Rajat's bookshelf: british en-US Sat, 08 Mar 2025 16:32:44 -0800 60 Rajat's bookshelf: british 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It]]> 208868800 NOTHING WORKS IN BRITAIN.

It’s harder than ever to get a GP appointment. Burglaries go unpunished. Wages have been stagnant for years, even as the cost of housing rises inexorably. Why is everything going wrong at the same time?

It's easy to point the finger at dysfunctional or even corrupt politicians. But in reality it’s more complicated. Politicians can make things better or worse, but all work within our state institutions. And ours are irrevocably broken and outmoded.

In Failed State, respected political analyst Sam Freedman offers a devastating analysis of where we’ve gone wrong. Speaking to politicians of all stripes, civil servants, workers on the frontline and key thinkers across the world, this book bursts with insight on the real problems that are so often hidden from the front pages. The result is a witty, landmark book that paves the way for a fairer and more prosperous Britain.]]> 359 Sam Freedman 1035026619 Rajat 0 to-read, british 4.31 2024 Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It
author: Sam Freedman
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read, british
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour]]> 288448
Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.]]> 424 Kate Fox 0340752122 Rajat 0 to-read, british 3.91 2004 Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour
author: Kate Fox
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read, british
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat]]> 553101 576 James Morris 0156302861 Rajat 0 to-read, british, history 4.34 1978 Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat
author: James Morris
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/17
shelves: to-read, british, history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Full English: A Journey in Search of a Country and its People]]> 63540591
English Journey is warm, funny, tender. But tough. There is steel here too. J B Priestley’s elegant and readable prose, written for a mass audience, is just as forensic a reading of a changing England and just as passionate a call to arms as anything in Orwell’s bleak masterpiece. Moreover, it both captured and catalysed the public mood. But it’s more than this. It’s a love letter, albeit an exasperated one, to a country that he loves and yet finds unfathomable.

Stuart Maconie has often expressed the same passions and puzzlement. Now, ninety years on, he intends to take an English Journey of his own, with Priestley’s thirties itinerary as guide. How does the country look now, as it reopens and re-emerges from this ice age of doubt and insecurity. Re-energised? Hungry for change? Or moribund, dazed and desperate for old certainties.

Revisiting English Journey, interrogating its insights and perspectives, walking in Priestley’s footsteps and riding the roads and rails he did, Maconie’s latest is popular, timely and entertaining, taking the form of a ‘sustained lovers quarrel with England�, as did the original.]]> 352 Stuart Maconie 0008498261 Rajat 0 to-read, british, travel 3.93 The Full English: A Journey in Search of a Country and its People
author: Stuart Maconie
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves: to-read, british, travel
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History]]> 58772741
When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written ten thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny―yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means.

Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules―for Now , describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain’s arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and―increasingly―Chinese actors.

In trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The ten-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the current century is not what to do about Brussels; it’s what to do about Beijing.]]> 576 Ian Morris 0374157278 Rajat 0 to-read, british, history 3.94 2022 Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History
author: Ian Morris
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/21
shelves: to-read, british, history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Slow Horses (Slough House, #1)]]> 19191674
London, England: Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The "slow horses," as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing they all have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there─even if it means having to collaborate with one another.

River Cartwright, one such “slow horse,� is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. But is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers� connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.]]> 320 Mick Herron Rajat 0 to-read, espionage, british 4.16 2010 Slow Horses (Slough House, #1)
author: Mick Herron
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/14
shelves: to-read, espionage, british
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown]]> 57293228 ‘The execution of the king took place on a bleak, bitterly cold afternoon in January. As the executioner landed the single blow that severed Charles I’s head, the crowd let out a deep collective moan. Within weeks both the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. The future was in the hands of the people.�

The Restless Republic tells the story of what life was like during the unprecedented and unrepeated decade when Britain was governed without a king. Who cut radical paths? And who suffered the monumental costs?

Acclaimed historian Anna Keay follows nine figures who made names for themselves during this time. Among them Anna Trapnel, the young prophet whose visions transfixed the nation. John Bradshaw, the Cheshire lawyer who found himself trying the king. Gerrard Winstanley, the man who saw a utopia where land was shared and no one went hungry. William Petty, the precocious academic whose audacious enterprise to map Ireland led to the dispossession of tens of thousands. The redoubtable Countess of Derby who defended fiercely the last Royalist stronghold on the Isle of Man. And Marchamont Nedham, the irrepressible newspaper man and puppet-master of propaganda.

The Restless Republic ranges from the corridors of Westminster to the common fields of England. Gathering her cast of trembling visionaries and banished royalists, dextrous mandarins and bewildered bystanders, Anna Keay brings to vivid life the most extraordinary and experimental decade in Britain’s history. It is the story of what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.]]> 496 Anna Keay 0008282021 Rajat 0 to-read, british 4.38 2022 The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
author: Anna Keay
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/22
shelves: to-read, british
review:

]]> Bournville 60301215 From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family

In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave.

As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family - and their country - closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?

Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself.

'A wickedly funny, clever, but also tender and lyrical novel about Britain and Britishness and what we have become' Rachel Joyce

'It is miraculous how, in his new novel, Coe has created a social history of postwar Britain as we are still living it. Bournville is a beautiful, and often very funny, tribute to an underexamined place and also a truly moving story of how a country discovered tolerance' Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of Empireland]]> 354 Jonathan Coe 0241517389 Rajat 0 to-read, british 3.74 2022 Bournville
author: Jonathan Coe
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/13
shelves: to-read, british
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over The UK]]> 58993078
Eleven of the fifteen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford. This narrowest of talent pools has shaped the modern country. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of Oxford University - and the friendships and worldviews it created - helped give us today's Britain, including Brexit.]]> 240 Simon Kuper 1788167384 Rajat 0 to-read, british 3.91 2022 Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over The UK
author: Simon Kuper
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/13
shelves: to-read, british
review:

]]> Jeeves and the King of Clubs 39088553
In this magnificent new homage to P. G. Wodehouse, Ben Schott leads Jeeves and Wooster on an uproarious adventure of espionage through the secret corridors of Whitehall, the sunlit lawns of Brinkley Court, and the private clubs of St James's.

We encounter an unforgettable cast of characters � old and new � including outraged chefs and exasperated aunts, disreputable politicians and gambling bankers, slushy debs and Cockney cabbies, sphinx-like tailors, and sylph-like spies.

There is treachery to be foiled, naturally, but also horses to be backed, auctions to be fixed, engagements to be escaped, madmen to be blackballed, and a new variety of condiment to be cooked up.

'Jeeves & the King of Clubs' is essential reading for aficionados of The Master, and a perfect introduction to the joys of Jeeves and Wooster for those who have never before dipped their toe.

