In times of recession, people turn to food reminiscent of their childhood. Macaroni and cheese, shepherd’s pie, etc. That’s a fact. Someone told me it once.
So it’s not surprising that in times of hard reading, I turn to favourite books from my youth.
I’ve just started Vikram Seth’s The Suitable Boy. It’s a whopping 1474 pages. But the effusive reviews on the dust jacket mean I simply cannot read this book. “….such writing reminds us that there are secrets beyond technique, beyond even style, which have to do with a quality of soul on the part of the writer …”
See? I have to read this book. The Guardian told me so.

But given it’s bigger than a block a cheese, I need easy, bite-size reads in between chapters. I need a shepherd’s pie kind of book that is mentally unchallenging and with a storyline as well-worn as a particular peach-fluffed, original Care Bear. And so I turn to Gordon Korman’s Bruno and Boots series.
Gordon Korman should be world famous. His series about two loveable rascals at a Canadian boys’ boarding school is utterly, simply, delightful. There are seven books in all. The first, This Can’t Be Happening At MacDonald Hall! he wrote as a 12-year-old for a school project.
By complete contrast, The Suitable Boy is set in newly independent India in the 1950s. It’s an epic novel intertwining romantic tales, domestic-wars, class feuds and politics. It’s not particularly heavy going. But my tired little mind occasionally yearns for something simpler. And then I turn to Bruno and Boots.
Bruno lets his roommate’s ant collection loose in the hostel. Boots makes his roommate think he has a tropical disease. As much as I love the sumptuousness of The Suitable Boy, there is one note it just doesn’t hit – warm fuzzy nostalgia.

Footnote:
Check out this recently established and impressive blog (love the name) from journalist/runner/book lover Jolene Williams. Thanks to ace cookery writer Lauraine Jacobs for bringing it to my notice.
Just one small error I need to point out to Jolene, Vikram Seth's novel, my all-time favouite read by the way, and one of the longest novels ever published in Englsih, is called A Suitable Boy not The Suitable Boy.