress.
Emma
If P&P knocked the stuffing out of me, Emma completed the taxidermy, to leave me transfixed. You will need all your powers of persuasion to unconvince me that Austen is the most complete writer that breathed.