'Impossible to read without grinning idiotically.'
- Mark Sanderson, Evening Standard

Bibliographical note: Although the cover reads 'Jeeves and the King of Clubs' , the half-title and tile page read 'Jeeves & the King of Clubs' and this is how it is catalogued above. In addition the title page does state, separate from the actual title, 'An homage to P.G. Wodehouse authorised by the Wodehouse Estate' and adds, 'With Authorial Endnotes'.]]> 320 Ben Schott 0316524603 Rajat 5 british, humour 4.07 2018 Jeeves and the King of Clubs
author: Ben Schott
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/27
date added: 2021/01/27
shelves: british, humour
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation]]> 31806828
In this important book, Ian Cobain offers a fresh appraisal of some of the key moments in British history since the end of WWII, the measures taken to conceal the existence of Bletchley Park and its successor, GCHQ, for three decades; the unreported wars fought during the 1960s and 1970s; the hidden links with terrorist cells during the Troubles; the sometimes opaque workings of the criminal justice system; the state's peacetime surveillance techniques; and the convenient loopholes in the Freedom of Information Act.

Drawing on previously unseen material and rigorous research, The History Thieves reveals how a complex bureaucratic machine has grown up around the British state, allowing governments to evade accountability and their secrets to be buried.]]> 407 Ian Cobain 1846275849 Rajat 0 4.23 2016 The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation
author: Ian Cobain
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/14
shelves: to-read, british, espionage, governance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century]]> 4936457 319 Ian Mortimer 0224079948 Rajat 0 to-read, history, british 3.99 2008 The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
author: Ian Mortimer
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/31
shelves: to-read, history, british
review:

]]> The Doors of Eden 48643567
When government physicist Kay Amal Khan is attacked, the security services investigate. This leads MI5’s Julian Sabreur deep into terrifying new territory, where he clashes with mysterious agents of an unknown power ­who may or may not be human. And Julian’s only clue is some grainy footage ­� showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.

Khan’s extradimensional research was purely theoretical, until she found cracks between our world and countless others. Parallel Earths where monsters live. These cracks are getting wider every day, so who knows what might creep through? Or what will happen when those walls finally come crashing down...]]> 609 Adrian Tchaikovsky Rajat 0 to-read, sci-fi, british 3.76 2020 The Doors of Eden
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/09
shelves: to-read, sci-fi, british
review:

]]> Utopia Avenue 52597312 The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks.

Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet, and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968.

David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue; of riots in the streets and revolutions in the head; of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?]]> 574 David Mitchell 0812997433 Rajat 0 3.94 2020 Utopia Avenue
author: David Mitchell
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/05
shelves: to-read, music, rock-n-roll, british
review:

]]> Blood & Sugar 40859099
Some days later, Captain Harry Corsham � a war hero embarking upon a promising parliamentary career � is visited by the sister of an old friend. Her brother, passionate abolitionist Tad Archer, had been about to expose a secret that he believed could cause irreparable damage to the British slaving industry. He’d said people were trying to kill him, and now he is missing . . .

To discover what happened to Tad, Harry is forced to pick up the threads of his friend's investigation, delving into the heart of the conspiracy Tad had unearthed. His investigation will threaten his political prospects, his family’s happiness, and force a reckoning with his past, risking the revelation of secrets that have the power to destroy him.

And that is only if he can survive the mortal dangers awaiting him in Deptford...]]> 430 Laura Shepherd-Robinson 1509880771 Rajat 4 3.89 2019 Blood & Sugar
author: Laura Shepherd-Robinson
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/27
date added: 2020/06/27
shelves: british, historical-fiction, thriller
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moriarty (Horowitz's Holmes, #2)]]> 22535533
Days after Holmes and Moriarty disappear into the waterfall's churning depths, Frederick Chase, a senior investigator at New York's infamous Pinkerton Detective Agency, arrives in Switzerland. Chase brings with him a dire warning: Moriarty's death has left a convenient vacancy in London's criminal underworld. There is no shortage of candidates to take his place—including one particularly fiendish criminal mastermind.

Chase is assisted by Inspector Athelney Jones, a Scotland Yard detective and devoted student of Holmes's methods of deduction, whom Conan Doyle introduced in The Sign of Four. The two men join forces and fight their way through the sinuous streets of Victorian London—from the elegant squares of Mayfair to the shadowy wharfs and alleyways of the Docks—in pursuit of this sinister figure, a man much feared but seldom seen, who is determined to stake his claim as Moriarty's successor.

Riveting and deeply atmospheric, Moriarty is the first Sherlock Holmes novel sanctioned by the author's estate since Horowitz's House of Silk. This tale of murder and menace breathes life into Holmes's fascinating world, again proving that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however im- probable, must be the truth.]]> 285 Anthony Horowitz 0062377183 Rajat 4 crime, british 3.75 2014 Moriarty (Horowitz's Holmes, #2)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/15
date added: 2020/06/15
shelves: crime, british
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This is London: Life and Death in the World City]]> 25874625 In This is London, the author turns his reporter’s eye on home, immersing himself in the hidden world of the city’s immigrants � from the richest to the poorest � to discover the complex and varied individuals who are making London what it is today. He’s had dinner with oligarchs and meetings with foreign royalty, spent nights streetwalking and sleeping rough; he’s heard stories of heart-breaking failure, but also witnessed extraordinary acts of compassion, hope and the triumph of love.]]> 424 Ben Judah 1447272447 Rajat 0 3.91 2016 This is London: Life and Death in the World City
author: Ben Judah
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/22
shelves: to-read, british, travel, urban-studies, journalism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else]]> 20601075 238 James Meek 1781682909 Rajat 0 3.96 2014 Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else
author: James Meek
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/18
shelves: to-read, british, business-finance-and-economics, travel
review:

]]> The Road to Wigan Pier 30553 215 George Orwell Rajat 0 3.92 1937 The Road to Wigan Pier
author: George Orwell
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1937
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/18
shelves: to-read, travel, british, grim
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)]]> 32075854
When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pünd investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript—one of ambition, jealousy, and greed—and that soon it will lead to murder.

Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage crime fiction.]]> 477 Anthony Horowitz 0062645226 Rajat 5 crime, mystery, british 3.93 2016 Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/04/03
date added: 2020/04/03
shelves: crime, mystery, british
review:
Horowitz is an undisputed master of the whodunit. Splendid stuff. I tip my hat to you, Sir.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sentence is Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #2)]]> 39913740
These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer. Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine � a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3,000, to be precise.

Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed?

Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.

But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realises that these secrets must be exposed � even at the risk of death�

]]> 373 Anthony Horowitz Rajat 4 crime, mystery, british 3.95 2018 The Sentence is Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #2)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/30
date added: 2019/12/30
shelves: crime, mystery, british
review:

]]> Plain Tales from the Hills 34058 158 Rudyard Kipling 1406946966 Rajat 0 to-read, short-story, british 3.72 1888 Plain Tales from the Hills
author: Rudyard Kipling
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1888
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/03/16
shelves: to-read, short-story, british
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mists of Avalon (Avalon, #1)]]> 40605251 The magical saga of the women behind King Arthur's throne.

