Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Books

The Dork Trilogy - Sidin Vadukut

I have been a regular reader of his blog since the Travails post. So I knew what to expect, still he managed to surprise me. Dork tracks the 1st year of Robin "Einstein" Varghese as Management Consultant in a shady consultancy firm, Dufresne Partners. It is a laugh a minute book, with Einstein getting into impossible situations and getting out of them with implausible solutions. If you like college humour kind of books, you should definitely read this.

Chai Chai - Bishwanath Gosh

I met Gosh once when we were part of Chennai Metblogs. I have been a fan of his writing style, both in his blog and his Sunday Spin column in Indian Express. So it was with a lot of expectation I picked up his book - a travelogue about the railway junctions that most of us pass through and the small towns behind them. It was a great premise for a travelogue. I was disappointed with the inconsistency of his writing. His write up on Itarsi and Shoranur were good, but Arakkonam and Guntakal felt like labored writing. Also the repetitive pattern of settling in a lodge and visiting the shady bars started to get boring. I expect a good travelogue writer not to pass judgement on the characters he meets. So when I read this sentence on his meeting a prostitute, "People generally spend one hour with a human being who is a prostitute. I had spent one hour with a prostitute who was a human being" (I type from memory, I don't have the book with me right now) it was jarring to say the least. Sorry BG, I sincerely wanted to like the book, but couldn't.

3 comments:

Krishnan said...

Yet to read The Dork Trilogy. Read Chai, Chai few months back. I kind of liked it. Very interesting premise. Agree with you that it flagged off towards the end.

Sidin said...

Thanks Chenthil. Much obliged.

Hawkeye said...

Because you said you knew what to expect from Sidin but still were surprised - I will try out the book. I am totally skeptical of his ability to pull it off/surprise because he hasn't managed to do so in his blog in the post 'travails' era (I am so used to his writing style now). So I was actually waiting for someone i trust to review his book.

Hopefully Amazon has it.