reading habit
Editor’s note
Supriya Nair is co-founder at the media company All Things Small and editor of FiftyTwo, a fantastic platform that publishes one deeply-researched essay on Indian history, politics and culture each week–a number of which have won several awards. She was formerly a books columnist with Mumbai Mirror, and she’s the perfect guest for our Book Addict’s Quiz.
What is your most powerful and/or cherished childhood memory of a book?
Over the pandemic I’ve thought a lot about the libraries I went to as a child. I hate nostalgia but I long to share that sense of books as everyday luxuries with others once again.
<All the more so since all of us are just sitting at home, staring at our Kindles.>
What line of literature or poetry can you quote ad nauseam? Brownie points if you can tell us when and where you quoted it most recently.
I know and think about ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ often. But I have not yet quoted it à propos.
<John Donne! We give this quiz 150/100 already.>
An author you adored as a child but haven’t thought about in years?
Roald Dahl. He’s very funny and wicked and I’ve enjoyed his creepy fiction for adults in my time. But the children in my life are rather too small for him at the moment.
<‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ is essentially ‘The Hunger Games’—a contest that ends in dead kids… except you’re laughing right through it?>
Which book would you gift to your new best friend, and which to your worst enemy?
To a friend, the poems of Eunice de Souza. Poetry is a generous gift: it can contain a thread of the giver’s soul but you don’t have to be a great reader to enjoy it, and you can leave it on the shelf without feeling guilty.
To my worst enemy I would give my favourite novel, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, a frothy and violent tale of revenge. Maybe after I have cast them into ruins, but before I deliver the coup de grâce. . .
<We guess this isn’t the right moment for one of our snarky comments. Umm, yay?>
I would love to see a movie/series adaptation of ___________ starring ____ as _____
Helen DeWitt’s ‘The Last Samurai’ as a Korean drama, starring Jeon Do-yeon as Sybilla; and Amita Kanekar’s ‘Fear of Lions’ as a Hindi movie, starring Seema Biswas as Tara.
<Do-yeon and Biswas—we like it!>
A book review that was better than the book?
“Better” is open to misinterpretation, but Nissim Ezekiel’s essay on ‘An Area of Darkness’ was as necessary as the book. Naipaul’s influence on Indian writing in English is admissible but his influence on male Indian intellects has been very boring.
Which book do you pretend to have read?
It’s really much more fun to tell people that you haven’t read something.
What is the first “forbidden” book you read in secret?
Nothing was forbidden at home. I think Jeffrey Archer’s novels introduced me to sex in literature, which I regret in retrospect. Ugly and male-gazey but also silly.
<Clearly you have not encountered Harold Robbins—best way to ensure young girls take the pledge of abstinence.>
What’s one of the funniest books you’ve ever read? Something apart from Wodehouse, Adams, Durrell et al would be even better.
Anuja Chauhan’s ‘Battle for Bittora’. I’m not sure all the humour holds up—she wouldn’t write that queer bestie the same way today as she did a decade ago, I think—but with her, everything always feels like a giant in-joke. I usually quail at “accented” English on the page but she gets past my misgivings almost every time.
<And anyone who can make Indian politics funny deserves some kind of a literary prize!>
Send us a photo of your tsundoku pile.
<For the sheer size of that monster book holding up the pile, 100/10>
Thank you for playing, Supriya! Be sure to check out FiftyTwo—a brilliant and much-needed source of excellent journalism.