Books Read In 2024

Last year, as an experiment I selected a set of English books to read and tried to read from that. At the end of the year, it gave me mixed feelings. I could read a few big books and put some solid pages, but I couldn’t achieve my targets. Some books I thought would be good were not really good. Some exceeded my expectations too. I was the most happy to read another Marquez book, but I missed his translators Rabassa and Grossman. 

So here they are in the order of completion.

1. മുതൽ - വിനോയ് തോമസ് 

2. TheFortune Men - Nadifa Mohammed

3. മരിയ വെറും മരിയ - സന്ധ്യാമേരി 

4. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

5. ആ നദിയോട് പേര് ചോദിക്കരുത് - ഷീല ടോമി 

6. Well-Kept Ruins - Hélène Cixous

7. Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo (new edition translated by Douglas Weatherford)

8. മാമ ആഫ്രിക്ക - ടി.ഡി. രാമകൃഷ്ണൻ 

9. ഇരു - വി. ഷിനിലാൽ 

10. നീലച്ചടയൻ - അഖിൽ. കെ 

11. Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy - John Le Carré

12. Until August - Gabriel García Márquez

13. The Diary Of A Bookseller - Shaun Bythell

14. A Gentleman In Moscow - Amor Towles

15. Midnight’s Borders - Suchitra Vijayan

16. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo

17. Necklace/Choker - Jana Bodnárová

18. Days and Nights of Love and War - Eduardo Galeano

19. The Quiet American - Graham Greene

20. Cobalt Blue - Sachin Kundalkar

21. Herbert - Nabarun Bhattacharya

22. Near to the Wild Heart - Clarice Lispector

23. അറബിപ്പൊന്ന് - എം.ടി വാസുദേവൻ നായർ/എൻ.പി മുഹമ്മദ് 

24. ഹെർബേറിയം - സോണിയ റഫീഖ് 

25. The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin

26. പ.(ക.) - ജുനൈദ് അബൂബക്കർ 

27. എം.ടിയുടെ തിരക്കഥകൾ  Vol 6  - എം .ടി. വാസുദേവൻ നായർ 

28. സമ്പർക്കക്രാന്തി - വി. ഷിനിലാൽ 

29. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

30. പന്നിമലത്ത് - ജോഷി ബെനെഡിക്ട് 

31. വായനക്കാരൻ എം.ടി - ഇ.പി. രാജഗോപാലൻ 

32. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver

33. 9 mm ബെരേറ്റ - വിനോദ് കൃഷ്ണ 

Top Malayalam Recommendations

മരിയ വെറും മരിയ

ആ നദിയോട് പേര് ചോദിക്കരുത്

ഇരു

പന്നിമലത്ത്

മാമ ആഫ്രിക്ക

Top English Recommendations

A Gentleman In Moscow 

Midnight’s Borders

Girl, Woman, Other

Days and Nights of Love and War

The Quiet American

Cobalt Blue

The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry

Near to the Wild Heart

Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo

 

The story of 12 Black British women spread across Britain and other continents.

Amma, a lesbian who started her drama troupe and is putting up the grand mega show of her latest play - The Last Amazon of Dahomey.

Yazz, Amma’s teenage daughter, is at the university. Born to a gay father, Roland and a lesbian Amma.

Dominique, Amma’s partner with whom she started the drama troupe. She later moves away from her when she finds solace in Nzinga.

Carole, is a hardworking woman who found her way into the top of the corporate world. A daughter of Nigerian parents, and marries a white man against their wish.

Bummi, Carole’s mom, had to work her ass off sweeping floors to get a good education for her daughter. A bisexual who found solace in another woman in her later life.

LaTisha, Carole’s classmate, who is a supermarket manager. She became a mom at 16 and got thrown out of her house. Have three kids from different relationships.

Shirley, Amma’s unglamorous friend, the strict teacher at Carole and LaTisha’s school. She helps Carole to get back to her studies once she falters. 

Winsome, Shirley’s mother from the Caribbean, has an affair with Lennox, Shirley’s husband. She was once in Britain and worked as a ticket checker to bring her kids up.

Penelope, Shirley’s senior colleague from school, who, at first, is not always in agreement with her. But later they become friends. She gets the shock of her life from her parents when they tell her that she was adopted. 

