But the critics got some books right too. As some did turn out to be "by turns vain, ingenuous, peevish, pompous, ranting, vengeful, smug, and prone to delivering long homilies..."
This is one starry memoir which is clearly not ghost-written. No ghost-writer could have got Vyjanthimala’s voice so right: "by turns vain, ingenuous, peevish, pompous, ranting, vengeful, smug, and prone to delivering long homilies," as one exasperated critic put it.
Bollywood: A History—By Mihir Bose
Mihir Bose’s massive tome is that sad thing: too dull to attract real Bollywood fans and too trivial to interest the critics, one of who described it as "shallow, derivative, too long and insufferably tedious."
Fireproof—By Rajkamal Jha (Picador)
It’s hard to decide which was worse: the daily news stories of the Gujarat riots in 2002, or Jha’s retelling of the stories through a murderous arsenal of literary devices.
Let’s Kill Gandhi! A Chronicle Of His Last Days—By Tushar A Gandhi (Rupa)
Despite the intimidatingly long title and massive size (1,012 pages), the Mahatma’s great-grandson flounders in both scholarship and readability, verging on sensationalism.