Here's my selection of the best of the books I read this year. Links are to reviews on this site. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton—one of the most enjoyable books I read this year. Set in New Zealand in the 1860s with multiple narrators, the narrative keeps looping in on itself. A man arrives in …
One World, Many Stories: Sharing Books from the Challenge
We finally held our reading event at the ICV Arcade last Wednesday (19 November)—on the one day that the Geneva public transport system decided to go on strike! I was worried that people wouldn’t come, what with no buses or trams running, and traffic jams because more people were taking their cars. But we had …
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Half of a Yellow Sun: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Published by Fourth Estate, 2006, 448 pages.Review by Imran Ali Khan It took me a while to get to this book but when I finally did it consumed me. It kept me up all night and haunted me well after I was done with it. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun …
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The Goldfinch: Donna Tartt
Published by Abacus, 2013, 880 pages.Review by Karen Moir The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is a captivating 800 page chronicle of the life of Theodore Decker. It begins when a young boy is rocked by suicide bomb in Metropolitan Museum of Art that takes his mother’s life and replaces her with a yearning for the …
The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: Tarquin Hall
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2012, 341 pages. How can anyone resist this title? I would have bought this book even if I hadn’t already known this series of detective novels set in Delhi. The book’s main character is Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Investigator, who is often helped—against his wishes—by his mother (the formidable …
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The Riches of Al-Fahim’s Autobiography
From Rags to Riches—A Story of Abu Dhabi: Mohammed Al-FahimPublished by CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 1995, 192 pages. Review by Lesley O’DowdMohammed Al-Fahim’s autobiography, From Rags to Riches was first published in 1995. By the time he wrote this illuminating story, Al-Fahim was an eminent, highly respected Emirati businessman in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. As he …
Shady Characters—Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities: Keith Houston
Published by Particular Books / Penguin, 2013, 252 pages. Writing and typeface are things we take for granted, almost as if the letters, punctuation signs and symbols we use have always been around. So it’s good to have someone remind us that behind these characters is a long and interesting history. Keith Houston picks a …
On a Lighter Note… The Things that People Use for Bookmarks
What do you use as bookmarks? As someone with a large collection of bookmarks, I am fairly traditional about what I use to mark my place in a book. But according to AbeBooks, people use all kinds of things, including a baby's tooth, a diamond ring and a marriage certificate from 1879! Read on...
An Andamans Story
The Last Wave—An Island Novel: Pankaj SekhsariaPublished by HarperCollins, 2014, 304 pages.Review by Usha Raman I had the pleasure this last week of engaging in conversation with Pankaj Sekhsaria, author of the new release, The Last Wave: An Island Novel (HarperCollins, 2014). The conversation was part of the Hyderabad launch of the book, a story …
The Danger of a Single Story
I have been meaning to put this on for a while because I think everyone will enjoy it! "It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is …
