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One day in January I was too restless to read, so I watched TV the whole day.

I was a bit nervous about it, because I know from bitter experience that I have very strong couch potato tendencies. (There was a period in my life, when 24-hour satellite TV had just happened to us in India, that I was so hooked to TV, I even used to watch an afternoon soap opera set in a space ship – I kid you not. It was called Jupiter Moon.

Just as I had feared, my all-day TV session nearly destroyed me. For weeks, I was so hooked to the idiot box that the only time I read a book was on my great commute.

I could FEEL my little grey cells (such as they are) shrivel. Seriously, I could feel the shrivelling process physically.

Fortunately, I got bored of TV a couple of weeks ago. And typically, I went overboard with the books.

Since some of what I read recently was sooooo good, I am burning with evangelistic fervour and you, O Reader, will have to suffer because I am now about tell you all about them. (Feel free to watch TV instead if you like. Don’t blame me if your little grey cells shrivel.)

At No. 1 is The Beast, by Syed Muhammad Ashraf, translated from Urdu by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. I think it is brilliant.

It’s set somewhere in North India – an area that is mostly unfamiliar to me, except from the stories in my Hindi textbooks at school (which I had rather liked), and in a rural and small town environment which is also unfamiliar to me. (Nobody can call Calcutta, where I was born and grew up, small town except me. Get it? Or I will put a creative curse on you. And I’m VERY good at creative curses.)

The translation is excellent. The book has exactly the flavour of the stories in my Hindi textbooks, so I was quite startled when I realised that it’s actually a contemporary novel. The stories in textbooks tend to be by writers of the 40s and 50s, the great writers, the ones who produced what would become classics. Is rural / small town India really still like that? I was stunned.

But aside from that revelation (which is making me think quite furiously), what I loved about this book was its quietness. There’s no drama in it, there are no rising and falling tones, everything is related in the most even tone. It is deeply ironic, but it leaves the reader to discover that for herself, it doesn’t hit her over the head and say: Saw that? Isn’t that horrible? And because of this, I felt like the writer’s partner, quietly observing what was happening without comment.

At No. 2 is The Little Drummer Girl, by John Le Carre. I’ve had this book for quite some time, but I only read it very recently. That’s because I only discovered Le Carre and his spy novels a year or so ago (I don’t know why it took me so long, but I am grateful that I’ve found him at all) and having fallen for him, I have decided to eke his books out. So it’s roughly one Le Carre every three months or so.

I can’t say I’ve loved all the Le Carres I’ve read so far. Some seem to have been written only to fulfill a contract or something. But I can never fault his writing. One sentence can sum up a whole personality, in one paragraph I am no longer here but wherever he wants me to be. Superb.

The Little Drummer Girl is about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and since I myself am conflicted about that particular issue (which is a lot like the Kashmir issue, if you ask me, points on all sides so no outright hero or villain, just a lot of pain on all sides), I just loved the book.

At No. 3 is The Wings of the Sphinx, the latest book in the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri. It isn’t as good as the earlier ones, actually, but I am so in love with Inspector Montalbano, that I don’t care, I will read all the books that feature him and cherish them.

Then there’s what I mentally term ‘the sleeper hit’. The Immortals of Meluha, by Amish. I call it a sleeper hit because I really did not expect much from it. Plus, it was given to me by the author who insisted on doing that even though I’d told him I am not the person to speak to for reviews.

I really dislike it when people make things personal when they want or hope for my professional help. I understand it’s personal for them, but I have a job and I prefer to do it as best I can – and that means no favours to anyone and from anyone. And when it comes to books, where judgements are subjective, I much prefer to do my own choosing – like anyone at a bookshop – and then like the book or not – like anyone who reads – without having to cope with the author and her / his feelings as well as her / his need for publicity.

So I was polite, but this was a black mark against the book already. However, when I read it, I was actually liked it and wanted more. It’s the first of a trilogy and I hope the next two live up to the promise of the first.

On my bedside table are books I’ve been looking forward to:

Self’s Murder, by Bernhard Schlink: The author of The Reader has a series of crime books featuring Gerhard Self, an elderly detective who was a Nazi in WW II and hates himself for it. This is the third Self book – the first two are Self’s Punishment and Self’s Deception, and I loved them both.

Through the Children’s Gate, by Adam Gopnik: I don’t know if I’ll like this, but I got it anyway on the strength of Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon, an account of his five years in Paris. I found that book magical, so I’ve taken a chance on this book, which is an account of life in New York. Hope I’m not mistaken.

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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