Oliver Twist was the second book by Charles Dickens, and was the first one to portray a child in the main role. The book tells of the struggles of this boy, Oliver Twist, having been born in poverty and suffering through large sections of his life. The book also portrays an England of that time as a time of suffering for the poor (something that typically does not come through many historical books of that period, which concentrate on the richer class of society). Charles Dickens is acknowledged as an all-time great writer, with his portrayal of a life more than ordinary. His characters typically go through great suffering, physical and emotional; sometimes they come out trumps, and many times their condition does not really improve that much. Books by Charles Dickens are a must read for most English literature courses, and once you read the book (and get through the emotions, you realize that these are great books).

Many of Charles Dicken’s books were serialized in magazines, with a chapter appearing in each issue of the magazine. Similarly, Oliver Twist was published in monthly installments in a magazine called ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’ (starting in February 1837 and through to April 1839), with a steel etching by George Cruikshank for every installment. The book has 2 very famous phrases - ‘Please, sir, I want some more’, and ‘The Law is a Ass’.
The story is about this poor orphan (his mother died in childbirth and father was absent) called Oliver Twist, who is forced to spend the first 9 years of his life at a ‘baby farm’ run by a lady called Mrs. Mann, done under the auspices of a law called the Poor Law. In reality, he is brought up in a life of few, with bad conditions and inadequate food. Around his 9th birthday, he is removed from the poorhouse and sent to work in a place with inadequate food. There, through a draw of lots, he utters a line that angers the folks running the establishment, ‘Please, sir, I want some more’. They decided to send him off with anybody who is willing to pay 5 pounds; Oliver manages to avoid being sent off with a chimney sweep, instead he is sent off with Mr. Sowerberry (who is an undertaker for the local parish). Mr. Sowerberry treats Oliver well, and this angers his wife who treats Oliver badly. Similarly, another employee Noah Claypole and the maidservant Charlotte also mistreat Oliver.
Eventually, Oliver attacks Noah after one insult too many, and after being punished for this, Oliver runs away, wandering aimlessly for some time before heading towards London. in the journey, he encounters a gentleman by the name of Jack Dawkins, and this encounter is liable to cause him many problems; Jack Dawkins is not called the ‘Artful Dodger’ for no reasons, he lures Oliver to a lair called Saffron Hill that is the headquarters for the criminal called Fagin. He sets out with Dodger and another boy once for ‘making handkerchiefs’ and realizes too late that their mission is to do pick-pocketing. They are chased, and only Oliver gets arrested. He only escapes prison when a witness clears him. He is taken in by an elderly gentleman called Mr. Brownlow who cares for him.
However, this is shortlived as Fagin gets him back with the help of an accomplice called Nancy; and he is forced to take part in a burglary. The burglary goes bad and Oliver gets shot, however, he is again saved when the occupants of the house take him in and care for him. By this time, Nancy wants to save Oliver. Things start turning bad when a new person called Monks (who wants to destroy Oliver) joins Fagin’s gang. Nancy manages to protect him till her secret of trying to protect Oliver is revealed and her lover Sykes kills her, and is himself killed while escaping.
And then the secret of Monks is revealed; he is Oliver’s half-brother and is searching for Oliver in order to destroy him (not searching out of any love, but more to destroy him). Monks makes up with Oliver reluctantly, and moves to America where he eventually dies in prison after reverting to crime. Fagin is also arrested and sentenced to death. And then things turn out better for Oliver, with finding his mother’s half-sister in the form of Rose. He eventually lives happily ever after with Mr. Brownlow.

This is an epic novel published in 1949 by George Orwell (real name, Eric Arthur Blair). The book is seen as a landmark work, used extensively for teaching, and also as an example of a Government and society heading on the totalitarian path. The book has had a tremendous effect on the mass culture dealing with the rights of individuals versus the tyranny of a Government that believes in keeping an eye on all its citizens, governing their thoughts and actions. The novel led to the popularity of many terms such as ‘Big Brother’, and ‘Orwellian’. It depicted the horror of a society where the Government controlled all aspects of life, and knew everything about every citizen. Soon after, a state came into being where this concept was very close to being achieved. It was in East Germany, a state that had an extensive network of internal spies, and for whom it was claimed that fully a third of the population informed on other people.

