THE BOOKS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE
While meandering through the huge bookshelves in the colossal Harvard Book Store at Boston last year, I stumbled upon a corner interestingly named as, “THE BOOKS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE ”. I kept on browsing in that nook for half an hour or so and would have continued for some time more had my wife not dragged me out. She always does that. She thinks that the books are more addictive than cocaine for me and tries to shield me. Anyways, the idea stuck in my mind and kept sticking even after we returned to our homeland. When this accursed pandemic swooped upon this planet and our life expectancy came under severe threat, the idea surfaced. Why not make a list of twenty all-time best books and read them in this forced isolation clamped upon us in these serial lockdowns? I had been a student of English literature and fiction is my favourite stomping ground, so I started with it. On the top of my list came Harper Lee’s “To
