25 Lifelong Friends

There are some topics that are so close to my heart that I don’t write about them for fear of going on and on. But I guess some things are just destined to be. Jennifer tagged me to make a list of 25 writers who have influenced me most. Now I’m a person whose life has been about her books. I was reading before I had learnt to walk. The way I think, the way I live, the way I talk, the way I write, the way I dream, the way I love, have all been shaped by the books that I’ve read.
It’s difficult to limit myself to 25, but I’ve tried, and come up with this list of people whose books I find myself going back to again and again. The list is not in any specific order, except for Marquez, who’ll always come first in any list of mine. And oh, though they’ve influenced me in no small way, I’m saving the Bengali writers for another list, another day.
The following list includes the names of 25 of my favorite writers and those books of theirs that I’ve read and loved. But I’m not writing about why I love them. If you’ve read them, you’ll know. If you haven’t, I just hope that some day in your busy lives you'll find the time to do so. And then you'll know.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – (One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera; Of Love and Other Demons; Chronicles of a Death Foretold; Strange Pilgrims; The General in His Labyrinth)
Milan Kundera – (The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Life is Elsewhere; The Joke; Farewell Waltz)
Ian McEwan – (In Between the Sheets; Amsterdam; Atonement; Saturday)
Arundhati Roy - (The God of Small Things)
Alexander McCall Smith – (The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series)
Jhumpa Lahiri – (The Interpreter of Maladies; Namesake; Unaccustomed Earth)
Joseph Heller – (Catch 22, Closing Time)

Helen Fielding – (Bridget Jones’ Diary; The Edge of Reason)

Hector Hugh Munro (Saki) – (All the short stories)
Melissa Banks – (The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing; The Wonder Spot)
J.R.R. Tolkiens – (The Lord of the Rings)
Pablo Neruda – (all poems)

Amitav Ghosh – (Hungry Tide; The Glass Palace; The Circle of Reason; Sea of Poppies)
J.K. Rowling – (The Harry Potter series)

Harper Lee – (To Kill a Mockingbird)

Ogden Nash – (All poems)
Alex Hailey – (Roots; Queen)
Franz Kafka – (Metamorphosis and other stories)

John Steinbeck - (The Grapes of Wrath; Travels with Charlie)
J.M. Coetze – (Disgrace)
Arthur Golden – (Memoirs of a Geisha)

Yann Martel – (Life of Pi)
Sue Townsend – (The Adrian Mole series)

Vladimir Nabokov – (Lolita)

Roald Dahl – (All the creepy short stories)

Upamanyu Chatterjee - (English, August)

John Updike - (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; Rabbit at Rest)


I tag:-Quaint Murmur, because her writing is so beautiful there is no way she’s not a reader.Happy, because I midwifed his lust for booksChirpy Paro, because she loves to talk booksAniket, because I want to know what inspires a man to write so deliciouslyShubhodip, because I know a bibliophile when I see one


Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!