Vivek is the one of the few people I’ve met who has read and personally has copies of the Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Sandman’ series. I was quite eager to peek into a tiny portion of his personal collection and favorites! 

On your nightstand now

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, On History by Eric Hobbsbawm  (PS: both bought from Junction)

Favorite book when you were a child

Summer of 42 and Marvel and DC comics

Your top 5 authors

Tough one but here goes: Steven Pinker, Brian Greene, Nicholas Taleb, Daniel Kahneman, Daniel Gilbert, Joseph Heller, Ghalib, Vikram Seth  (OK I cheated that’s 8)

Book you‘ve faked reading

Midnights Children  (didn’t fake but fell asleep every time I tried to read it)

Book you‘re an evangelist for

Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 and The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth… delicious…

Book you‘ve bought for the cover

Playboy Magazine (OK actually for the centerfold)

Book that changed your life

The Fabric of the Cosmos, In search of Schrodinger’s Cat, and Stumbling on Happiness

Favorite line from a book

“All that is gold does not glitter…” JRR Tolkein

 Robert Frosts’- “When to the human heart was it ever less than treason/To go with the drift of things to give with grace to reason”

 Any number of verses from Ghalib, perhaps the most quotable (for those who understand hindi) - “Humko Maloom hai zannat ki haqeeqat lekin/Dil ko kush rakhne ke liye ghalib ye khyal accha hai”  Roughly translates to “I know the reality of paradise (utopia) but I prefer to live with the delusion” 

Book you most want to read again for the first time

Catch 22

Book you are most looking forward to reading

Last Man in the Tower by Arvind Adiga

This is the way Vladimir Nabokow’s Laughter In The Dark begins:

‘Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.’

And he starts from here, with his characteristic dazzling skill and irony, and cleverly turns a fable into a chilling, original novel of folly and destruction.

Member of the Reading Group, volunteers with the reading group for children and an avid reader.

The last time Dechen was here helping out with the Young Readers Reading Group, I was stupefied (the children too) by the amount of interesting facts she provided, in a short span of time. Besides being exceptionally well-informed, Dechen’s definitely one with an imagination so dexterous, trust me, you will be impressed! 

On your nightstand now

I am currently reading Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things, a collection of short stories and poems. I also keep a few comic books next to my bed to read whenever the mood strikes like the X-Men, Wolverine or Batman.

Favorite book when you were a child

This is difficult to list as I’ve had so many favourites as a child. Definitely the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M Montgomery, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Goosebumps and Fear Street by R.L Stine, the Battle for the Castle by Elizabeth Winthrop, all of Enid Blyton’s children’s series and most of all White Fang and The Call of the Wild by Jack London.

Your top 5 authors

My top 5 authors would be Robert Jordan first and foremost (The Wheel of Time is an epic fantasy series and my favourite of all time) , Stephen King is an author I almost worship, I love everything he’s written  (admittedly I refuse to acknowledge the existence of some of the not so good ones), J.R.R Tolkien (I obsessed over the Lord of the Rings but I think The Silmarillion is even better and should be read before the former), Anne Rice (The real queen of all vampire and witches lore, she puts everyone else to shame and a certain Twilight writer is a pale shade in comparison), and last but certainly not least is Terry Pratchett, he is absolutely brilliant.

Book you’ve faked reading

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, I’ve only ever read the first 5-6 chapters after which I surrendered and just pretended it must be exactly like the movie.

Book you’re an evangelist for

I spent a lot of time in school and college convincing my friend with great difficulty to read Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Love Story by Erich Segal. By the end of our second year of college she’d finally read both and wept buckets for each.

Book you’ve bought for the cover

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and The Seer and the Glass which was one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made.

Book that changed your life

I think every book I’ve read and enjoyed has had some impact on me but I suppose Stephen king’s It and Anne Rice’s Blood and Gold were the ones to change my life.

Favorite line from a book

From Dune, “Fear is the mind killer, I must not fear” is the only one I can think of right now.

Book you most want to read again for the first time

The Three Musketeers or the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, I think I’d see both in a different way then when I was thirteen.

Book you are most looking forward to reading

This is the easiest question, the final book in the Wheel of Time Series- A Memory of Light. I’ve been waiting ten years for this series to end (it came out in 1990 so a lot of fans have been waiting a lot longer than me) and the final fate of my favourite characters to be decided. 

Much to his dislike we at the Reading Group have categorized Utsav as the sci-fi aficionado (the sci-fi guy to be precise). It’s obvious from the questionnaire below that science fiction is not the only genre on his reading palette.

There aren’t many people I know, who take time off their busy schedule to be part of a book club and help encourage reading by volunteering on Saturdays with our children’s reading group - thank you Utsav. 

On your nightstand now

Call me a schizophrenic reader, but I can rarely confine myself to one book at a time. Right now I’m shuffling between Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Don Quixote by Cervantes, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, a collection of stories called The Best American Noir Of The Century, and another collection called Machine Of Death. Also, I’ve been listening to an audiobook recording of Voltaire’s Candide in my car.

Favorite book when you were a child

The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer- my object of endless hero worship. I was so in love with Becky Thatcher!

Your top 5 authors

Douglas Adams, JRR Tolkien, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Ernest Hemingway, but I’ll give you a different list if you ask me tomorrow.

Book you’ve faked reading

Animal Farm, though I finally did get around to reading it recently.

Book you’re an evangelist for

I’ve been known from time to time to beat people down with the heaviest edition I can find of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Book you’ve bought for the cover

Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke, and I was certainly not disappointed by the contents either.

Book that changed your life

I don’t know how it’s possible to read a book without it changing your life a little, be it ever so imperceptibly. But I suppose that’s just a fancy way of saying “Uhh, dunno, dude..”

Favorite line from a book

“Reality continues to ruin my life”, if you’ll permit me the indulgence of calling a Calvin & Hobbes collection a book.

Book you most want to read again for the first time

I’d love to first unwatch the Lord Of The Rings movies, then unread the books, and then read them all sitting on a misty mountain with the forests rolling below. Bhutan is way more Middle Earth than New Zealand!

Book you are most looking forward to reading

I’m waiting to get my hands on a copy of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick, and I’ve also been waiting on a second volume of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, but that doesn’t seem to be coming out anytime soon!

This week we will be discussing chapter 1-8 of Robert Newton Peck’s ‘A Day No Pigs Would Die’.

Out of a rare American tradition, sweet as hay, grounded in the gentle austerities of the Book of Shaker, and in the Universal countryman’s acceptance of birth, death, and the hard work of wresting a life from the land comes this haunting novel of a Vermont farm boyhood. 

Robert Newton Peck is the author of more than sixty books, including “Horse Thief”, “Cowboy ghost”, and “A Day No Pigs Would Die”.