I try to systematically log all my books on Goodreads.

Authors with a relatively short oeuvre

Although often in a misguided way, fame and familiarity cling to an author’s most approachable and best works. I have always found it a safe bet to start from the most reviewed piece to get to know an author’s style. These are some names whose works I have almost inhaled in uncontrollable binges through times tough and easy, through days full of light and nights without -

• Arundhati Roy
• Bohumil Hrabal. On IITB’s Central Library’s dusty world literature shelf I found Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, and my romance with Hrabal’s novellas began.
• Bruno Schulz.
• Khushwant Singh. I will admit it, I never read Train to Pakistan. I got to know of Khushwant Singh through his lesser known succinctly titled novel, Delhi.
• Alfred Jarry. I read Ubu Roi for a drama course and ended up reading everything Jarry wrote.
• हरिशंकर परसाई | I have vague memories of reading Parsai in school but I am convinced that he is the best satirist in Hindi language.
• Siddhartha Mukherjee. The Emperor of All Maladies is a beautifully written book and I am even more excited about The Song of The Cell.
• महादेवी वर्मा | The earliest poems I ever read were hers. She is the literary giant I look up to.
• Virginia Woolf. I sobbed while reading A Room of One’s Own.

The Holy Trinity - India Edition

• Midnight’s Children. Salman Rushdie’s classic taught me how to read literature. No doubt the book takes its playful language from Indianisms which most non-South Asian readers might miss out on. But I whole heartedly agree with, and still remember, the disappointment in the voice of my mentor from my undergraduate days, Prof. Pradeep Sarin, when we talked of how none of Rushdie’s later works even come close to this colossal magnum opus.

• God of Small Things. This was the first of Roy’s books that I picked off the school library shelf, and it rewired my brain over the next three days. Ornate prose, harsh truths to power, iconoclastic characters, the prose introduced me to an India I saw around me but couldn’t quite comprehend.

• The Inheritance of Loss. As if the poetic honesty with which Roy depicts an innate sadness in people was not enough, the very next book I read was Kiran Desai’s pean to generational trauma.

Curated Book Series, Publishing Houses, Magazines

Museums are my sanctuaries, and their existence is bound to that of curators—humans who carry the mantle of preserving representative endeavours of humanity under muted spotlights. I feel at home when my nose is buried in books and growing up among family who showed no interest similar to mine, I looked to the curators for direction. I have kept this habit safe, and in doing so, found many treasured books and writers.

Philip Roth’s Writers from the Other Europe Series

I am not well versed in non-English and non-Hindi works of literature. This series served as a great introduction to masterful writers from Eastern Europe. I am forever indebted to Philip Roth for introducing me to the works of Bruno Schulz.

Simon Winder’s Central European Classics Series

Ota Pavel’s How I Came to Know Fish is the first book that serves as a good introduction to this series.

Fitzcarraldo Editions

A small publication house named after a Herzog character. They publish a handful of fiction and non-fiction books every year. I find their choices for translation excellent.

Granta

I found a dilapidated copy with frayling spine at one of Mumbai’s several ‘books by weight’ events (it is exactly what it sounds like). Back then I was a broke undegraduate living in India with no means to afford the subscription; it took me seven years but I got my wish!