One more book tag

The tag has caught up with me – thanks to Sunil

Total number of books I own – never counted but my guess is close to 600 – most of them scattered across book shelves – the more loved and often read ones in a pseudo-antique shelf I picked off the Oshiwara old furniture market – plus another 200 or so lying back at home in Madras – which my mother keeps threatening to throw out if I don’t ‘want them’ – don’t want them? She means, carry them back to Bombay with you – clutter your house, not mine… Having lived off cartons for the best part of the last ten years, am now on a ‘Say not to cartons’ trip – so the books stay in Madras for now till I find a place for them here.

Last book I bought – no one can eat just one – lagi bet? I mean buy just one – Being Indian : Inside the real India – Pavan Varma, Bombay meri jaan – anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Naresh Fernandes, A Hundred and One Days, A Baghdad Journal – Asne Seierstad

Last Book I Read – A short history of nearly everything – Bill Bryson rocks – he has a wonderful sense for the small things that make life more interesting and amusing… and he can laugh at himself…
And now reading – Being Indian

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me – I don’t know if any of these books has changed my life in any way but I love reading them – over and over again…

Going to school in India – a delightful book on a subject that is very close to my heart – the front cover has a bright picture of children peeping out from inside an overcrowded rickshaw / handcart… And then my heart with pleasure fills…

84 charing cross road – reading other people’s letters can be so much fun! A collection of correspondence between the author Helene Hanff and a London bookseller, Frank Doel – the relationship spans over twenty years – against the backdrop of events shaking and making the world… Hanff so open and American, Doel all stiff-upper-lip and British – perfect… I smile and smile evey time I read the book – a must read for every book lover….

The essential groucho – edited by Stefan Kanfer – how can anyone take life seriously after meeting groucho – in print, that is? I can only pity and envy those who lived with him…

The remains of the day – this was the first book by Ishiguro that I read and this had me looking for more… the book is about many things – selective memory, misguided loyalty, that elusive quality called dignity, reflections on a life that seems wasted at the end of it all….

The meaning of it all – Richard Feynman – a man of science bravely and simply speaks on “the other” – religion and the place of science in society

Also ‘Candy is dandy’ – Ogden Nash

Laughing Gas – my favourite PGW – a pick-me-up that never fails to well, pick me up – I tried to imagine this fourth dimension as I struggled with multiple regression in class…

And then some…

Now to find some bloggers who have not yet been there, done that…
Patrix , Harini, Abinandan, Anita, Satya