The year is 1984, the place is called “chief city of Airstrip One”, a part of the large region known as ‘Oceania’ (the place where the protagonist works is actually London, but a London that has been wracked by civil war after World War 2 and was eventually made a part of Oceania). Oceania is one of the 3 totalitarian states, the other 2 being that which was formed by the USSR, and the third from East Asia. Oceania is a territory or a country that runs through terror and a deep desire to control every citizen. Photos of the leader called ‘Big Brother’ are everwhere with the caption ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’. Every place has a two-way television (the telescreen) in order to make suer that nothing is secret, and there can be no voices raised against the state (people believed to be working against the state are first re-educated so that they start to love the Big Brother, and then they are executed). In addition, society is divided into 3 separate classes: (i) the Inner Party, (ii) the Outer Party, and (iii) the Proles (upper, middle and lower classes, respectively).
The members of the Inner Party and Outer Party were subjected to a thorough control (with the Proles being deemed to be the worker class, with not much worry being given to whether they needed to be indoctrinated). In the midst of all this, you had the protagonist, Winston Smith. Winston works in the aptly named Ministry of Truth where his job is to modify all records such that the Government is always shown to be true (and this includes removing people from photos once a person is deemed to be a unperson). Winston had lost his parents in the civil war, and the English Socialism Movement (”Ingsoc”) had raised him up. However, he was beginning to have his doubts about the system (even while knowing that if these thoughts ever got out, he would be re-educated and then executed).
He meets Julie, a mechanic in the Ministry of Truth. He feels in her a partner in his feelings, and they start having a secret affair (hopefully away from the watchings of the Ministry, which would have believed this affair to be a betrayal and akin to treason). However, they are soon caught, and sent off to re-education in the dreaded Ministry of Love. There, Winston is subject to monologues from O’Brien, a functionary of the Ministry. There you come face to face with the true horror - the Party has only one aim; it has to keep itself in power, and the only way it can do that is by breaking the traditional friend and family bonds a person has. The person can only have a bond with the party and with Big Brother.
In the despairing end, both Winston and Julia are re-educated. You get to feel the absolute sense of despair when you read about when they meet again, with no feelings for each other (not even anger at each other’s betrayal). They are well and truly successful citizens of Oceania now.

For those of you who have not read this novel, but the name sounds somewhat familiar, worry not. You are indeed correct, with the name being similar to the biblical ‘Cain and Abel’. The novel was released in 1980, with was an international bestseller. It remains on the popular list, being among the more famous, if not the most famous, book of Jeffrey Archer. It has been made into a 1985 television mini-series as well. The book is essentially a life story of 2 men, born into 2 entirely different societies and circumstances, but sharing the same date of birth, April 18, 1906. This book is the story of William Lowell Kane, and Wladek Koskiewicz (later to be called Abel Rosnovski), and truth be told, is a great book.

These are 2 men with an entirely different start in life, with one thing in common; both are extremely confident and self-starters. They have built up whatever they currently own in life, and are willing to take a fight all the way to the end.
Kane is born in a rich family, but loses his wealth and inheritance after a series of misfortunes. His father dies in the Titanic disaster, and his mother marries a man who does nothing but squander his wealth and waste it away. Eventually, after his mother dies in a miscarriage, Kane throws his step-father out.
Abel, on the other hand, lives a life of poverty. He is born in a forest, and only gains some hope of a better life due to his intelligence; the local Baron recognizes his intelligence and seeking to get a good companion for his son, adopts Abel. However, soon after, with the First World War breaking out, the Russian Army kills the Baron and his son, rapes Abel’s sister, and takes Abel to Siberia (However, Abel also discovers that the Baron was actually his father, since both of them have only one nipple each). Abel manages to escape from Siberia, and after almost getting his hand amputated in Turkey for stealing, he manages to reach the US.
And this is where the battle between the 2 starts to germinate. After Abel starts to rise by dint of ability, his benefactor suffers because Kane’s bank refuses to lend funds during the depression, and actually commits suicide. Blaming Kane for this, Abel has two ambitions, how to become a successful and rich man, and how to defeat Kane. He has one option, if he can get enough shares of Kane’s bank, he can get Kane kicked off the board (he does not know that Kane was the one who had actually helped him in the past and Kane cannot tell him also).
This rivalry takes a strange turn when the children of both of them meet, fall in love, and marry over the massive objections of both of them. What happens next ? Do these 2 bitter enemies forgive their children and each other, and reconcile with their grandchild ? Read the whole novel, it is a great work of fiction.