“A monumental reimagining of the Arthurian legends . . . reading it is a deeply moving and at times uncanny experience. . . . An impressive achievement.”—The New York Times Book Review

In Marion Zimmer Bradley's masterpiece, we see the tumult and adventures of Camelot's court through the eyes of the women who bolstered the king's rise and schemed for his fall. From their childhoods through the ultimate fulfillment of their destinies, we follow these women and the diverse cast of characters that surrounds them as the great Arthurian epic unfolds stunningly before us.

As Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar struggle for control over the fate of Arthur's kingdom, as the Knights of the Round Table take on their infamous quest, as Merlin and Viviane wield their magics for the future of Old Britain, the Isle of Avalon slips further into the impenetrable mists of memory, until the fissure between old and new worlds' and old and new religions' claims its most famous victim.]]> 1009 Marion Zimmer Bradley Rajat 0 4.20 1982 The Mists of Avalon (Avalon, #1)
author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/02/05
shelves: to-read, historical-fiction, mythology, british, fantasy
review:

]]> Excellent Women 178565 Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,� the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.]]> 256 Barbara Pym 014310487X Rajat 0 3.92 1952 Excellent Women
author: Barbara Pym
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/18
shelves: to-read, comedy, british, humour
review:

]]> Wilt 420966
After a peculiarly nasty experience at a party thrown by particularly nasty Americans, Wilt finds himself in several embarrassing positions: Eva stalks out in stratospheric dudgeon, and Wilt, under the inspiration of gin, puts one of his more vindictive fantasies into effect. But suspicions are instantly aroused and Wilt rapidly achieves an unenviable notoriety in the role of The Man Helping Police With Their Enquiries. Or is he exactly helping? Wilt's problem -although he's on the other side of the fence -is the same as Inspector Flint's: where is Eva Wilt? But Wilt begins to flourish in the heat of the investigation, and as the police stoke the flames of circumstantial evidence, Wilt deploys all his powers to show that the Law can't tell a Missing Person from a hole in the ground.]]> 336 Tom Sharpe 0099435489 Rajat 0 3.95 1976 Wilt
author: Tom Sharpe
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/18
shelves: to-read, british, comedy, humour
review:

]]> A David Lodge Trilogy 69929
This omnibus lines up David Lodge's trio of brilliantly comic novels that revolve around the University of Rummidge and the lives of its role-swapping academics. When Philip Swallow, lecturer in English at Rummidge, changes places with flamboyant Morris Zapp of Euphoric State University, USA, trouble ensues. Then, ten years on, older but not noticeably wiser, they are let loose on the international conference circuit - a veritable academic carnival. And finally, Dr Robyn Penrose becomes part of a scheme to learn about industry instead of reading about it, with hilarious results. David Lodge exposes the dizzy pursuit of knowledge - literary, commercial, romantic and erotic - with unparalleled wit and insight.

Changing Places 1975
Small World 1985
Nice Work 1989]]> 897 David Lodge 0140172971 Rajat 0 4.27 1993 A David Lodge Trilogy
author: David Lodge
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/18
shelves: to-read, british, comedy, humour
review:

]]> The Rotters' Club 41038 415 Jonathan Coe 0375713123 Rajat 0 3.99 2001 The Rotters' Club
author: Jonathan Coe
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/18
shelves: to-read, british, humour, coming-of-age
review:

]]> <![CDATA[World of Simon Raven (Prion Humour Classics)]]> 1381321 Alms for Oblivion, which chronicled the misdeeds of English society in the 1950s and 60s, Simon Raven is also recognized as a brilliant travel writer, an unblinking reporter of the seamier side of English upper-class life, and a hilarious commentator on the sexual mores of gay London. His demise in 2001 robbed English letters of one of its most colorful characters. Expelled from Charterhouse “for the usual thing,� he was, for a time, an officer in the British Army. He gambled heavily on the horses for years, was often in debt, drank too much, and had a rich and uncommonly varied sex life. He was said to possess “the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel,� and this selection of his writing contains a magnificent array of pieces on army life, sex, school days, and travel. The quality of his writing and his fearless descriptions of the habits of the English, and indeed of all mankind, will come as a revelation.]]> 313 Simon Raven 1853754935 Rajat 0 4.38 2002 World of Simon Raven (Prion Humour Classics)
author: Simon Raven
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/18
shelves: to-read, british, comedy, humour
review:

]]> The Islamist 834224 Ed Husain's The Islamist is the shocking inside story of British Islamic fundamentalism, told by a former radical.

'When I was sixteen I became an Islamic fundamentalist. Five years later, after much emotional turmoil, I rejected fundamentalist teachings and returned to normal life and my family. As I recovered my faith and mind, I tried to put my experiences behind me, but as the events of 7/7 unfolded it became clear to me that Islamist groups pose a threat to this country that we - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - do not yet understand.'

'Why are young British Muslims becoming extremists? What are the risks of another home-grown terrorist attack on British soil? By describing my experiences inside these groups and the reasons I joined them, I hope to explain the appeal of extremist thought, how fanatics penetrate Muslim communities and the truth behind their agenda of subverting the West and moderate Islam. Writing candidly about life after extremism, I illustrate the depth of the problem that now grips Muslim hearts and minds and lay bare what politicians and Muslim 'community leaders' do not want you to know.'

Ed Husain was an Islamist radical for five years in his late teens and early twenties. Having rejected extremism he travelled widely in the Middle East and worked for the British Council in Syria and Saudi Arabia. Husain received wide and various acclaim for The Islamist, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing and the PEN/Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography, amongst others.]]> 288 Ed Husain 0141030437 Rajat 0 3.77 2007 The Islamist
author: Ed Husain
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/23
shelves: to-read, islam, british, memoir
review:

]]> A Delicate Truth 16167080 Gibraltar, 2008.

A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.

Cornwall, UK, 2011.

A disgraced Special Forces soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be - or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up?

Summoned by Sir Christopher Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's beautiful daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service.

If the only thing necessary to the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, how can he keep silent?]]> 320 John Le Carré 067092279X Rajat 0 to-read, espionage, british 3.75 2013 A Delicate Truth
author: John Le Carré
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/17
shelves: to-read, espionage, british
review:

]]> The Year of the Runaways 17824793
Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize
The Guardian: The Best Novels of 2015
The Independent: Literary Fiction of the Year 2015

Three young men, and one unforgettable woman, come together in a journey from India to England, where they hope to begin something new—to support their families; to build their futures; to show their worth; to escape the past. They have almost no idea what awaits them.

