Books
- Sacred Games By Viikram Chandra
- Bandicoots in moonlight by Avijit Ghosh
- The Girl with Dragon Tatoo by Steig Larsson
- Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Egonomics by David Marcum and Steven Smith
- The Cult of Amateurs by Andrew Keen
- A Perfect Mess by David Freedman
- Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres
- Wikinomics by Tapscott and Wiliams
- How to change the world by David Bornstein
- Stick to drawing comics, monkey brain! by Scot Adams
- Getting things done by David Allen
- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
- The Stuff of Thoughts by Steven Pinker
- Madness and Civilization by Foucault
- Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani
- The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
- Hot Flat and Crowded by T. Friedman
- Dreaming of Jupiter by Ted Simon (Thanks Srey for the gift.)
- India: The Emerging Giant by Arvind Panagariya
- Phantoms in the brain by Blakeslee and Ramachandran
- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Tribe by Bruce Parry
- Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal
- Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille
- The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne
- Snow by Orhan Pamuk
- The Innocent Men by John Grisham
- The Broker by John Grisham
- The Last Song of Dusk by Sidhart D. Sanghvi
- Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
- The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
- The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid by C K Prahalad
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
- The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
- The way of the Sufi by Idries Shah
- Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Cuckold by K Nagarkar
- The Moral Mind by Marc Hauser
- Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
- Chandamama - We were waiting more eagerly to get this magazine from newspaper wala then our results. Beautiful stories of Kings, stories from ancient epics with written with clear motive of promoting values and culture in children made this magazine immensely popular among kids.
- Champak - Loved it. Cheekku (the rabbit), Meeku (the mice) and their adventures were superb, since 1968 this magazine has established itself as the number one Children’s Magazine of India. A part of Delhi Press Group, they followed their group policy of not promoting any superstitious or bhoot-prate stories, but clean healthy entertainment for kids. Even today, I get my hands on any issue of Champak, I make sure to find Cheeku’s column and read it.
- Nandan - Unlike many children’s magazine of that time, this one has backing of a one of the leading media house of country Hindustan Times Group and has some of the biggest name as its contributor. Edited by Jayprakash Bharti (one of the biggest name in Children’s literature), it had/has strong focus on indian mythology and presented stories from Puranas and Upnishads. It was more structured and well presented compared to its competitors in 80’s, there you had Crosswords, Find the Difference (Kaun Kitna Buddhiman), a very popular Tenaliraman. The Pari Katha Visheshank was its eagerly waited special issue by its readers. Vishwa Prasidha Kahania provided its reader the best of childrens literature from world over translated in hindi.
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Madhu Muskan- If anyone of you have read it, you would vividly remember, Daddy jee, Chustram Sushtram.. Great comic and great mag. I dont know whether it is being published today or not but it was really one mags I wanted to read again and again. I even had a collection of around 5-6 years of Madhu Mushkaan, but some of dear friends loyal to borrowed reading, betrayed me.
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Suman Saurabh - Aimed at teens and probably only magazine in Hindi in late 80s and in 90s which went beyond storytelling and provided useful articles. Again from the stable of Delhi Press Group, I loved its Jasoosi Katha Visheshank (Detective Stroy Specials) and Vigyan Katha Visheshank (Sci-fi Specials). It is still going strong.
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Balhansh - Though this was quite new compared to Champak, Chandamama and Nandan, but it can be categorized as more balanced reading experience for kids. Published by Rajasthan Government, it kept the allround growth of its reader in mind. While Kavi Aahat made people go hither and thither fearing his poems, Havaldaar Tholaram was no less then a mixture of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond with grey matters borrowed from the likes of Kaanti Shah and Raakhi Sawant, taking care of goons and evildoers as well as problems of common man. It has some great informative articles which were not very common at that time in children’s magazine as most of the mags provided only stories and comic strips, the focus was not there on interesting or informative articles.
