Santaclaus in Baghdad!

This is an unbelievable compilation of short stories by Elsa Marston and it throws a different angle into the lives of teens in Arab World. The first look gave me the impression that life runs same whichever part of the world you are in; the daily struggles and small droplets of happiness makes it complete. Be it among the refugees of a camp or highly educated family reduced to eating from the floor owing to poverty, there are rays of hope and the glittering visions of future that goads them on.

The story in the same title from Iraq deals with a family and the kid hopes for his little red car from Santa Claus - the girl in the family gets a gift for their favorite teacher; I was thrilled reading this story. It might sound simple but there was truth and beauty in the narration. The story called “Honor” talks through honor killings in Jordan and “The Plan” is a wonderful storyline about brothers trying to ‘woo’ a teacher. There are other stories each with its unique way of capturing the hearts.

I liked the collection and would recommend…

Feluda

I have been re-reading the "Feluda" series by Satyajit Ray, after years. Picked up the omnibus, in two volumes, this time in Calcutta.
These novelettes used to be available for Rs.20 when I was in school, and I used to devour them. My uncle, my father's younger brother possessed a pretty nice collection as well. A few years back, Satyajit Ray's son, Sandip, put together this collection of all the stories.
Perceptions change with time. Feluda, the main character, whom I thought the Perfect Man as a teenager, seems like this totally arrogant know-it-all, spouting information which people are AWARE of in any case, and his cousin's hero-worship is sometimes pretty hard to digest. Jatayu still remains the lovable bumbler, though it's a bit difficult to accept that anyone can be THAT ignorant of certain well-known facts-such as the difference between the walrus and the hippopotamus and that penguins can only be found in Antarctica.
That said I still loved reading the stories. Ray is good at drafting a plot, even though I think he is a better film-maker than a writer. He does detailed travel descriptions too-and sends his detective trio to the most amazing places to solve crimes, from Ellora to Gangtok, from Shimla to -well, nowhere in South India really. Suppose he did not need to come here to shoot movies (it's said that he used to use the locales he shot in as a background for the books).The only thing that irritates me is that the trio spend more time solving crimes and rescuing each other and bringing the evil-doer to book, than in sight-seeing.......but I suppose that's natural if you are a detective?
Also I like the fact that the novels are CLEAN; read, no crimes passionnelle, or however you spell it, no sex,only a minuscule amount of violence, strong bonding between the characters, and thank god, practically none of that stock in trade of detective fiction, the bungling inspector.
Another thing I liked was that different types of crime are dealt with, petty theft, fraud, imposture,smuggling, illegal trade in arts and antiquities, drugs, forgery, even a case of grave robbing, all accompanied by a corpse or two.
Though for a Christie addict, the solutions seem a little too simple and not far-fetched enough :))))..I think these books are definitely for a younger audience.
Read the original Bengali of course, but I think translations are available.