In a dilapidated shared house in Sheffield, Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his life in Bihar. Avtar and Randeep are middle-class boys whose families are slowly sinking into financial ruin, bound together by Avtar's secret. Randeep, in turn, has a visa wife across town, whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes in case the immigration agents surprise her with a visit.

She is Narinder, and her story is the most surprising of them all.

The Year of the Runaways unfolds over the course of one shattering year in which the destinies of these four characters become irreversibly entwined, a year in which they are forced to rely on one another in ways they never could have foreseen, and in which their hopes of breaking free of the past are decimated by the punishing realities of immigrant life.

A novel of extraordinary ambition and authority, about what it means and what it costs to make a new life—about the capaciousness of the human spirit, and the resurrection of tenderness and humanity in the face of unspeakable suffering.]]> 468 Sunjeev Sahota 1447241649 Rajat 5 3.82 2015 The Year of the Runaways
author: Sunjeev Sahota
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2016/08/07
date added: 2016/08/07
shelves: british, india, immigrant-indians, caste, grim, splendid-prose
review:
This Booker-nominated novel about working-class Punjabi immigrants in the United Kingdom deserves all the praise heaped upon it. The lives and dreams of its principal protagonists are so finely sketched it feels the author has lived through it all himself. Utterly realistic, compelling, heartbreaking, this could be termed 'A Fine Balance' of the 21st century. Highly recommended!
]]> <![CDATA[The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within]]> 66856 I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it.
—Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled

Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. Many of us have never been taught to read or write poetry and think of it as a mysterious and intimidating form. Or, if we have been taught, we remember uncomfortable silence when an English teacher invited the class to "respond" to a poem. In The Ode Less Travelled, Fry sets out to correct this problem by giving aspiring poets the tools and confidence they need to write poetry for pleasure.

Fry is a wonderfully engaging teacher and writer of poetry himself, and he explains the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. His enjoyable exercises and witty insights introduce the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics. Aspiring poets will learn to write a sonnet, on ode, a villanelle, a ballad, and a haiku, among others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of, but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try. BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise:
“Delightfully erudite, charming and soundly pedagogical guide to poetic form� Fry has created an invaluable and highly enjoyable reference book.�
�Publishers Weekly

“A smart, sane and entertaining return to the basics� If you like Fry’s comic manner� this book has a lot of charm� People entirely fresh to the subject could do worse than stick with his cheerful leadership.�
�The Telegraph (UK)

“…intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.�
�Observer (UK)

"If you learn how to write a sonnet, and Fry shows you how, you may or may not make a poem. But you will unlock the stored wisdom of the form itself."
—Grey Gowrie, The Spectator (UK)

“…intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.�
�Observer (UK)

]]> 384 Stephen Fry 1592402488 Rajat 0 to-read, poetry, british 4.05 2005 The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within
author: Stephen Fry
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/11/17
shelves: to-read, poetry, british
review:

]]> Maps for Lost Lovers 44086 Maps for Lost Lovers.

Jugnu and Chanda have disappeared. Like thousands of people all over England, they were lovers and living together out of wedlock. To Chanda’s family, however, the disgrace was unforgivable. Perhaps enough so as to warrant murder. As he explores the disappearance and its aftermath through the eyes of Jugnu’s worldly older brother, Shamas, and his devout wife, Kaukab, Nadeem Aslam creates a closely observed and affecting portrait of people whose traditions threaten to bury them alive. The result is a tour de force, intimate, affecting, tragic and suspenseful.]]> 400 Nadeem Aslam 1400076978 Rajat 0 3.80 2004 Maps for Lost Lovers
author: Nadeem Aslam
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/29
shelves: to-read, british, indian-subcontinent
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ipcress File (Secret File, #1)]]> 171624
The Ipcress File was not only Len Deighton’s first novel, it was his first bestseller and the book that broke the mould of thriller writing.

For the working class narrator, an apparently straightforward mission to find a missing biochemist becomes a journey to the heart of a dark and deadly conspiracy.

The film of The Ipcress File gave Michael Caine one of his first and still most celebrated starring roles, while the novel itself has become a classic.]]> 342 Len Deighton Rajat 0 to-read, thriller, british 3.95 1962 The Ipcress File (Secret File, #1)
author: Len Deighton
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/09
shelves: to-read, thriller, british
review:

]]> Nymphomation (Vurt, #4) 92122 368 Jeff Noon 0552999067 Rajat 0 3.99 1997 Nymphomation (Vurt, #4)
author: Jeff Noon
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/17
shelves: to-read, speculative-fiction, sci-fi, british
review:

]]> There but for the 11995444 Hotel World and The Accidental, a dazzling, funny, and wonderfully exhilarating new novel.

At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles’s story is told from the points of view of four of Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another?

Brilliantly audacious, disarmingly playful, and full of Smith’s trademark wit and puns, There but for the is a deft exploration of the human need for separation—from our pasts and from one another—and the redemptive possibilities for connection. It is a tour de force by one of our finest writers.]]> 396 Ali Smith Rajat 0 to-read, british 3.44 2011 There but for the
author: Ali Smith
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/07/23
shelves: to-read, british
review:

]]> The Moon and Sixpence 44796 The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art. As Strickland pursues his artistic vision, he leaves London for Paris and Tahiti, and in his quest makes sacrifices that leave the lives of those closest to him in tatters. Through Maugham's sympathetic eye, Strickland's tortured and cruel soul becomes a symbol of the blessing and the curse of transcendent artistic genius, and the cost in humans' lives it sometimes demands.]]> 187 W. Somerset Maugham 1598185217 Rajat 4
The Right Time

There are some books that walk into your life at an opportune time. I'm talking about the books that send a pleasant shiver down your spine laden with “Man, this is meant to be!� as you flip through its pages cursorily. Or those that upon completion, demand an exclamation from every book-reading fibre of your body to the effect of “There couldn't have been a better time for me to have read this book!� Now, I come from deferred-gratification stock. So books like these, you don't read immediately,. You let them sit there on your table for a while. You bask in the warm expectant glow of a life-altering read. You glance at the book as you make your way to office, take pleasure in the fact that it'll be right there on your table when you open the front-door wearily, waiting to be opened, caressed, reveled in. And when that moment of reckoning arrives, you don't stop, you plunge yourself straight into the book, white-hot passionate.

