Looking back, moving on - Jerifa Waheed

I read a number of books in 2011. Of them, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph M Marshall deeply influenced me. The first book is about how a person can live a contented life against all odds. The main character, a college professor, is a cancer patient. He knows he is going to die after six months. So, he makes the most of his life without worrying about his inevitable end. The lecture he gives at the college, an annual event, is his last. Keep Going is about the virtues of pertinacity. The message it brings the reader is: take life positively. Such books inspire us to live with whatever we have rather than run after money all the time.

I wish to read several books in the coming year. I have already bought Paulo Coelho’s The Winner Stands Alone and Kiran Desai’s Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. I am also planning to read books by Bhabendra Nath Saikia. I have got a collection of Saikia’s works from his wife.

Looking back, moving on - Utpal Borpujari

During 2011, the one book I really wanted to finish (am still reading it) was Gil Bettman's First Time Director, a fabulous guide towards making a movie from an author who has developed his theories from practical experience. It's a book that is thoroughly informative and engaging, and I feel it's a must read for anyone who intends to make a movie, or at least know what it takes to make a movie. I also enjoyed reading Manikuntala Bhattacharjya's biographical novel Debabala and Tuna Gautam's novel Aichung. I intend to start off 2012 with Mrinal Talukdar's Mautam, not only because Mrinal is a childhood friend but also because this book, as I understand from a glimpse of the first chapter I had courtesy the author when he had started serialising it in Asomiya Pratidin newspaper's Sambhar, offers a recounting of an important chapter of Northeast India's history in an immensely readable manner.

Looking back, moving on - Subir Bhaumik

I read 38 books this year — more than three a month — amidst the usual 24x7 pressure in the media world. The two books I really enjoyed reading were both written by friends — Parag Khanna and Sugato Bose. Khanna’s The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order was a hit but his latest How to Run the World was just great. His argument is interesting: “The world is entering a perfect storm of calamities: a great game for scarce natural resources, financial instability, environmental stress and failing states. In some respects, it isn’t far off from that medieval landscape of almost a millennium ago. It is a multi-polar, multi-civilisational world in which every empire, city-state, multi-national corporation or mercenary army is out for itself.” I have met Khanna in a few seminars and become friends with him but that’s not why I say he is terrific. Read these two books and you will know why.

Harvard Professor Sugato Bose’s His Majesty’s Opponent is the best critical biography I have read of his great-grandfather Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, in which he does a historian's job so admirably that if his name was not ­­­printed on the book, no one would even know they were related. Subhas Bose is my childhood hero; I even got married on his birth date. This critical biography, again so well written, was absolutely gripping.

In 2012, I am looking forward to reading Bertil Lintner's Great Game East (that is the tentative title) which looks at the Big Power games and how they are affecting the smaller nations of South and Southeast Asia.

Looking back, moving on - Pradipta Borgohain, Professor, Gauhati University

Turkey can boast of distinctive, colourful phases of history –it has a Byzantine past, an Ottoman past, and has gone through a more recent modern phase under the reform-minded despot Kemal Attaturk. After the exacting secularist programs of Attaturk the country is now reverting to a brand of pragmatic Islamism. Ohran Pamuk is arguably Turkey’s best-known face (especially after he won the Nobel prize for Literature) and he has riveted the attention of readers world-wide by chronicling diverse and fascinating aspects of Turkey: its art, history, and often turbulent religious politics. In 2008 he wrote the unusual love story, The Museum of Innocence, which blends and meshes romance, tragedy, popular culture, and even politics, making for a heady reading experience. The publication of his book in 2009 on the craft of the novel, The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist (English translation 2010), saw him sharing with the reader a practicing novelist’s rich, rewarding insights. In the coming years of the decade, we are likely to see many more vibrant and influential works from this writer whom the international community holds in great importance because he is such a sensitive cultural ambassador, moving between different worlds with great aplomb. In 2011, I read his works with great interest.

In 2012, again, I would love to read anything that Pamuk writes, as well as something that Haruki Murakami — author of Kafka on the Shore — writes. I am also looking forward to reading Salman Rushdie's memoir, slated to be published by Random House in 2012.

Looking back, moving on - Jahnavi Barua, Author

The book of the year for me would have to be Erin Morgenstern’s, The Night Circus. It is a story full of whimsy and magic, and is moreover, set far back in the late nineteenth century — ingredients that normally do not appeal to me — but here, I am captivated as soon as I begin to read. With great skill, the author draws the reader into the illusion of the tale and it is with little resistance that even a sceptical reader like me soon surrenders all disbelief and is immersed in the current of the narrative. It is a vast story, although a simple one at the core, and could have been a cumbersome read. Yet, on the other hand, it is almost a page-turner; once you begin to read, it is hard to stop. The language is crisp and engaging and the pace of the narrative keeps the tension taut. All in all, a great read and I would recommend it enthusiastically.

In the coming year, I am looking forward to Aruni Kashyap’s debut novel, scheduled to be out sometime mid-year.

Looking back, moving on - Rita Choudhury, Eminent Assamese Novelist

I have recently read Osthir Prantor, a collection of short stories by Saadat Hasan Manto, translated in Assamese by various writers. The book has been edited by Imran Hussain. Manto writes mainly about Partition and different aspects of that period. The most striking characteristic of this author is that he looks at the whole scenario of Partition as a writer and not as a Muslim. His stories compel the reader to think. I find them very moving.

One of the books that I am really looking forward to reading in 2012 is Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke.

Looking back, moving on - Lou Majaw

I love Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Lord of the Rings series by JRR Tolkien but I am not potty enough for Potter. The Lord of the Rings books tell a story of the beginning of the world. There is so much destruction, warfare, violence and greed. And then there exists this one ring that can control and conquer all. But ultimately love conquers everything. I feel the setting, even though it’s a world of fantasy, mirrors the reality of our society.

I cannot spare as much time as I would like for reading these days. But I have recently started reading a book by Sunanda K Datta-Ray, titled Smash and Grab: The Annexation of Sikkim. The book was banned in 1987 for focusing on some foul political negotiations. It is about the creation of Sikkim and it’s sad how people sell their own country. I would really like to finish reading this book in 2012.

Looking back, moving on - Giripad Dev Choudhury

I have recently written a version of the Mahabharata for young adults in Assamese, Bedabyax Mahabharat. In the course of my research for this book, I read and reread various Mahabharatas in 2011. I had read Rajagopal Acharya’s Mahabharata while in college. This time I enjoyed reading it once again immensely – it is an amazing take on the epic, written on modern lines about the sciences and technologies used in the tale. It does not read like a religious text at all, but like a novel. I have also read the Bengali and Assamese versions of the epic and found it fascinating that certain things dealt with in it are still relevant today. The political machinations, for instance, and the lies and deviousness associated with statecraft have remained the same. Women are still repressed today as they were then, and they are still as strong and incisive – as Gandhari was in cursing Krishna for failing to do what was in his power to do, namely stop the war.

In 2012, I wish to finish reading a set of 18 Sanskrit texts in English and Bengali that I have procured. I am aging now and I wish to read only this kind of books. Of these 18 volumes, I have finished reading the Panchatantra. The moral tales of those days are applicable even today. The story of the foolishness of the learned men who gave life to a tiger’s skeleton and of the practical knowledge of the foolish man who climbed a tree to save his life is a particular favourite of mine. Now I intend to read the rest of the volumes which include the Vedas, the kavyas (like Abhigyan Shakuntalam), the Harshacharita and so on. I also want to write a few books on them myself.