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The Old Man and the Sea is a classic authored by Ernest Hemingway. It's a Novella with nearly 100 pages.  I haven't read any work by Ernest Hemingway earlier. This novella is very impressive. The life of Ernest Hemingway is even more impressive than the novella, from the short biography provided at the beginning of this book. He was a Cub Reporter - Ambulance Driver on the Italian Front - Journalist - Interested in Bullfighting - Deep sea fishing. Wow :) So he doesn't fit into the stereotype that most of us maintain for writers..  As the title says, it is a story of an old fisherman Santiago in Havana, Cuba. Two other characters from the story are a boy named Manolin and a big Marlin fish that Santiago catches in the deep sea. The story begins with the locals calling him the most unlucky person (Salao) as he wasn't able to catch a single fish in the last 84 days. The boy who was helping the Old man was also stopped by his parents citing his lack of luck.  Determined to ...

To make it one word "Wonderful"  is the right adjective to describe this book. Pallavi Iyer's (   Smoke and Mirros: An Experience of China )   flow of the book seems to be very nice.. (Though I  read the tamil translation by Raman Raja). "What do we know about China?... Nothing" is one of the few catchy lines in the first page of the book. China has been a black box for majority of us here. The book is not a simple travelogue. You can really get a feel of China by reading this book. Few things that attracted me: How controlled is China. Strict reciprocal to India. Chinese language has no characters to represent foreign names. Even names have to be "translated" to Chinese to represent. Demolishing most of the structures in Beijing for the Olympics (without any opposition) ... Think of the scenario here where even the smallest of smallest roadside temple demolition would raise lots of criticism.  Internal Passport mechanism to control the...

Till from the early days I am a big fan of writer Sujatha. A true versatile writer. Works of writer Sujatha would make me free from all the day to day hassles. Frankly speaking, apart from Sujatha I haven't read much of others in Tamil. Recently I heard about the authour Era. Murugan இரா. முருகன். One of his works Moondru Viral is about the life of a Software engineer, depicted in a humorous manner. Many good comments were there.. Thought of buying the book in Pondicherry. Fortunately found it online in an online store http://nhm.in/shop/978-81-8368-073-8.html . I have made an order there today.. Eagerly waiting for the delivery of the book.. Would write more about மூன்று விரல் - Moondru Viral after reading it..