The Moon and Sixpence was just that kind of a book for me. I had just completed (and thoroughly enjoyed) a course on Modern Art in college and could rattle off the names of Impressionist painters faster than I could the Indian cricket team. I was particularly intrigued by Paul Gauguin, a French Post-Impressionist painter, after reading one of his disturbingly direct quotes. “Civilization is what makes me sick�, he proclaimed, and huddled off to Tahiti to escape Europe and “all that is artificial and conventional�, leaving behind a wife and five children to fend for themselves, never to make contact with them again. This struck me as the ultimate expression of individuality, a resounding slap to the judgmental face of conservative society, an escapist act of repugnant selfishness that could only be justified by immeasurable artistic talent, genius, some may call it. My imagination was tickled beyond measure and when I discovered there was a novel by W.Somerset Maugham (the author of The Razor's Edge no less!) based on Gauguin, my joy knew no bounds. I was in the correct frame of mind to read about the life of a stockbroker who gave up on the trivial pleasures of bourgeois life for the penury and hard life of an aspiring painter without considering him ridiculous or vain. Supplied with the appropriate proportions of awe that is due to a genius protagonist, I began reading the book. I have to admit I expected a whole lot from it. I had a voyeuristic curiosity to delve into the head of a certified genius. I was even more curious to see how Maugham had executed it. At the same time, I was hoping that the book would raise and answer important questions concerning the nature of art and about what drives an artist to madness and greatness.

The Book

The book's title is taken from a review of Of Human Bondage in which the novel's protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as "so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet."

I admired Maugham's narrative voice. In his inimitable style, he flits in and out of the characters' life as the stolid, immovable writer who is a mere observer, and nothing more. His narrator defies Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as in observing his characters, he doesn't change their lives or nature one bit. He has a mild disdain for the ordinary life of a householder and relishes his independence.

“I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of these two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined to carry on the normal traditions of their race and station, not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due course � the one a peretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the other a handsome, manly fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in their dignified retirement, beloved by their descendants, after a happy, not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they would sink into the grave. That must be the story of innumerable couples, and the patter of life it offers has a homely grace. It reminds you of a placid rivulet, meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees, till at last it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a vague uneasiness. Perhaps it is only a kink in my nature, strong in me even in those days, that I felt in such an existence, the share of the great majority, something amiss. I recognized its social value. I saw its ordered happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for a wilder course. There seemed to me something alarming in such easy delights. In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have change � change and the excitement of the unforeseen.�

In Maugham's hands, Gauguin becomes Charles Strickland, an unassuming British stockbroker, with a secret unquenchable lust for beauty that he is willing to take to the end of the world, first to Paris and then to remote Tahiti. He is cold, selfish and uncompromising in this quest for beauty.

“The passion that held Strickland was a passion to create beauty. It gave him no peace. It urged him hither and thither. He was eternally a pilgrim, haunted by a divine nostalgia, and the demon within him was ruthless. There are men whose desire for truth is so great that to attain it they will shatter the very foundation of their world. Of such was Strickland, only beauty with him took the place of truth. I could only feel for him a profound compassion.�

However words such as these serve to romanticize Strickland's actions which at first glance, remain despicable. [spoilers removed] Maugham paints him as a rogue loner, an unfathomable apparition, compelled to inhuman acts by the divine tyranny of art.

“He lived more poorly than an artisan. He worked harder. He cared nothing for those things which with most people make life gracious and beautiful. He was indifferent to money. He cared nothing about fame. You cannot praise him because he resisted the temptation to make any of those compromises with the world which most of us yield to. He had no such temptation. It never entered his head that compromise was possible. He lived in Paris more lonely than an anchorite in the deserts of Thebes. He asked nothing from his fellows except that they should leave him alone. He was single-hearted in his aim, and to pursue it he was willing to sacrifice not only himself � many can do that � but others. He had a vision. Strickland was an odious man, but I still think he was a great one.�

In these beautiful words he describes Strickland's strange homelessness and suggests a reason for his subsequent escape to Tahiti.

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid strange surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scnes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.�

By the end of the book, Maugham's narrator somewhat loses his grip over the reader and I could picture him in my mind floundering around the island of Tahiti, interviewing the people who came in contact with Strickland, trying to piece together a story. He finds himself in the “position of the biologist, who has to figure out from a bone, not only a creature's body, but also its habits.�

The reader is promised the ineffable, a study of genius and is only delivered an admission of its elusive nature. Also the tone of the novel tends to get slightly misogynistic in places. But I suppose that is more a failing of the protagonist rather than the author. As compensation, Maugham offers delicious crisp cookies of wisdom throughout. In simple lyrical language, he penetrates to the core of the human condition and offers invaluable advice to the aspiring writer, the hopeful lover and the wannabe genius.

For its unpretentious, sympathetic and humane portrayal of a deeply flawed protagonist, its quotable quotes and its ironic humour, this book shall rank as my one of my favourite books on the life and development of an artist in search of the unknowable.

My Master Maugham

I strongly believe that the adjectives one throws around are a barometer of one's sensitivity or at the minimum, one's desire to be accurate. Both of these qualities are indispensable to the aspiring writer because honestly, what is there to writing except fresh verbs, evocative adjectives, searing honesty and an unbounded imagination. Also, that it's easier said than done.

In this context, there are moments when I feel utterly stupid and unimaginative. My inner monologues resemble the chatter of teenage girls in their lack of content and use of worn-out adjectives. I mean, awesome and amazing, like seriously? Bleeuurghh!! During such exasperating times, my inner world aches to devour a mouthful of good-looking words in the Queen's English. I head to my dusty book-closet and roughly displace its contents until I find a book either by one of the barons of British literature, a W.Somerset Maugham/PG Wodehouse or a laid-back satire along the lines of Yes Minister. The book usually serves its purpose admirably. It manages to extract me from my predicament by either making me split my sides laughing or by drowning me in a stream of sentences so beautifully constructed that I completely forget my insecurities and start shaking my head ponderously at the writer's virtuosity instead.

Coming to the topic of the writer himself, W.Somerset Maugham is one of my favourite writers in the English language. Being an aspiring writer who's yet to find his voice myself, his novels never fail to stab me with a hopeful optimism. My premature belief, that I can write well, is reinforced when I read Maugham. He never intimidates me or bores me, commonplace sins many writers will have to go to confession for. While reading his prose, he possesses the singular ability of making the difficult art of writing seem pretty doable. This, I've realized with the passing of time, is due to one simple reason. It is because W.Somerset Maugham never shows off! Never! Never does he ramble pointlessly. Never does he merely graze the point instead of hitting it fair and square because he was too busy fooling around with the language. Never! He hits bulls eye with eloquence and a kind of frugal, flowing lyricism. There is always a single-minded purpose behind his writings. It is to spin a mighty good yarn by getting the point across without making his readers consult a dictionary. He even propounds profundity in a manner that typically makes me re-read the paragraph(and underline it) to admire the economy and ease with which the thought was expressed in words. I find the writing styles of Hemingway and Maugham similar in form, but while Hemingway's writing is austere to the point of being skeletal, Maugham clothes his words until they can be considered passably pretty.

For his remarkable abilities, Maugham's opinions about his own writing were always modest. He believed he stood "in the very first row of the second-raters." Asked about his method of writing, he simplified it to a matter of keen observation and honest reproduction. ""Most people cannot see anything," he once said, "but I can see what is in front of my nose with extreme clearness; the greatest writers can see through a brick wall. My vision is not so penetrating."