Arthur C Clarke was a visionary story teller and science fiction writer. He will forever be remembered for his visionary writings, such as the conceptualization of the geo-stationary communications satellite; and for his great works of fiction such as the ‘Space Odyssey 2001′ (made into a excellent movie). In Space Odyssey 2010, he continues his work, moving ahead the story of the monolith around Jupiter (in a slight adjustment, while 2001 the book was about Saturn, while 2001 the movie was about Jupiter, and hence 2010 the book refers to Jupiter - so readers should not get confused that the first book talks about Saturn while the second book talks about Jupiter).
2001 was in the decade when the quest for the moon was at its peak, and the book was right before the Moon landings were planned, so there was a great more public enthusiasm for the book (more suspense). This book (Odyssey 2) was released in 1982, so it was not directly linked to anything happening in real life, and the space program was ongoing, but that initial romanticism was missing.

This book was set in a period 9 years after the events of 2001, and a joint Soviet-American expedition on Soviet spaceship Alexei Leonov is planned to visit the abandoned Discovery spacecraft so that they can find out what really happened (after all, David Bowman vanished from the viewpoint of Earth (he turned into a starchild)), as well as to determine what happened with regard to the monolith. However, there is a surprise since a spacecraft leaps out of Earth orbit, and is revealed to be a Chinese inter-planetary spacecraft called Tsien, setting a course for Jupiter and expected to reach before the Leonov.
The Tsien lands on Europa to collect water for its propulsion, but runs into an accident when native life forms overwhelm the ship (attracted by the light from the ship) and given the loss of the ship, the crew are destined to die there (the final survivor radioing this information to the arriving Leonov). The Loenov eventually reaches the Discovery and Dr. Chandra manages to reactivate HAL. At the same time, we learn that the ethereal form of David Bowman visits his mother and girlfriend on Earth; he also does investigation of the life forms on Europa and in the cloud region of Jupiter. In the balance between these 2, the life forms on Europa are deemed to have a far greater potential for growth and evolution.
Bowman then appears before Floyd and warns that they must leave Jupiter within 15 days. Naturally, the crew hesitate to believe Floyd until they see the monoliths growing all over Jupiter, at which point an emergency mission is setup, using the Discovery as a booster for increasing speed. And in a scene designed to remind humans about the awesome capabilities of the intelligence behind the monoliths, the monoliths actually increase the density of Jupiter until the planet becomes a star (having achieved nuclear fusion). And there is a final warning that Bowman delivers via HAL, “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.” HAL in turn is absorbed in the monolith just like David Bowman was.

In today’s world, we take underground tunnels, trains, space travel, satellites, etc, as standard everyday things. However, there was a time when there was no concept of having long tunnels under the seabed, or massive bridges many kilometers long; and travel to space was difficult to visualize (astronomy existed, but to visualize precise details was difficult). It is to the credit of the science fiction writers of that time that they were able to visualize underwater, underground, and space travel adventures. One of the most famous science fiction writers of that time was Jules Verne, who wrote about locations and adventures that were unheard of in the 19th century, and many of which bear a good resemblance to what came into reality many many decades later. One of Jules Verne’s novels that makes interesting reading is the tale of a journey underground - A Journey to the Center of the Earth.

