What's On Your Bookshelf?: Ambarin Afsar Recommends Four Great Books

What’s On Your Bookshelf is a new series we’re introducing, through which we hope to expose our readers to a wide variety of books on literature, design, art and much more. The idea behind it is to get a glimpse into how and what people read and why they read what they do, while simultaneously profiling an aspect of their personality through their books.

Ambarin Afsar lives and works in Mumbai, India. Professionally, she writes and shoots for whoever has need of an oddjob flunkie. She is an avid reader and is still cataloguing all the books she’s read so far on GoodReads. Her virtual shelf houses more than 700 books. She likes travelling as much as she can, and while she has not ventured too far from her city, she considers it fertile ground for many adventures and serendipitous meetings. She believes that her photographs are little messages sent by her heart to her hands. You could say that they are romantic in nature, just as falling in love with a moment, a passing stranger, or an untouched vista is romantic. From cityscapes to urban grunge, her body of work is probably as hard to pin down and describe as a city that is as large and dynamic as Mumbai. She also enjoys baking biscuits, cookies and cakes.

I. Name a few books on your bookshelf, why you’re recommending them and the moments in your life you associate with each.

My bookshelf usually brims over to the couch or the chair or the table or the floor or any other empty surface that is available. So, the ones that I’d pick up would have to be the ones I can spot easily. I’m consciously going to talk about science-fiction and fantasy because while I love reading all sorts of stories, it is these ones that I enjoy the most, and I’d like to believe that most of us would enjoy these a lot, if we took away the tag that comes along with sci-fi. They’re not so complex that you wouldn’t understand their premise; they’re not that confusing, and all the maps are actually quite fun. I’m sort of going to tie in magical realism to fantasy, too, because I think they’re two sides of the same coin. 

Oh, also, I’m going to be giving you entire series recommendations, so hold tight and here goes:

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson: This is a series I am currently reading, and so it has to find a place on this list, but that’s not the only reason. You can read reviews and they’ll all talk about rich worlds and the horrors and pathos of war and the camaraderie of soldiers, but this series is so much more than that. There’s just so much about concepts like light, dark and shadow, mortality and destruction, the things that the night brings, the fears that hide within us, faith and belief, theism and atheism, gods and kings, the cold light of day and our faults that it hides in plain view, and a lot more than I can probably classify here. To give you a taste, here are a couple of quotes from one of the books in the series:

“Children are dying.”

Lull nodded. “That’s a succinct summary of humankind, I’d say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.”

- Deadhouse Gates

“Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.

Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers, and is not threatened by them.

Show me a god that understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.” 

- The Bonehunters

Oh, and there’s a lot of humour too. There’s a character in here that talks out loud to himself and blurts everything on his mind to the very people who probably shouldn’t hear any of it. Is he simple in the head or is he playing a larger game? The books keep you guessing. That’s why I love them so much. Steven Erikson, the author, gives you a pretty large heads-up before you dive into the books. He tells you that if you stick through the first quarter of the first book, you’re likely to stick it out through the remainder of it. I think that’s pretty darn accurate.

A Song for Lya/Tuf Voyaging/Wild Cards by George R. R. Martin: Yes, I’m talking about GRRM of the Game of Thrones notoriety. Did you know he wrote sci-fi? No? Go pick up a copy of A Song for Lya or Tuf Voyaging or his epic editorial venture, Wild Cards, which I personally believe is harder to put together than A Song of Ice and Fire.

A Song for Lya is a haunting novella about two telepaths that will only take you about an hour or two to finish, and will give you an insight into Martin’s world of space fiction.
Tuf Voyaging, as Wikipedia describes it, is a novel that has the (mis)adventures of Haviland Tuf, an exceptionally tall, bald, very pale, overweight, phlegmatic, vegetarian, cat-loving but otherwise solitary space trader. Is it giving you reboots of Adams’ toothbrush and towel-toting Hitchhiker? Well, then you’re in for a crazy, crazy ride. Martin has a bizarre sense of humour and nothing gives him more opportunities than Tuf Voyaging, no, not even Tyrion Lannister.

Wild Cards is a… how do I describe it? Well, it is a clusterfuck that is presided over by George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass. And I mean it in the most glowing, admiring way ever. The Wild Cards universe is based on the premise that a virus causes people to ‘draw’ a wild card that gives them certain abilities or disabilities. An Ace gives you superpowers, a Deuce is only minor powers, a Joker gives can cause your appearance to change dramatically, and give you abilities or disabilities, based on how you look at it. The people who draw the Black Queen die horribly. A new social order emerges with Aces on the top rung (or is it) and Jokers considered as outcasts, owing to their radically strange appearances. From espionage and presidential elections, to crime and war, Wild Cards will take you on a ride worthy of its title. GRRM and Melinda Snodgrass edit and also author parts of this magnum opus that features different writers for different characters, while following a few larger common threads and plotlines. Every third book in the series is a mosaic novel, and the series also has standalone novels written by a single author. How GRRM and Melinda put this together, is anybody’s guess.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez: Start with Love in the Time of Cholera, because it is important to be guided quite gently into Márquez’s world of mirrors, some of which can be broken and jagged and can cut you quite deeply. Love in the Time of Cholera is also fierce, obsessive and passionate in its own way, but since it fits more easily into the “I’ve loved you forever” narrative that most of us secretly cherish, it becomes an absorbing introduction to Márquez.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami: I would suggest 1Q84, once again a sort of a love story set between parallel words, and also my introduction to Murakami. This one is also special because it looks at writers and writing and the power of stories and the past and history and memory. All of which happen to be my favourite themes. Then you can navigate the treacherous waters of Murakami’s words, you never know what you might find floating in them.

II. At this point in your life, If you were to write a book, what do you think it would be about?

I’m not really sure I could write a book. Prose is not really my forte and I’ve read a lot of stories, but that doesn’t make me a good storyteller. Some of my friends want to write children’s books and I think that is amazing, because that’s where all of us learn how to be good people, and learn that it is okay to daydream sometimes.

III. If your books could say something about you, what do you think they’d say?

That I’m a forgetful loon bird and I really wish people would stop taking life so anxiously and seriously. A little more compassion and happiness would help.

Quick Questions:

Describe your ideal reading experience: I love food, so yes, plenty of food to go with my books, please. A steaming cup of any sort of herbal infusion tea, coupled with a comfortable bed to doze off on and I’m a happy camper. I don’t really like reading by the beach because I think the sea is quite overwhelming a presence on its own. Mountains and winter/monsoon mornings are more accommodating of us people with short attention spans.

E-book or real book: I’m not a purist, I’m a fan of convenience. Anything that lets me read, be it on a screen or against paper, is welcome.

The worst kind of people to lend your books to: The ones who never give them back. And because I’m so forgetful, I won’t even remember who I lent it to, or when.

One fictional character from the books you’ve read that you’d like to be for a day: I’d love to be Sophie Hatter from Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, which was made into an animated movie of the same name by Studio Ghibli.

A literary genre you particularly enjoy: Children’s fiction, science fiction and fantasy.

One author no one should die without reading: Rainer Maria Rilke