My favourite excerpts

Advice to aspiring writers

� I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed. But there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have subjected my flesh each week to a more severe mortification. I have never failed to read the Literary Supplement of The Times. It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these book are well and carefully written; much thought has gone to their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thoughts; and indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.�

“Until long habit has blunted the sensibility, there is something disconcerting to the writer in the instinct which causes him to take an interest in the singularities of human nature so absorbing that his moral sense is powerless against it. He recognizes in himself an artistic satisfaction in the contemplation of evil which a little startles him but sincerity forces him to confess that the disapproval he feels for certain actions is not nearly so strong as his curiosity in their reasons. The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.�

On the ironic humour of life

“Dirk Stroeve was one of those unlucky persons whose most sincere emotions are ridiculous.�

On the nature of art

“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.�]]> 4.15 1919 The Moon and Sixpence
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1919
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/07/20
shelves: favorites, british, splendid-prose
review:
Fair warning, this is going to be a long review for this is a book that is close to my heart written by an author whom I deeply admire.

The Right Time

There are some books that walk into your life at an opportune time. I'm talking about the books that send a pleasant shiver down your spine laden with “Man, this is meant to be!� as you flip through its pages cursorily. Or those that upon completion, demand an exclamation from every book-reading fibre of your body to the effect of “There couldn't have been a better time for me to have read this book!� Now, I come from deferred-gratification stock. So books like these, you don't read immediately,. You let them sit there on your table for a while. You bask in the warm expectant glow of a life-altering read. You glance at the book as you make your way to office, take pleasure in the fact that it'll be right there on your table when you open the front-door wearily, waiting to be opened, caressed, reveled in. And when that moment of reckoning arrives, you don't stop, you plunge yourself straight into the book, white-hot passionate.

The Moon and Sixpence was just that kind of a book for me. I had just completed (and thoroughly enjoyed) a course on Modern Art in college and could rattle off the names of Impressionist painters faster than I could the Indian cricket team. I was particularly intrigued by Paul Gauguin, a French Post-Impressionist painter, after reading one of his disturbingly direct quotes. “Civilization is what makes me sick�, he proclaimed, and huddled off to Tahiti to escape Europe and “all that is artificial and conventional�, leaving behind a wife and five children to fend for themselves, never to make contact with them again. This struck me as the ultimate expression of individuality, a resounding slap to the judgmental face of conservative society, an escapist act of repugnant selfishness that could only be justified by immeasurable artistic talent, genius, some may call it. My imagination was tickled beyond measure and when I discovered there was a novel by W.Somerset Maugham (the author of The Razor's Edge no less!) based on Gauguin, my joy knew no bounds. I was in the correct frame of mind to read about the life of a stockbroker who gave up on the trivial pleasures of bourgeois life for the penury and hard life of an aspiring painter without considering him ridiculous or vain. Supplied with the appropriate proportions of awe that is due to a genius protagonist, I began reading the book. I have to admit I expected a whole lot from it. I had a voyeuristic curiosity to delve into the head of a certified genius. I was even more curious to see how Maugham had executed it. At the same time, I was hoping that the book would raise and answer important questions concerning the nature of art and about what drives an artist to madness and greatness.

The Book

The book's title is taken from a review of Of Human Bondage in which the novel's protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as "so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet."

I admired Maugham's narrative voice. In his inimitable style, he flits in and out of the characters' life as the stolid, immovable writer who is a mere observer, and nothing more. His narrator defies Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as in observing his characters, he doesn't change their lives or nature one bit. He has a mild disdain for the ordinary life of a householder and relishes his independence.

“I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of these two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined to carry on the normal traditions of their race and station, not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due course � the one a peretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the other a handsome, manly fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in their dignified retirement, beloved by their descendants, after a happy, not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they would sink into the grave. That must be the story of innumerable couples, and the patter of life it offers has a homely grace. It reminds you of a placid rivulet, meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees, till at last it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a vague uneasiness. Perhaps it is only a kink in my nature, strong in me even in those days, that I felt in such an existence, the share of the great majority, something amiss. I recognized its social value. I saw its ordered happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for a wilder course. There seemed to me something alarming in such easy delights. In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have change � change and the excitement of the unforeseen.�

In Maugham's hands, Gauguin becomes Charles Strickland, an unassuming British stockbroker, with a secret unquenchable lust for beauty that he is willing to take to the end of the world, first to Paris and then to remote Tahiti. He is cold, selfish and uncompromising in this quest for beauty.

“The passion that held Strickland was a passion to create beauty. It gave him no peace. It urged him hither and thither. He was eternally a pilgrim, haunted by a divine nostalgia, and the demon within him was ruthless. There are men whose desire for truth is so great that to attain it they will shatter the very foundation of their world. Of such was Strickland, only beauty with him took the place of truth. I could only feel for him a profound compassion.�

However words such as these serve to romanticize Strickland's actions which at first glance, remain despicable. [spoilers removed] Maugham paints him as a rogue loner, an unfathomable apparition, compelled to inhuman acts by the divine tyranny of art.

“He lived more poorly than an artisan. He worked harder. He cared nothing for those things which with most people make life gracious and beautiful. He was indifferent to money. He cared nothing about fame. You cannot praise him because he resisted the temptation to make any of those compromises with the world which most of us yield to. He had no such temptation. It never entered his head that compromise was possible. He lived in Paris more lonely than an anchorite in the deserts of Thebes. He asked nothing from his fellows except that they should leave him alone. He was single-hearted in his aim, and to pursue it he was willing to sacrifice not only himself � many can do that � but others. He had a vision. Strickland was an odious man, but I still think he was a great one.�

In these beautiful words he describes Strickland's strange homelessness and suggests a reason for his subsequent escape to Tahiti.

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid strange surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scnes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.�

By the end of the book, Maugham's narrator somewhat loses his grip over the reader and I could picture him in my mind floundering around the island of Tahiti, interviewing the people who came in contact with Strickland, trying to piece together a story. He finds himself in the “position of the biologist, who has to figure out from a bone, not only a creature's body, but also its habits.�

The reader is promised the ineffable, a study of genius and is only delivered an admission of its elusive nature. Also the tone of the novel tends to get slightly misogynistic in places. But I suppose that is more a failing of the protagonist rather than the author. As compensation, Maugham offers delicious crisp cookies of wisdom throughout. In simple lyrical language, he penetrates to the core of the human condition and offers invaluable advice to the aspiring writer, the hopeful lover and the wannabe genius.

For its unpretentious, sympathetic and humane portrayal of a deeply flawed protagonist, its quotable quotes and its ironic humour, this book shall rank as my one of my favourite books on the life and development of an artist in search of the unknowable.

