List 1

There are so many books to read. so many that i havent read. so many that invite me to pick them up and i do at some point, only to realize it is not very interesting and put it back on the shelf. i have such a huge collection of books – close to 7000 and i do not know when will i ever get down to reading every single one of them. i love making book lists. every single day. i write names of books – write names of authors, the dates when i plan to start reading them to approximately how much will it take me to finish reading them. i do not know why i do this but i would like to believe that it is therapeutic. yes it is. for all the booklovers out there, try it and then let me know if it is or isn’t.

I was going through this book the other day called “1001 books to read before you die” and it is a fantastic compilation with excellent illustrations. I picked up the book only for the illustrations. I wonder if I had to make a list like that what books would I include in that list. Not that I am an authoritarian on books, but this is just my personal list.

For starters let it be the top 10 and may be I will continue at some point….

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
5. The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
6. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
7. Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland
8. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Beloved by Toni Morrison
10. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

So many books…so little time…sigh!!

Love Affair with Books

My love affair with books began when I was all of 3 or so I am told by my mother. It was she after all who instilled the habit of reading in me and carried it through with my sister as well. We must have hardly ever received any toys as children compared to the number of books that lay around in our room. I remember my mother reading out loud, either from “Noddy” or “Mr. Pink Whistle Series” or “Eight O’Clock Tales” or “Five O’Clock Tales” – all of Enid Blyton’s, till I grew up and then realisation hit with all her sexism and racial discrimination tales and yet Ms. Blyton remained an exciting author whose works never failed to amaze us as children. In fact I would still go on and present my nephews and neices her books…

I remember my mother telling me that as a child if we ever crossed a bookstore on the way to my nani’s house, I would throw a massive tantrum and sit on the road, refusing to get up till she bought me a book. Nasty Child!! But just for books…

Then as I grew up, I realized that I never liked sports vis-a-vis the other boys who would love to keep score of how many runs, what football goal so on and so forth. I was always on the search for more books – loads of them…more and more…only books. Nothing else seemed to matter than curling with a book under my blanket with a cup of hot “Cadbury” Cocoa while I would drift away with Gulliver on his travels and with Captain Hook and his menacing ways to obtain the treasure….

My Dad used to never read or may be he did and I never knew of it. My mum, sister and I are the only readers in the entire Sindhi Clan that I know of. I wonder why people do not encourage their children to read. Its pathetic to note that kids these days are more worried about what to wear and which playstation to buy rather than what park to play in. They will never know the smell of new books. They will never know what its like to open a page and get seeped into the life of a character that will remain close to your heart. They will never know what its like to throw a tantrum for a new book by sitting on the middle of the road…They will never know…

As of now I am happy. Knowing that I will always have books by my bedside no matter what.

My Very First Book Meme

I love doing meme’s and specially when its all about books…so here goes:

1. One book that changed my life.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte : If I had to learn about loving all over again I would learn it from this book. Though some would claim it to be highly over-rated but I still love it…All the time. It also happens to be my very first classic read. So I am there with it all the time….A hardbound classic edition from Barnes and Nobles adorns by bookshelf [which will be my pride and glory in my new home]…

2.    One book I have read more than once.

 

Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart… Read it to know why have I read it like a dozen times over and not got enough of it…I love everything about the book. The language is fluid and almost sweeps you with it. Read it. Highly Recommended. Will post a sneak preview on its quotes..
3.    One book that I would want on a desert island.

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar…A book with so many twists that it drives you crazy by the end of it and I wanted more of it by the time I was done with it…

4.    One book that made me laugh.

Anything by the colonial writer Wodehouse…anything at all. Though my favourite is the Blandings series. The funny book that tickled me pink was nonetheless “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 133/4 by Sue Townsend”

5.    One book that made me cry.

Hmm.  Not too many books do that.  Probably the book that engendered the strongest feeling of sadness/overwhelmedness is Night by Elie Wiesel.  It’s the story of his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps.  Powerful stuff. And the other one that had be in buckets of tears had to be “Of Love and Other Demons” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez..No points for guessing why!!

6.    One book that I wish I had written.

Has to be Vikram Seth’s “An Equal Music”. Pure Magic. Absolute and complete. Not a word that is out of place in that book…

7.    One book I wish had never been written.

All books written by Dan Brown, Suketu Mehta, Gregory David Roberts, and Sidney Sheldon.

8.    One book I am currently reading.

Loads of them…Eight at the same time to be precise. Its there in the form of a pictoral post..

