Third Man: Recollections from a life in Cricket

Author – V Ramnarayan

Genre – Autobiography, Sports, Cricket, Ranji Trophy

Source - Print

Rating - 4

Read - Sep-October 2015

Sporting Autobiographies / Biographies: The types I hate:
1. Heavily ghostwritten works, where you do not find the sportsperson, only the ghostwriter (e.g. Arsene Wenger's biography, and way too many others)
2. Ones that play it safe and are over-complimentary to everyone and their grandmothers (e.g. those of most currently playing sportspeople. Andrew Flintoff's)

3. Ones that are just intent on settling scores (e.g. Alex Ferguson's)

4. Ones that go on and on about personal milestones, and have no stories or interesting anecdotes to tell (e.g. Peter Roebuck's Sometimes I Forgot to Laugh, unfortunately. Especially because Roebuck is my favourite cricket writer. Read Roebuck's It Never Rains, instead. It's the journal of one cricketing season, and is absolutely excellent)

5. Ones that lack enthusiasm, humour or warmth (e.g. Sachin Tendulkar - Playing It My Way) 

6. Ones where the sportsperson comes across as a proper ass (e.g. eh... Nope. Many examples, but no names, alright?)

This is none of the above. Stellar stuff. Recommended. The book has its blemishes, but none are significant. The good things about this book, on the other hand, are numerous - the opposite of the six points above, to start with. And many more.

One Summer: America, 1927

Author – Bill Bryson

Genre – History, Journalism

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 4

Read - July-October 2015

This is how the book ends.

"Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs. The Federal Reserve made the mistake that precipitated the stock market crash. Al Capone enjoyed his last summer of eminence. The Jazz Singer was filmed. Television was created. Radio came of age. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. President Coolidge chose not to run. Work began on Mount Rushmore. The Mississippi flooded as it never had before. A madman in Michigan blew up a school and killed 44 people in the worst slaughter of children in American history. Henry Ford stopped making the Model T and promised to stop insulting Jews. And a kid from Minnesota flew across an ocean and captivated the planet in a way it had never been captivated before. Whatever else it was, it was one hell of a summer."

And all that in Bill Bryson's flowing, humorous prose. And in Bill Bryson's voice. It's a treat! I loved this book.

Inverting The Pyramid

Author – Jonathan Wilson

Genre – Football, Sports, History, Journalism

Source - Print

Rating - 5

Read - September 2015

There are some books for which the one-minute book review is insufficient - not because you are full of things to say and you cannot do it concisely (that is YOUR problem, reviewer), but because there are so many things to write about. 

There are so many things to write about in this book. To the commoner, Cricket is the game of detailed tactics, and football is the game of hit and run. They cannot be further from the truth. Cricket is essentially a game of skill. Football is essentially the game of strategy. And this strategy, which took the last hundred years to develop, is detailed in this book - in crisp, clear, precise, journalistic language and quite phenomenal depth of research. @jonawils is quite a special football journalist, as any regular reader of The Blizzard and The Guardian (and even ESPNCricinfo) will attest - and this will, I think, remain his pièce de résistance.

And you, readers of this blog, know that I sometimes recommend sports books to non-sports fans. This is not one of those books. But if you are a lover of the beautiful game, you have to have this book.

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. 

Wolf Hall

Author - Hilary Mantel

Genre - History, Politics, Non-Fiction

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 5

December 2013

This is an incredible achievement. Really one of the books where even while reading it you know that this is a piece of high art. Hilary Mantel is a genius. How many book have you encountered where in the middle of an exciting passage of events you suddenly stop to marvel at a piece of sparkling prose? And you are never over-burdened by the literariness of the piece (something that, I must agree, happens to me often), the book, all 24+ hours of it in Audible, flows through. I am not the Booker-prize-reader kind, in fact, I am the exact opposite. This however was brilliant. Will have to start on the next part in a few days.

India After Gandhi

Author - Ramachandra Guha

Genre - History, Politics, Society, Non-fiction

Source - Print

Rating - 5

November 2013

Re-read. This should be re-read once every year. Masterful. A page-turner, it reads like a thriller. Even on the second read.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Author – Bill Bryson

Genre – Science, Popular Science, Non-fiction, Humour, History, Physics, Geology, Paleontology, Anthropology

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 5

August 2013

I have been having great luck with books in recent times. Or maybe I am easy to please. But really, this book here is a definite read-this-now. The dexterity is not in the physics, the geology and paleontology and anthropology, a fair bit of which (gloat gloat) I was to an extent in the know of, but in the presentation. Bryson is an awesome storyteller, and he weaves these superb, fun, and exceedingly funny stories around the mysteries of nature and creation and the men and women who solved these mysteries for us – this is the perfect book to read beforehand if you are planning to babysit a particularly inquisitive nephew or niece.