Classics & other favourites

At any point of time, I have some half a dozen new books waiting to be read. Strangely enough, when the lockdown was imposed on March 25, I had none. In the mornings I worked and not having fresh books didn’t matter. But in the evenings it did. 

So, for a while, I passed time by watching films and serials on Netflix. One was truly outstanding — The Two Popes,  with brilliant performances by Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce as the cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was to be elected as Pope Francis after Benedict’s resignation in 2013. The conversations between the two are superb; the issues Bergoglio raises and argues with Benedict are profound; and the manner in which an initially suspicious Benedict warms up to Bergoglio and is then convinced that the Catholic church needs a new direction that cannot be provided by him is played out with rare artistry. Every scene, nay every frame, of the film is brilliant. It touched my soul, like very few films have in recent times.

Other on Netflix were hardy repeats: The Crown, Fauda  including the third series, World War II  (in colour),  Goodfellas, The Departed, The Irishman, The Casino  (I am a huge Scorsese fan). Then I watched some of my old DVDs:  Amarcord  (probably Federico Fellini’s greatest film, an autobiographical piece on when he was a school kid); Pink  (where Sean Penn is outstanding);  Where Eagles Dare  (I love Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in that thoroughly enjoyable shoot-everyone-on-sight and jump-off-the-cable car film); Battle of the Bulge, with Henry Fonda doing a fine role; Patton, with George C Scott as only he could be;  Is Paris Burning; The Longest Day  (a great black and white film starring everyone including John Wayne and Robert Mitchum);  The Great Train Robbery  (with Sean Connery), Name of the Rose (also with Sean Connery as William of Baskerville, a rare film that is as brilliant as the novel by Umberto Eco);  Rashomon; Monty Python’s Life of Brian; Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro;  and  Shonar Kella. Finally, I was filmed up to my eyes and ears.

Then I moved to my older books — communing in equal measure between the informative, the profound and trash. For the nth time, I re-read one of the greatest journalistic books of the time: Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail,  which The Economist  had given a rare tribute “Too good to put down”. It is by far the most definitive piece of consistently readable journalism on the Wall Street crash of 2008. No character is left out. No detail missed. With the story written so well that you really can’t put it down.

After that, I felt like reading trash. It was the time for my favourite pre-war detective, the one and only Bernie Gunther of Berlin, created by Philip Kerr. Till his early death in 2018, Kerr wrote many novels, many of which featured Bernie Gunther. But his first three were brilliant:  March Violets, The Pale Criminal and  A German Requiem.  If you want to get a feel of pre-war Berlin under the increasing hold of the National Socialists and of the great Adlon Hotel by the Brandenburg Gate, you must read these three novels. Penguin now sells these as a single book called Berlin Noir. Get it. Detox yourself from seeing repetitive news on television. And read the three. 

Then, while I was re-reading a brilliant and wickedly provocative early historical work of Simon Schama called Citizens,  about Parisians during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, the lockdown lifted for bookshops to open.

In a trice I went to stock up. Without boring you with what I bought, let me share the three books I’ve enjoyed reading since then. The first is Hilary Mantel’s  The Mirror and the Light,  the third and final of the series on Thomas Cromwell, which started with Wolf Hall followed by Bring Up the Bodies, both of which won the Booker Prize. Frankly, so should the third. It starts with the execution of Anne Boleyn and then goes on to depict the sheer span and exercise of Cromwell’s power, his eventual fall in Henry VIII’s eyes and finally his execution. Exquisitely written as only Ms Mantel can, it is a treat for those who love a great historical novel.

The second is Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Czar. I am a Montefiore fan, and if you haven’t read his Jerusalem,  I would strongly recommend you to do so. This is Montefiore at his best: using hitherto un-accessed archival material to reconstruct a horrific, revelatory yet unforgettable story of Joseph Stalin. 

My third is book of a totally different genre: Bill Bryson’s The Body: A Guide for Occupants. It is about us — our skin, hair, brain, head, mouth and throat, blood circulation, the heart, the guts and much more. Bryson is a rare author who combines enormous data with the style of a brilliantly funny raconteur. It is fat book of 386 pages of running text. But, believe me, it is as close to un-put-down-able as it gets.

Pandemic Perusing is an occasional freewheeling column on books and reading by our writers and reviewers