Birthday, Bihar Trip, Books and Deadlines
A blog post after almost two months does not indicate my diminishing passion for blogging but highlights the hectic professional life I had in last 2-3 months. A marathon writing session, boring sessions of number crunching and perusing some serious statistical concepts.. These things took so much control of my free time that I did not even manage a 'happy birthday post' on my birthday. Yes, I celebrated my birthday last month and this was supposed to be 'a very simple birthday celebration' and guess what.. I had to treat my friends in a five star hotel :( In between I had an eventful trip to my home state Bihar. Spent almost 48 hours in car and travelled more than 900 kms. I was accompanied by an intern, a british girl of Indian origin who was having her first trip to Bihar. Bihar was facing a drought like situation when I started for Bihar but the rain welcomed us as soon as we moved out of Patna and it poured heavily for next two days. The result: we were driving on water clogged Bihar roads, and it was a tough task for the driver to negotiate the water filled potholes suddenly appearing under the wheels. Fortunately the new Bihar government has made tremendous change to road conditions in Bihar and we could still manage to reach our destination. Though it was itneresting the see expression on my co-traveller's face while the driver negotiated the rough weather and bumpy roads. The highlight of the trip was our car breaking down around 11 pm on a deserted road and rain pouring down heavily. Imagine someone having the first trip to the 'notorious' Bihar and being in this situation. I must say that my co-traveller was really a courageous girl to take that trip considering the image she construed from the different books and media clips.
Meanwhile I finished the second book in Millenium trilogy ( a best-selling series translated from Swedish), The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson. I must say Lisbeth Salander rocks. She is the most intriguing, sensuous and engrossing charachter I have came across in recent times. :)
Back to books
Finally after all the madness in las few weeks I am relaxed and completely free from any professional commitment for a week. It really feels good to be free to decide what you want to do next .. read books, listen to music or just gaze at the random things in front of my eyes and get lost in thoughts.
Though the primary reason to take a week off and to be at home, is to take some rest and read some of the many unfinished books I have on my desk. Yes, I just want to read and read. There are many books which are half read, some I just started and did not get time to go back after the first couple of hours.
I have seen just one movie in last 3-4 months and the one I saw was ‘The Public Enemy’. I could not manage to get time for day or evening shows so I went for late night show. After all it was Johnny Depp and Christian Bale movie, unfortunately the movie turned out to be a disappointment. I had a lot of expectations from a Johnny Depp movie and it never reached to that level. So with diminishing interest in movies and not much time available at my hand, I am back to my first love reading books.
3-4 months back I had decided to read some of the best Hindi works and I picked up Raag Darbaari by Sri Lal Shukla, an amazing thought-provoking book filled with chuckle inducing humor. I wan to finish this first and then go on to finish The Rebel by Camus. Recently I have been reading some hindi poems thanks to online hindi websites which are doing a great job in promoting great hindi works. I remember just 2-3 years back, while I had a lot of resources to read English Classics, there were absolute no websites which provided similar content for lovers of Hindi Literature. For poems, now we have quite a number of websites which one can access, if you have not been to them and are interested in hindi literature you can check the following:
http://manaskriti.com/kaavyaalaya/ http://www.hindinest.com/ http://hindipoetry.wordpress.com/
Just explore the bloglinks given on these sites, there are some great blogs and sites listed there.
What I read in 2008
Fiction
Non-Fiction
Half Read / Unfinished Books
Surely I could not read a lot of fiction this year and spent a lot of time on non-fiction/ pop-economics. Though I wanted to read some good fiction titles. I bought many books last year and I think I need to speed up my reading to consume them this year.
What I read in 2007
Though I could not read as much as I did last year and left many books half finished, or just untouched on the shelf. These are books I did manage to finish, apart from the compulsory reading required by my job.
Fiction
Non-Fiction
I bought several books last year and many of them are still waiting to be finished. I read a few pages and somehow could not finish them. Hope to finish them soon this year.
Half Read / Unfinished Books
Let see how much time I get this year to satiate my desire to read. Getting Thinds Done by David Allen and The Perfect Mess by E Abrahamson and D Freedman are the two books which I am finishing this month. Two books advocating completely contrasting approach to manage your work-life.
Seven Children Magazines that I loved
Recently, Chandamama’s last 60 years issues have been digitized, so those who want to gift their children a good read, devoid of gory action and violent fantasy, this is a great option.
3.Lotpot - Full of laughter and great comic strips. The stories were invariably successful in bringing laughter and making you go ’lotpot’ . No advertisement and reading material from cover to cover at price of Rs. 2 (At present it is being sold at Rs.5). Though the paper was not great but stories were. Motu, Patlu and Ghasita’s always used to find themselves in trouble in whatever they did. Though Ghasita was not the main hero of the Motu Patlu strip but his hair style and Haryanwai accent made him my favorite character.
At the moment, it has gone numerous changes and is being edited by Mrinal Pandey, I just recently checked one issue from my brother, and found that the new avataar is no longer as fascinating. Earlier Nandan used to be full of stories and stories only. Now, they have started putting articles (probably following other mags), interviews and other pieces but somehow it doesnt reminds one of the old Nandan we were fond of.
Now let me know, which were your favorites …..
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