a story with a capital ‘S’

The Story behind the interesting site What is Stephen Harper Reading? is

Life, it seems, favours moments of stillness to appear on the edges of our perception and whisper to us, “Here I am. What do you think?” Then we become busy and the stillness vanishes, yet we hardly notice because we fall so easily for the delusion of busyness, whereby what keeps us busy must be important, and the busier we are with it, the more important it must be. And so we work, work, work, rush, rush, rush. On occasion we say to ourselves, panting, “Gosh, life is racing by.” But that’s not it at all, it’s the contrary: life is still. It is we who are racing by.

Yann Martel wonders as to what makes the Prime Minister of Canada tick? when he refused the funds for the Canada Council for the Arts, so he decides

'For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.'

A wonderful compilation of books recommended by Martel along with his letter to Stephen Harper which slowly prods the subject, albeit in a gentle manner.

One of them is this poem from the Short and Sweet: 101 very short poems, edited by Simon Armitage:

Fleas

Adam
'ad 'em

and he says

'Busy? Tired? Feeling nothing? You’re missing on the depth of life that you know is out there.... '

Do read and if you have similar books you would like to recommend to Dr. Manmohan Singh do let me know.

A pick among great sagas

As I pause at the 330th page of Book1 of Ashok Banker’s adaptation of The Ramayana, I am amazed to find that a single day of Rama’s life is vividly brought to life in 330 pages of this 550-paged tome. Banker’s story-telling is full of colorful imagery, mental picture of different sounds and presenting the seers and kings without making them appear as caricatures.

This old mythological tale is packaged to suit the literary tastes of the current generation of fantasy-fiction lovers without dwelling on it’s religious elements.
Banker banks on the strength of this epic saga leading us along the main arteries of the story without getting lost in the by-lanes of the minor tales this epic abounds in.


He presents an ensemble of philosophy, action, rivalry and jealousy interweaving it with petty quarrels and mundane conversations.
But I thought the language could have been better than what appears to be school-bookish.
Can’t help but pick nits, what was ‘Harishchandra Avenue’, PFs, the Dark Lord??? Wasn’t it supposed to be set in the 4th century BC !!

Inspite of this, I do not deny that this is an interesting read, wonder if it can be sustained to complete the entire series of the 7 books.
I suddenly morph into a 5 year old sitting on my mother’s lap and listening to this amazing story of good vs evil.

Are you spineless???

David McKie at the Guardian Books muses about his ‘uncontrollable urge to seize the nearest magnifying glass and try to decipher the titles’ from the spines of books in a photograph.

Do you have this intense urge to reach for the nearest sharp instrument and use it to scratch your body parts, which in other words can be termed an itch – now imagine that we bibliophiles have a similar feeling when seeing books anywhere ;only with double the intensity.
I have known people to wade through the ocean of people in Mumbai local trains only to find out the title of the book being read by the last person seated at the last window seat near the exit.
Also if the DVD you had borrowed from your local DVD store suddenly starts imitating a mouse – with squeaks ; I am sure that there would be at least one guilty person who seeing a book featured in the movie would have hit the FF and RW buttons a few hundred times.(remember ‘Crime and Punishment’ in ‘Matchpoint’?)
Old houses with books, libraries, bookshelves in any building form other parts of this serpentine queue of obsession.

But this saga of the spine-obsessed continues to haunt those who are not.
As is evident from one of the comments ‘How about just reading 'em and shutting up about it?’ to which comes the apt reply ‘Down in the antipodes, we have something called the "tall poppy syndrome". Means that anyone who takes a risk and tries to be interesting gets shot down. Guess it happens in the northern hemisphere too. WHY shut up about it? What's wrong with conversation?’

As for me I keep looking at any books hovering in the background until the person in front feels that I am more interested in inanimate objects rather than the conversation ,wish I could say, ‘Yeah, please take the hint!’ .

(Update: Much thanks to Lotus Reads for this site.Very interesting)

To weep is to make less the depth of grief ~William Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth

Anna Beer at the Guardian blogs says ‘I am too self-conscious to read in public places, because I might start sobbing’ while discussing schmaltzy books.

The responses to this post, form an interesting pattern which varies from Anna Karenina to Brothers Kharamazov, Charlotte's Web, A Time Traveller's Wife, The Mayor of Casterbridge and what appeared like a cute cartoon called 'The Cat Came Back'.
Many readers seem to think that the demise of Beth is in Little Women but I distinctly remember Beth's death as described in it's sequel 'Good Wives'
(Brings back memories from school where I had devoured the entire pack of Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys in a single week.) Does anyone else remember Beth in Good Wives?

