Comic books, once considered as shallow and decried, have revived in the past 20 years. With the blockbuster movies from the Marvel and DC stables, they are now a serious business. Reading as a hobby, a guilty pleasure and an addiction is something that is dying out in this technology-obsessed world. Youngsters nowadays are immersed...
The author was so entranced by the character of Robin Hood that he even toyed with the idea of becoming an outlaw himself. Later he decided to dive into similar characters instead, and found a host of immensely readable books featuring them — AJ Raffles, Simon Templar and Norman Conquest among them
The author was quite an ‘MCP’ as a seven-year-old, looking down upon comic books featuring girls as main characters, until Little Lulu came along Wonder Woman — pah!
The author comes from a family of hard-core rationalists, but his overly active imagination prevented him from sleeping well after reading horror novels, forcing him to make a cross out of the pages of his algebra notebook once to keep the Lord of the Night away
There are a host of relatively unsung writers who are as witty as Jerome K Jerome or Mark Twain, and are worthy of reading and even re-reading, says the author, giving a glimpse of some of his favourites -- Richard Armour, Tom Sharpe and Henry Cecil among them
Agatha Christie might hold the record as the world’s best-selling fiction writer, but the author was disappointed by the first novel of hers he chanced upon at the age of 14. But he didn’t give up, and considers Christie unparalleled in cleverly deceiving the reader.
Dr. Sadanam K Harikumar’s book Structural components of Kathakali belongs to a class of its own for its holistic analysis of the dance-drama in a manner hitherto not attempted by any critic or writer.
The author first took up an Enid Blyton book grudgingly, but was so caught up that he went on to read almost all her various series and was soon hooked firmly on to reading. Despite having outgrown Blyton, he still occasionally rereads an adventure story, just for the ‘unalloyed enjoyment’ of it.
The comic book culture, thought to have died a slow death, has seen a revival in the past 20 years, thanks to digitisation of the original print comics and a series of VFX heavy movies featuring the superheroes. Original copies are highly coveted by collectors today, and the fans are no longer children but young adults.
Vineeth Abraham calls himself a “complete, utter and unapologetic bibliophile”. In Shelf Life, Abraham writes about reading, books, and beyond.