My Master Maugham

I strongly believe that the adjectives one throws around are a barometer of one's sensitivity or at the minimum, one's desire to be accurate. Both of these qualities are indispensable to the aspiring writer because honestly, what is there to writing except fresh verbs, evocative adjectives, searing honesty and an unbounded imagination. Also, that it's easier said than done.

In this context, there are moments when I feel utterly stupid and unimaginative. My inner monologues resemble the chatter of teenage girls in their lack of content and use of worn-out adjectives. I mean, awesome and amazing, like seriously? Bleeuurghh!! During such exasperating times, my inner world aches to devour a mouthful of good-looking words in the Queen's English. I head to my dusty book-closet and roughly displace its contents until I find a book either by one of the barons of British literature, a W.Somerset Maugham/PG Wodehouse or a laid-back satire along the lines of Yes Minister. The book usually serves its purpose admirably. It manages to extract me from my predicament by either making me split my sides laughing or by drowning me in a stream of sentences so beautifully constructed that I completely forget my insecurities and start shaking my head ponderously at the writer's virtuosity instead.

Coming to the topic of the writer himself, W.Somerset Maugham is one of my favourite writers in the English language. Being an aspiring writer who's yet to find his voice myself, his novels never fail to stab me with a hopeful optimism. My premature belief, that I can write well, is reinforced when I read Maugham. He never intimidates me or bores me, commonplace sins many writers will have to go to confession for. While reading his prose, he possesses the singular ability of making the difficult art of writing seem pretty doable. This, I've realized with the passing of time, is due to one simple reason. It is because W.Somerset Maugham never shows off! Never! Never does he ramble pointlessly. Never does he merely graze the point instead of hitting it fair and square because he was too busy fooling around with the language. Never! He hits bulls eye with eloquence and a kind of frugal, flowing lyricism. There is always a single-minded purpose behind his writings. It is to spin a mighty good yarn by getting the point across without making his readers consult a dictionary. He even propounds profundity in a manner that typically makes me re-read the paragraph(and underline it) to admire the economy and ease with which the thought was expressed in words. I find the writing styles of Hemingway and Maugham similar in form, but while Hemingway's writing is austere to the point of being skeletal, Maugham clothes his words until they can be considered passably pretty.

For his remarkable abilities, Maugham's opinions about his own writing were always modest. He believed he stood "in the very first row of the second-raters." Asked about his method of writing, he simplified it to a matter of keen observation and honest reproduction. ""Most people cannot see anything," he once said, "but I can see what is in front of my nose with extreme clearness; the greatest writers can see through a brick wall. My vision is not so penetrating."

My favourite excerpts

Advice to aspiring writers

� I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed. But there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have subjected my flesh each week to a more severe mortification. I have never failed to read the Literary Supplement of The Times. It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these book are well and carefully written; much thought has gone to their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thoughts; and indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.�

“Until long habit has blunted the sensibility, there is something disconcerting to the writer in the instinct which causes him to take an interest in the singularities of human nature so absorbing that his moral sense is powerless against it. He recognizes in himself an artistic satisfaction in the contemplation of evil which a little startles him but sincerity forces him to confess that the disapproval he feels for certain actions is not nearly so strong as his curiosity in their reasons. The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.�

On the ironic humour of life

“Dirk Stroeve was one of those unlucky persons whose most sincere emotions are ridiculous.�

On the nature of art

“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.�
]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101139 'Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.'

England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.

From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.]]> 653 Hilary Mantel 0007292414 Rajat 0 3.84 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/07/20
shelves: british, to-read, historical-fiction
review:

]]> Coming Up for Air 832138 Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon from the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in Penguin Modern Classics. George Bowling, forty-five, mortgaged, married with children, is an insurance salesman with an expanding waistline, a new set of false teeth - and a desperate desire to escape his dreary life. He fears modern times - since, in 1939, the Second World War is imminent - foreseeing food queues, soldiers, secret police and tyranny. So he decides to escape to the world of his childhood, to the village he remembers as a rural haven of peace and tranquility. But his return journey to Lower Binfield may bring only a more complete disillusionment.]]> 247 George Orwell 0141185694 Rajat 0 3.79 1939 Coming Up for Air
author: George Orwell
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/07/18
shelves: to-read, british, war, village-life
review:

]]> Ending Up 143653 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

The title refers to how we spend our retirement years, often called "golden," though in Kingsley Amis' hands anything but.

At Tuppenny-Hapenny Cottage a clutch of oldsters, brought together more by ill fortune than blood or love, struggles with problems that range from penury to prostate. That's the good news. The rest is Amis as usual, providing fun for himself and his readers at the expense of his characters.]]> 176 Kingsley Amis 0140041516 Rajat 3 comedy, british, old-people 3.58 1974 Ending Up
author: Kingsley Amis
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1974
rating: 3
read at: 2015/07/15
date added: 2015/07/15
shelves: comedy, british, old-people
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]]]> 13258 258 Zoë Heller 0312421990 Rajat 5 3.72 2003 What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]
author: Zoë Heller
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2012/08/25
date added: 2015/07/12
shelves: favorites, british, splendid-prose
review:
Definitely among the best books I read this year. Itching to review this one.
]]> The Razor’s Edge 31196 314 W. Somerset Maugham 1400034205 Rajat 5 4.20 1944 The Razor’s Edge
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1944
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/07/12
shelves: favorites, british, self-discovery
review:

]]> The Finkler Question 8664368 307 Howard Jacobson 1408808870 Rajat 2 british, comedy
He did succeed in convincing me that anti-Semitism, like all other prejudices, is an irrational phenomenon, a bandwagon for haters. The word it seems has a ring to it, the kind of ring that makes people want to be an anti-Semite, a secret dirty ring, something like

'Hey man you an anti-Semite?'

'Yeah I just started. Isn't it empowering? It helped me focus my dislike for humanity into a hatred for the Jews. I feel so much better already. Here, let me show you the swastika I had to tattoo on my ass as part of the initiation.'

'Hoo Haa! Let's go maim some money-grubbing, manipulative, motherfucking Jews after that!'

Through Julian Treslove, the neurotic protagonist whose life is a farce, the author tries to explore the essential quality of Jewishness, to find out what separates them from the rest as a culture. Treslove, crazy cat that he is, wants to learn the knack of thinking Jewishly. He essentially wants to be a Jew because he finds their ease with the ways of the world in contrast to his own chronic sentimentality and unease.

His best friend, Sam Finkler is an ambitious, self-centred Jew who hates being stereotyped as a Jew even though he fits the bill better than any one. In fact, he is ashamed of being a Jew as is evident by the ludicrous association of ASHamed Jews that he is part of. Except that it's not really shame. Nobody parades around shame since normally, it's too shameful a matter to do that. In Sam Finkler's case, it's more like pomposity. Julian decides to call all Jews Finklers since that's how he's got to know them. Hence, The Finkler Question. Yay! Though I have a sneaking suspicion he did that just to reduce the Jew word count.

