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Friday 28 October 2016

One line reviews by people who clearly hadn't read the books - Part III

This is the third Part in a series we are doing of one-line reviews of Books - where the reviewer has clearly not actually read the Book itself. This is, let it be noted, an exercise in humour, and no author sentiments, cats, or country musicians are intended to be harmed.

The first Part of this series, along with a detailed introductory note, can be found here:


All entries are by me except where indicated.



21. Adam Bede is George Eliot’s very colonial look at the Catholic Church’s attempts to infiltrate the beedi-manufacturing industry in pre-independence India.



22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is an excellent essay on fairness creams. [Ravi Kumar]



23. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens captures, in eloquent prose, each and every nail-biting moment of IPL Season 8, Match 32, Mumbai Indians vs Kolkata Knight Riders [Ravi Kumar]



24. Midnight’s Children is Salman Rushdie’s startling biography of a night-shift nurse working in the neo-natal ward. [Aindrila Roy]


25. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is a religious discourse on the topology of Gods based on their sizes [Anirban Nanda]


26. Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens’ biography of the erstwhile choreographer whose twisted leg brought a tragic end to his career. [Aindrila Roy]


27. Fury by Salman Rushdie sees The Incredible Hulk making his first appearance in literary fiction. [Ravi Kumar]


28. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is an instructional book about teaching your lamb how to meditate for world peace [Archana Sarat]


29. The Fault in our Stars is a treatise by John Green on the life of Galileo Galilei, and how he challenged the geocentric view of the solar system, leading to his being persecuted and tried by the Church [Rahul Rao]

30. Kim by Rudyard Kipling is an ominous future-fic predicting the fate of North Korea.

For entries from 31-40 in this series, click here.



Sunday 23 October 2016

One line reviews by people who clearly hadn't read the books - Part II

[This is the second Part in a series we are doing of one-line reviews of Books - where the reviewer has clearly not actually read the Book itself. This is, let it be noted, an exercise in humour, and no author sentiments, cats, or country musicians are intended to be harmed.

The first Part of this series, along with a detailed introductory note, can be found here.]

All entries are by me except where indicated.




11. The Return of the Native is Thomas Hardy’s definitive guide for filing of Income-tax returns by native Americans





12. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri is a novel set in the Kurla and Sion railway station premises during the Mumbai monsoons. [Ravi Kumar]




13. Midnight’s Children is a rollicking account of a bunch of rich kids and that one time they were out partying till late in the night, written based on personal experience by Salman Rushdie. [Ravi Kumar]




14. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell is an architecture textbook warning about the importance of building sound structures in windy areas like Chicago.





15. The Godfather by Mario Puzo is a religious treatise about the father of God, who is God.




16. The Inheritance of Loss by Jhumpa Lahiri is an excellent handbook on accounting for family trusts and ‘Association of Persons’ in a tax-efficient manner [Ravi Kumar]





17. Through his critically-acclaimed treatise The Silence of the Lambs, renowned author Thomas Harris has attempted to capture in detail the recent (and as yet unexplained) phenomenon of sheep born mute and the subsequent efforts by the Modi Government to make them bleat once again, louder if possible [Ravi Kumar]




18. How Green was my Valley by Richard Llewellyn is the definitive self-help book for Kashmiri Pandits in exile.




19. The most remarkable aspect of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is that not only does he guide surgeons on how to conduct a heart bypass during load-shedding, but he manages to do this within 110 pages. [Ravi Kumar]




20. Aside from his contribution to the teapoy and coffee table manufacturing industry, Stephen King has also been monumental in making the study of India's technological growth post independence much simpler and much more intriguing, by giving us his book, so aptly titled, IT. [Ravi Kumar]

For entries 21-30 in this series, click here