Tagged, me!

Subhashini had tagged me a while back - close to 2 weeks, and I thought long, hard, real, sincere and came up with this list of mine.

I went through a lot of blogs and was amazed by the range of topics that people read books on. To be honest, I dont have any of those style books (the classic ones) on my list. But reading all your blogs, I do came up with a list that I have put down as must read by the end of this year and believe me, that list is already pretty long.

My first few reads : The first 2 were from the school non-detailed section -

Oliver Twist (for some reason, I never felt sympathetic towards Oliver after reading the story).
Around the world in 80 days - easily the best that I read when I was young. I so liked the story and narration that I re-read it like 20 times within one summer. It was pacy, entertaining and thrilling to read.
King Solomon Mines - Again the non-detailed book for 8th standard English and man I liked it very much. It describes the quest of a team determined to find the gold mines in Africa(I guess!).
500 Panchatantra tales - I dont remember any one of them, but I borrowed this book from my cousin and read this one summer.
Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare.

My college day reads:
When I was in my 2nd year of college, it dawned to me that everyone around me is reading a fiction-novel and I started reading one too. My first one was Rage of Angels and so it always is special to me. Then read a series of Sidney Sheldon novels - If tomorrow Comes, Other side of midnight, Memories of midnight (not sure about the name of this novel), Tell me your dreams. Sheldon is like our typical masala movie director - has all necessary ingredients to his novel.

Then switched to Michael Crichton - read Congo, Jurassic Park, Sphere. I liked reading Sphere - it was riveting to say the least, and sustained my interest through out. But when I watched the movie later, I felt disappointed. :(

My friend Rajaram then introduced me to Robin Cook's novels - Outbreak, Mutation and Terminal. I read Mutation first and was spell-bound. The theme was different but then the subsequent novels lost that touch.
I read this novel - The Second Lady, not sure who wrote it (any one knows the author?). It is about a body-double that Russia develops who is trained to be look, behave, talk the same way as the first lady of USA and swaps them somehow. I liked it as well.
One more short writeup that impressed me was Seagulls. Although I am not a big fan of philosophical-spirit-lifting theories in books, I liked this one mainly because this was short and to the point.
Ok, now that completes my list of read books.

Let me finish this one with the list of books that I lent from the Lexington Public Library last weekend -
Rising Sun - Crichton, Michael
Debt of Honor - Clancy, Tom
Sons of Fortune - Archer, Jeffrey
Sphinx - Cook, Robin

I still have Thunai Ezhuthu by S.Ramakrishnan (published as a weekly article in Anandhavikatan) to be read.( aamam PB, unnoda book thaan, naan vachu irukken - dont worry!) and I borrowed Bhagavat Gita from Pradeep that I need to read as well.

My list to read includes top of the list - "Ponniyin Selvan", Atlas Shrugged, "Parthiban Kanavu", "It is not about the bike - Lance Armstrong","A brief history of time", "Not a penny more, not a penny less".

By the time I finish writing this blog, I feel good (I thought this will be my shortest blog, but turned out the other way) and thanq Subha! :)

My turn to tag people -
- VS (yes, my lesser seen roomie!)
- Moni
- Ananthu

Go on guys, I did it, you can do it too!
- Prabhu

ps : hmmm, on seeing Subha's blog again I left out one thing - The last book I was gifted? It was Love Story ( what 4 years back, was it?). hmmm, now that people know I have become an avid reader all of a sudden, I think can expect to get few more :)