I found the narrative similar to The God Of Small Things, where the plot revolves in time and space around a single event of life-changing proportions. I just hope the Booker Prize isn't going formulaic. The event in this case is also a farce, like much of Julian's life, a life-changing farce. A woman accosts him, proceeds to slam his face into a glass window, relieves him of all his valuables before he can react and whispers in his ear "You Jew". LOL. After this, he goes down a spiral of rabbis and Bar Mitzvahs and other weird Jewish names. He's overwhelmed by all the Jewishness, us even more so. He meets a Jewish woman next and promptly begins to obsesses about his uncircumcised penis, reads ancient Jewish religious texts to get a deeper understanding of being Jewish and of having an uncircumcised penis. Whoa. Give me a break.

The book is funny in places but I maintain that the best part about it is that it's crystal clear about what it propounds. There is no ambiguity of subject matter, no secret center which the reader finds himself looking for. If someone asks me what this book was about, I now have the shortest answer I've ever had for this question. Jews. Here, let me say it a few more times, I think the author would appreciate it. Jews. Jews. Jews. Everything else is there just for it to not seem like that. Talking about being Jewish has to be the most Jewish trait of all, no Mr. Jacobson?]]> 2.81 2010 The Finkler Question
author: Howard Jacobson
name: Rajat
average rating: 2.81
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2012/02/18
date added: 2015/07/12
shelves: british, comedy
review:
I had no clue what I was signing up for when I began reading this. The author began by making a very big deal about the pain of being a Jew in the modern world and ended the book with an impassioned plea to see Jews for what they really are, half right and half wronged, like the rest of us. I appreciate that unambiguously. Nobody should be singled out for persecution, I agree. What I don't appreciate is being bombarded with the words 'Jew', 'Ju', 'Julian' with freakish consistency on every page. Now, mind you, this isn't because I'm an anti-Semite. Because I'm not. In my culture, anti-Semitism is merely something other people do to other people, or nothing at all. We have other people to hate. Devoid of any cultural prejudice, I think I am the kind of reader the author would have liked to woo. Did he succeed?

He did succeed in convincing me that anti-Semitism, like all other prejudices, is an irrational phenomenon, a bandwagon for haters. The word it seems has a ring to it, the kind of ring that makes people want to be an anti-Semite, a secret dirty ring, something like

'Hey man you an anti-Semite?'

'Yeah I just started. Isn't it empowering? It helped me focus my dislike for humanity into a hatred for the Jews. I feel so much better already. Here, let me show you the swastika I had to tattoo on my ass as part of the initiation.'

'Hoo Haa! Let's go maim some money-grubbing, manipulative, motherfucking Jews after that!'

Through Julian Treslove, the neurotic protagonist whose life is a farce, the author tries to explore the essential quality of Jewishness, to find out what separates them from the rest as a culture. Treslove, crazy cat that he is, wants to learn the knack of thinking Jewishly. He essentially wants to be a Jew because he finds their ease with the ways of the world in contrast to his own chronic sentimentality and unease.

His best friend, Sam Finkler is an ambitious, self-centred Jew who hates being stereotyped as a Jew even though he fits the bill better than any one. In fact, he is ashamed of being a Jew as is evident by the ludicrous association of ASHamed Jews that he is part of. Except that it's not really shame. Nobody parades around shame since normally, it's too shameful a matter to do that. In Sam Finkler's case, it's more like pomposity. Julian decides to call all Jews Finklers since that's how he's got to know them. Hence, The Finkler Question. Yay! Though I have a sneaking suspicion he did that just to reduce the Jew word count.

I found the narrative similar to The God Of Small Things, where the plot revolves in time and space around a single event of life-changing proportions. I just hope the Booker Prize isn't going formulaic. The event in this case is also a farce, like much of Julian's life, a life-changing farce. A woman accosts him, proceeds to slam his face into a glass window, relieves him of all his valuables before he can react and whispers in his ear "You Jew". LOL. After this, he goes down a spiral of rabbis and Bar Mitzvahs and other weird Jewish names. He's overwhelmed by all the Jewishness, us even more so. He meets a Jewish woman next and promptly begins to obsesses about his uncircumcised penis, reads ancient Jewish religious texts to get a deeper understanding of being Jewish and of having an uncircumcised penis. Whoa. Give me a break.

The book is funny in places but I maintain that the best part about it is that it's crystal clear about what it propounds. There is no ambiguity of subject matter, no secret center which the reader finds himself looking for. If someone asks me what this book was about, I now have the shortest answer I've ever had for this question. Jews. Here, let me say it a few more times, I think the author would appreciate it. Jews. Jews. Jews. Everything else is there just for it to not seem like that. Talking about being Jewish has to be the most Jewish trait of all, no Mr. Jacobson?
]]> The Sense of an Ending 10746542 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.

This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.]]> 150 Julian Barnes 0224094157 Rajat 3 british 3.73 2011 The Sense of an Ending
author: Julian Barnes
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/09/29
date added: 2015/07/12
shelves: british
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)]]> 4921
"We agree that we are overworked, and need a rest - A week on the rolling deep? - George suggests the river -"

And with the co-operation of several hampers of food and a covered boat, the three men (not forgetting the dog) set out on a hilarious voyage of mishaps up the Thames. When not falling in the river and getting lost in Hampton Court Maze, Jerome K. Jerome finds time to express his ideas on the world around - many of which have acquired a deeper fascination since the day at the end of the 19th century when this excursion was so lightly undertaken.]]> 185 Jerome K. Jerome Rajat 4 british 3.86 1889 Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)
author: Jerome K. Jerome
name: Rajat
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1889
rating: 4
read at: 2011/07/27
date added: 2015/07/12
shelves: british
review:

]]> To Sir, With Love 895163 The all-time Classic schoolroom drama - as relevant as today's headlines ...

He shamed them, wrestled with them, enlightened them, and - ultimately - learned to love them. Mr. Braithwaite, the new teacher, had first to fight the class bully. Then he taught defiant, hard-bitten delinquents to call him "Sir," and to address the girls who had grown up beside them in the gutter as "Miss".

He taught them to wash their faces and to read Shakespeare. When he took all forty-six to museums and to the opera, riots were predicted. But instead of a catastrophe, a miracle happened. A dedicated teacher had turned hate into love, teenage rebelliousness into self-respect, contempt into into consideration for others. A man's own integrity - his concern and love for others - had won through.

The modern classic about a dedicated teacher in a tough London school who slowly and painfully breaks down the barriers of racial prejudice, this is the story of a man's integrity winning through against the odds.]]> 189 E.R. Braithwaite 0515105198 Rajat 5 favorites, british 4.17 1959 To Sir, With Love
author: E.R. Braithwaite
name: Rajat
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1959
rating: 5
read at: 2015/04/28
date added: 2015/07/12
shelves: favorites, british
review:

]]>