9.    One book I’ve been meaning to read.

May be I will get there someday – the entire “A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snicket…

The link continues: Living High, Evestigio, and GeeBaby!!

Currently Reading – October to November

       

 

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

Survivor is one of the best books I have read this year and it had me from the word GO! I have always been an admirer of Mr. Palahniuk’s writing. I remember reading “Invisible Monsters” when I was 21 and it had such an impact on me that I thought that may be after all beauty is not everything in the world and it isn’t. In a world full of madness, no logic, chaos and everything turned up-side down I sometimes feel that Palahniuk’s books provide the most comfort and its so ironic considering that most of his book are either macabrous or just plain horrific. Why horrific? Because they paint reality and nothing is sugar-coated and it is in our face and we hate to see it. Be it beauty being deconstructed in “Invisible Monsters” or children being killed by a rhyme in “Lullaby” or for that matter a story about a cult and faith in “Survivor”

Survivor is not a difficult read at all, however it is not a one-time read. Not at least for me. It revolves around Tender Branson who is the last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult and he has a story to tell which is getting recorded into the flight recorder as the flight is about to crash into the Australian Desert. All said and done Tender is one hell of a great speaker and who can one credit it to but the author who almost seems like he is stepping into the mind of the character so close that he can feel the breath and the heat of the heart.

Palahniuk’s prose sometimes reads like the transcript of a glib motivational speaker, who instead of delivering the program delivers his commentary on the program. The details pile up one after another, the loops and repetitions accumulate, and gradually the reader is admitted into the mind of Tender Branson.

Tender Branson during the course of his tales enlightens the reader on how he met Fertility Hollis – the psychic who can predict the future and let him know what is going to happen…to the time he becomes a messiah and the outcome thereof…

I will not spoil it for you, so pick up the book and read it. Not because it is a masterpiece but because it will definitely make you think…Of everything…Here are a few quotes from the book:

“Every addiction is just a way to treat this same problem. Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it is all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple. Language is just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. People can’t deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can’t be explained and understood.”

“Here in the bathroom with me are razor blades. Here is iodine to drink. Here are sleeping pills to swallow. You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don’t throw yourself down the stairs, that’s a choice. Every time you don’t crash your car, you re-enlist.”

Till Death Do Us Part by Mahasweta Devi

Mahasweta Devi is one of my favourite bhasha writers and I love everything that she writes no matter how tripe it can get sometimes. Right from the time I read “Mother of 1084″ and then saw the film in which Jaya Bachchan was brilliant to the time I finished reading her simple short volume of five stories titled “Till Death Do Us Part”, I have always revered her as one of my favourite authors.

“Till Death Do Us Part” is very different from all the other works of Mahasweta Devi that I have read before. All her other books are angst driven, full of passion to fight for the masses and their rights. Where they communicate nihilism to a large extent, this book is so tender and full of love that is energetic, defiant, and pathos that it makes you close the book with a bittersweet smile on your face.

Currently Reading…

Justine by Lawrence Durrell: Alexandria with all its madness and a melange of love stories against the backdrop of heat, dust, serendipities and insanity known only to the ones who love with passion and obsession. A must read…

The second one that I am reading right now is a book of selected stories by the famous Tamil Writer “Kalki”. Kalki’s writing reminds me a lot of R.K. Narayan and Malgudi Days which I devoured as a teenager and way into my adolescence. Kalki writing gleams of simplicity and dry humour. Though translated, I would love to read the original some day.

Chuck Palahniuk’s “Survivor’ has blown me away. Reflecting on modern times, this book discovers a messiah who is not one and what is the cause and effect of media on everything that we do, everything that we touch, and who we really are. This is the fourth Palahniuk that I am reading right now after Fight Club, Lullaby and Invisible Monsters. I love this one as well though my personal favourite is Invisible Monsters.

More detailed reviews…later…ciao

Nineteen Eighty-Four

 

Mr. Orwell never manages to disappoint me. This is the fifth time I am reading it and honestly it has amazed me all the four times I have read them. According to me “1984″ is the best satire ever written. Every time I have read this book, it runs a shiver down my spine and I do not know what to make of the feeling. May be its just fear. Fear of being born in a totalitarian society and following its hapless rules which do not make any sense whatsoever.