I'm a little shocked at the mention of 'The Wind in the Willows' ?? A scornful look at self for not shedding a tear even as a kid. Is the sentimentalist in me dead?

But no, I remind myself about the incident where I needed a tissue or two while reading the last chapter of the “Remains of the Day’ and the only other instance I remember being misty-eyed was while reading ‘Of Mice and Men’.
I think moving to tears by a book not only depends on the type of person you are but also on the mood while reading and there are some books which leave you with a melancholic mood -Maugham comes to my mind at this juncture.

And in the words of Anna Beer ‘Sometimes the tears are a sign that a book has truly, deeply moved me - but too often there are shadows of Dickens at his most manipulatively sentimental.’ Do you agree with this?

A Magical world at Diggi Palace

A gathering of like-minded people thronged the corridors of the Diggi Palace - venue for the Jaipur Literature festival,2007 and yes, yours truly was very much part of that.

Since a lot has already been written about this by indiauncut, jabberwock and kitabkhana,
I'm adding only little nuggets of information.

William Darlymple's post lunch session on the first day of the fest., was good till about 40 minutes after which I caught people dozing - I must mention this despite him being such a wonderful narrator but alas! a post-lunch session can sometimes prove to be a disaster. I wish there was more to the session other than just getting to hear extracts from his book.

To a question by a wise,old man to Kiran Desai whether unlike her hero Biju , is she not fortunate enough to win the Booker?, Kiran replied (in her soft voice, much to the agony of the audience at the back who were constantly complaining that it was inaudible until she was almost forced to 'kiss' her mike) -'Winning the Booker is like a lottery - it depends on a whole lot of factors like the happenings around the world that year, what the other writers have written etc.'

One of the questions to Suketu Mehta was 'why fiction is more popular than non-fiction' , he replied 'Because it does not involve going around slums or a fat advance'.
Another question shot at him was 'If attending creative writing courses is of any use? ' ,he said that personally he found it useful ; had he not done the course he would have still come to Jaipur but not as a writer but as a diamond merchant(he hails from a family of diamond merchants).

William Darlymple who also moderated Suketu Mehta's session remarked atleast on two occasions about incurring the wrath of bloggers to which Suketu replied politely that he doesn't follow blogs too much.(Point to be noted, what??)

Amit Chaudari's session I thought was one of the best ,with Anita Roy doing a very good job which Barkha has apparently failed in case of Kiran Desai. Please read an extensive account of it here.

One would wonder if the crowd for Rushdie's session, which spilled the corridors and extended till the lawns , had any clue as to how captivating his session would be!

Whether it is "What kind of God wouldn’t strike you down for eating a ham sandwich?”“Karachi is a bloody big dump!” or

'Chhagan Bhujbal is an asshole' or

'Karachi is a dump' or

'this week's issue of Outlook has lies written about me'

Rushdie proved that he is indeed the walking, talking intellectual and is worthy of all the respect and recognition that he gets.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

the above lines are from one of my recent reads - 'A Woman of No Importance'.

Only 84-odd-pages and Wilde seems to have filled it with pearls of wisdom (well, you can say that for any book of Oscar Wilde).

A simple story (might remind you of some old Hindi movie)-
Young Gerald is offered a job of a secretary by Lord Illingworth and the twist in the tale occurs when Gerald's mother Mrs.Arbuthnot realizes her relationship with Lord Illingworth.

Carefully camouflaged between the amusing lines, lies the mockery of erstwhile aristocracy of England.
These lines, of Lord Illingworth, would bear testimony of the above fact:

"To get into the best society, nowadays, one has to either feed people, amuse people, or shock people--that is all!"

Lord Illingworth is to this book what Henry was in 'The Picture of Dorian Grey’. It is through his wit that we encounter some of the best lines of this book.
Consider this

LADY STUTFIELD : Every one I know says you are very, very wicked.

LORD ILLINGWORTH : It is perfectly monstrous the way people go
about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that
are absolutely and entirely true.

Sometimes I wonder whether I see the reflection of Wilde in the voice of Lord Illingworth - cynical and a stylish villain. In comparison to him the apparently good natured Mrs.Arbuthnot and Miss. Hester appear boring and dull. (Self-righteneous and seemingly didactic).And of course Illingworth walks away with all those famous lines of the play:

"I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable."

"The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations."

"Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman - or the want of it in the man."

Considering the fact that Mrs.Arbuthnot emerges victorious towards the end of the book, I wondered if the title ‘A Man of No Importance’ would have been more suitable.
But Wild(e) are his ways...

All 'bout true frendz -Buks

Since this is on one of my favourite topics (books), I don’t mind Vigs tagging me and even if it wasn’t on books, I don’t mind tags because it really gives you something to write about without thinking too much.
On a side note, I should say that considering the number of times I fill such questionnaires especially in restaurants (where the bill is always invariably handed to the guy and the feedback form to the girl!) I should have mastered the technique by now.

So without further delay lemme proceed in the direction of the questions at hand

Total number of books owned :
After someone flicked my “Gone with the Wind” besides umpteen others whose titles currently slip my mind, after I lost “Rebecca” while travelling, I had given up on buying books and started patronizing the neighbourhood library Kaleidoscope – which btw has an amazing collection of Tintins as well :-)
Recently I restarted my collection, I think it wud be a miserly 80+ books falling under the category of fiction.

The last book bought :
well I picked atleast half a dozen books at Blossoms but lemme put down the one treasure that I’d picked there in hard bound- “The ThornBirds”

The last book you read :
Itz Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide –not a bad read at all considering my prejudice against Indian authors.

One Book I Couldn't Finish:
James Joyce’s Ulysses takes the cake –I have not yet given up hope that one of these days I would definitely finish it.

Five books I always cherish:

In order to sound different (from my mouthshut review on 5 Best Books) I choose a different set of books here

1.The Colour Purple by Alice Walker -
It is just a coincidence that Purple is indeed my favourite colour n coming to the book it is 'bout Life as seen thro’ the eyes of an Afro-American woman –it is not only about the tribulations she faces because of her race, faith or gender but also about Hope that shows the triumph of the human spirit against all odds.

2.Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov –
Well this controversial book has always been on my list esp. because of the author’s lyrical (almost poetical) writing style and Humbert Humbert is the perfect love struck protagonist in my eyes and the book is all about love albeit between an old man and a nymphet.

3.Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck –
I hear that this is sort of classic in American literature and rightly so since it captures the essence of the dreams that American farmers nurtured during the Great Depression. A story of the love and dreams shared between two farmer friends and the tragic end that would leave you misty eyed.

4.The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waler
Every once in a while u read a book that completely changes your perspective of love and this is one such book. I know this book evokes mixed response from people, who consider it adultery, but for me it is a simple and eternal story of love between Kincaid and Francesca, sometimes even an affair of 4 days leaves an indelible mark in your lives.

5.The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Ok I can hear my friends screaming “here she goes again ‘bout thornbirds” but I can’t help it (sorry folks!) I know it is just an antiquated love story but the forbidden love of Maggie and Ralph, the Australian home of Drogheda and the entire Cleary family hold a special place in my heart always.

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice... and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart. ~Gilbert Highet

5 ppl I would tag it (I haven’t done checks if they have already endured this list!)

the crouching tigress
the desi Barry
first rain
zombie
fiona

When Pinching helmets was a pastime and newts got painted orange

I was in deep mourning thinking of the wasted years I spent when I did not read PG Wodehouse’s works. How did I miss noticing Lord Emsworth and Jeeves and Wooster books beckoning me from their colourful covers is beyond my ken!
My memory takes me back to the days of apna doordarshan, which did indeed telecast good programmes apart from Krishi Darshan.I would have been about 13 years old and the Jeeves and Wooster series would be my side dish for my afternoon lunch –of course I think most of the British humour was lost on me then but still I think that is my first meeting with this maestro of humour.
Once again I bumped into him in college on the recommendation of gud ole Akila (mental note to myself: try to locate her) I read a couple of golf stories of his but I still did not appreciate the writer too much or perhaps it did not appeal to my then rebellious mind (which was busy devouring Ayn Rand).
Almost a decade later I started again with “The Inimitable Jeeves” and only then I really started appreciating PGW. Having just completed “What Ho! - The Best of P.G. Wodehouse”, I must say that I have a lot of catching up to do but like the saying goes “Better Late than never”! What Ho!.. has the best of PGW’s collection with an excellent introduction by Stephen Fry and came to my rescue in my long waits in airports where the weary passengers were left wondering what made me laugh so much after a 5 hour wait and a 9 hour flight!! I did pity them indeed for not being able to look at the brighter side of life through the eyes of PG Wodehouse.