Fiction
34 BooksAnxious people
The leopard
Zikora
Amnesty
A Thousand Splendid Suns
A Sound of Thunder
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises
My favourite Backman book of them all. Wish I could go and live with Elsa and her granny and the wurse in that land of almost awake
Britt Marie was here
Again to Carthage
Quenton Cassidy settling into the life of a successful lawyer in South Florida. Quenton Cassidy returning to running training for one last shot at glory. It’s a book of two halves. I read it for the latter, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t know or care much about the first, which is written OK but too long for its relevance.
Once a runner
Books like this one are so rare that I’m sad that it’s over, sad that I took so long to discover it, sad that I’m not a young white athlete living in the Dooby hall in the 70s.
Training, banter, training, friendships, training, pain, obsession, demons, racing, training, loneliness, training…. success. Need a few years of running and struggles to appreciate this book. Not for everyone. And possibly the greatest book for those for whom it is…”
Of mice and men
Moving, honest story of friendship, life, mental disability, and hard decisions.
Conversations with friends
A not very faithful married couple, two young women, lots of conversations, lots of sleeping around. A ménage-à-quatre of heads and bodies. Sadly, it was too slow, so I eventually quit sometime after the halfway mark.
To Have and Have Not
Brave, sometimes smart; married to the sea, between Cuba and Florida keys; slowly sinking into poverty and despair. Life of a down-on-luck hard man in hard times in pre-revolution Cuba and Florida.
A man called Ove
Heart warming, involuntary smile causing, tear creating tale of Ove, Parvaneh, the cat, Sonja, Rune and Saab. It’d been a few years since I read it, so read it again. Glad I did :)
The red pony
A simple tale of a boy’s year on a farm—of learning some good and some bitter faces of life.
A boy in winter
A simple tale of Nazi occupation and holocaust in a small town in Ukraine. The story was simple but I enjoyed the characters—understated but involved; very human. Arnold, the SS leader of the district, Pohl, the German engineer in-charge, and Yasia, the strong but hesitant Ukrainian girl were my favourites.
The Old Man and the Sea
On the road
Fast, breathless, always moving…
I never connected with the characters. I understood term. I may have even known some Sals and Deans. But I just couldn’t connect with them, as people.
Yet, I enjoyed the writing.
Enjoyed the vividness of the scenes.
Enjoyed discovering a subculture of 7 decades ago.
Even, at times, enjoyed the wild wanderings of minds constantly high of mj, insomnia and youth.
Not bad for a book I picked up by mistake.
Mr. Iyer goes to war
Interesting, fairly fast moving novel. Mixes present day Eastern UP with its religion, castes, corruption and politics with a hallucinating religious warrior ;)
The writing tends to go overboard a bit at times, but that may just be due to the nature of the story.
Gun Island
Picked the book up from the library last night. Read it at the cafe, read it in bed before sleeping, read it in bed after waking up, read it in the loo, read it in the morning instead of running, and then finished it before lunch. The only breaks were for visitors and sleep.
It’s an unputdownable book for those who like Amitava Ghosh’s mixing of cultures and timelines, fiction and facts. The ending was a bit sudden, but it may just be in preparation for the next episode.
The deal of a lifetime
Short story, with some illustrations. Typical good-hearted emotional Backman, though with a small twist near the end.