June Reading …

 

A flight journey (was home for a week J), waiting at the airport and a once a week travel in a cab to a distant place (min. 30 min cab ride) increased my reading time in June. Helped me read more J Also, I read something other than the regular mystery stuff

 

1. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

I had read a Mitch Albom last year and had liked it. It was emotional stuff which sets your heart thinking about the most important aspect of our life, which we tend to ignore - people. Five People was no less.

It turned out to be another emotional read … often making me stop and think about my own life and people around, people who came and went away, who stayed in touch and those who broke all contact, people with whom I have been in touch all my life and also those with whom I had a chance encounter and they are set permanently in my memory with hardly any change to meet again (although hope is hopelessly optimistic emotion … the hope to see them again, meet them and talk to them is always alive)

The story itself teaches (which preaching) a few important lessons of life; How people have impact on one's life and how we impact others life; How forgiveness is a very important and critical virtue for our own good, more than for others; How life can be very different if we choose to make it so …

 

2. Feluda: The Mystery of the Elephant God by Satyajit Ray

A very good one wherein Feluda is pitted against an adversary he is delighted to meet; someone who really challenges his intellect and becomes an adversary to reappear in later stories too. Another interesting aspect of the story was that when the story begins, it talks about a 'Machchli Baba (Fish Saint)' who is called Ebony Baba also because of his smooth and very dark skin.

I kept wondering where the Elephant God fit into this story only to realize towards the end that the story revolved around the theft of a small statue of Lord Ganesha … who is the Elephant God of India. The actual story never referred to Him as the Elephant God and hence I did not make the connection. How stupid of me to miss this point !

 

3. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

I have been reading this one at a snail's pace for last couple of months. Decided to give it some high priority and finish it off this month. The story started off nicely and then suddenly it began to stall, slow down and sputter. I don't really have very strong views on this one. Neither too good, neither too bad. It had its own twists and turns in the story and some suspense and mystery.

The interesting aspect was actually how the story travelled as two parallel stories in different eras of time; the narration alternating between the two stories. What was missing is the connection between the two stories. The story simply alternated without connecting the two stories; except at the end. Mind you, the stories were related but not well connected. Also, I found the climax pretty anti-climactic.  

Maybe I have come to expect too much from 2 parallel stories.  Matthew Reilly's TEMPLE was a fantastic novel in this respect, 2 stories across two timelines run parallel, narration alternating between the two and the stories feeding into each other … something Labyrinth didn't do.

 

4. Feluda: The Bandits of Bombay by Satyajit Ray

This one was a nice mix with all the makings of a Bollywood Masala Movie … in fact it actually had a movie being made in the story J and that too on the novel written by Jatayu !!

 

5. Sherlock Holmes: The 'Gloria Scott' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This one was a short story where Sherlock relates to Watson, an incident which led him to take up detective consulting as a profession. This wasn't actually a case to be solved. It was just a narration of an incident. Nothing Interesting

 

Did not read any Three Investigator story this month …

 

Series Completion Score (as of 30^th June 2011):  

Three Investigators    13 out of 35

Feluda                         12 out of 35

Sherlock Holmes         19 out of 56

Total                           44 out of 126