Playing tag with books

        

        

How many of you have been playing this new tagging game on Facebook? The one where one of your friends tags you & asks you to list your top ten all time favorite books, and then you have to do the same, thanking the friend that nominated you plus tagging some others to post their favorites. I usually don’t do Facebook challenges, but when I did take part in this one, only because it had everything to do with books. It’s terribly difficult to choose just ten from the whole universe of awesome books around us. There are just too many books to love!

Here goes, in no particular order…

• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
  I am a huge fan of this author, I’d even read product labels, if she wrote those. Poirot is my hero. And this book in particular is the best from the author.

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
  This book is written in the voice of an autistic teenager whose understanding of the world is so simple it’s extremely touching. This one made me cry.

• The Palace of Illusions – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
  This is the story of the Mahabharata from a different point of view, that of Draupadi. She who was born of fire, married to the five Pandava brothers by a twist of fate, lost by her husbands at a game of dice and dishonored by the Kauravas in a court full of royal elders, who swore revenge and finally achieved it in the battle of Kurukshetra.

• Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen
  The first grown-up book that I read and instantly fell in love with. The setting in old English countryside, the adamant heroine, the distant hero, their love-hate-ego-clash relationship and the rest of the varied characters, all make it a novel to remember.

• The Magic Faraway Tree – Enid Blyton
  In fact I honestly don’t know which one of her books is my favorite. Although she has been analysed as being sexist in her works, I prefer to bypass that. I am thankful that her stories filled my childhood with so much imagination & wonder.

• All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
  This is how war sounds when described in a young soldier’s voice. Despite having learnt about the skills needed in the field, what actually happens there will test the soldiers to the limit. It is a poignant story and a reiteration of the fact that war can never ever be good for anyone.

• City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi – William Dalrymple
  You see my husband is from Delhi so I wanted to know more of his city. Also, my sister is crazy about the historical appeal of the city and she blogs about it passionately.  This book helped me discover a Delhi I had never known. And I kind of started to look at it as way more than the bustling metropolis that it appears prima facie.

• The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
  The author describes so well that feeling of belonging, and yet not. Finding your roots in a foreign land has never been easy, all the more when the world you are a growing up is so different from what you find inside your home.

• The Pact – Jodi Picoult
  This book I read recently opened my mind to teen issues that I thought insignificant. I guess, growing up as a teenager is getting tougher in today’s world where every move one makes is up for scrutiny. It’s something I am definitely going to keep my eyes & ears open when I have kids of my own.

• A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
  This is a moving account of war-torn Afghanistan, revolving around the lives of two women brought together by fate and how their relationship grows from initial hostility to love and trust beyond life.

I am sure as I continue to read every day, this list might take a new shape, but for now, this is it. Have you read any of these? I’d love to find out if our choices match!