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 Kill a Mocking Bird”. The Bible, which sold the largest number of copies in the world, had been relegated to the second spot by this 1961 bestseller. The book’s universal appeal lies in the unique relationship of a widower father with his two children and the racial discrimination rampant in the southern part of US in 1920s. It’s a great book and no booklover should die before reading it!

         

   Next on my list appeared the two dystopian novels, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984”. Both are utterly dark and powerful warnings against totalitarian regimes and extreme political ideologies. And both still remain two of the most terrifying portrayals of the future of mankind even after more than 80 years since their publication.

            And if you are a lover of this genre called novel you cannot leave this world without sampling something from the platter of Dostoevsky and Hemingway. So, I included “Crime and Punishment” and “Old Man and the Sea” here. The former focusses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodin Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student who plans to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Hemingway’s short novel narrates the epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life.

            And how could I forget Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22”, the inimitable satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. I placed it on sixth spot, just a place above Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” – the masterpiece of realistic Russian literature depicting the impact of Napoleonic invasion on Russian society through the stories of five aristocratic families.

            After this I added Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby”, William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” and James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, reaching around the middle of my list. Albert Camus had always been my great favourite. I was in a fix whether to include his “The Outsider” or “The Plague” here, when my son barged into the room to enquire what I had been busy with for the last two hours. I told him that I am compiling a list of books which I or any book-lover must read before dying.

    “There are other things more important to be done before dying,” he said without caring to look at my list.

“Like?” my face contorted into a question mark.

“Like inserting nominations in your Bank deposit accounts and….,” he paused.

“And?” I gaped expectantly.

“And writing a will, what else!” he blurted and bolted out.

            So here I am trying to contact my Bank for nomination facility and downloading templates for my last will and testament on my laptop.

I shall come with my completed list next time, I promise. Please bear with me.

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