My sister's favourite novel is Five Point Someone. As a matter of fact, it may be one of the two novels she has ever read. To make my sister stick to a novel until the end is no mean achievement for an author. Besides, this book has been in the Indian bestseller list for a long time.

So, one day, I decided to go through the novel. It was a plot around the life of students at IIT Delhi. I couldn't however relate the life of my institute, IIT Kharagpur, with that of his. Yes there always is the pressure of academics but, if you are even a fraction as serious as the protagonists of this novel are, you can easily manage a good grade point average. Academic load in IITs (except IIT Madras) is not as bad as the author tries to portray. May be it was so in his time.

5.some1 is good fiction, written in a lucid and simple way. The novel has all the masala (I hate to use Bollywood lingo for movies of Karan Johar and associates but couldn't find any better word) to make it an entertaining teen story ' girl, girl's father who happens to be the professor, vodka and suicide. The dope element was found missing in the novel but that is ok. After all, not everyone takes grass in college.

What I wonder is how the novel made it to the bestseller list. Agreed, Chetan Bhagat is a fine storyteller, but that is not all that's required. Flair in narration is essential, but not all to make a novel work. I discussed the book with a few blogger friends who are of the opinion that the book worked because the huge number of engineering students and employees in IT liked it. Perhaps the era of such novels making top business has begun.

Others are of the opinion that the book worked because of the use of the IIT brand name. I don't blame the author for doing that, as every IITian does. A political outfit started by novices called Paritrana made headlines and garnered much attention due to the IIT tag. I shall promptly use the 'Kgp Sento' (Once a Kgpian always a Kgpian) to get a good job or get funding for my start-up if I am ever to start one.

I don't think the IIT tag had much of an effect for the same author came up with another book One night @t the call centre, which was also a success. My sister got a copy of it by shelling only a hundred bucks (cheap!) or so. I came home a few days back after taking clearance from my institute and was strongly recommended the book by my sister.

The dedication page of a novel is where you make a sincere dedication to someone you appreciate or love and the author tries to be funny here too: "To my baby twin boys, and the wonderful woman who created them." Appreciating the mother of your kids isn't bad, but why don't you name her if you sincerely dedicate the book to her?

Then, I move on to the bottom of the page: "with a little bit of help from me". Thank you for the clarification. What does the author try to prove with such a comment in the dedication page?

I am not making an Everest out of an anthill. Nor am I here to review some novel for I closed the book after I found the dedication page itself wanting. Mind you, I am just speculating over the reading habits of an average Indian and I have no enmity whatsoever with the author or the novels, nor do I want to alienate the fans (and there are many) of these novels.

One positive trend I found about Five point someone and One night at call centre is that these books have helped inculcate the reading habit among the Indian youth. Yet, I believe there are many talented writers around who don't get published because the market likes simple easy-going entertainers.

After ditching One night @ call centre, I got hold of a translated copy of the Oriya novel Paraja by Gopinath Mohanty. It is also a work of fiction (on tribes of Koraput) but gives the reader an insight into the life, culture, traditions, thoughts and religion of the tribal people. After reading the book, I felt content that I had understood people and cultures I would otherwise have sneered at. The author made me see what the tribals see, eat what they eat and think the way they think.

I won't comment on what makes a good novel, I would just like to express my own views. A good novel is an entertaining narration of a strong plot embedded by informative description (Amitav Ghosh?), ideological and philosophical insights (likes of Rushdie) and reflections on human character (Guide, The English Teacher R K Narayan still rocks) and emotions (Srikanth or any other book by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee).

There are many writers in regional languages who are extremely talented but don't get published or get published and don't get noticed because the masses prefer English. For such people, translations are available. I would recommend you get hold of any Katha collection of short stories or translated classics by Oxford University Press. If you are into reading good novels, my personal recommendations for this summer are A Damsel in Distress by PG Wodehouse and The Class by Erich Segal.

– Smarak Swain is an undergraduate student at the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur.

Sleepless nights. No-carb diets. A scramble for the best gowns and accessories.  When I first watched the Miss Universe pageant at the impressionable age of 10, these are hardly the things I associated with beauty pageants.

But closer to home behind the glitz and glamour of Femina Miss India, the pageant sounds like pure hell — according to Ira Trivedi's book What Would You Do To Save The World?

Trivedi participated in the pageant in 2004, the year when Bollywood actress Tanushree Dutta won the crown and chronicles her own experiences in the book right from scratch, when she first decided to enter the contest.

This includes having to shoot a portfolio, whipping up an entire wardrobe together at short notice, participating in somewhat agonising training session by various fitness/diction/catwalk experts, dieting, not sleeping, participating in vulgar videos, flashing plastic smiles every time the flashbulbs go off, unearthing pageant controversies, the whole gamut. And of course finally participating in the contest.

All the names have been camouflaged, but not too well (intentionally?). This includes experts, judges, ex-Miss Indias and Ira herself, who is Riya in the book.

Emma Contractor who trains the girls in English diction is possibly Sabira merchant and the cigar-smoking Promod Kakre, India's mad 'ad-man' who has a 'fetish for beautiful young things', is definitely Prahlad Kakkar.

Trivedi's tone is a bit supercilious (this gets rather annoying during the course of the book). It is evident that she feels superior to most of the other contestants because she is smart, educated (she has an economics and international relations major from Wellesley College in the US) and is not dying to make it big in Bollywood, as are most other contestants.

However the book is insightful and takes you on a journey into a parallel universe.

There's the bit where the girls are being interviewed by prominent personalities from different walks of life in a pre-contest round. No real names are used, but I am guessing that Arvind Mahinder is Anand Mahindra, Craggy G is Rocky S, Celine Chandra is Celine Jaitley, Sharmila Ray is Shobha De, Pooja Batra is Pooja Bedi and so on and so forth. The interactions with these personalities made for interesting reading. Some were warm, friendly, chatty, and supportive. And some were cold, supercilious, disinterested. I couldn't make up my mind as who Karen Kapadia was. Kareena Kapoor, maybe?

Disinterested or not, most judges to echo the same home truth — this contest is a stepping-stone to the glamour industry. Some of them wonder what is a Riya doing here?

Participating in Miss India was her fantasy and she gives it a shot, not necessarily a fair one — she does not make it even to the top 10. At the post-contest party she questions the editor-n-chief of a prominent newspaper, why she did not win? She is smart, beautiful, tall, et al. He replies that he marked her very highly, but couldn't guarantee 'what happens at these contests'.

What really happens, the book leads one to wonder too? Ira suspects that the contest is rigged, and suggests that some contestants may have been given easier questions on D-day. Is it sour grapes or is it a judgement reached after some careful analysis? I think the latter.

The bigger question: When girls participate in such pageants with stars in their eyes, do they know what to expect? It doesn't seem to be a bed of roses.

And a myth: the training given to one at the contest is a good grooming experience. Seems more like a cloning experience to me, conducted by eccentric experts.

This book is no piece of literature. However, I think it would prove to be an insightful read for aspiring contestants and those who epitomise beauty pageants.

– Ira Trivedi, What Would You Do To Save The World?, Penguin India, Rs 195.
– Review: Merril Diniz.

British writer Zadie Smith has held off competition from what The Guardian calls “perhaps the strongest Orange shortlist in the prize’s history,” winning this year’s £30,000 award with her novel On Beauty.

She narrowly beat strong contenders like Hilary Mantel (Beyond Black), Sarah Waters (The Night Watch), Carrie Tiffany (Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living), and Nicole Krauss (The History of Love) to win. Before you rush out and pick up a copy though, try her debut novel White Teeth, followed by E M Forster’s Howards End.

The latter is guaranteed to add a whole lot to your reading of On Beauty.

Time magazine's recent list of 10 most anticipated books to come out later this year mentions the first Vikram: Chandra. His novel, Sacred Games, is to be published by HarperCollins in January 2007.

Apparently, at over 1000 pages, the massive novel about detective Sartaj Singh and gangster Ganesh Gaitonde "will do for Indian literature what One Hundred Years of Solitude did for South American literature.” That the report refers to it as Chandra's debut novel proves the writer hasn't done her homework. Or that Chandra's earlier work doesn't really warrant much mention. I'd go with the second possibility.

Then, there's the other Vikram: Seth. According to a report in The Telegraph, he is now intent on turning Chinese poetry into opera.

In collaboration with a composer on "a sort of music-theatre piece", he has written something called Songs in Time of War involving a narrator, singer and violinist. The texts are poems by Seth, translated and adapted from the original Chinese of Du Fu, a Tang Dynasty writer.

It's an intriguing title. The Experts’ Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do. And Samantha Ettus, the woman who put it all together, knows it.

The good thing is, it's also an interesting book for a lazy afternoon. What Ettus has done is get in touch with experts on all kinds of things, who then share their tips and tricks with you. With diagrams too, wherever necessary!

So, whether it's tying a bow tie or changing a tyre, preparing scrambled eggs or how to apply lipstick ' you can get it from people who know what they're talking about. For instance, while journalist Larry King tells you 'how to listen', author Stephen R Covey has pointers on time management.

Some are just funny. Like Letitia Baldrige, a former White House social secretary, explaining how one ought to shake hands. Or Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the New York Times Company, offering tips on how a newspaper should be read. But you also get world-famous tennis player Jennifer Capriati showing you how to hit a tennis ball. See what we mean? All experts. And all perfect for a lazy afternoon.

What helps tremendously is that the book isn't written like a boring school textbook ' which it could easily have turned into. Ettus has enabled the experts' individuality to stay put, giving us varied styles (apart from the tips themselves) in the process.

Here's more of what you can expect: 'How to paint a room', 'How to arrange furniture', 'How to set a formal table', 'How to make a bed', 'How to remove a stain Prepare for  disaster Wash your hands Eat right Paint a room Give a massage Ask someone out Hold a baby

You get the  picture.

On the downside, a lot of stuff here is just pure common sense. Do we really need another person telling us to "Be open to change"? Or someone else saying "Trust your instincts"?

The woman behind it all, Samantha Ettus, is founder and president of a talent brand-management firm called Ettus Media Management, which "develops and hones personality-driven brands." What does that mean? Your guess is as good as ours. She does have a syndicated column called 'Celebrity Assets' in newspapers throughout the US though.

Is it all terribly serious? Or is this just a cheery coffee-table book for those who prefer practicality to frivolity? We'd pick option two.

– The Experts’ Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do, Samantha Ettus, RandomHouse India.

At the heart of this rare book lies a deliciously intriguing question. If a white girl and a black boy of the same age were allowed to live on a deserted island until they were 12, with no-one but a mute nurse as caretaker, which of them would emerge the master and which the slave? While this is a question whose answer would remain eternally gripping, it was particularly relevant in Europe of the 19th century, where Kunal Basu’s Racists unfolds.

The book gets off to a languid, descriptive start. We meet the rather terrifying craniologist Professor Samuel Bates, his unassuming assistant Nicholas Quartley and the flamboyant Monsieur Jean-Louis Belavoix. We approach the island of Arlinda, where Norah, the mute Englishwoman raises the two children. Basu draws out his plot, keeping us a bit unsure, a bit inquisitive but always engaged, with clear descriptive writing that steers well clear of being pedantic. But it is when he descends into describing the nitty-gritty of the experiment that Basu begins to meander.

There’s Bates’ invalid and enormously wealthy wife who is sponsoring it. And her coterie of friends who, we gather, do not like Bates much. There’s the Frenchman’s argument with Bates, which is the catalyst of it but we are told that too much into the story. There’s Quartley’s history. And his feelings for Norah. And there’s her story. And, oh god, the children. Phew. Too much to be told and somehow, Basu unravels the tapestry he had begun to, so cogently, spin. There’s a twist in the tale, which was rather predictable.

About midway through Racists, you don’t know enough about the children and are not offered any chance to speculate on the possible outcome of the entire experiment. There’s too much of everyone else and everything else. And ultimately, the book ends on a very disappointingly tame note. The tragedy of Basu’s book is too much detail. What starts off as a provocative, bold and remarkably well-written book becomes one you just want to finish because you’re eager to know if the white one triumphs over the black or vice versa. But that question is conveniently left unanswered.

It could have been more taut, Basu could have afforded to be less indulgent with some parts of the plot and stayed close to the experiment. Because he has chosen, very bravely, to talk about European racism and to talk about it in very scientific terms. This book is rare because Basu moves away entirely from India and everything Indian. And it is rare because it etches out for itself an ambitious and gripping premise. Where Basu fails is in seeing this through.

Anthony Lane in the May 29 issue of The New Yorker:

“There has been much debate over Dan Brown's novel ever since it was published, in 2003, but no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound reasoning begins reading the book at ten o'clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03, shortly after I read the opening sentence: "Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery." With that one word, "renowned," Brown proves that he hails from the school of elbow-joggers'nervy, worrisome authors who can't stop shoving us along with jabs of information and opinion that we don't yet require.”

More good stuff:
“Even as you clear away the rubble of the prose, what shows through is the folly of the central conceit and, worse still, the pride that the author takes in his theological presumption. How timid'how undefended in their powers of reason'must people be in order to yield to such preening? Are they reading "The Da Vinci Code" because everybody on the subway is doing the same, and, if so, why, when they reach their stop, do they not realize their mistake and leave it on the seat, to be gathered up by the next sucker?”

Ha

A new pocket-sized short-story format series from Picador called Picador Shots.

The shots “aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some of Picador’s greatest authors. They will be contemporarily packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine.”

Ought to cost around Rs 50 each and will include short stories by contemporary writers like Colm Toibin, Tim Winton, Bret Easton Ellis, Haruki Murakami, Matthew Kneale, Nell Freudenberger and Craig Davidson.

Yay