Last Chance To See

Author : Douglas Adams

Genre: Travel, Humor, Nature, Non - fiction

Rating: 5

Source: Print

Read on: April 2015

Motherhood and Apple pie. Puppies. The Godfather. Anurag Kashyap. Ronaldinho. Rahul Dravid. The curious incident of the dog in the night time. Douglas Adams.

The untouchables. The beyond-criticisms.

In all honesty, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was something that I never did warm up to. It's something that I never finished, even. The first book, a little bit of the second... And that was it. I just never got the fuss. About the way-larger-than-cult following. And about Douglas Adams.

Now I do. This book changes it. There's a lot of humor, a lot of warmth, and a lot of heart - this is a real treasure. Suhas, my friend, had been quietly pestering me for a long time to read this. And now I have. And now I know why. I am happier for the experience, and wiser, and better even. 

Red Harvest

Author - Dashiell Hammett
Genre - Detective, Thriller, Hardboiled, Classic
Source: Audiobook
Rated: 5/5
Read: March-April 2015

Hammett is a very different kind of brilliant than Chandler. Not for him the plebian godliness of Chandler and his stark, perfect prose. Hammett is made for action, and for action scenes. And the man-with-no-name protagonist, oftentimes referred to as the Continental Op, is rough-hewn, brutal and just keeps to business. And business is good. Very good. 
You are missing out on a lot of brilliance if you are not reading hardboiled.

Jar City

Author: Arnaldur Indriðason
Genre: Detective, Thriller
Source: Audiobook
Rating: NR - Dropped Midway

My first 'Dropped Midway' of the year. 
Attempted: Jan-Feb '15 (Gave up in March '15)
Summary: What do I say? Did not work for me. Too gloomy, soggy, wet and cold. Too alien. Icelandic Mystery is left for maybe another time, okay?

The Big Sleep

Author: Raymond Chandler

Genre: Detective, Thriller, Hardboiled, Classic

Source: Audiobook

Rated: 5/5

Read: Jan-March 2015

Chandler’s writing is like a slap of crisp, hot breeze on the face, late on a tiring summer’s day – clean, brutal, uncompromising, and unforgettable. Clean, more than anything else. Sparse. Hard. And enough.

You know that this is genre fiction. And while reading it (and I have read only one Chandler earlier), you know that this is literature that is defeating the genre it is part of. You know that this is a classic. You are mesmerized. You are pulled. You carry on. You are carried on.

Raymond Chandler is the writer I want to write like.

Ruaha

Author: Buddhadeb Guha
Genre: Thriller, Young readers, Wildlife, Shikaar
Source: eBook
Rated: 5/5
Read: March 2015

Later

Rijuda Samagra (Part 5)

Author: Buddhadeb Guha
Genre: Thriller, Young readers, Wildlife, Shikaar
Source: eBook
Rated: 4/5
Read: March 2015

Review alongwith the review of with Ruaha

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

Author: George Saunders
Genre: Short stories, novella, dystropian
Source: Print
Rated: 4/5
Read: Feb 2015

Saunders is a magician of the written word. These are superbly well crafted stories, each a decidedly original take on the world around us, and each does the work of holding up a mirror of our world in all is darkest (Bounty, the novella, is a miracle). Where is separates from the later 'Tenth of December', Saunders' masterpiece in my opinion, is that even though dark, somewhere is Tenth is something very hopeful and life-affirming, while all that you will find in Civilwarland is a sense of overwhelming bleakness and hopelessness. The mirror showed such depressing images that sometimes they made this reader want to just close the book and prefer the placebo of turning away.

The Shadow of the Wind

(The Cemetery Of Forgotten Books, in Spanish)

Author - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Genre - Fiction, Thriller, Adventure, Modern Classic

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 4

January 2015 (started ages back)

Magnificent. Sprawling. Meandering. Rambling. Confusing. Contradictory. Infuriating. Grandiose.
Doomed, defeated, flawed characters. Caricatures. Swathed in Black and White.
This is the novel that Dumas, were he alive today, would have written. and Dumas is (almost) the reason I read.
So... so read. It's a 3.8 on 5 that I will recommend more highly than most 4.8s.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Author - Mary Ann Shaffer and Angie Barrows

Genre - Fiction, World War II

Source - Print

Rating - 4

January 2015

May all books have a soul like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.
I have become choosy and selective in my appraisal. Maybe even a bit snooty. That's the only reason I can think of why I would not rate this a 5. But I didn't. 
But read. Do read.