Ponniyin Selvan

Just completed reading my first Tamil novel "Ponniyin Selvan". It was a good read with good characterizations but without any significant central theme or noteworthy philosophy. At the end of the 3 month duration of reading the 2000+ page novel, I am definitely not disappointed. I am getting a sense of contentment which I normally feel after watching a good masala Tamil movie: sans logic at many and important places.

Overall, it was a good beginning to my Tamil fiction reading; would have cherished the novel had I read it 10 years back.

Book Lists - building a personal library

With gift coupons worth INR 5000 that can be used only for buying books, I have been actively searching for building my personal collection of books which I can keep in my 'library'. In this quest, I have been looking at multiple lists - here are some, in no particular order:

• Modern Library Top 100 Fiction and Non-Fiction
• BBC - The Big Read: Top 100
• TIME - All time 100 novels
• Telegraph - 110 best books: The perfect library

The following books are in my wish-list for now:

1. "Out of my comfort zone" by Steve Waugh
2. "Watchmen" by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
3. "Beyond the blues" by Aakash Chopra
4. "How chess imitates life" by Garry Kasparov
5. "On the interpretation of dreams" by Sigmund Freud
6. "Plato and Platypus walk into a bar" by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein

Any recommendation is welcome for inclusion into or exclusion from my above wishlist. TIA.