However, this novel should be looked upon as fiction. In this particular case, the novel is not very accurate. However, it is still a good work of fiction, and should be read for that reason alone.
The story is that of an eccentric professor, who is attempting to follow in the footsteps of an Icelandic adventurer who had made an epic journey to the center of the earth a long time back, and of which there are not many records. The professor gets his nephew to follow him (well, actually the nephew volunteers for this expedition), and along with a strong, silent, guide, they head off this to this incredible journey.
The professor finds a coded text in a book written by Snorri Sturluson, and is desperate to decode the parchment, going without food if necessary. It is the nephew, Axel who managed to decode the code, finding that it was just written backwards. He is concerned about what his uncle will do if he finds that the text has been decoded, but after 2 more days without food, gives up and tells his uncle about the decoding. The code is very simple: “Descend, bold traveler, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the calendas of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; I have done this, Arne Saknussemm” (the translation in English).
Inspite of the protestations of his nephew, the professor is eager to take this trip, and after arriving in Reykjavík, they hire an Icelandic hunter, Hans Bjelke, as their guide. After some delay due to clouds, they are able to find the starting point, and start a descent into a crater. And then start their adventures, with very sharp descents, almost running out of water once, another time when Axel separates from the others and is only able to find the others due to a strange acoustic phenomenon. They find strange creatures, and a massive underwater cavern with a huge water body; the water body contains many prehistoric creatures.
At a point however, they find that the path is blocked; they decide to blast their way through; however, the resultant upheaval pulls them through the blasted path at a high speed, and soon they find themselves in a close proximity to hot water and magma. Just when they are sure that they will soon boil, they find themselves rising fast, and soon get ejected from a volcano (in Stromboli, in Italy - very far away from their descent point in Iceland). They are all termed as heroes when their journey comes to public knowledge.

David Copperfield is probably the book that is the most autobiographical of Charles Dickens novels, borrowing many sections from his life. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) lived in poverty during his childhood, being one of 8 children. He had little formal education, and yet grew out of his circumstances to become one of the most famous writers of all times. Many of his novels are prescribed reading in English literature courses in schools and colleges. Most of his books are based on human emotions, and contain a fair amount of poverty, human emotions, and so on. They present a vivid picture of human society.

The novel was published in 1850, and like his other novels, appeared in serial form in monthly installments. Dickens also reckoned this book to be his favorite novel. The novel was written in the first person, with David Copperfield being the narrator of the novel. The book has one clear message: The disciplining of the life (emotional and moral) of the hero, presenting a number of characters who are either disciplined, and others who are not disciplined. The book portrays the various characters in terms of the discipline in their life, including Agnes Wickfield, Mr. Peggotty, Uriah Heep, James Steerforth, Betsy Trotwood, Dora Spenlow, etc. Many of these characters have become very famous.
The book is about the life of David Copperfield, who loses his father six months before he his born, and he gets a new stepfather (Mr Edward Murdstone) when David is around 7 years. David cannot stand him or his sister, Jane and gets sent to a boarding school soon after biting his stepfather. When David returns home in a break, he finds that his mother is going to have a baby. However, when his mother and her baby die, David has to return to the home, and gets sent to a factory in London, where David has a doleful and poor experience. Soon, the factory owner goes bankrupt, and David manages to make his way to Dover to be with his aunt, and finally free of his stepfather.
He comes across many more character as he moves to adulthood, some of them good, kind and caring; others were selfish. Eventually, they get some sort of desserts for their acts. David himself finally finds happiness with his second wife, Agnes.

Great Expectations is a great book, an all-time classic. The book is set in a period from 1812 to the winter of 1840, in the England of that time. The book was actually a series in the ‘All the Year Round’. Charles Dickens has always been considered a writer who can write about a whole gamut of human relations, but there has always been a strong element of pathos, of pain, of despair, and totally shies away from portraying life as rosy. Charles Dickens has also been known to write elements from the story of his life in his novels, weaving his life and experiences through the medium of the story. When he wrote this magnificent novel in the form of a series, he had to ensure that each episode was gripping enough that people would wait for the next part of the series to arrive.

