On my father’s 80th birthday this year, he was gifted an Amazon coupon that he redeemed for books on his Kindle. He downloaded Oliver Strange’s Sudden series, Sherlock Holmes and Leslie Charteris’ Saint . He is also forever reading The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers . “I enjoy meeting the old characters again,” he says.
“Who doesn't love Sherlock Holmes,” Mohua Mitra, wants to know. “The forbidden taste of crime, the exposure to unknown countries, names and people…19th and early 20th century England... I can read Arthur Conan Doyle just for the sheer lyricism in his language. I remember encountering the word ‘singular’ for the first time in one of the books and using it in every school essay!” For Mohua rereading is to do with childhood memories. The magic has not diminished one bit, she says.
“I love The King's General and Rebecca too for their passion and fantastic storylines. The Diary of Anne Frank is a favourite that I grew up with. Anne’s dreams, misgivings, frustrations and urges were mine. She’s my hero.” As are Jim Corbett and Richard Llewllyn,
Latha Anantharaman estimates that every fourth book she reads is a reread. “I often discover more that is fresh each time I revisit one of my favourites than I find in the new titles. I used to read Middlemarch at least once a year; these days time flies faster and I’ve been reading it once every two years. The book is an entire universe I move into for a while, and if I were to meet any of its characters under the hedgerows I think I know what we would talk about. When I was new to it, I used to empathize with the young Dorothea, idolising her scholarly husband, and a few years later it was the struggling physician Lydgate, slowly awakening to the realities of his situation. Now it’s Harriet Bulstrode whose plain rectitude and loyalty call to me. Once a year I also read Eliot’s Adam Bede and Silas Marner , Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Emma , Dickens’s Bleak House and Hard Times . And there are many, many other titles I read repeatedly. Especially when I read for comfort I trust in the old rather than the new.”
“I’m the kind of person who ambitiously buys and Kindles stacks of books,” says Jayashree Arunachalam. “These are what people call ‘required reading’, books that are supposed to change your life. But sometimes you just aren’t in the mood to tackle new material, however noble and worthy it is, so these are the days when I just want to read something familiar or comforting.” For Jayashree that would be The William series by Richmal Crompton. “Who doesn't want to read about the comical adventures of a bad little boy in an English village? Agatha Christies are another favourite. When you’ve read it a hundred times, you’ll always know whodidit but they're simple books that are so well-plotted that you can skim through one over lunch or just before you go to sleep.”
The Chalet School series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer is another guilty pleasure Jayashree enjoys.
There is no easy way to describe these books: they’re sagas of a boarding school in Europe described in copious detail, a bewildering number of characters, a very marked emphasis on piety, and you’re rolling your eyes most of the time. I’d probably never whole-heartedly recommend them to anyone else, but I thoroughly enjoy reading them. Mostly because they’re old friends now, or old acquaintances that you don’t mind meeting now and then, even if it’s only to poke a little fun at them.”
For Vineeta Raj, “There is so much going on in Austen’s books that it’s like being a fly on the wall in the era she wrote about. I also love the spy Vs spy stuff; the counter-espionage, the suspense.... I keep going back to it even though the Cold War is long over… I am talking of Graham Greene, Le Carre and Alistair McLean. Erle Stanley Gardener introduced me to Perry Mason and the courtroom. I enjoyed how cases were constructed and fought in his books. But it is Miss Read I turn to when I am agitated or upset. Nothing much happens, nothing much changes - and that calms me down.”
“Agatha Christie! And William. Over and over again”, declares Meena Chari. “Because they are such fun and remind you of a happy time when things were simple. Even the murderer was well behaved, everything was well mannered. I also go back to Catch 22 because it always answers my question for the time and because it is so clever, savage, heartbreaking and terrifying.” But her first crush was Hamlet, she confesses. “I was so hopelessly in love with that gloomy Dane. Hamlet also restores my faith in the English language.”
This list of favourites is by no means complete. It is difficult to fit them all in here. But we also love you Bronte sisters, R.K. Narayan, Gerald Durrel, P.G. Wodehouse, Georgette Heyer…
