Sunday, May 14, 2006

Some Good Books

Here is a compilation of some books that are, if anything, interesting reading. Some of them are ridiculously easy/entertaining reading while others are...well, also mostly entertaining reading.

Novels
The Five Find-Outers and Dog series- Enid Blyton*
The Hardy Boys series - Franklyn W Dixon*
Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl(and others by the same author including his autobiography)
Three Terms at Uplands - Angela Brazil (and others by the same author)
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkien
The Hobbit - J.R.R Tolkien (most of his other books are boring)
The Biggles series - Captain W.E Johns
Rumpole of the Bailey - John Mortimer (and others by the same author)
Leave it to Psmith - P. G Wodehouse (and ALL others by the same author; none of his books are boring)
The Guns of Navarone - Alistair Maclean (and others by the same author)
The Labours of Hercules - Agatha Christie (and others by the same author)
The man who knew too much - G.K Chesterton (and others in the series)
The Father Brown series - G.K Chesterton
The Harry Potter Series - J. K Rowling (Although I believe that some scenes in the latter books were pretty lame)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Others
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Eats Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss
Emily Post's Etiquette - Peggy Post
Business @** the Speed of Thought - Bill Gates
Be My Guest - Conrad Hilton
Parkinson's Law - C. Northcote Parkinson
Vignettes of the Ceylon Civil Service - M Chandrasoma***
Assignment Colombo - J.N Dixit****


I'm apologize if "The Da Vinci Code" is not in any of the lists; but it wasn't a great book anyway. If anything, I would say that it was OK. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. It was, in my opinion, good fiction that entwined facts about Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings to a notion concocted out of thin air. Kudos to Dan Brown. Frankly, I think that the publicists are the real heros here.

* Just to clarify, I don't still read Enid Blyton. Thought I'd just include it in the list because it was entertaining reading... about 8 years ago.
** The @ symbol here is not an abbreviation for "at". That's the way it is in the book.
*** An entertaining book about the Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) Civil Service in the monarchal days before independance.
**** A very political 80's history of Sri Lanka.

No comments: