Siddharth Kapila's All-time Favourite Reads
Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer turned writer whose writing has focussed on issues surrounding Hinduism. His debut book, Tripping Down the Ganga: A Son’s Exploration of Faith (Speaking Tiger) traces his seven-year-long journey along India’s holiest river and his explorations into the nature of faith among believers and skeptics alike.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Faber and Faber
Mistry portrays quotidian middle-class Indian life so effortlessly that you flow with his prose. And as you’re sailing along, out of nowhere, he drops instances of the everyday cruelties we inflict on the most vulnerable in society, leaving you gasping. I was fearful to turn the page. Then, I re-read the book.
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, Puffin
Just before WW2, an English mother takes her children from Britain to the Greek island of Corfu. What ensues is the most hilarious and colourful story of the family’s stay there. At once comical and genuine, this autobiographical book taught me a lot about vividly depicting places and family relationships. I still return to it if I need a pick-me-up, and it never fails to provoke laughter.
Catcher in The Rye by J. D. Salinger, Penguin UK
I first read this all-time classic bildungsroman on the six-hour toy-train ride from Shimla to Kalka. I was so absorbed in it that I hardly looked out the window! I’ve re-read it four times since and loved it just as much on every reading.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, Black Swan
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Faber and Faber
Mistry portrays quotidian middle-class Indian life so effortlessly that you flow with his prose. And as you’re sailing along, out of nowhere, he drops instances of the everyday cruelties we inflict on the most vulnerable in society, leaving you gasping. I was fearful to turn the page. Then, I re-read the book.
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, Puffin
Just before WW2, an English mother takes her children from Britain to the Greek island of Corfu. What ensues is the most hilarious and colourful story of the family’s stay there. At once comical and genuine, this autobiographical book taught me a lot about vividly depicting places and family relationships. I still return to it if I need a pick-me-up, and it never fails to provoke laughter.
Catcher in The Rye by J. D. Salinger, Penguin UK
I first read this all-time classic bildungsroman on the six-hour toy-train ride from Shimla to Kalka. I was so absorbed in it that I hardly looked out the window! I’ve re-read it four times since and loved it just as much on every reading.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, Black Swan
“99.99 per cent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.” I remember this quote and many other facts from this thrilling book that impressed 23-year-old me with how much was packed in our Universe; not least, how much could be fitted into a book in an engaging way. Bryson’s travelogues, especially his Notes from a Small Island, are also tremendous.
Family Life by Akhil Sharma, Penguin
Reading it during the lockdown, I was immediately transported into the private family life of an immigrant Indian family in the US confronted with tragedy. Akhil Sharma has a way of using clean, taut prose to incisive effects. He says so much with so very little.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, RHUK
It’s a tight punch-in-the-gut of a novel that delves into the subjectivity of memory and truth in a way few others have done, using up many more pages. You can read it in a day but will want to re-read it right away.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Fingerprint! Publishing
There’s something both ethereal and hyper-real about Oscar Wilde’s writings. In Dorian Gray, he paints, like the picture mentioned in the book, the most striking images: of human desires, our inner machinations, our enigmas.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, Penguin UK
Being a black gay man in the USA in the 1950s couldn’t have been easy. But being a black gay man writing a novel with a white gay man as the protagonist was groundbreaking. Giovanni’s Room weaves a compelling love story touching on themes of morality and passion while journeying deep into the recesses of the mind.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Penguin
It’s not just its allitera-tive prose (“They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much.”) or the story, which is as old as it’s current, that makes this book exceptional. I think it’s that every time I visit it, I marvel at the magic of literature.
Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes, Bloomsbury
A reflective, poignant book about memory and ageing, the love for a city and a partner, and filled with evocative pictures, this memoir reminded me that it is not so much the story itself but the lucid and candid telling of it that makes a book good.