The Year in Books

How spooky then to discover a book of conversations with Shields by a Canadian broadcaster (Random Illuminations by Eleanor Wachtel) that opens with these words: “Not long ago,I was sitting in a restaurant on the Bosphorus in Istanbul with some Turkish academics discussing a new translation of a novel by their Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. Somehow in the conversation,Carol Shields’s name was mentioned. How wonderful a writer she is,said one; how fine her sense of language,said another. ‘I’ve read all her books except The Box Garden,’ she continued. ‘I wanted to save one,to know it was there waiting for me.’”

The Unread Book. As 2010 winds down to a close,and we play that parlour game of rounding up our favourites,recalling passages from the good and the memorable publications of the year,collating a year’s worth of experiences through memories of where we read the books,and when and why,and occasionally fishing out the tangential thoughts that floated through our minds when certain books were held in our hands,think a bit about the unread books.

Of course,at December-end unread books weigh us down with guilt. How untrue we must have been to our reading selves to not find the time to read Salman Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life? (Perhaps that too in a year when we reread Haroun and the Sea of Stories.)

But the unread book is also a vehicle for intellectual detective work we undertake constantly. The information space is thick with clues. Whether it be Jonathan Franzen’s long-awaited epic novel Freedom,or George W Bush’s mishmash of a presidential memoir,Decision Points,there is so much chatter that if you are not first in the queue at the bookshop to grab a copy and begin reading it on the way out,you will know certain things about it before being done with the book yourself. In any case,most us are not enamoured of the pure reading experience,where the reader and the book are set apart,without being influenced by reviews,interviews,debates and context.

Try this experiment: pick a big,influential book you have not read this year and talk of it as if you have subjected it to deep reading and it’s actually your favourite book of the year. It’s a disturbing task,because you may just find that you can mask your disconnect from the actual text. But in an oblique way,the year-end stocktaking,and the fabrication it almost inevitably allows,shines a light on the essence of being a reader. It’s a point French philosopher Pierre Bayard made playfully and subversively a couple of years ago in his book,How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.

So here are my favourite books of the year,some read and possibly the odd one unread:

1. Besieged: Voices from Delhi,1857 — compiled and translated by Mahmood Farooqui

2. Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power — Robert D Kaplan

3. Freedom: A Novel — Jonathan Franzen

4. The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama — David Remnick

5. Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe — Roger Penrose

6. Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy — Raghuram Rajan

7. To the End of the Land — David Grossman

8. The Art of Choosing — Sheena Iyengar

9. Open: An Autobiography —Andre Agassi

The last one is technically from 2009,but it’s one I carried forward to read this year.

mini.kapoor@expressindia.com