Megan/Morgan, a transgender man who was born female and later changed sex. He meets Bibi, who was born male and became a woman. He is the great-grandson of nonagenarian Hattie, the only person who recognises them in their family.

Hattie, is the matriarch of the family that owns Greenfields Farms, which is spread across acres of land in the Northumbrian countryside. She holds a secret in her life, a secret which is very pivotal to the climax.

Grace, who came into the world courtesy of a seaman from Abyssinia, is Hattie’s mother. Grace never knew who her father was. She married Joseph Rydendale who owned the farms. Hattie was her only kid who survived.

This novel is the story of these 12 women, who have struggled to live a respected life, be it due to their colour or their sexual orientation. While it may seem that Amma’s play is the centre point of the book, it is just a melting pot for some of the characters to get back and rekindle their relationships. Each of these characters is individually strong and their own story is told from their chapter and other chapters. The last few pages of the book are where the novel takes it to a different level and concludes. Truly, a masterpiece. 

It is also the history of Britain. The differential treatment of Black people across the country is depicted in this novel. The writing is freewheeling and bold. Bernadine uses different writing techniques to convey different experiences. She calls the technique fusion fiction. It may take time to get used to this sort of writing, but 10-15 pages in you are all set for great storytelling.

Don’t miss.

Books read in 2023

At the start of the last year, I decided to put quality and bigger books into the reading plan rather than quantity. Even then I kept a challenging target of 43 books. I thought reading would be easier than last year. However, it was severely affected due to various factors. Yet, I am glad and grateful that I managed to read these books and write and publish 3 articles. 

So here goes them, in the order of completion.

1. ബുക്സ്റ്റാൾജിയ - പി. കെ. രാജശേഖരൻ 2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon 3. ചുവന്ന ബാഡ്ജ് - രാജേഷ് ആർ വർമ്മ 4. ഇതിഹാസത്തിൻ്റെ ഇതിഹാസം - ഒ.വി. വിജയൻ 5. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - Shehan Karunatilaka 6. വല്ലി - ഷീലാ ടോമി 7. പടിഞ്ഞാറെ കൊല്ലം ചോരക്കാലം - ജി. ഇന്ദുഗോപൻ 8. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood. 9. IIT മദ്രാസ് - കെ. വി. മണികണ്ഠൻ 10. പൊനം - കെ. എൻ. പ്രശാന്ത് 11. The Bookshop - Penelope Cruz 12. സിംഹത്തിൻ്റെ കഥ - അഖിൽ. കെ. 13. മാസ്റ്റർപീസ് - ഫ്രാൻസിസ് നോറോണ 14. A Case of Exploding Mangoes - Mohammed Hanif. 15. Hellfire - Leesa Gazi 16. Man Tiger - Eka Kurniawan 17. My Father's Garden - Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. 18. Purgatory - Tomás Eloy Martínez 19. കന്യാവനങ്ങൾ - പുനത്തിൽ കുഞ്ഞബ്ദുള്ള 20. മഞ്ഞ് - എം. ടി. (re-read) 21. The Museum Of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk 22. ദത്താപഹാരം - വി. ജെ ജെയിംസ് 23. The Laughing Policeman - Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö 24. Sakina’s Kiss - Vivek Shanbhag 25. Segu - Maryse Condé 26. കാരി, ഒരു ദളിത് ദൈവത്തിന്റെ ജീവിത രേഖ - താഹ മാടായി 27. The Honjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo 28. കിഷ്കിന്ധയുടെ മൗനം - ജയപ്രകാശ് പാനൂർ 29. വിശുദ്ധപാപങ്ങളുടെ ഇന്ത്യ - അരുൺ എഴുത്തച്ഛൻ 30. Kiss of the Spider woman - Manuel Puig 31. My Documents - Alejandro Zambra 32. The Lost Steps - Alejo Carpentier

My Top 5 Malayalam Recommendations

വല്ലി

ചുവന്ന ബാഡ്ജ്

പൊനം

സിംഹത്തിൻ്റെ കഥ

വിശുദ്ധപാപങ്ങളുടെ ഇന്ത്യ

My Top 5 English Recommendations

The Lost Steps

Sakina’s Kiss

Hellfire

Segu

Purgatory

Special Mentions

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

My Documents

ബുക്സ്റ്റാൾജിയ

Kiss of the Spider woman

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Man Tiger

The Museum Of Innocence 

The Laughing Policeman

Many thanks to Shimmy for asking about my reading and recommending new books. A few Malayalam ones that I read this year would be from his recommendation. A detailed review of all these books are available on my Instagram.

