Library
5 Clandestine Tales
Text by Nittal Chandarana
This one’s for the lazy buggers. Life is magical when you read a superb novel. You store the author’s name for future reference and bless her soul for the kindness she has bestowed upon you, for giving you the safety net of a lot of books you know you can trust. But the horror of scouting new material to read, the tragedy of leafing through a 100-odd pages of a new novel only to find that it bears an alarming amount of codswallop!
Some great authors are kind. They slyly use the name of a book they have enjoyed in the pages of their own thereby, unknowingly, making our future reading experience far smoother.
Check out gallery below and see if you know the answer before clicking on the thumbnail! Click on any thumbnails to view gallery and read more….
Chobsky mentions Ayn Rand
Stephen Chbosky in The Perks of Being a Wallflower recommends The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
This one’s not discreet at all. The leading protagonist, Charlie, has an all-too-brilliant English professor who hands a copy of Ayn Rand’s famous work to his prize student saying, ‘Read it like a filter, not a sponge.’ Sound advice.
The Fountainhead is a book about ideals, power play, the media, a fickle-minded people, and one man’s battle against the world. Read too little and you shall lose out on Rand’s impeccable thought process; read too much into it and you might just be transported into a dark space. But read. Chbosky certainly thinks you must!
John Green recommends Walt Whitman
John Green in Paper Towns recommends Leaves of Grass and Niece by Walt Whitman
Margo Roth Spiegelman sets her friend, Quentin, on a near-impossible hunt for…herself. She decides to take off and make her way into the world leaving clues in the verses of Whitman’s anthology, or so he believes.
Leaves of Grass was Whitman’s Precious. He spent his entire life writing and rewriting the poems. There have been a total of eight editions published. As for Niece, do go ahead and read this one. It is either a work of genius or Whitman’s little joke on the world.
Meg Cabot recommends Charlotte Bronte
Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries recommends Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
Try as she may, Mia, the unlikely princess, can’t seem to imbibe a touch of subtlety. Nor does she seem to be lucky getting the man of her choice. Enter: Royal Grandmother. The queen encourages her to read Charlotte Brontë’s near-Gothic novel and glean young Jane’s tactics to bewitch Mr. Rochester.
We can’t fathom Jane Eyre and this redundant art of dropping slight hints, but then it’s a classic. It’s the story of a governess entering a melancholy household and making it her own. Thrown in is a mentally ill ex-wife. Aren’t you even a little tempted to read it?
Mark Haddon references Doyle
Mark Haddon in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time references Arthur Conan Doyle's Silver Blaze
The title of Haddon’s book is taken directly from the Sherlock Holmes’ short story, Silver Blaze. Christopher is all set to discover the murderer of his neighbour’s black poodle, Wellington. It is the story of this teenaged boy having Asperger’s Syndrome and how he unravels this mind-boggling riddle.
Silver Blaze, a famous racehorse, is murdered and it is up to Holmes to discover who committed the crime. One astonishing piece of the puzzle is why the dog, witness to the horse being led out, did not bark the place down.
Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
Chills. And there stands one of Doyle’s finest works.
Jane Austen looks at Anne Radcliffe
Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey recommends The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Gothic literature meets family drama?! Heresy! Young Catherine in Austen’s novel is a Gothic story aficionado and a fan of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mystery of Udolpho. Catherine makes the mistake we all do quite often. She tries to relate the happenings in her Gothic book to what she might experience in Northanger Abbey, where she is invited to stay with family friends. A huge mansion; exactly as described…surely there must be a dark story hidden behind its walls.
The Mysteries of Udolpho is a Gothic romance novel and traces the troubled life of its protagonist, Catherine. Dark and sinister in its approach, this book covers everything from the mysterious to the supernatural to dreadful family secrets. A monster of a read!