The book is divided into 3 stages of the life of the orphan Pip, his young life when she stays with his sister and her husband. He is comfortable with his life, and has no great expectations from it, until the time he meets a very bitter elderly woman Mrs. Havisham (who was jilted on marriage and becomes very bitter towards men) and her adopted daughter Estella. Mrs. Havisham hates men, and has accordingly inculcated a strong feeling of coldness in Estella, something which is to stay with her in life. Pip continues his life, then becomes an apprentice to Joe (his sister’s husband). However, his life is turned upside down when he is informed that he has been bequeathed a large sum of money by an unknown benefactor. Pip’s expectations are now increasing, and his earlier contact with Mrs. Havisham had made him want to be a gentleman when he grows up, and this wealth will help him a lot.
In the second stage, Pip is now living the fine life in London. He is rich, and adopts the customs of the rich and the cultured, very different from his earlier life. In this life, he pursues Estella, who is now a very beautiful, but very cold person (not caring much about his feelings); he has a rival in the form of Bentley Drummle, whom Pip despises and cannot understand why Estella sees him. Pip has assumed that his provider is in fact Mrs. Havisham, and this also creates a lot of jealousy in her other relatives who are looking forward to her property. However, this Pip has now developed a class attitude, and is ashamed of the lower status of Joe, and is embarrassed when Joe visits. And then he learns that his benefactor is in fact a former convict (who Pip had helped many years back), Abel Magwitch.
In the third stage, this is when things start going downhill. Estella does not acknowledge his advances, and Pip is repulsed by the knowledge that his benefactor was a former convict, and he starts to acknowledge that the allowances will now stop coming. He plans a way to get Magwitch to leave the country, since if he is caught, he will be sentenced to a harsh term. He creates a great plan, but the plan eventually fails and Magwitch is caught and sent to jail, where he dies (but not before Pip visits him and has already warmed to him). In the end, all of Pip’s Great Expectations come to naught, and he learns to live a life without such high expectations.

‘Bonefire of the Vanities’, published in 1987, a biting portrayal of the New York of the 1980’s was a major commercial success. It was not author Tom Wolfe’s first work (he had written journalistic articles and non-fiction books before this work), but the success of this book must have left him spell-bound. The book was eventually made into a motion picture of the same name, with some great credentials (movie ‘Bonefire of the Vanities’, released in 1990, was directed by Brian DePalma, and starred such name as Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Melanie Griffith). Part of the reason why the novel struck such a resounding chord could because the characters could be been as representing many of the character flaws of important public figures.

The characters themselves represent the worst of the sins of greed, adultery, ambition, the preoccupation with status and wealth, the arrogance of the wealthy and the insurrection type violence of the deprived, the way in which you can actually depend on no one, and the special talents of wannabe and existing politicians. Imagine what happens when a highly arrogant and wealthy banker gets hit by about everything that he can be hit with and becomes the target for people wanting to use him to advance their own career. In addition, New York city seems like a perfect spot for such a novel to be set - it is probably the most melting point type of city in the world (with unprecedented riches and the most poor and deprived).
The book is about the powerful and WASP banker Sherman McCoy, arrogant in his status and wealth (he is atop the banking circles of New York). He is already distant from his wife, and is in the car with his mistress, Maria Ruskin - this is when his troubles start. He accidentally enters the Bronx, and in a confrontation with some muggers, his mistress takes over the wheel and hits one of them, young Henry Lamb.
This accident becomes the Saviour for a number of people, all of whom will use this incident and the powerful symbol of a white powerful man hitting a poor and powerless young black man. So, Peter Fallow, a drunk washed out reporter, gets a chance to take on this assignment, and uses this to powerful advantage, writing a series of articles based on this incident, and against McCoy when it becomes clear that it was his car that was involved. McCoy is also ditched by his mistress who soon makes it clear that she was not involved in the accident.
What makes matter worse is the involvement of a local religious leader with political aspirations, Reverend Bacon (seemingly styled on the real life Rev Al Sharpton), who wants to utilize this accident to further his career as the one who really cares for the African-American community. And to increase the forces against McCoy, he is also targeted by the district attorney, Abe Weiss, who is up for re-election and sees this trial as a way to consolidate votes behind him (and will do anything to get a conviction). With all these factors against him, McCoy is in for it, and is soon up for trial. What happens next ?