Set in the year by which the novel was titled, Winston inhabits a world completely different to the one in which we all inhabit today. After the nuclear war of the 1960’s, democracy was abandoned as the civil war which engulfed Britain turned against the capitalist hegemony. The workers (or proles), believing that taking away business interest meant that power would be vested in them through the collective state, backed a regime change which exterminated democracy and capitalism and replaced them with an horrific autocratic system of governance, the embodiment of this is the all-seeing omnipotent “Big Brother”, the nominal public figurehead of the newly formed Oceania (British Empire and the US mainly) to which subservience and adoration is required in equal measure. To achieve this, the “Party”, who run this new world, have removed all civil liberties. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and human rights are alien concepts. Attempting a degree of free thought is punishable by death. Indeed, the word freedom no longer exists, thanks to the removal of Common English, or “Oldspeak”, and the lack of comparative word in the new, preferred language, “Newspeak”. Words, work, broadcast media, social life, books-everything is designed to create mass adulation to Big Brother and the party. This is helped by the encouragement of “doublethink”, the process by which a loyal party member can take what may appear to be an untruth and accept that it is a truth by training his mind to ignore the former and blindly accepting the latter.

This is Winston’s problem. He has not quite got the hang of doublethink. He has memories of a time when the party never existed. He knows, through his job at the Ministry of Truth, that he is implicit in an elaborate falsification process. He cannot blindly accept these new facts, as he knows that they are not so. He is a minor member of the party, yet he hates the party and lives in fear of detection from the “thought police”. And what is to be made of Julia, the fervent young party member scrutinising his every action? The novel chronicles these physical and mental struggles as eventually he finds himself in the position he dreads the most.

Without ruining the novel for anyone who has not read it, this is as much information as I can really give without turning this review into a series of plot spoilers. What can be looked at, however, are some of the main issues arising in the novel, for it is the political repercussions of this work which have earned this novel its deserved status as a piece of classic literature.

In the second section of the novel, Winston is presented with a copy of “the book”. If you want to know more about how this happens-go read the novel! However, “the book”, for me, is the most fascinating part of this work. In it, Orwell creates a platform by which he explains why the world has changed into the way it is, how it has done so and most interestingly of all, why the population allow themselves to be subjugated as they do. In doing so, he exposes some of the most common devices for population control used by authorities all around the world. Many of them are still used today. The personal favourite of this reviewer is the principle of “Continuous War”. Orwell states that war, after WW2, has essentially ceased to be. Certainly there can never be another war of attrition like that seen in the early twentieth century. Due to nuclear proliferation, no major country can ever realistically expect again to successfully invade another, without inviting its own destruction. If society is destroyed, then no-one can have power, and those in charge never wish to relinquish power. Yet War is a splendid thing to authorities, when it can be controlled. It allows manpower to be used for production of goods which are largely destroyed and then rebuilt. It also keeps the populous fearful, and a fearful population can be manipulated much easier than a comfortable one. They will look to a leader, a protector, when they feel that there is risk. Thus war, so long as it can never cause true disaster to the homeland, is to be encouraged and sought.

In the face of world events since Orwell wrote his book, it is astonishing to see that, certainly on this theme, there are parallels which could be said to show that he was eerily correct. For 45 years the Cold War rumbled on, with near half the planet’s population living in fear of imminent destruction. Now we have a “War on Terror”, and with it a need for protection and a build up of fear. It has been used in the US to create the Patriot Act, while in Britain Parliament convenes today to discuss ID cards, both designed to curb civil liberties under the guise of protection from an international bad-guy…

There is so much more to this novel, which could be argued on similar lines. The proliferation of “text” (or txt, if you prefer) language shortening the English language, and thus reducing the potential for individual thought. The introduction of a national lottery to give the proles (that’s you and I, dear reader) a false level of hope each week to make the drudgery of life more bearable. The mass production of Newspapers which contain nothing except sport, sex and horoscopes to keep the masses believing that they know what is happening in the world, while telling them nothing. The list goes on and on and on.

And if there is a flaw with this novel, then this is it. While the central character’s story is moving and deeply disturbing at times, it is the potential conspiracies arising from Orwell’s predictions which spook the most. Once you read this book, you will see capitalist government conspiracies EVERYWHERE. I kid you not. This can leave you in a rather isolated social position. My brother, for example, is sick of me telling him that his life is being designed for him by others for their benefit. His last response was something about a good hiding or something…

Please read this novel. I implore this for two very, very good reasons. The first is that it will change forever your perception of the world in which you live, and make you realise that the b***tards running the show have much to answer for.

My World!!

This is my world. A world which is only related to books and where I will proactively try and post all I can about books and how close they are to me! I love reading with a vengeance. I could go on and on about books and never tire. I am the sort of the person who speaks about books and people either get bored or they just let me be. So let me take you on a journey of knowing books through my mind…my perception…my eyes and my sensibilities….