Home and away: A holiday reading list
Editor’s note: Ditching the end-of-year best books list (yawn), we asked writer Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan to curate a list of her faves books to read on long breaks—the jaldi fun stuff and the binge-worthy kind.
Written by: Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of eight books, across genres: literary fiction, mythological reinterpretations, young adult and short stories. Her latest book is ‘Soft Animal’, published by Penguin Random House in 2023. She lives in Berlin and writes about it in her newsletter The Internet: Personified.
In the spirit of the holidays, this list is divided into massive immersive books you can read at home during your winter break and (slightly lighter) books you can take with you to the warmer or colder holiday destination of your choice.
Books to stay home with
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard: This is a five-book series starting with ‘The Light Years’—already cheating and so quickly off the bat, I know! But I would argue that the Cazalets themselves represent a single book, which for the sake of space has been divided into five. The books deal with a particular British family (the Cazalets) right before, during and right after World War 2. The characters shift, the places are vivid and evocative and you inhabit them so deeply that you literally won’t be able to read anything new once you’ve devoured the entire series. Luckily, Howard had a tremendous backlist. My own personal endorsement: I had to leave all my books behind in Delhi when I moved to Berlin but I sacrificed valuable suitcase space to bring all five books with me to my new home so I could reach for them whenever I wanted.
11/22/63 by Stephen King: I came late in life to Stephen King, only about 10 years ago when I was travelling somewhere (Goa?) and the place I was staying had a copy of ‘Duma Key’ which I picked up out of curiosity and then couldn’t abandon. After that, every time I was in a reading slump I turned to King, another person with an extensive backlist, and I was always lifted right out of it (usually with one hand over my eyes, because his stories are ‘creepy.’) After all my reading, I can confidently say that ‘11/22/63’ is one of his best, a time travel story for people who don’t like sci-fi, light on the horror for the squeamish, but scaled way up on the sense of impending doom. That can be hard to sustain over 849 pages but he does it anyway. The story in brief: a man finds a portal in time and tries to go back to 1963 to stop the JFK assassination. Good news: you don’t need to know ‘anything’ about American politics to enjoy it.
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters: Do you know Sarah Waters? She wrote a haunted house story that I had to do a Joey with and stuff in my freezer to stop it from escaping. (That one’s called ‘A Little Stranger’ and it’s also a good book to read during your holidays—with the lights on.) The best part of ‘Fingersmith’ is that halfway through, the book is turned completely on its head in a twist to end all twists. It’s the story of a long con, set in Victorian era England and that is literally all I’m going to tell you about it. As a further reward, once you’re done, you can watch the faithful film adaptation directed by Park Chan-Wook, faithful in every way except the setting—here it’s 1930s Korea.
Ghosts, Monsters and Demons of India by J Furcifer Bhairav and Rakesh Khanna: First, author Robin Sloan recommended this several times in his excellent newsletter. Second, I was at a friend’s house for lunch and I found the gorgeous hardbound edition and then spent some anti-social time just going through the pages and cooing with pleasure to myself. Third, my mother was due to visit me from Delhi and asked if she should bring any books so it was a great time to acquire a copy for myself.
It’s incredible. Published by Blaft, it features stories and legends of ghosts and other creepy-crawlies collected from the entire length and breadth of the country. Not only does it make for fascinating reading, it’s also just a good resource to have as a writer in general. (The other book my mother brought me was the even more wrist-breaking ‘Penguin Book of Indian Poets’ by Jeet Thayil which I also can recommend highly as one to own but not really a holiday read.)
Books to take with you
The Beach by Alex Garland: You’ve probably seen the movie with Leo DiCaprio looking sweaty and young and wandering around Khao San road with his backpack and the movie is good, but nothing is ever as good as the book, is it? The movie moves the plot along for Hollywood, the book has more breathing space to shade in nuances. The story: foreign backpackers in Thailand hear of a mysterious beach free from tourists (ironic) and set up a community there. ‘Lord of the Flies’-style sh*t goes down but not before an absolutely delicious exploration of how power corrupts. This book also has romantic associations for me—my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I actually read it out loud to each other as we wandered through Thailand. Above all though, it’s just a bloody good story.
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch: Are you the sort of person who loves showing off on holiday about how much you know and generally being insufferable with all your knowledge? ME TOO! Travel companions might give you a pass after you’ve read this urban fantasy novel—and first in a series—because it’s not just a recap of ‘here’s where Anne Boleyn was beheaded’. It’s got hidden gems of history that you’d never have learned about from a tour guide—like plums in a pudding, within an exciting propulsive plot about magic policemen in London. I read it on my recent trip to that city and after a while—maybe out of self defence—my husband decided to read the books too so both of us were showing off to each other. Good times.
Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Ostcamp: Sure, you’ve read the World War II novels and the Berlin Wall novels. But to truly sound like an insider (even when you’re a tourist), you’ve got to have heard of Marzahn.It’s not the most exciting neighbourhood and has a reputation for being crime-ridden, but Marzahn is where the really old school East Berliners live—in their prefab apartments! Some of them make their way into this book about ageing and loneliness, for so many of her clientele are pensioners, but it’s also a story about love. I read it this year and it has made my best books list for sure.
The Agony And The Ecstasy by Irving Stone: If you were a bookish teenager in the mid-90s, chances are you’ve already read this book. My boarding school bestie and I shared our copy and devoured it. On a trip to Italy pre-COVID, I read it again and was no less enchanted. It’s the life story of Michelangelo who seems to be built into the fabric of Italy, on a recent trip to Rome, no one could shut up about him. Everywhere you looked, there was something he touched or influenced. The story begins with a strong-willed artistic boy of thirteen and then goes on to cover his whole life. I’ll never forget the chapters where he learns human anatomy by looking at cadavers after hours, something he could have been severely punished for, but whose effects show in all his work. And because it’s a novel, it moves along propulsively, until you forget this is an actual real life person. Then you come across some of his art and it’s like you ‘know it,’ because you know ‘him’.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer: Perhaps don’t read this if you’re planning a trek to base camp yourself, but it’s incredibly atmospheric. Read it, like I did (in Ladakh, not Nepal), surrounded by icy mountains, thinking of the fate of people who climb them, thinking of how easily something could go wrong, and then congratulate yourself on your good sense to stay in bed and not try to climb something just because it’s there.
Home by Manju Kapur: How can I leave my home town out of this? Maybe you’ve got a big wedding in Delhi to go for. Maybe you don’t understand how large joint families in Delhi work. No one does the small quiet voices of women in large traditional families in a modern era better than Manju Kapur. I’ve read all her books several times and the one I keep coming back to is ‘Home ', which starts off with the story of Sona, newly married to a rich business family who can’t conceive and then later to her daughter, Nisha, who is battling demons of her own.
