Bina Shah. -File Photo

Bina Shah’s latest book, Slum Child, was published in 2010

What are you reading these days? At the moment I’m reading The Fry Chronicles, the second part of Stephen Fry’s memoirs/autobiography. He can be annoying, but then he’ll write something that makes me laugh out loud, so I enjoy the read. And I’ve been a fan of Fry and Hugh Laurie’s TV sketches and shows since college, so I like reading how it all came about.

Which books are on your bedside table? As I’m travelling, I don’t have much of a bedside table, but back home, I had Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon, Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard Country and Kate Pullinger’s The Mistress of Nothing all claiming space on the table (it’s much bigger than a bedside table because there are so many books I have to read!).

Which titles are on your bucket list of books? Books to read before I die? I haven’t even begun to think in that direction yet.

What is the one book/author you feel everyone must read? I think everyone must read the political essays and memoirs and at least one book by George Orwell, who was so brilliantly perceptive about how the modern world works — its political systems, its tilt towards totalitarianism and tyranny, and the way the English language has been subverted for political ends. Whether you read Burmese Days, 1984, Animal Farm or “Politics and the English Language”, you will gain some understanding of the most important political trends that faced us in the 20th century and continue to do so in the 21st.

What are you planning to reread? I’ll probably re-read Aamer Hussein’s The Cloud Messenger, which is a rich, though slim book, and reveals more of itself as you read it again.

What is the one book you read because you thought it would make you appear smarter? All the books I tried to read for the purposes of intellectual deception just gave me a migraine, so I never finished them. Sophie’s World, I suppose. I’ve always hated philosophy.

What is the one book you started reading but could not finish? There’s been more than one book. Anna Karenina for a start; I didn’t even attempt Ulysses. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna. I started them all but couldn’t make head or tail of any of them so gave them up, relying on something I learned in an economics class: if you pay for a movie ticket but don’t like the movie, it’s a smarter decision to walk out because you’ve already lost the money so you might as well use your time for something that will benefit you. I do try to donate unread books to a library or used bookstore so that others can benefit from my bad decisions.

What is your favourite childhood book or story? The first childhood book I loved to bits was a Disney book called Button Soup. I had my mother read it to me almost every night. It was about Daisy Duck and how she creates a pot of soup big enough to feed the whole town using just a cauldron of water and one button. Of course, she cleverly manipulates all the townsfolk into contributing something for the soup — carrots, turnips, potatoes and a juicy bone.