Happy Reading to you all in 2024! 

 

The Lost Steps - Alejo Carpentier

A nameless narrator has abandoned his creative dreams for a job in corporate New York. His wife, Ruth, is an actress with a drama troupe and is away most of the time, and the marriage is becoming predictable. He is rotting there, but a chance from his former employer in search of indigenous musical instruments deep in the jungles of South America changes his life forever. He sets out with his lover, Mouche, an astrologist, to a land which not many in the outside world know.

On his arrival, he realises that the people over there speak the language which he spoke during his childhood. He can easily converse with the people and mingle with them while he finds Mouche’s urban pretensions ridiculous. On their further journey into the deep jungles, he meets a native woman Rosario and is captivated by her simplicity and connection with nature.

In the journey, there are further characters that help and join the narrator’s quest to locate the instruments. There is a Capuchin friar whose mission is to spread the religion. Some Greek miners want to look for gold and diamonds. There is also the Pathfinder who is their guide and knows the hidden tributaries to the deep jungles. During this long trip, the narrator and Rosario fall in love and he finds that he has been lost in time. Mouche contracts malaria and is sent back while the rest of the party continues the journey. Finally, they arrive in the village that Pathfinder has established. The narrator settles down there after locating the musical instruments during the journey and has fallen in love with the place and the lack of time awareness. He wants to write music based on the Odyssey, but the lack of paper in the deep jungles poses a problem. He is also disturbed when Rosario rejects his marriage proposal, though they are still lovers and sexually involved.

There is an underlying theme of music in this novel. While the narrator finds his wife’s drama troupe’s popular music boring, he feels like he has watched the birth of music during a funeral prayer of the native Indians. He finds music in the torrential rains and the pre-historic plants and composes his masterpiece. But why write music, when it can be played - asks his lover Rosario. And while he leaves primitive classical music for the non-quality one, his life also changes from prosperity to poverty.

Alejo Carpentier’s masterpiece can be considered a work of magical realism. There is no surety of time once the story gets into deep jungles. He puts us, readers, in a dream-like state where we are also not sure of what happened because the story jumps so quickly sometimes. Some of the portrayals of the jungle and the action are poetic and magical. Maybe the whole story itself is a dream that happens between the two states of the narrator. Who knows! But hey, what is Latin American literature without a little bit of magic?

Adrian Nathan West’s translation is good and magical too. Hope he keeps up the tradition of the Rabassa and Grossman and translates many more from the Latin American world. Many thanks to Penguin Books ton commissioning a new translation of this one.

P.S. - I have been searching for this book for a long long time now. I came to know about this book at least 10 years ago. I wrote to many bookstores asking about this book.
The price in Amazon was exorbitant. I also wrote to The Bookshop, Jorbagh during the Covid days. They didn’t have it, but I bought another set of books from them. Then early this year, they said a new translation was coming and the publication is expected in May. Promptly, I set a reminder and emailed them in May. They said the publication date has been pushed to January 2024. Then out of nowhere Sonal from The Bookshop Inc. Lodhi Gardens (Jorbagh one shut down and the folks started a new one in Lodhi Gardens) emailed me and said this book and Carpentier’s Explosion In A Cathedral are available. I was in tears and jumping with joy. They remembered an email I sent in 2020 and reminded me the book was available. So good they are. This book introduction is possible because of them. Much much gratitude for them. Love you, folks! One day I am going to arrive in Delhi with empty suitcases and buy as much as I can :) You should follow them on Instagram. They make great recommendations. And yes, buy independent if you can, not from the Amazons of the world.

#alejocarpentier #theloststeps #LatinAmericanLiterature #latinamericanboom #lastbookoftheyear #books2023 #independentbookstore