On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 05:04 -0700, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> Damn whoever started this thread. I'm going to get forced to pull all those
> books off the shelves and start re-reading them. For the next few weeks at
haha mea culpa. so let me modify the thread, then: what are the sort of
books you re-read?
i hardly ever re-read, despite building up a huge collection. i find i
almost always end up remembering the book quite well once i'm back in
it. some times that is the point of re-reading, of course.
my small list of books i've read more than once includes _foucault's
pendulum_, which some here find incomprehensible; a couple of calvinos
("if..." and "castle of crossed destinies"); and two books of google's
#1 "ghosh", "calcutta chromosome" and "the hungry tide" (fantastic).
divya, it's nice to know i'm not the only person who likes
_economist_-recommended fiction. mark burnell's "petra" thrillers are so
terrific, i don't understand why they're not more popular - the
economist's reviewers religiously call them their favourite thriller,
but bookstores don't stock them and publishers keep delaying releases.
i like the poetry-meets-recipes-meets-politics shanghai crime series by
qiu xiaolong, and various obscure crime writers i've been discovering in
translation via the crime writers association's "dagger" awards. Jose
Carlos Somoza's "Art of Murder" is a fascinating
sci-fi-suspense-thriller satire of the world of modern art - abhishek
might find it amusing.
speaking of translations from spanish, i read carlos ruiz zafon's "The
Shadow of the Wind" before it became a worldwide bestseller and it
really is great, not only because its plot revolves around "the secret
Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles
lovingly preserved by a select few initiates. According to tradition,
everyone initiated to this secret place is allowed to take one book from
it" and a mysterious guy who's finding and burning books from there.
-rishab
