The Long Goodbye

Author - Raymond Chandler
Genre - Detective, Hardboiled, Philip Marlowe, Crime, Murder
Source - Audiobook
Rating - 4
Read - July 2015

The Long Goodbye finds Marlowe at his most devil-may-care, at his most pungent, at his hardest, and at his most tender. He is going the extra mile, nay, the extra light-year for his friend, he is getting beaten to an inch of his life by the police, he is playing Steinitz in chess, and Chandler is, at one point almost sounding like literature (however much he might have detested me saying this). But he was supposed to give back murder to the people who commit it, wasn't he?
I am happy with the sequence in which I read the three Chandlers. The Big Sleep is the big one- with big characters, big plotlines, even big holes in the plot. Then, The Lady in the Lake is clean as a whistle - there's a master at his peak - it's not as powerful as The Big Sleep, but with its ducks very much in order. And then this - Ray Chandler is a world-weary man now, pouring his vitriol at the readers. It is a magnificent experience.
Raymond Chandler is a magnificent experience.

The Lady in the Lake

Author - Raymond Chandler
Genre - Detective, Hardboiled, Philip Marlowe, Crime, Murder
Source - Audiobook
Rating - 4
Read - July 2015

Philip Marlowe is a private eye, it is his job, he is doing a job, he can do this job - and he is also seeing the world for what it is. Dreary. Bitter. Futile. He is making us look at our world. 
As a murder mystery, this is better, more intricate, more intelligent, more complete than 'The Big Sleep' (my impressions of that book are here), but that is a better, more compelling book. This isn't much worse though.
Read both. Read Chandler. Our world hasn't changed much in the last 70 years. One of the other books I have started is 'The Dark Knight Returns', and that one smells the same as this.
Ray Chandler is the Poet Laureate of Sleaze Street. Indeed, was the poet laureate of Sleaze Street, a position now taken up by Frank Miller. Here's to them both.

Patriots and Partisans

Author - Ramachandra Guha
Genre - Politics, Society, Academic, Research, Media, Magazine, Congress, RSS, Communist Parties, BJP, Nehru, Gandhi, Mahatma, MK Gandhi, Press.
Source - Print
Rating - 4
Read - July 2015

The gift of Ramachandra Guha is to present serious academic discussions to us, reasonably well-read non-academics, in a tone that is neither academic nor over-simplistic. It is to his great credit that the reasonably well-read non-academic can actually read his points-of-view, and digest them well enough to create a coherent opposing view. Reading Ramachandra Guha is a gift - even if one disagrees vehemently. I was about to point out a few chapters that are must-reads, but there are way too many. Buy it. Read it.