Sunday, October 14, 2007

Book Tag, Again

I was tagged by Jyo ages ago, and finally found the time to do it!

Total Number of Books Owned:
If they are few enough that you can count them, you are not a book lover!!

Last Book Bought:
Legend by David Gemmell
If you are a fan of battles like the one at Helm's Deep in Lord of the Rings, you'll love this book.

Last Book Read:
Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman
A decent fantasy book, but not good enough for me to actually recommend to someone. Perhaps I have been spoiled by Steven Erikson: if an important character dies, it must be in an utmost heroic, ironic, epic fashion!

Five Books that mean a lot to you:
1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
I like the concept of Objectivism. I'm not one of those Rand-fanatics though; I don't go around spreading objectivist philosophy; I simply find the concept interesting enough that it made me think. The fact that this book made me have philosophical discussions in my head puts it in this list.

2. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Most writers dream of being able to make their readers put themselves in the shoes of the character, to look through their eyes, to think and feel like them. Salinger achieves this, in a way that I am yet to see duplicated. On top of that, this book will make you feel ashamed of the little hypocrite in you, in all of us. Rare. A gem of a book.

3. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The classic science fiction novel! When you say SciFi what pictures does the word conjure up in your head? Non-Scifi people think about Star Trek and such. But the real Scifi fan thinks about Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein... its not spaceships and lasers and robots that make the Scifi story, it is the setting, the possibilities in writing stories when you are not fettered by the sad truths and realities in the world.

4. Magician by Raymond Feist
What I just said for Scifi goes for Fantasy too. And the fantasy book that did it for me was not Lord of the Rings but Magician. This is the book that started it all for me, got me into the fantasy genre, made me want to write fantasy stories, everything. A great read, a balanced book, a great storyteller.

Well, four will have to do for now.

Cheers
Prashanth.

4 comments:

Pradeep Sriram said...

i read Trudi Canavan's "Black Magician" trilogy recently. Was decent enuff to make me read all the 3 books.

Sakshi said...

Surprised that the four books are my favorite too :)

Surprised because I am not big fantasy genre reader. Magician was something you recommended. Being a sci fi fan I completely agree with what you say - "it is the setting, the possibilities in writing stories when you are not fettered by the sad truths and realities in the world."

Good tag.

Anonymous said...

umm, thank you for entertaining my tag...well, the salience does exist that your kind of genre would not fit into my universe.
But, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, certainly feature amongst the classics I cherish.The phase of adolescence - between childhood versus adulthood, is captured so beautifully - the angst of the adolescent caught in the flow of becoming an adult and the struggle against the adultish world. The protagonist's criticism of society is brutally honest, his profanity grips one unpredictably, nothing in the ambience escaped from his cynical and critical adolescent mind. what I really like about this classic is the precision with which the author captured the mind, the predictable thoughts that plague the human nature.

Prashanth said...

Anna,
Thanks for the hat tip, will check it out.

Sakshi,
You will make some geeky guy very happy someday :)

Jyo,
Totally agree... as I said, I felt as if I were in the character's shoes.