“Desperately Seeking Paradise” is a spiritual-cum-philosophical autobiography by British author and scholar, Ziauddin Sardar. In this book, the author is in search of the right approach for paradise (and please do not take it literally) - one notion which is termed as the prime objective for every Muslim. In his search, he joins one sect (or thought of school) and then gets dejected by its approach/thoughts/people etc… and then leaves it to join another and same thing happens there as well and then another and so on… His search takes him from Mecca to Bejing and all the other places, in between meeting with people like Zia-ul-Haq to Anwar Ibrahim, even attending a mujaheddin meeting with Osama Bin Laden in attendance, and him running into Iran’s military police in times of Ayotollah. There is an entire chapter dedicated on ‘The Satanic Verses’ controversy - talking about how the author felt bad about ‘The Satanic Verses’ and the Ayotollah’s fatwa as well. Here the author regrets that the core issue was buried under whatever political drama that took place around the controversy.

The book is filled with lots of information about various aspects of Islam, ranging from different terms associated with it to the current as well as traditional interpretation of different things associated. He also looks into different school of thoughts and poses a not-so-rosy picture of things. This book was written in pre-Iran, pre-Iraq, pre-Afghanistan era and with his descriptions one can relate to what is happening now and how its roots are related to those times only. The authors quest for a new initiative about “paradise-seeking” is not accepted in the traditionalist societies where the true meaning of Islam has been confined to having a beard sometimes. He also tries to understand what does Sharia means in actual terms and how it should be adapted in modern times - again he finds that societies just want Islam in totality but are never open to understand the totality itself.

I am not sure what to make out of this book - I am as confused about this book as the author is about his search. The main problem as seen by the author is that nobody is willing to listen to modernist Islamic views. Overall, a nice read for me at least - for understanding more about Islam and another face of it where there are modernist thoughts in plenty.

Isaac Asimov was one of the pioneers of the field of writing about robotics, and was most famous for his creation of the Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
These seem simple enough, but as with laws for humans, there can be many interpretations and conflicts that can arise out of using these laws. ‘The Rest of the Robots’ is a set of 8 short stories that all deal with robots, and many of them also have references to these laws as well as situations arising out of problems with the use of these laws. I found the collection to be very readable and interesting, and considering that most of these stories are more than 50 years old, not dated in any way. We have not had the development of humanoid robotics to the extent that Asimov had written about, so many of these are stories that we will still need to worry about.

The collection was released in 1964, and hence you can consider the book to be a very old book indeed, and yet when I was browsing through some Asimov books on an online bookshop, I found it easily available, which means there is a regular demand for it. The book starts out with a foreword by Asimov in which he explains about how books used to be about robots, they were seen as being part of the Frankenstein complex, where man created robots, and robots would destroy man, and this happened again and again. Asimov chose to move away from this concept, and wrote stories with far more complexity and depth.
The book has 8 short stories:
1. Robot AL-76 goes astray: A story in which a robot bound for the moon somehow manages to get loose on earth, and has to try and figure out its surroundings, especially when it has been fed only information about the moon. It creates a great new machine, but then destroys it when ordered to in mistake. A comedy.
2. Victory international: About projecting the power of robots, especially those constructed with a great deal of care to make extra-strong so that they can impress the ferocious inhabitants of Jupiter.
3. First law: About an exception when the power of the First Law cannot suppress the maternal instincts of a robot, and the robot is willing to let a human die.
4. Let’s get together: A political story about robots being used as terrorists. Showcases one of the biggest fears of humanoid terrorists.
5. Satisfaction guaranteed: One of the most complex stories of this volume. Deals with human emotions such as jealousy, envy and a feeling of low confidence, and how this interfaces with the First law.
6. Risk: About how the human mind can still be a much better instrument to deal with uncertainty and complexity rather than even the most complex positronic brain.
7. Lenny: About the maternal instinct in even the most seemingly hard-boiled scientist can come about when dealing with an under-developed robot.
8. Galley slave: A story which deals with the fear in a human about the advent of robotics and how this could totally destroy human creativity in a slow and gradual way.
The last 4 stories also had the character of Dr. Susan Calvin, whom Asimov used as a representative of the robopshycologist, the head in that area for US Robotics, and a pioneer in the development of robots.